I saw the Maori Jesus
Walking on Wellington Harbour.
He wore blue dungarees,
His beard and hair were long.
His breath smelled of mussels and paraoa.
When he smiled it looked like the dawn.
When he broke wind the little fishes trembled.
When he frowned the ground shook.
When he laughed everybody got drunk.

The Maori Jesus came on shore
And picked out his twelve disciples.
One cleaned toilets in the railway station;
His hands were scrubbed red to get the **** out of the pores.
One was a call-girl who turned it up for nothing.
One was a housewife who had forgotten the Pill
And stuck her TV set in the ******* can.
One was a little office clerk
Who'd tried to set fire to the Government Buldings.
Yes, and there were several others;
One was a sad old quean;
One was an alcoholic priest
Going slowly mad in a respectable parish.

The Maori Jesus said, 'Man,
From now on the sun will shine.'

He did no miracles;
He played the guitar sitting on the ground.

The first day he was arrested
For having no lawful means of support.
The second day he was beaten up by the cops
For telling a dee his house was not in order.
The third day he was charged with being a Maori
And given a month in Mt Crawford.
The fourth day he was sent to Porirua
For telling a ***** the sun would stop rising.
The fifth day lasted seven years
While he worked in the Asylum laundry
Never out of the steam.
The sixth day he told the head doctor,
'I am the Light in the Void;
I am who I am.'
The seventh day he was lobotomised;
The brain of God was cut in half.

On the eighth day the sun did not rise.
It did not rise the day after.
God was neither alive nor dead.
The darkness of the Void,
Mountainous, mile-deep, civilised darkness
Sat on the earth from then till now.

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.

I tried
to throw it out
along with the bubbles,
the yellow duck,
and the knickers the dog crudely
chewed

pushed it amongst silled plants,
now it stands,
between Thick Cut Marmalade
and Chlorine Free Baking Cups
a token, painted green with white
Maori dots, symbolizing
the small dreamings
of a tortoise
                                                    
and since this house
is my body, see
how I have placed you
in the kitchen

and I cannot get beyond,
the simple meaning,
of daily needing
love like water, air

and how I don't seek
to see it fully
yet often find myself
checking if its there.

hiatus awaiting

welcome are the nights,
with a chance of snow,
and me...
   writing practically nothing;
i guess the common ground
encompassed by a
acted out "laziness"....
    i can admire *******
and it feels
     the same dead weight of
*******' hanging weight...
        i sacrifice my lamb
on the altar of Slayer
and say goodnight....
  i like these nights, redying
myself for an internet hiatus...
    getting a haircut,
trimming my beard...
        it will be a most pleasant
experience,
being internet-free...
i can actually forget about
the dialogues...
                   for a month or so...
the whiskey dries out,
the will abides by hibernation,
the book is read...
time passes via
         a Maori interpretation....
slow, deathly,
unpredictable...
                 such warm wintry
nights when the snow falls,
and the fox scuttles about...
            are paid grievances
for want of dream...
                i write the least
because i belittled the most...
   zeit werden plötzlich halt...
        like i said: i pay my allegienace
to a tongue..
       i align with german
on a fetishist's whim,
not a nationality...
            speaking german comes
across as oral ***...
            scheiße ficken auster!
      i pay my allegiance
to a tongue, not the people -
  der zunge uber die volk...
            i reek of the kind of hate
that these zombie-people dreams of
the living become acrid...
         i am sodium and sulphate!
                              i watch
the shamanic dance and the *******
"ladies" in waiting...
                      i am the tongue
above the people;
    thinking comes later...
    last...
       the only increment of crafting
a nostalgia of carving
and a nostalgia of what's past;
****** the oyster with the serpent,
maggot, worm...
             there's nothing with
leverage of poetics...
              why has the thrill of life
and upkeep "suddenly"
expired from me?
         why has this quasi-
castration taken hold of me?
                   all before the
perfected mechanisation ugly...
                  doesn't matter,
as individualism dies
i am the one to inherit it...
                      die hitzig nächte
aus gefallen schnee...
und die tänzeln fuchs...
                                    zu sehen.
- perhaps a return to
the saxon rooting...
perhaps that,
perhaps anything at all...
what does it matter,
there's the troubling tomorrow
to pitch against...
             the lost beauty of
the sunrise, to the day's insistence
for love lost unto labour;
the abhorring obedience to
said, "love", and slavish schematics;
love is a pardoning word
in keeping things intact,
but not a word worth an ounce
of motivational value.

and due to CSFR (cross-site request forgery)...

