Poem: Seuss 2.0
We were all very very naughty and Santa Claus brought us the Internet we deserved.
If the Wi-Fi on your hi-fi on your hi-def on your Wii
is connected to the iPod that controls your PS3
and the Dosbox on your Xbox booted Linux just before
but the Bluetooth on your Blu-Ray doesn't like your MP4
and the HDCP settings on your HDMI port
tell your SDHD SD-card to suddenly abort
and the CIA are calling 'cos your SDMI mix
just got copied to the KGB instead of MI6
and your Flickr's started Twittering your pics to Wikipedia
but your router won't re-multicast your Vista multimedia
and Google Search is peeking through the Windows in your brain
and your Blackberry is bleeping 'cos it thinks it crashed a plane
patch your PHP's Apache with a picture of a badger
then go paste it up on Facebook and sign someone else's name.
Poem: Sideways
Time is an orange
Curls up at the edges -
So
There you see
Vacuum isn't
Kilometres
At all
It's skin
Space is an egg
Sunny side, scrambled
Boiling over the city
Any way you want it
And you could pour
Light from a jug
Onto grids of crisp
Houses
The trick
Is to wake up
Sideways
Poem: Happy Hour
Happy Hour
Evenin', sir. Been out on the town tonight, have we?
Just a routine checkpoint, sir. If you'd kindly whistle into this bag.
We need to establish your blood happiness levels, sir.
Yes, just a whistle is perfectly sufficient.
Or a yodel, yes.
A rousing chorus of 'God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen' would indeed do the trick, sir. If you truly feel it.
No sir, this is not an evidentiary happiness test. That is to say, it has no actual what you would call legal standing in court. But a failure would indicate sufficient cause for us to request you to accompany us to the local store for the full Seasonal Fitness examination and certificate.
His orders, sir. Our mutual friend. Him with the beard.
No, I'm sure neither of us wants that, sir. If you'd just whistle? Or hum if you prefer. It's the mirth that is the significant factor.
Involves candy canes and intubation, I believe. I've not witnessed the procedure myself. It's only my first night on the shift. Your lips go here. It may help to pucker.
There's no call for that sort of language, sir. This is for your own safety and protection during this extremely tolerant season. Once again I have to request that you perform the procedure and display visible jollity.
Sir, I'm afraid that is a fail result and I'm going to have to ask you to accompany me to the store. You are not at this point under obligation to exchange gifts, but a card will be required, and possibly one phone call. Should a gift become mandatory, you have the right of access to a gift-wrap of your choice; if you do not have gift-wrap, a tasteful bag with store branding will be provided...
Poem: Absents
Christmas is a wonderful time. It's when you're powerfully reminded how many things exist that you don't need, and how many things you need that don't exist.
Absents
I looked everywhere
to find you a present
The only thing they didn't have in stock
was me
So I bought it for you
but then I remembered
The only thing I don't have
is you
Poem: Collision
Christmas is a northern hemisphere holiday. There should be a law against celebrating it in summer. Fake frost on your windows in 30 degree heat: no excuses, BOOM.
Collision
Christmas is a collision
white knuckle deadlines
multiple party damage
the smoke of burning bridges
one final accounting
of the year's sins and omissions
told, carried, spindled, posted
racked with the cards and wine
white crosses
on the new year's grave
resolutions
to live forever
Poem: Forgetting How To Fly
A poem for Christmas.
Forgetting How To Fly
Christmas and the smell of
haybales on the plains
and looking up at a sky
black and full of dust
through a tin-shed window
and bright in that star river
the Cross, a kite
for hanging dreams on.
It's been some years, now,
under white fluorescents
and I'm missing something
I've forgotten how to name
that space inside, to fly:
I need a holiday from me.
Poem: Starholes
One of a triptych of poems written for my Gethsemane station at Opawa Baptist Easter Journey 2007. The theme for the labyrinth as a whole was 'today's news'. Since climate change had burst into the headlines I wanted to do a contemplative station from the viewpoint of Earth as 'a garden under siege'; a whole-systems, God's-eye overview that invited reflection and confrontation, seeking for hope amid the shadow of approaching disaster.
