Dedicated to the Steelers who do their hard work so well.

The Pier five superstructure
Looms above the turgid waves,
Gothic cranes do hover close
To service needs of orange knaves
Who swarm to manufacture,
Who work to make complete
This massive bridging edifice,
This mighty engineering feat.

Cathedral like in grey austerity
Freezing zephyrs howl and blow,
Through the maintenance shaft tunnels,
Through the bridge's bowels go.
The catacombs are echoing,
Stark light's reflection deep
In corridors of baleful concrete
Through which angled cause ways sweep.

A forest of reinforcing rods
Stand starkly high and straight,
Atop adjacent pylons
Which arise from deep mud's gate.
Hazard lights are flashing
Amber, green and blue
As north east gales bring pelting rain
To obliterate the view

The tattooed hands of black skinned steeler
Twitch the wire to make the loom,
Lattice works of reinforcing
Blackened mesh of iron entombed.
Hard to fathom steeler's chatter
Bending low to twitch by feel,
Working fast in noisy unison
Twitching reinforcing steel.
Pliers flash in rapid movement
Wrist's convulse in rapid slap
Unintelligible chatter flows
But the job is finished, just like that.

Skill saw screams in echoed silence
Booming blows of hammers pound,
Pipe work's resonance percussion
Tempered by a sad song's sound.
Great concussions pound the air
As towering cranes do drive,
Enormous pylons into mud
And bedrock's solid hide

The mighty form travellers moving
High above cold estuary waves,
Reaching forth for unbuilt mana
It's red extension arm enclaves
Providing for the next poured section,
Providing for the next steel work,
Reaching out for firm embrace
Where Pier four's form travellers lurk.

The pungency of solvents spread
Across the steel plate, made to last;
Barrier to adherence of
The sticky concrete's surface cast.
The form work archway's wooden shell
Adopts a high cathedral stance,
This bride in waiting nervous for
The concrete pumps lithe serpent dance.

An unyielding environment
A hard surfaced place to be
Where materials of venom
Are handled casually.
Where massive superstructures
Unforgiving in their stance
Lead the busy, ant like steelers
In their lofty, hard days prance.

To look across Pier Five's expanse
And view the surface cant,
And visualize the future motorway
With it's headlong traffic rant;
And look again at what is spread
Across it's surface now,
At the jumbled reinforcing steel,
The cables, tools and how,
Organizationally chaotic
The whole affair appears ???
Whilst in actuality, my friends,
This clockwork sequence has no peers.

With the roar of passing traffic
As the headlights flash on by,
And the Pier's massive cantilever
Looms impossibly to sky.
One must praise the skilled designers
And those engineers of skill
Who summount vast odds of nature
To scale this monumental hill.
As this mostrous concrete edifice
Claws inexorably from tide,
To loom in towering sillouhette
Where estuary mists abide.

Marshalg
onsite@Pier5
Manukau Harbour Crossing
29 June 2009

when the sunsets in arizona  descending in the sky
the cactus are in sillouhette standing near by
gentle winds are blowing across a sandy plain
and tumbleweeds begin to tumble once again
a picture to behold that will never die
when you see the sunset in the arizona sky

Red Lace Is Something
I’ve only ever heard about.
Never seen.

Big Hips, Tiny Waist
Isn’t real in my world.
Just TV.

Tight Seamless Dresses
And a flattering sillouhette:
Flattery?

Danger: Curves Ahead,
Comparing me to thrilling.
Not me.

Real Women Have These:
It’s either me or my best friend.
Always neither.

Bossom Buddies, Close Knit
Shower buddies using soap.
Never clean.

broken lips harbor a pale cigarette and untold secrets
some crafted tales, others unfortunately true
disheveled blonde curls scatter near hollow irises
empty vision, devoid of all color from smooth bourbon
as these drunken nights consolidate all of our old stories into one word,
goodbye

blowing smokey kisses into the polluted air
dangling feet, perched above a desolate rusted bridge and clouded waves
whose orange trusses have all but faded
to form a mixed color that matches the scene ahead
the deepening violet summer sky, nearly black and so sticky
tightening its humid grip on trembling fingers
which remove the cancer stick carefully out of sight
in hopes that desperate eyes can convince a lonely mind
that your sillouhette will reveal itself, dancing in swirling smoke
as your faint hand reaches out to invite me to join you
I grab hold with one thought gnawing at my heart
do I give in to your gentle touch,
and slip below the other side of the bridge?

Neath the pale and crescent moon
I saunter with the call of loon,
This haunting note through reeds on lake
Reflected moonlit ripples make.
I pause to ponder beauty stark
Of monochrome in Willmont Park,
In sillouhette of black and white
Through lakeside, rippled reeds at night.
Again the call of haunting loon
In silver light's reflected moon,
The chill air causing breath to cloud
My footfall crunch in sand, too loud,
Distracting me from beautious sight
Of moonlit lake on darkest night.
And yet again that haunting call
To conjour Willmont's phantom shawl,
Descending mist now brings the damp
Necessitating my decamp....
So.... with regret, I disembark
From gracious, moonlit Willmont Park.

M.
April 19 2014

when the sunsets in arizona  descending in the sky
the cactus are in sillouhette standing near by.

gentle winds are blowing across a sandy plain
and tumbleweeds begin to roll and tumble once again


a picture to behold that will never die
when you see the sunset in the arizona sky.

half past midnight
your face becomes my hell.
personal or otherwise,

hell nonetheless.

the beast with two backs rears
its ugly sillouhette
from the depth of my imagination.
an encounter I never
encountered.
but played back on my brainwaves
radio request of the unappealing
monster you've become.

my overrun mind needs
a walk.
it's metaphorical legs afire.

you patronize me with
empty words
relieving me of nothing but
the notion
that good men exist.

I emasculate you
with my sharp tongued replies.
abuse on demand,
for you taught me well.

long past midnight
your lies become my hell.

The lake looked luxurious,
Opalescent folds of china blue,
Twinkling stars upon water,
Gold russet rushes gently swaying,
Lime catkins freshly woven onto dangling branches.
A Moorhen wades in the riverbed,
Diamond ripples orbiting its sillouhette.
Plump new leaves bedeck the low horse chestnut trees and their fingers stream in steamy shallows.

The dreams I have when I’m ill
Are almost as sick as my body itself.
I toss and turn
As all of the happy thoughts I have mold themselves into something horrifying

The people that I think of
Their eyes melt out of their skulls
They grow hair and their faces are deformed
They smile at me, a most terrible smile
They laugh at me, and chant strange things

The bakery that I go into
Its colors fade into a grayish and terrible shade,
And ghosts surround the thorny, black weeds which are breaking through the walls.

I bring myself to waterskiing on glass-like water
And I drown
I can no longer breathe
The water infests my throat and ears and mouth,
And when I try to breathe all the more water is pushed down my throat.

If I open my eyes,
All I can imagine is a simple coat being the sillouhette of a person out to get me
The person standing outside my window,
Watching for signs of the circumstances to hide me from the light of day forever
The ghost which dwells in my closet,
Its very presence chilling me to the very marrow of my bones.

Thoughts and dreams such as these haunt me,
Scaring me away from sleep.
My dreamland becomes a place of desolate darkness
As my night goes to waste with my sweat soaking through the pillow with every. Agonizing. Thought.

when the sunsets in arizona  descending in the sky
the cactus are in sillouhette standing near by

gentle winds are blowing across a sandy plain
and tumbleweeds begin.  to tumble once again

a picture to behold that will never die
when you see the sunset in the arizona sky