Flustered in gumboots,
No way to compute
The full weight of the drops
That saturate her scalp
And seem to soak right through
To her clouded brain,
Where thunder roars
And lightning scours
Until she smells burning flesh;
While she spins, confused
The sky seems quite amused
For there is nothing
But sunshine and blue.

Rush around in circles like a headless chicken running
Diminishing to spirals in a blue encircled churn
Giddying to balance in unsteady equilibrium,
Whilst canting to the left on a gyroscopic turn.

Vaulting to the heavens in gymnastical maneuvering,
Launching into ether in fanatical escape,
****** features grimacing through muscular contortion
With abdominal contractions in a pantomime of ****.

Yowling to the darkness in a feline form of vocalness
Hissing through the teeth in a serpentine display,
Bellowing the bellicose of bovine innuendo
And bleeding feet in gumboots on a ****** raining day.

Rush around in circles like a headless chicken running
With ****** features grimaced on a ****** raining day,
Yowling to the darkness with abdominal contraction
In a bovine innuendo of a serpentine display.

Bellowing the bellicose of bleeding feet in gumboots,
Vaulting to the heavens in fanatical escape,
Giddying to spirals in contracting equilibrium
Just a ****** innuendo of a gyroscopic shake.


Marshalg
Victoria Park Tunnel
On a ****** raining day.
7 August 2010

From caribou, sheep,
and seal skin linings,
to modern leather,
and endless refining.

Boots have come
so far in a hurry-
once thin and essential,
now stylish and furry.

From Doc Martins moving
on mosh pit floors,
to fireman's boots,
and kicking down doors.

Buckles and laces
and straps and steel toes.
Patterned, simple,
they fit with your clothes.

Each boot has a story,
a personality too.
They help you dress up,
and with the things that you do.

We all have our favourites,
our boots we don daily,
The boots that add to
our own story, maybe.

For me, it's my gumboots,
you may ask yourself, why?
Simple: they keep
my blue jeans dry.

There's something majestic, yet also extremely gloomy, about a streetlight at night in the rain. Something, some unplaced dimension within the echoing cars and within the particles of water, as they spray...into oblivion*

Mother, do you recall that rainy day?
The day my gumboots soaked through,
I beleive we were waiting for a bus. It was one of those city rains, when all you could dream of was home or the warmth and comfort. When all you wanted was a bath and hot-chocolate or another item of food, steaming with love. Mother, I remember holding to you're body for warmth as we sat under that old wooden bus shelter.
I clung to you're body and melted into you're lingering scent, you're falling breath and you're human form.
You held me, you hid you're shivers so as to warm mine.
We watched the cars spray etheral mist into the orange lights of the city.
We watched lovers rush by under umbrellas, we watched rain curve down the cement like a snake on it's own journey.
We listened,
oh did we ever listen, we ate up the noise, the stories within the rain, we cuddled until we felt the warmth from our bellies rise out of us like smoke or a dragons breath, tainting the air.

I, you're daughter. You, my mother.

You're long hair curling down your breast. Me, like a little berry scrunched up as close to you as I could get. Like our bodies would drip into each other as one, our breath the same. Only my gulps of air came much sooner and you silently resisted my subtle games. When the huddling was done you reached out to me with you're strong hands and you led me along the night of echoes. I can't remeber much else, asides from sitting with you in the empty pizza shop as we both savoured and satisfied our cravings for comfort. Cold-handed laughter as we danced over the most delectable pizza.
Then we caught the bus home, you sat on the red leather, grabbing the creamy yellow bar, I jumped onto the ratty blue seat beside you and leaned once again into you're body, melting into sweet harmonies.
Eating in the sounds of humans and the sound of the bus, splashing through water
and journeying on through the deep
and endless city night.

The sun is shining
but it's raining

on your face,
down your neck,
through your socks,
through your skin.

It chills your heart
and makes you glad.

You look up.
The sun,
the clouds,
the snowflake rain.

Pink gumboots,
striped jackets,
dull canopies.

People stare
as you stop and wonder
how people could hide

from this pleasure
which makes them cold,
makes them see
the amazement
of sun and rain
together

creating beauty
in a sunshower.

My darling little one I am tasked.
Tasked with the idea of imparting what I know.
It might not all help,
But it is what I wish I knew.

If you don’ t already;
Pretend you like yourself,
Because if people think you are untouchable
They won’t attempt to approach you and tell you the negative things that you already tell yourself.

