Tuesday Poem: Resilience

Mathematicians      have worked out

how to calculate       the bounciness of a ball:

(the coefficient of this  x  the cosine of that)

+   the differential of today's weather     all ÷ by

a piece of string      (and the speed of the train)

=  the same as     dropping different balls together

and seeing which ball     has the longest bounce

Measuring how well     a person will rebound

after being dropped on     is still being worked on:

some believe     it has something to do with

the thickness of their skin           whether their stretching

reaches a breaking point     or results in       withstanding

whether they can fight and flee          how many times
the person has returned to a vertical position before


I am feeling a little guilty for not having posted on Tuesday Poem for two whole months! Excuses - Xmas, grown-up children shifting house, work busy-ness, summer, grandchildren, checking out that the Hawkes Bay still makes wine...writing poetry???

Anyway, today's poem arose from contemplation on a phenomenon of recent (quaky) times.

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Tuesday Poem: February 22nd, 2011

The earth roared, jack-hammered
bucked like a brahma bull
at a rodeo.

After, we waded through a field of shards
found open space, moved the glass-grazed car
away from the bruised and broken building.

During that afternoon of terra not-so-firmer
we stood around, shivered, hugged the ground
comforted those from the third floor

whose sky had fallen on their heads.
We remarked on a distant tower, three sheets
to no wind, shedding bricks each new tremor

saw plate glass bow and flex, lights oscillate
in a luxury-car showroom, watched would-be
CBD traffic becalm itself in a sea of sirens.

I remember now a grey sky
the absence of cell phone sounds
how no birds sang.


Poems from my Canterbury quakes experiences are starting to insist on air-time. This one was written last month.

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Tuesday Poem: The Head of Department's Prayer on a change of Government

Our Minister, who art in cabinet,
hallowed be thy name.
Thy party won,
thy will be done,
in fact as it is in fiction.
Give us this day your empty signifiers,
And cover our stuff-ups,
as we cover yours when you pot us.
And lead us not into the glare of scrutiny,
but deliver us from scarce resources.
For thine is the government,
the power and the spin,
at least until the next election.

Amen/Awomen


I have always been a great admirer of Whim Wham, which was the pen-name the great New Zealand poet Allen Curnow used when he wrote his weekly and extremely long-running satirical poetry column in the Christchurch Press and then the New Zealand Herald. Unfortunately, satire is not the current flavour of the poetic month but I'm sure it will make a return one day.

The Head of Department's Prayer is one of my attempts in the genre and pokes some fun at our Mandarins.

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Tuesday Poem: Stellar Science Fiction

Sometimes when
the paddock gate has closed on day
and dusk’s fence
has culled the colours from the sun

I watch the mother of all musters
graze the night.
My childhood questions long ago
re the stars

and their what and why and when
are answered now
with quasars, crabs, quarks and holes.
But these don’t hold a candle

to the stories told me then
of angels tending flocks
of fireflies
across the fields of heaven.


When the priest who married my wife and me heard I wrote poetry, he asked me for a poem to put in his parish newsletter. I sent him this.

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Tuesday Poem: Chance Meeting

You walked into the café
flanked by ghosts
from my past.
We chatted for a bit.

You left. They stayed.
One wore our school uniform
and a prefect’s badge
another opened a kit bag

of shared Army time.
The third was your sister.
I was holding her hand
on my first ever date.


I wrote this after meeting someone whose life and mine kept intersecting over the decades. I hadn't seen him in quite a while. The rest is in the poem.

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Tuesday Poem: Canterbury Oblations

Great God Ruamoko
we humbly beseech
you accept these
our offerings –

    30 billion dollars
    7.8 billion litres of spilled
        untreated wastewater
    535,000 tonnes of silt
    181,000 damaged homes
    40,000 chemical toilets
    8,900 Christchurch emigrants
    1,200 demolished
        city centre buildings
    546 rest home evacuees
    2 cathedrals
   
    185 lives


This poem is a further in my Ruamoko series. Hopefully, explanations are not needed.

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Tuesday Poem: Now on at a court/house near you

Act I

After the man moved into the home
the boy’s toilet behaviour regressed.

The man was twenty-five years old.
He flushed the boy’s head in a toilet

carpet-burned his face
bruised his ears by twisting them

stuck a drawing pin in his penis
inserted a pen in his anus.

The man was sentenced to
six years nine months’ in jail.

When the offending took place
the boy was three and a half.


Act II

She had a call from school to say her son
had kicked a hole in a toilet door and sworn.
When they got home she bent him over the table
and gave him six whacks with a bamboo cane.
She said he apologised for his behaviour
said he wouldn’t behave like that again.

Later, when the boy was asked to help
he swung a baseball bat at her husband’s head.
This time she gave him a sharp lesson
hitting him with a small riding crop.
She denies she assaulted the boy.
He’s been removed from her care.


Act III

The couple went for a drive
to Titahi Bay Beach where
he stabbed her to death.

The pathologist said
stab wounds to her front
punctured her heart.

Stabs dotted her back.
Her hands were crossed with
defence-type cuts.

A defence of provocation
would be put forward
said his lawyer.

She had thrown down
the bunch of flowers
he had given her.


This poem was published in Landfall 214 in Nov 2007 and relate to actual events reported in the media that year.

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