americano
in his mephistophelean slink
toward some visceral glimmer
of ‘democracy’
americano
pauses to pat
his shades
I n t o p l a c e.
he redeems his
brusque suit collars
with a residual slap
&
twists
the silver fob watch
his granny gave him
before he l e f t to serve.
his precise shave chin
struts just a little more
as he grimaces his smile
against this humid hecatomb.
diplomatically,
he thews
d
e
e
p
e
r
into his groin
a special issue
snubnose
&
- vibrating like a clockwork bunny –
he waits
to redact
this next big
threat
to the flag.
a guy I met once
he was an arch-cunt
tricking his
prismatic diamonds
in a thin trickle scored
from some deep clay mine
in deeper zimbabwe
where dead
black men sweated to eat just once
before their demise
&
mugabe
reigned/reined supreme;
rather
akin
to this guy ugly
I once met
who would have sold
his own mother into
whatever was going down at the time.
petrichor
for Leticia, 2013
there is nothing
on
E A R T H
quite like
the petrichor.
that intangible
w a f t i n g
aroma
just a f t e r
a rapid rain
calls on
its loping twin,
the warm foehn
to come out for a stroll.
their
tryst breath
paradise
for every pore,
a succour
for the glad tine
of my tongue;
suffusing through me
as subtle
balm.
there’s nothing
quite
like
the petrichor.
the petrichor
is
y o u.
a forced reunion
was just me
and the boy
threshed backtogether
a f t e r y e a r s a p a r t.
father & son
as aleatory
aliens
flesh & blood
genetic synchronicity
sharing his birth
but NO
commonlanguage
other than obligatory
chitchat.
solipsistic
soloists in the same rooms,
strangely more r e m o t e
than strangers.
years then ran
past themselves: the boy grew,
married,
h u n g himself at 29.
even now, when it’s far too late,
there’s the ‘what if’ and the ‘why didn’t I’
and a hundred other such
slowly riveting
this amaranthine pang
to
my heart.
taku aroha ngaro
ko te tāima
mo taku korero aroha
ki a koe.
kāore he wahine tēnei tāima.
ko
taku
whenua
tūpuhi
ki ngā maunga nui.
ngā roto ngoto me ngā awa mārōrō.
ko tahi anake tēnā
kāore he wahine tēnei tāima,
engari ko tino ātaahua tonu
ko aotearoa
te ingoa o tēnei wāhi
ko rakatia
ki taku manawa.
[my lost love
it’s time for my love talk to you not a woman this time
it’s my skinny country,
with many mountains,
the deep lakes,
and the powerful rivers
that is the only one not a woman this time
but is still very beautiful
it’s you
Aotearoa is the name of this place
It’s locked in my heart.]
charybdis
came up against imperial
the arrogant a r r a y
of oligopolists
sutured deep
i
n
t
the skins
of oligarchy.
damnably difficult
to
dislodge,
this sucking charybdis
stifling, suffocating.
one could be a terrorist manqué -
or –
after donning
mirror shades of
the densest black
insouciance –
hoick
backwards fulsome
their own arrant
mantra:
‘better loaded guns
than butter’.