Take the time to listen to classical music,
You will like Toccata and Fuge in Dmin,
Trust me.

Don’t regret anything;
You are who you are because of what you have done,
Even if you don’t like the person you are now,
Use the present as a catalyst to become who you picture yourself being.

Fall in love with weird people.
They are a different type of person
And you learn much about how the mind works from them.

Pick up the ukulele.
It is bright and happy.
But only do this after your long stint as a metalhead.
People can say what they want,
But you have to be talented for metal
And if anyone knows about community and looking out for their own it is metalheads.

It is okay to be unhappy-
Even now I don't have the hang of this one.
But maybe someday
Maybe someday.

My tiny shining star,
The world will be cruel to you,
But it will be kind if you let it.
Take in the little things that give you joy.

But your Mum and I cannot wait,
To see the joys you experience
And the mistakes you make,
Because I will be waiting with tea and gumboots
And your Mum will be waiting with blanket forts and chocolate
And probably a better solution.

You will be an unstoppable force in this world
And I couldn't be more excited to meet you

I want to go to the circus with him and fail at the tricks at home
I want to dance in the rain with him and jump in puddles in gumboots
I want to climb trees with him with binoculars and look over the lake
I want to build a pillow fort with him, with Disney movies and chocolate

Something took a hold of me right in the moment
I accidentally got lost in those eyes first time looking into them
His smile made so happy and I think he noticed because he smiled more
I literally felt sparks and a warm fuzzy feeling in my heart

I didn't plan on this happening, far out
I swore to only fall inlove with myself
Too much pain and love is so overrated
But it was beyond my control

And then cupid's arrows kept hitting me
Just a moment in the pouring rain
I saw myself and a billion adventures together in him
A deep urge to hug him came over me

He's so dorky and cute and sweet and innocent
He wears a big clunky watch and is good at maths and computers
He does acoustic covers of Of Monsters and Men songs
He runs around like a maniac in PE and bashes up his friends playfully

There is no definition and there aren't any rules for love
If you think a person is just the bee's knees, that's love
I'm only young but I know an awesome person when I see one
And God will always hold my heart but man, this human... I adore him

I feel stupid for letting another person contain some of MY own joy
I feel so scared that I fell for just the idea of him like I have once before
But ugh, words can't describe how content my heart is
I refuse to say he erased my pain, because let's not be naive, but wow


One day I hope we get to conquer the world in our pillow fortress


<3

"Bring your gumboots and rain coat, we're going on an adventure"

Lost, going around in circles; embarrassing.
Rainy, sick, "Let's go".
Pizza! Closed... cue more embarrassment.

Car rides along the main street, soft music playing
"Can I borrow that towel for my hair?"
Picks place to eat.
"Let's become humans again"

Dry hair, deodorant, changing shoes.
Struggle...
Horn blaring.
"This looks weird. Windows fogging, horn going, scraggly hair"
Awkward belly laughs.

Best avocado burger and aioli chips ever.

my thoughts were perverted

but somehow it became reality

blue jeans and gumboots

your kissing my *******

playing with my shell necklace

whispering memories of the past

we're laying on a cold tile floor

in an empty room

in an empty hotel

in the middle of nowhere

this can't be real...

/sword

in the way
by the well

it is said
she will rise from the blue
and it is true

...chilly mossy air
petticoats and nighties

little torch
and walloping gumboots

pig tails and
bandaids


the little girl went running

the rust of the bucket
  the shadows cast by the hidden moon
a bolt of lightning in a far away tree

       scare her a little


but she goes on


..at the well
she points and whispers
and there is the ghost-ish-thing
with its sad sad eyes

it tells the girl of the slashes
and deaths the swords
  and the wars
have caused in its time and
it tells the girl

to stop the wars from happening again and again

...the little girl often visits the ghost

   she is not frightened as the ghost has never sought to harm her

instead she listens, and learns



    **the ghost is her teacher

The storm on the eastern  coast will descend
into a grey day bringing showers
and thunderstorms
filling your picnic basket as you go about
finding shelter under trees and shrubs
gone on holiday to the south of france.

bring your brollies
raincoats and gumboots just in case
you day darkens into a cyclone
and your lover leaves you
abandoned with the sunrise
emerging in your life

take care as you meander through
the floods as the gates open
and your emotions spill out
in poetic metaphors
all over the page
******* readers into the whirlpool
of hidden symbols and mechanisms
that can choke you out

as you watch the weather swish by
without you noticing.

never be deceived by the weathermans wares
at times he may play god
with your days diary entries
but all he can do really
is work like a fortune-teller
using guesswork as a device.