      *Turkish Barbers

once more, the notion of the simplest pleasures in life, are the most rewarding; maybe i should be 30 to 40 years older to make such a statement, maybe i ought to be the colt-type bungee jumping and skydiving feeding an adrenaline rush... but then again once you make life slim of extreme pleasure, the real authentic pleasures come through in the most unexpected way, out of the mundane every day, a proud, strutting peacock - let's keep the intricacies of pleasures and experienced bound to a labyrinth of either such extreme experiences, or the heights of philosophical discourse... keep the pauper's share, allow the everyday form of grey separate itself: till you finally see the black & white.

it was about time, someone had to allow this
ruffian, this ***, this barbarian into society...
sure, a suit makes a man,
but since we're living in times of smart casual,
where ties are not required nor
the top button done up -
the next thing that makes a man,
is a well deserved, haircut.
i come to think that a haircut makes more
of a man, than a well attired suit,
call me old fashioned, or new fashioned -
but it comes as a shame to not bother
with a haircut, like i did for almost a year,
considering the angst of the baldies,
with their shining craniums exposed
to moonlight...
like ice converging to act as mirror
in a firming puddle on the pavement...
yes, i am prone to "forget", well, in actual
fact abandon any ****** aesthetics to
imitate a variant of Lent...
i give certain things up and fast in a much
different way... vain?
hardly...
you only notice the difference
when a girl looks your way after a transition,
even with a puffer-fish face from all the drinking...
but it had to be done,
someone really had to get rid of the barbarian,
this: feral *thing...
and who better if not a Turkish Barber?
i have to say... i lost my virginity to a razor today...
Turkish Barbers are the best in the world,
that's not an opinion, that's a fact,
and from what the result is...
women can't cut beards,
they can do a brazilian wax no problem,
but the ***** on the face?
ladies, leave that to the men...
and there's one in particular,
a local,
a very cameo parlour,
two seats, almost like a kiosk -
Ustun's -
4 chase cross road, romford, essex,
RM5 3PR.... cemil ustun,
phone number 07447752357...
i don't know what's better,
receiving oral ***, or getting a proper barber's
treatment...
i'm starting to think the latter,
since it's cheaper...
i've come to a conclusion,
forget inquiring into prostitution -
£110 for an hour of agonising *** acts,
i'd take an hour with cemil for
a £20...
first time i actually had
oil applied to my ****** hair,
and foam and blow-drying it into shape...
before i grew my hair like a, ******* hippy,
i never really had a proper barber experience,
and i've learned something important:
not all "feminine" professions are actually
feminine...
a barber is as important as a soldier...
and that coincides with:
well, if we don't really believe in
moral relativism but absolutism,
and if we don't believe in cultural relativism
but absolutism,
we can at least agree that:
every, single, job, is, important,
that there must be a professional relativism,
or that there is a relativism of labour,
since nature does not like vacuums...
every job is equally important,
in that relativism exists on the basis of
gradation, an "ablaut" of incremental changes
in "value"...
by not money has exited the original
idea that it's the source of
the trans-valuation of values -
point being?
£20 for a haircut and a beard trim,
£110 for some wacky fucky-fucky...
hey, that's five and a half sessions
with cemil...
barbers can out-compete
the necessity of prostitutes...
but you can only, really, come to such conclusion
if you've been to both...
and this has to be the most authentic
experience of pampering that a *******,
with her moral baggage, simply can't give;
but it ought to be noted once more...
the best barbers in the world are Turks...
must be the highlight of the Ottoman empire,
akin to the english coffeehouses,
the barbers of the Ottoman empire
probably had as much significance as
the coffeehouses of england...
and that's how the cookie crumbles.

I grew up in South Auckland, Takanini
the only Pakeha in the caravan park,
I learnt how to be tall, smart and skinny
how to raise the end of my sentences in an arc.

At school, we were told words held power;
but for teachers words were flowers,
and my friend Cruz had two brothers
Harley and Davidson - they belonged to Black Power,
their fists tattooed with something like “Smother”.

But there was never violence on our street, gang was family;
I usually never felt more at home around Bourbon,
loud Reggae, bags of ****, and men so manly
they’d cry over love, and I wouldn’t get a word in.

Though my Father votes National and thinks Michael Laws is right
so moves us to Dunedin where it’s ninety percent white.
I stopped reading Lenin and picked up Rousseau  
became a vegetarian, thought it was so cool you know,
even wrote a blog that discussed rise from below.



But I’ll never know below again
until I’m drunk in an old shed at 3am on a school night
singing along to Bob Marley in Maori,
sunk deep into the mattress propped against the Harley,

the one you and I would cruise on until dawn together
as police took to the streets in riot gear -
we’d get lost in the country and learn to smother
our thoughts in starlight then stagger over,
listen in to the darkness,
and just slowly breathe
the crisp, cool air of the kiwi tundra.

