non-poem poem
some nights
merely typing
is enough
Tag: New Zealand
fresh fruit ice cream
fresh fruit ice cream
scoop after scoop
of vanilla ice cream
plus my chosen raspberries
smooshed together
to a luscious pink rope
of cold sweet fatty bliss
dropped on top
of a crunchy waffle cone
all because Cedar
passed fourth grade math
250 years ago
250 years ago
James Douglas 14th Earl of Morton
begs for mercy, restraint, peaceful contact:
Exercise the utmost patience [and] respect for the Natives…shedding the blood of these people is a crime of the highest nature…every effort should be made to avoid violence; if it becomes inevitable then [they] should be treated with distinguished humanity, [so] the Crew still considers them as Lords of the Country
this is a scientific endeavor
tracking Venus’s transit across the sun
establishing our exact place
in the scheme of things
it’s a boat full of scientists
and the Royal Society of London
guards against making men murderers
reminds them to be civil
and
almost immediately, they kill
Te Maro lies splayed on the sand –
these studious men prove
no better than conquistadors
and it all adds up to the same story again:
arrival means death
5.4 64km 11:45pm
5.4 64km 11:45pm
first the moth flinging himself at the pane
becomes a stiff wind
then the gust gathers
becomes a truck going by on the road behind
but then the rattle’s in front, too –
have truck and wind teamed up?
no, it keeps growing all around at once
quite unlike any truck
then you realize what it is
when everything moves at once:
earthquake
dormitory room
dormitory room
in the sleeping room
bodies stay busy
minds turned out to shake
gallop eat daisies and peer at sky
make whatever worlds they will
bodies stay home
limbs heavy
but blood pulsing, lungs pumping,
mouths restless, straining to speak
air squeezing in and out of all
the little face holes
the dark unknowing hours mumble by
one exhalation at a time
drinking the Kool Aid
drinking the Kool Aid
after months of being careful
the boys froze
as I took water from the priest’s bowl
and brought it to my lips
I nodded to them
it’s okay
they hesitated
then did the same
why? they asked later
it’s Besakih, the Mother Temple
the blessing’s worth the risk
today floating in the bottle green depths
of the pelucid Pelorus
that once held dwarves afloat
they asked me
can we drink it?
here we were
in a space sacred to them
I hesitated then nodded
just a little I said
and we all took a bit of magical river
into our very selves
slippery slope
slippery slope
the slightest bit of justification
and the ground shifts
tilts toward what I want
until it comes rolling my way
and I’m trapped under its weight
listless legs kicking in that void
under a tent of stars
waiting for the lights to go out
