#zealand
By great rolling hills and mountain
Past brook and creek and fountain
The land from window seat, I pass
Where man and beast and cattle roam
The palm, the fir, the cedar, all passed by
Where farm and stable both do lie
Past lake and cloud-kissed mountain top
Wherein deep forests spread
The calves and cows are all a-grazing
No farmer you can see a-lazing
The echo of the wheels a-rolling
As flower, root and fern go by
Winding now around the hillside
far away from beach and tide
The little swallow darts away
The magpie soars on high
On my left side, townsfolk labour
On my right, the mountains dwell
The lambs a-playing, the horses neighing
Upon this summer morn
Flowers white and purple adorn the lineside long
And to you, dear reader, I do confide
My view along the train I ride.
Nov 30, 2025
Nov 30, 2025 at 1:03 AM UTC
I cannot drink you,
or eat until I reach my fill,
I cannot savour every rise and hill,
consume each circling bird that drifts in flight
or charge my glass with graceful morning light,
I can only hold you,
fold you as a memory to keep and put away,
and promise that with luck I may return one day
Mar 7, 2025
Mar 7, 2025 at 12:13 AM UTC
Milford Sound,
how can I hope to chain you
contain you with a word,
captured like a beetle on a card
for other souls to marvel and to see,
that’s patently absurd
how could pen or brush or eye
portray the loveliness of thee
Mar 5, 2025
Mar 5, 2025 at 6:19 PM UTC
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
Sep 4, 2019
Sep 4, 2019 at 5:53 PM UTC
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
Mar 17, 2019
Mar 17, 2019 at 9:34 AM UTC
a beef
Wellington is
a serenade
on your
birthday night
with candle
light on
your plate
where Aphrodite
beget Zeus
as she
did want
the dish
with pastry
and frothy
post with
her wine
Mar 14, 2019
Mar 14, 2019 at 9:53 AM UTC
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.
Sep 17, 2017
Sep 17, 2017 at 9:11 PM UTC
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 white power.
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.
Jul 27, 2016
Jul 27, 2016 at 6:03 AM UTC
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
Apr 26, 2015
Apr 26, 2015 at 9:44 PM UTC
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.
Feb 24, 2015
Feb 24, 2015 at 11:19 PM UTC
Called to war. Sent across.
To lands abound and far enough.
The Anzacs were never lost.
Our hearts spread with pride
And glory.
Fell were they at Gallipoli, who at beaches, landed wrongly.
The waters deep and bullets afloat they fought with might of lions and hearts of steel.
But in all they won and enemies fell, the water calmed.
They Were Called Home.
Feb 24, 2015
Feb 24, 2015 at 11:16 PM UTC
There he is,
between the Siberian Tiger and the Maui's Dolphin,
**** Mobilis Nullius.
She does not own a cellphone.
Text for her is the letters and words
that make up a book.
If he wants to take a picture,
he'll use a camera, thanks.
She doesn't want to download, upload,
freeload, overload,
girl, you've got to carry that load
of debt to the telco company.
He watches movies in the cinema
and he doesn't want to be hooked up
to the internet
or caught in the ever-widening net of commerce.
She's happy with the ancient ways,
songlines on the landline
lines on the land
where a woman can walk away
and hear only the ringing
of bird song,
lines on the land
a man can follow to the heart
of somewhere lost
and know only peace.
Feb 20, 2015
Feb 20, 2015 at 1:00 AM UTC