(After Cavafy - stolen really)

Of glory be you fearful, O my Chris

Unable to defeat your ambitions

(the way Mr Muller finally did)

It would be wise to hesitantly pursue

them – alas you love renown it seems

And yet the further you proceed, we

see that hubris runs amok and this

this moment, your apogee, might

contain a letter from Artemidorus

(in disguise as Janet, Heather and

Matthew who once anointed you)

‘Read this right away’… or at least try to read the room

Don’t abandon poor Nicola (unpopular

at school, too tall, she said) and now

imagine her decline – all those matching

pj pictures – alas will not feed those

hungry school kids – don’t feed her

to the starving masses, all those

hungry kids of underpaid police

It’s something important that concerns you

Don’t fail to stop, don’t fail to put it off

all talk and business, don’t fail – don’t brush it off

but do brush off all those who fawn

and salute you, fame is fleeting

(just ask Jacinda)

If you are among the truly elect,

Watch how you achieve your predominance

Read this right away – or at least try to read the room

It’s something of importance that concerns you

The children are listening Mr Luxon and the

children’s parents, and the landlords are laughing

Laughing all the way to the bank.

Hello old age

Nice to meet you
well you are unexpected
to some extent
but I can’t ignore you
even though I’ve tried

I’ve been keeping you
at bay, or so I thought
with my fitness class
look here, this morning
I lifted 5 kilo in a bicep curl

surprised my broken wrist
the radius and ulna (I know
It was two years ago) but anyway
following instructions using
my core to absorb the weight

Who’d have thought that eh?
next time I’m lifting the titanium
(non-stick_ very expensive fry pan)
I’ll recall my core, tighten my
bum and see if it helps

Alas, when down on the mat
giving the old triceps a burnout
It is very disconcerting to say 
the least, when I see that soft
hollow, the underside of my elbow
joint…. a kind of crepey paper

No worries, the elasticity of
the skin on the back of my hand
provides endless fascination for
my two-year-old grandson 
he pinches it in his fingers amazed
at its pliability like plasticine

and heigh-ho those once were
dusting of freckles, quite sweet
now brown mud pools in the
ravines between light blue veins
like South Island braided rivers
almost on the surface now


none of it matters when I’m swimming
wearing my proper togs for serious
old girls, minus underwire and pretty
padding to evoke a sort of cleavage
just practical, quick drying, flattening
and who cares if I have hairy thighs

there’s no need for disguise.
or deceit, nobody looks any longer
if only I’d known about this
years ago

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MNKL9onYB_8)

We’ve had two mango Frujus
because ice-cream is a no go
due to a lactose intolerance

I’ve cooked fresh fish with
steamed rice and seaweed 
plus an egg because well

my granddaughter is staying
we’ve swum half the day
and eaten up the rest of it

she’s in bed glued to a small screen
fighting sleep on granddad’s 
side of the bed - he’s away

she sleeps sideways and even
in a Super King, I am on the edge
covered in love and kicks

A man on Insta is telling me
alcohol will ruin my complexion
I refuse to believe him

I’m two wines in listening to
‘One Toke Over the Line’  a hit
from the early seventies

I know all the words and
I’m transported, in my twenties
instead of my seventies

marvelling  that I’m a Nana
hoping that last egg and
extra bit of fish does the trick

Or will she be bolt upright
eyes glazed fixed to the cartoons
and waiting for me refusing sleep

I’m two wines over the line
and my complexion is no longer
something I care a hoot about

She’s two Frujus and four pineapple
lumps in, plus I forgot to mention
those mini strawberry macarons

I’m in two places, singing with those
chaps, I know that shirt, I've kissed
that moustache, several different ones

pouring wine two pours over the line

(I need a disclaimer with this poem... a young reviewer of 'Formica' in an otherwise affirming review, hinted that two of my poems were sort of ... smug...oh dear

(Second disclaimer: A fellow poet posted a summary of her mammoth efforts in 2023, poems written, accepted, rejected, etc, and so I felt inspired and inclined to try and measure up...)