Accompanying photograph: Apollo 8 classic 'Earthrise' shot of Earth from moon, 1968.
I've always felt the Apollo expeditions to have a sort of surreal camping-trip weekend feel to them: transient, temporary, and above all childlike. And we've never been back. There is such wonder and terror captured in that one fragile glimpse of Earth, vulnerable, a glass marble. But I reject utterly the fatalism and despair of materialist science that proclaims 'that's all, there's nothing else, we're completely alone and now even the Earth is doomed'.
And yet. How much more suffering can the Earth endure? How much of that cup dare we ask to be averted? Gethsemane deeply troubles me, both as a symbol and as a question. If the bodies of all creatures die, and yet resurrection is certain, what does extinction of a planetary biosphere mean in the eyes of God who inhabits a glorious multiverse? Does He even see it? In what realm can the flame of life continue if it burns out here?
Yes, I am praying for the very life of Earth itself, and though it seems such a huge and yet simple thing, I am not yet confident that I am heard, or that I even grasp the question.
I weep, I rage against eternal night. I beat my fists on dead lunar stone. Why does God keep smiling?
starholes
this is us in '69:
blue marble
snapshotted
halfway to nowhere
(-- what we did on our
lunar holiday:
scuffed shoes, tossed rocks --)
that's all there is:
one pale blue dot
(-- except, ah, the fire
which burns through
starholes
from the other side --)
it's not like I'm asking
for much, God
just the earth
Poem: Extinction
A poem that didn't make the cut for the 2007 Easter Journey.
I replaced it with the more ambiguous 'Off The Grid'. Perhaps I should have kept it. But the installation already had dark themes and this felt just too despairing. Gethsemane is not about the end of all things, it is just a place we walk through.
extinction
my lips break
when I try to pray
for the world
it spins so fast
the times blow a gale
pain overwhelms me
industrial genocide
garden to necropolis
in my generation
what is there to say
that is not agony?
that is not despair?
we have slept
the night was long
and even our awakening
kills things
Poem: Barometer
A poem that didn't make the cut for the 2007 Easter Journey. I wanted apocalyptic storm imagery, but felt this was too dark, and too abstract.
barometer
trees cramped with pain
a bruised ash sky
moaning of a hot dark wind
storm's coming
sun stains like wine
a bone dust moon
vacuum rips my breath away
storm's coming
I watch alone
under the cyclone's eye
strips me to the truth
storm's coming
no more choices
but to stand
face up
storm's here
Poem: Stormwalker
One of a triptych of poems written for my Gethsemane station at Opawa Baptist Easter Journey 2007. The theme for the labyrinth as a whole was 'today's news'. Since climate change had burst into the headlines I wanted to do a contemplative station from the viewpoint of Earth as 'a garden under siege'; a whole-systems, God's-eye overview that invited reflection and confrontation, seeking for hope amid the shadow of approaching disaster.
Accompanying photograph: A hurricane dominates a quarter-Earth from orbit.
This poem is about a personal response to climate change in a New Zealand context. Christchurch is an exposed, swamp-built city. We inhabit an urban environment without immediate danger from weather, but there is always the shadow in the back of the mind, in the cold wet winter days, that the Canterbury river plains are a fundamentally inhospitable place to be should the water rise. On Rapaki Track just up the hills from my childhood home there is a monument to children who died of exposure when the weather turned bad. Some part of me has never quite forgotten the fear as a small child of being lost, displaced, a city kid thrown back to the elements. I wrote this as a challenge to that shadow.
Stormwalker
when the hot nor'wester
scorches tussock up Sugarloaf
I will remember you
on Olivet
when the freezing easterly
drenches Brighton Pier anglers
I will remember you
by Kinnaret
when the winter night
shades westward over Halswell
I will remember you
in Gethsemane
the storm rises
the wind whirls
the wave breaks
it will not touch me
it will not touch me
it will not touch me