Author Notes
One giant metaphor for what happens in your life if you believe in the weatherman!
© Marshall Gass. All rights reserved.

I do not remember my father as a demonstrative man,

but, hobbled though he was by a pre-war psyche,

we never doubted the depth of his affection for us.

His love of nature shaped our own perceptions of life

and his love of sport showed us the path of true competition,

that the essence is not to better others but to better oneself.

He transfused the ocean into us so thoroughly

that we will go to our graves with salt on our lips.


At all the painful pinnacles of growing

my father was there like a crampon you know will not fail you.

A towering lighthouse in his hat and dark suit

as he led me through the convent gate on my first day

and gently cut me adrift in the cruel seas of education

where the nuns patrolled the playground like killer whales

in search of seals.


He went ahead to each new town to make things ready for us

when I started boarding school he let me go in confidence

he bailed me out of scrapes with the law,

he was as certain as the mountain of his beloved Taranaki

and as solid as the beams of a whare runanga.


When I returned from overseas

my father and I found a space in our lives

where we could really get to know each other.

Through a winter that sparkled

he led me on odysseys into his soul

through the walkways, forests, rivers and coastline

of the city of his birth

which will, one day, witness his death.


If I were allowed only one memory of my father

it would be this: seaweed expeditions.

The northeast winds blew a bounty for his garden

onto the reefs around Belt Road

and at low tide we descended with our gumboots and sacks

to gather the fleshy harvest with its nitrogen-rich pods.

He had a system.

We heaped the seaweed on a number of high, dry rocks

then bagged from first to Iast to allow time for the seawater

to drain and the burden to be lessened.

I watched him as he moved around and about as deliberately

as a crab,

gathering the morsels,

bending to scoop the necklaces from the sea,

the sun's purple fire in the white, white, white of his hair.

He had seaweed in plenty at home,

it was the experience he craved.

once i feared the rain.
wet and cold.
afraid of hair and clothes.
now, i rejoice in it
running free through meadows
shelter beneath trees
wearing nothing but gumboots
annd a flowery dress
i feel like a gypsy of times past
free.
free as a bird that flys through my dreams
i feel words
i want beauty

Gidi gidi
The sound of their dusty feet
Oversized overalls with gumboots
Sweating,anger all over their face
Sore lips, puffy eyes, tremble voices

I watched their action
I heard their shouts
Yelling, grumbling and threatening
''Increase our salary,increase our salary''
They know thy self
They know thy enemy

I heard a thunderous voice shouting
''We should fire them''
Tears rolled down my cheek
Why so easy to put one down
Sifelani isizwe ngenxa yemali?

I heard gunshoots people screaming sadly
Yhoo yhoo yhoo
The scene was like genocide
All run for their lives
But too late to escape the deathline
They were killed like flies
Blood gushed all over the place
Their life flashed with the blink of an eye

Tears rolled like waterfalls down my cheek
Why so easy to **** someone?
What about their loved one?
Griefing,suffering,anger they will have

I fell down unconsiously
Thoughts crooked my mind
Why killed when you save your life from the yoke of slavery
Why killed when you ask for equity

Marikana you drained our power
Kids are now fatherless
Wives are now widows

-LakhanaMnyani

Do you picture,
A home,
Enclosed in snow,
Juxtaposed with ocean sand,
And the blaring light,
Of a fresh white sky,
Gumboots and maples,
Cemented in the dampness,
Of mud and dew,
Ice and oak walls,
Dripping with the gold,
Of morning

I'll stamp hearts in your sleeves
for every thing you've ever lost there
for every time she said "I'll never leave"
stop checking the lost in found
there are no childhood remedies hiding under the kitchen sink
quit flipping over couch cushions hoping for change
you wont need a rainy day fund
just gumboots with me
the only piggy bank we'll be breaking into is the one packed full, heavy with stolen memories
nickels and dimes,
save them for me

