Imperfect Time
Oh murky Waikato
Pandora let it all go in YOU
Hoofprints
Poison
Bright bruises
quarries
confiscations
arable land under Tainui contractual concrete
squatter claimant pinko hobo coconut deadbeat OTHER
Oh no not Pandora
It’s Māui who by deceit steals fire.
Schemes to attain immortality
but our fair dinkum “Queen of the Night
shuts down
and the sound is deafening
like prison doors closing at
Pāremoremo Maximum Security
Māui’s BUM is left out in the cold
Those damp thighs split him in two
bringing death as usual
like going under and never coming up
And its off with his head and all our heads
If only death could be that nimble for the rest of us
If only death could be that nimble for the rest of us
I hear gunshots at the growing wall
Who draws the boundaries?
Whose theodolite descries happiness?
Is your enough the same as mine?
All our belongings get in the way
Furniture is so heavy
Jewellery a bind
wanting gets in the way
All our belongings get in the way of belonging
Belonging to Papatūānuku
is the only way
And we’re sleeping it off in the PADLOCKED dead house
I stagger among the stench, the she-goats, the fireweed, the silence
Open hands and the pearly gift of hope
as when my moko asks
“When we visit America will we be
black or white or neither?”
and the graffiti in my head*
reads
ONE CHILD
WASHED ASHORE
TAHI
KOTAHI
KOTAHITANGA?
*after Zeina Hashem Beck