(Third disclaimer: Right now, nothing any poet dares to write will measure up when we allow ourselves to think of the children in Gaza)



Twitter is full of people 
bemoaning their fate
usually of which they
appear to be the author

A pregnant journalist
tweeted surprise her hands
ambushed by carpal tunnel
Oh I was instantly empathetic

Sweet memories of my first
pregnancy, making do with
Time Magazine rolled tightly
tied like splints to both wrists

plus the unsalted peanuts
In a drawer at work where
I scrambled feverishly to
avert nausea, face clients

Endless night trips to the toilet
plus a free stylish UTA airline bag
ruined when my urine sample
lost its lid and leaked full tide


Not to mention filling six or
maybe seven sick bags on
TWA New York to London
I’ll whisper this – first class

An upgrade, we hadn’t paid
the hostess was appalled
I’d eaten so much breakfast
Quite sniffy she was about it


But my best kept secret
Hush, don’t tell anyone
I’ve tried, no-one believes me
I loved giving birth

So there ,,, Time Magazine
for makeshift splints
but when the big cramps came
I sang deep and out of tune

Like a surfer, I sang through
every contraction, so focused
knowing a baby was arriving
and it was up to me to push


I made the mistake once of
telling a newly traumatised
mum that I loved childbirth
I’ve learned my lesson

It’s the sixties, and Grandma is a Pakeha
she has brown Irish smiling eyes and
a dowager hump, although she’s no rich
widow

She lives in a State House on George Street
purchased from the State with a State Advances
Loan which is being paid off by her youngest
daughter

Grandma had eight babies and then scooped
up another when her eldest girl fell pregnant
somehow Grandma fell pregnant too, two
boys

When Granddad got dementia, it was easy
enough back then. People just sent old Jack
home again when he got lost, it was a small
town

Thank God for the neighbour we all said
for years after, when he distracted granddad
with the axe raised behind Grandma 
Phew

Michael Joseph Savage was a Saint along
with all the other official Catholic ones
on the Columban Calendar in her
washhouse

It’s only now that I’m a grandmother that
I wonder why an old lady with Irish roots
and sparkling brown eyes, even knew
How to do a haka

What if I could go back and talk
to Grandma, over the ox-cube soup
she made for me one school day for
lunch

All I recall is saying (under my breath)
I must go now, Grandma, I must go
now Grandma, I must go…. And then
I did go

What I’d give to go back and ask her
about that haka…





 

I left Twitter for Bluesky
You might ask why?

Some of us were hoping
to dodge the bots
maybe read about
hand-knitted socks

and then

a man called Bill
our poet for hire
https://bsky.app/profile/pacificraft.bsky.social/post/3kcff6hmqyk23

wrote about lorries
full of water and one
full of coffins

and for a moment
a cloud crossed Bluesky

We'd imagined food, 
medicine, food, medicine
possibly bandages

even under Bluesky the bright light
can fade

no-one has ever imagined that
coffins could be aid

Virtuous and Sexy in the 60’s

(After a lecture entitled ‘Virtuous and Sexy: Making National Subjects in 1960s North Korea, Lecturer David Shuster, Seoul, July 2018).


It seems it wasn’t enough
to be a revolutionary woman
Confucian style in North Korea
nose picking, spitting girls
no longer fitted the narrative

a journalist seeing Marilyn’s
photo, a nude torso, the 
tip of her nipple exposed
recognised the raw moral
force of such beauty

she became a heroine
foreshadowing the metoo#
North Koreans despised
her objectification, while
adoring her physicality

how to harness this Yukch-emi
and yet suppress the libidinal
urges it might evoke – a new
etiquette of virtue arose from
the tip of Marilyn’s nipple


carry a gun why not and work
in the field, but stop when
you can to strengthen your
7 separate parts, for the
Ideal proportions of virtue

A State-run magazine was
offering tips for augmenting
breasts and buttocks, exercises
to become virtuous and sexy
while remaining chaste 

that Marilyn was both revered
and pitied … she would not have
wanted their pity … but I imagine
she might have loved the by-line
of strength and raw moral force

to know she inspired a new
kind of cinema, the circus
where the female form
could be admired from a
lustful chaste position

Hollywood tricked Marilyn
they said and instead the
trick was rearranged deftly
for all to agree about the
inner and the outer chastity


beauty was strength
and strength was sexy
if you eliminated lust
which of course you must
to get the perfect harmony

It was odd, to be listening
to this, in Seoul, this idea
that women should be
beautiful, as if a novel
Communist conspiracy

I see the surgery altered
faces of the South, girls
on trains their crotches
in the face of seated suits
unmoved, reading phones

has libido been removed
by stealth across the
border, are these women
perfecting something
for themselves entirely

Marilyn’s bare nipple,
her nude shoulder,
her wet skin, kneeling
figure, a strange and
almost ancient haunting