It was back in those days, the elementary school days,
when we were all friends, characters to one anothers plays of nonsense.
When we reigned over puddles with galoshes or brightly coloured gumboots.
When we wore capes and knew all the sing along songs.
And yes, I do recall, fondly so, that big park.
We were all there, whether in soul or in spirit,we explored the butterfly gardens, our parents and teachers were there too,
a school trip of sorts?
Just a vivid  but fotgotten dream?
Who may answer these questions but ourselves by eventually succumbing to the universes natural way and forgetting the questions and finding and accepting the universes other answers.
The flowers of the light May day were in full bloom and that glass greenhouse, the one that intrigued me so, stood just like a castle.
After lunch, when the children were running throuhg green grass or wiping sticky hands from oranges upon the damper grass of the shade and while our parents and teachers sat on their coats dilly dallying, I stopped.
Stopped from my playing like a bunny caught in someones eyes. Was it a hand that grabbed mine or mine that reached out? Lead to a rivers edge, a little stream or pond. Ducking under willow and stepping over bushes and creeping through imagined dens of foxes or coyotes. My companion, my little friend, the face on the memory is blank, perhaps we had even more company.
We held hands.
We held hands like friends in our childhood innocence, before the concept of cooties, before the playground held terror. We sat hunched up by the pond poking sticks and reeds into the stream. Poking at the river flies and mud. Lost in a mystic realm of childhood unknowingness.
And then it caught me. A glimpse that magnified. The little water spider, gliding on the surface as though the surface were glass.
Oh water bug, from my bright eyes  and blurred warm memeory you stood out to me. Majestically skating in the reflection of my face. As though you were that man mentioned in grandfathers stories from the book he said he beleived in, that man himself, walking on water. Such grace and beauty in you're perfectly casual stride, a quality I later noticed and looked for in people. Oh water bug, slipping your little bug fingers through glassy streams like a figure skater on an ice pond.
Do you remember me little bug? I was the one, the one with the little hands reaching out. I tried to hold your magic in my hands.
I was the one that in awe
reached out
But like a snap dragon,
in a blink, you were gone.

I live this peace like I once lived in pieces,like I once held the lease on the heartbreak hotel.
I wear it quite well but I once wore the gumboots,the glumboots that rooted me in hell.
That was another time,another line and where no signs could guide me,I had Beirut for brains,a war zone as I slept in the carriages on even emptier trains.
Peace is the bonus where the onus is on keeping it,
I do well to remember it when I think that my life is ****.

Keep your religions,your sanctimonious politicians with their maladministration,I take care of my own needs which are few,
I who have nothing,want nothing,it is you that wants affirmation that you're a force to be reckoned with as you praise Gods creation with one eye on the stock exchange floor,
what for?
We shall all end up as bleached bone with the coast as our beach home with no mortgage to pay and every grain of sand will have its day,only the dogs left to **** on us as they play with the bones.
I live this peace but it's fragile and while it lasts
I'll enjoy it.

We set off for a long weekend,
Does this Carmageddon ever end?
Eventually, we arrive,
That was a long hot drive!
See our tent as it collapses!
"He" does bust all  his synapses!
I unpack, rain commences,
"Let's go home!" he mentions,
Yeah, right, now the dog wants loo,
Did I bring a coat and gumboots too?
Armed escort of mosquitoes,
Forgot insect repellent, oh Woe!
Never mind, not long to go,
Finally made it all the way home,
A weekend of staring at the rain,
Last word to him I say,
"I am never going camping again!"
(And no more I did)... from my brain,
The poet in someone's heart,
From indoor ablutions, I'll never part.........

I'm loving this rain.
Listening to it hit the tin roof of this wooden jungle home,
dreaming of the little grey island back home,
The familiar sleepy feeling found in all rain,
feeling it cast over houses,
dreaming of a scene where I am thinking
whether to put another log in the fire and snuggle back into bed beside a man,
a man I love
with three days of stubble on his face
And to just lie thinking about things.
Or whether to start a *** of coffee
or just keep sleeping until the sounds of silence,
of finished showers,
awake us.
I lie dreaming
of family,
of chickens and kindling, of sweet angel children
soflty sleeping with baby hands in little fists
and resting under little quilts.
I dream of witch hazel, good soap,
and claw foot baths,
of lush mossy rocks and strong red cedar, of rich abundent apple trees,
they too sleeping in the rain,
black gumboots and puddle green fields,
of forest walks, warm eggs and organic chai tea,
I dream
of the ocean in the rain,
or the city in the rain,
all the different umbrellas.
Everywhere cast under Mama Earths spells of comfort,
of big yawn sleepiness
that follows a morning like this.
Oh my,
oh me,
if I didn't have chores
I could lie forever like this.

