I wanted to be there for Parsnips but time and  money availability have precluded it from happening. I cannot make it down for the funeral.

I f you would please pass on the following few words for me.

Parsnips was my mate, He was the epitome of a man from a different age.
He was wild and intense, dark of mood  and definite of opinion.

He was poetry in motion astride a good jumping mare, many a time I have seen him clear a seven wire fence with a good foot of daylight to spare.
His understanding of equine mentality approached that of witchcraft. He was capable of anticipating the  lashing hoof before the horse had formulated the thought, much less put it into action. He had NO patience with intemperate horseflesh. Many a frisky animal had second thoughts of misbehaviour after they had worn the thick end of a coarse rasp at close quarters.
Parsnip’s work was artistry, he was truly... one of the GREAT farriers.

The end of the working day would see Parsnips drown his sorrows in the demon ***.
This was the emergence of the dark soul who cast about for answers to impossible questions, who wallowed in the unhappiness of his failed horizons and the bitterness of his life’s disappointments. My mate Parsnips was not the easiest man to know in his dark moments. But a mate is a mate... you take the good with the bad.

And there were a lot of really good times... when a happy Parsnips had laughter in his eyes and a flash of excitement in his demeanour. I recall one such time when, on a wild rafting trip on a rampaging, flooded Mohaka river, The raft was marooned on a jammed stump in the midst of violent huge killer white water. Parsnips hung off a rope and with a look of wild joy on his face announced to his flabbergasted mates...”And I can’t even ****** swim a stroke!... fantastic. Needless to say he survived the trip and loved every moment of it.

I called to spend the afternoon with him a short time ago at the Rest Home. This was a shadow of the Parsnips I had once known. He was completely disillusioned with the hand fate had dealt him. He saw no future to speak of... He wanted out.
So I must say that I am not entirely surprised with the way things have materialised.
Parsnips usually arranged the system to get things the way he wanted them.

I grieve for the loss of my wild, intense mate, God knows there are few enough of them left.
Real people who live life in the black and white way.
Definite personalities who, for the good or for the bad, never ever leave you in any doubt as to where they stand in the way of things.

Fare well my old friend, I leave you with these words.

The Winds of Life
by Marshal Gebbie

The wind careers across the years
Gathering leaves and dust,
Sweeping lives before it
In cartwheels of redness and rust.
Epiphanous moments of magnitude
Through special occasions employ
The will o the wisp of everyday stuff
From sadness to anger to joy.

The billowing tumble of living
Through vaulting halls of trees
In the dappled light of sunshine
And green corridors of breeze.
The exquisiteness of living
When senses soar in the air
When the colours of being are rampant
And we savour each moment with care.

For the living time goes quickly
It flares and fades with speed,
‘Tis best enjoyed boisterously
With passion, love and need;
‘Tis best when tasted piquantly
Like a claret on the tongue
When you cloak the days with good things
And you hope your dreams die young.

Marshalg
@ the Gate
Mangere Bridge
29th January 2009

"Consider it” the courtier said to the king
"The Gods would never let the Reaper count among the battle-dead
The young and strong whom love has newly bound
As blissful newly wed”

And so it seemed!
When searching the war-torn land
No grave was found to mark the stain
Of newly wed, newly slain

Thus must they have triumphed with lovers' might
Two hearts in every lover's breast
What foe could stand the steel that love drove
To cleave helm, rend armour, sunder bone

“What mighty, fell warriors these must be
In the springtime of their love”
So spread the Courtier's revelation
The grim weaponry of devotion unmasked

The King, foes at hand and hard pressed
Now quickly formed his shock battalion of lovers
Whose brides, close as a skin to the battle, would suffer
To see Hell break loose between vows and wedding bed

Wedding parties among armourers and farriers
A wedding draught for courage
Gold bands not yet blood-warmed
On hands raised in “Adieu!”

Only through battle the taste of heaven on earth to be had
The love-zealots drove wild through the enemy to find
Among  baggage train and camp kitchens
A familiar, foreign rear-guard, devoted and adoring

Who overjoyed to meet victorious warriors
And at such short notice could not countenance the worst
And, as angels, would have felled these men
With easy smiles and tender greetings

Whence came the counter-revelation
Of us-and-them and just-the-same
And wheeling, reeling heads and hearts
Turned back to battle and were condemned to mortality

The noble and sanctified were thus slain
Justice was served to kings, courtiers, lovers and mere others
And by brutal blow and fickle chance the victors wrote history
And made justice, made their heaven on earth.

Absolute authority
Does not belong here
Prostitutes of parody
Will not be strong here

Carriers of castaways
Sink in the ocean
Farriers to Far Aways
Shrug off the notion

They don’t think it
Could ever possibly
Happen to them.
Eventually, it will.

Oh how creative
Oh how imperative
it is
Irreparable damage
Has already been done
In the homes
In the brothels
They hide from the sun

Time measures distance
Between now and then
A filthy-snow Christmas
I see at the end

You sleep they come, you sleep they go. They strike it rich, they take their gold.
They stake your home, you lose your house. Their life may change, you’ll lose it all. Ouchita surplus garbanzo bonanza. Milky white thistle caterpillars encircling State Farm. Around the rosy, redness blooms. First in a scratch, then flooding soon. You they watch, they watch you halved. First, you gave up plastic bags. Now plastic straws, and soon a water tax. The facts may might farriers to make haste with maize, face fate with rays of sun plants, and laughter, goodness stitched into new seeds we need to sew. New pith to chew our speed and seed pods back into. New buckets to hide the tragedies we’ve given into. Peace test, speed test. Time’s up and the beast continues. Some starve heading the tables of ancient feasts, infeasible feats that backroom recording darkness flows to fever grips in crimson-painted streets throw whim through. Chief prisoner that we’ve turned into? Where come we when new winds throw her Earth down, to see this missing blessed ‘being where unshucks from mystery and hide of humans’ rind, polls the throes in wheat to patrol these streets, puh lease don’t let this be the sh*t new DJs push their interdigital civics' symptom just to watch their hips get prompted down.

Who wants to be prompted. Particularly not we. Not now. Not a present. Not of precedent, and certainly not with this incredibly myopic disorderly gag borderer promulgating fact-less el ordeals. Wish these weren’t our ideals? Think again.

Faster than air conditioning units plucked out from under eaves, suspense is just injustice suspect from corruptness. Untouchable blood mensches, Houdini's that’ve come straight down the drain to take The Duchess. Forget smoke relief, screens between players in the first box, and the fellas driving the hearse, box first to fifteen with a given chance to clock down at the top if there’s a draw or otherwise start in at the Bell and pick up as many two or three rounds need to be until one side forgets why it needed to stand up to be put down, so then the Reader’s can connect with a truth mercurial and persistent with which needs to be more regularly achieved. Parts in pieces, or even just pieces in parts. If we don’t start to look at the pieces we’re never gonna figure this all out. We’re never going to make it to the paper on the sidewalk reminding us why we’re wandering around waiting to find a piece of paper to tell us everything, because look left, look right, and then turn around, answers to the questions you seek have never been more available than today.