They say New Zealand has two flags,
but in the country, when you’re blazed
on the benefit, ****** on the disdain
for positive discrimination, you can pick out
all the small bright koru unfurling in the stars.

with the birth of money the old, ethnically categorised
unity broke apart,
now the rats in banks, now the rats stocking
cheap metal jump the ship called humanity unanimously,
we no longer have tribes of apache, or maori,
we have ethnicity via professions - the ‘i scratch my back
you scratch mine’ lots drawn... the shortest match
gets to be in the philosophy gang of severe individuation:
it’s not that the english languages from philosophy orientated maxims,
the english language is quick on that, quick to spot that,
but in terms of a philosophical narrative like a complex prose book of fiction...
well... its legs are broken, its arms are broken, it’s simply languishing
behind all the truths proofs innuendos and falsities, like an eager puppy.
with the birth of money traditional tribalism died and became
a curiosity prior, the least amazing job in a society with the piston
named money expects us to gratify existential qualms like so:
least responsible most likely to profit... most responsible the type
to be political in salvaging the least responsible role of a postman
or a cashier with lies...
now you... waiting eager for the ear to hear sweater music,
fare well with the anti-communicative charon - ah death
has a boat and a gondolier’s oar, rather than hood wings and a scythe...
see past the pagan burial of putting two coins in the cauldron inferno of
******* stacked to send the signal of the departing soul: partly brain
partly heart... that inverted exoskeleton capacity to feed the idea of soul -
they make break my bones with sticks and stones...
on the outside bruised... but then the surrealism of the inside attracting
an unfamiliar species of thinking: either singing or harking.
with four beers in the churchyard i took the last remnant of my past
with me, a d.c. belt of my ex-girlfriend, and thought about black magic
and voodoo, hanging it on a branch... instead i wrapped it
around the tree and gave it a model’s size 0 circumference,
thus i ended the session thinking about buying new gloves for winter
feeling my hands turn into ivory at the touch of the cold beer can...
but prior i was well aware of the possibilities, when the theft / injury took
place in a frenzy of such jealousy as to acquire theological dimensions of proof:
at least i will leave the world satiated by convenience of the misguided act -
as to answer that famous question: leave numerology aside,
come with me from how you acquired your use of language, your vocabulary,
make me see you turn words to words... away from the jewish tradition
of numerology... let’s face it... would you answer the question:
what’s the meaning of life? with (23 + 8 + 1 + 20 + ~9 +19) etc.?
or would you care to peer in and say:
the question has no verb in it, i.e.: not activity, anyone can ask it
but still prevail in their vector coordination of plumbing or
spanking faraday equations with newton training the monkey to dance:
pronoun (what) 3rd person singular present indicative of be /
you might as well be saying 1st person plural non-present non-indicative of be /
schizophrenic / there’s meaning in the sewer blockage with eager hands to fix it /
the crooked tree with a straight shadow / the badger shrunk from a zebra and became
the petted dalmatian that became a cow (is, i.e. too much is happening) i’m looking at something with myopic directness of the far far blurry / a direct article (the) now open the dictionary and tell me how cave is a ditto of rock and mountain without antonym proximity (noun) prior to me there was ****** and mussolini, pre that while i mind the pro that’s me (of, preposition) the river sooner than soon pours into the ocean and becomes saltwater, it could be called the heraclitus estuary, but it’s the thames we’re talking about; many men became rivers but still the godly wound itched for more bloodshed, and all those that attracted sweet water fish ended up as salt water poisons known as oceans, known as humanity (life).

Enter the dragon with death and disruption
Pride and tradition cataclysmically thrown,
Magnificent structures reduced to rubble
Distraught people bereft of their homes.
Chasms of heartache with bodies of babies
Strewn with the bricks in vast disarray,
Dust in the air and the howl of the sirens
Shouting police on a horror filled day.


Christchurch is bleeding, her confidence shattered
Our keynote cathedral is lying in shards,
Vacant eyed people are clinging to strangers
Jagged black holes in suburban back yards.
Christchurch is bleeding, our torn, gracious City
The nation arises in hurt and alarm,
To face the challenge with strength and resources,
To nurture our sister with healing and balm.


Sympathy shown by the myriad faces
Racing to help from all parts of the globe,
Expertise offered with money and labour
Students with shovels and priests of the robe.
Sadness and torment for kin of the missing
Frustrated rescuers work till relieved,
Moments of triumph with lost resurrected,
Agony felt when the dead are retrieved.


Led by the strength of the Mayor of the City
Courageous citizens help where they can,
Moments of bravery, moments of agony
Inspirational feats of elan.
Poignancy shown by the sad Maori Warden
Guiding the aged through the strewn broken glass,
Aiding the ambulance crews in their labour
Proud to be Kiwi as folk show their class.


Christchurch WILL arise from the death and destruction
Once again people will overcome grief,
Pride and resilience will triumph with the passing
And time will repair with deserved relief.





Marshalg
Victoria Park Tunnel
AUCKLAND
25 February 2011