Flax blades
Howling birds
The tears of strangled mountains

Flip a coin
The land of the long white cloud
A sun so bright
The shadows are buried
7 feet below
Alongside those whose eyes
Were convinced
The coin only flipped one side

You,
Are my brother.
You,
Are my sister.

You are my tribe,
My people,
My Family.

To see the day,
Witnessing the ways we hate each other,
Thrusts a knife through my heart, and out the other side.

The weight of the world falls upon us when we see the loss of our brothers, our sisters,
Born of the same blood,
As you, and I.

I am not scared,
I am sad,
I am disappointed to see the ways,
The walls we build that separate us from the other.

There is no other,
Only Us.

You,
Are my brother.
You,
Are my sister.
You are all my family,
And my Blood.

To see the blood spilled for the sake of nothing,
Forsaken are we to each other.

Come together,
You and I.
Come, my sister,
Come, my brother.

We shall stand,
Hand in hand.
until the day we fly.

~Robert van Lingen

madness ensuing
violence and bloodshed
this world has lost its humanity
the world is no longer safe
we hold out hope
that there are some people who care
who give love
who spread peace
and then we spiral into a toxic cycle
guns and bombs
we paint on our war masks
flying flags of surrender
because all we've ever done is hurt
and we will continue to hurt

madness in their minds
those who choose to hurt
holding guns to foreheads
because they chose to **** and never forgive
stuck hearing new captions
listening to the tears of people over the radio
its post-apocalyptic
its the end of the world
and all we can do is pray
pray that we end what violence we've started
lay down your battle armor
make peace
and pray

The fonterrorists will go elsewhere
The big boy powers always find a small dot far away from their large splodge
To check and wreck havoc to
It’s got to be far far enough away that if you can smell the smoke,
It’s faint enough that you could mistake it for incense
Or your might twitch your nose
Turn your head and say
Is someone smoking?
It smells like someone is smoking?

When the water is more **** than water
When it is only dry, desitutte,
eroded wasted uselessness,
The fonterrorists will go elsewhere
Somewhere with more utility.

New Zealand culture,
a fragility,
tainted by violence.
Colonisation.

Writers have examined,
the loss of Maori land.
Less common however,
is writing concerned with
the benefits,
accruing to white people
as a result of the acquisition
of this land.

Colonisation has provided,
Economic and social advantages,
to white people,
in contemporary New Zealand.

A hierarchy,
white Western culture,
sitting uncontested,
at its pinnacle.

The cultural capital that whiteness provides.
Unearned advantages at our disposal.
Live our lives with greater ease:
Homeownership.
Health.
Education.
The ‘Justice’ System.
Institutional privilege.
A political separation.

The white New Zealand system,
designed for whites.
To get through school,
have good health,
get jobs,
get a little justice.
If the system was designed,
for Maori people
it would not be the way it is now.

Overrepresentation of Maori,
in every
negative
New Zealand
social statistic.

The persistence of *******.
Society provides greater opportunities,
to white people,
by disadvantaging those who are not.
Unacknowledged,
debilitating, racism.

Being oblivious,
sustains a belief,
in white superiority.

While factors:
socioeconomic status, gender,
sexuality, disability,
may impact the degree to which,
individual white people,
can access privilege.
On some level,
every white person,
in New Zealand
benefits from their skin.

is it strange then to long for wild mountains that spring from all angles?
and stretch to the a sky filled with clusters of white
which escape from view quickly with an ocean wind
to see the unordered grass trompled over by livestock
on their way to the sole tree in the pasture
seeking a brief salvation from a stark ozone-less sun
no bureaucrat planned, manicured this land
he did not sit in a lofty office, feeling the cool breeze of electrically chilled air
it was not voted on, the way the waves are to crash
he did not need the approval of his lay out for pebbles on the beach
corruption did not intermingle the trees, making it cumbersome for humans
or the reclining alp's angles
they were left to the law engrained in movement
the unknown dispersion of marbles across the ground, scientific wonders

now they sit, in their building, living monuments of time
springing up from the ground like ant hills
not understanding
standing on the previous lives of men
entitled
my land
my city
my country

and i long for, my archipelago
stretch of green, a harmonious chord
pining after the days
in D.O.C camps
barefooted
gritty
the feel of sand in the bottom of my sleeping bag
and the wonder of no-man's-land

Poppies abloom in memoriam.

Fields content of the past.

Storms brewing above.

To renew them once again.

Memories of battle, scars on the earth.
Revealed once again.

In the fields.

It was the poppies to bloom

In memoriam.