wearing his thick jacket and weary gumboots
                 the heat notwithstanding
the man is forever abroad on his strange mission
    his hat is the contraption that covers it all
as he feigns distraction and people call him mad
to live a life that has no surprises, only a pattern
how can they possibly know what he's brewing
or what he intends one blessed day to be stewing
in the big *** of dreams that he tends each day
those who want to know must,like him, be mad
only then will they see what really is in the sea
and how atlantis was a figment of souls hungry
for those unusual things from off the beaten path

(20 minute poetry)

Dateline timeline
weather unsettled
no chance however of any sunshine.

It's not a break when you have to take the early morning flyer,
I try a different tack on the journey back and make it with a canoe.

Nothing else one can do when it's raining in London and the sun's got a glum on and my gumboots need exercise.

There is a limit and winter has reached it,
It teaches us well.

If there's a place such as hell I'm sure winter is welcome, but I'll remain handsome although soaked through to the skin on my way into work.

The tube is quite full
this journey is dull
I think I might pull
some
funny faces.

black coffee on the table,
clean cold steel-chiselled Glock

loaded and placed in the bed-drawer.
The sharp wire that smells of the skins

and flesh it has strangulated. A black pair
of gumboots, a black overcoat, a black void

of past. A distant daughter who loves strawberries,
cats with abhorrence for your existence.

Cadillac, a pair to tan gloves, a love for silence,
love for the sight of eyes turning red, pleading

A packet of cigarettes, a bottle of Miller’s
An emptiness that spreads, a death that patiently lives.

Rush around in circles like a headless chicken running
Diminishing to spirals in a blue encircled churn
Giddying to balance in unsteady equilibrium,
Whilst canting to the left on a gyroscopic turn.

Vaulting to the heavens in gymnastical maneuvering,
Launching into ether in fanatical escape,
****** features grimacing through muscular contortion
With abdominal contractions in a pantomime of ****.

Yowling to the darkness in a feline form of vocalness
Hissing through the teeth in a serpentine display,
Bellowing the bellicose of bovine innuendo
And bleeding feet in gumboots on a ****** raining day.

Rush around in circles like a headless chicken running
With ****** features grimaced on a ****** raining day,
Yowling to the darkness with abdominal contraction
In a bovine innuendo of a serpentine display.

Bellowing the bellicose of bleeding feet in gumboots,
Vaulting to the heavens in fanatical escape,
Giddying to spirals in contracting equilibrium
Just a ****** innuendo of a gyroscopic shake.


Marshalg
Victoria Park Tunnel
On a ****** raining day.
7 August 2010

We slumbered through the Summer
and then wondered where it went,
who was it spent our sunshine?

In the Winter when it comes
there'll be gumboots and glum faces
and who's to blame?

It's only seasonal adjustments
for politicians
and the malcontents,
which may be true.

Next Summer
I'll stay awake,
watch the grass turn brown
and bake
take time to watch the sunsets
and
save some pictures for the grandkids.

What's a bird that doesn't have boots
Looks like a flamingo that flocks
And keeps it's feet up
What's a clock that doesn't tick
That radio can't relate too
That's we look for Radio Free Europe and daylight savings
What's the paper without a President
Counting days when he leaves, ticking time bombs
The bombs' without a clock
Hey Bob meet Charlie
Meet Tango and cash in your walkie-talkies
Cute meet between people who think, it takes two to tango
What's an avian bird that doesn't congregate
A gourmet meal
What's an eagle without the snake's shadow
A prey to the Sun and Moon, the nocturnal death
The snake sleeps with his head in the bagging
The sagging berry that doesn't taste sweet
What's a bird without wings
Is the imagination of the intelligent intellectuals
Looking for talent among ambitious, some have mirages of migration
What's the boot without the footer
A shorter foot, with a missing boot of homeless beggar
What's a barber without a cut
A devil's haircut for the witty purging fearful man
In loathful Vegas lost in its insipid disease
Trees and the malls, the Palio that looks the same as the Patio
Sounds like Caesar's Palace in a word salad
What's rubber with a tip
Some pocket full of things
A change of style, and wallet of wads of cash
Paying for the dinner and the present commitments with the lady in the bleeding ceiling
What about the lights, the gumboots shine in these muddy fishnets