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
.Among the lorries full of waterone full of coffinsinching slowly across the border.
— Bill Manhire (@pacificraft.bsky.social) 2023-10-23T04:37:49.292Z

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

(with apologies to Juvenal and all scholars of Juvenal)

Posterity will need to add nothing to how we behave, 
Our children will do and desire exactly the same; 
All depravity stands at the edge of a chasm. Set sail, 
Spread all your canvas. Perhaps you’ll say ‘Where 
Is the power to match your subject? Where will you find 
The frankness of those who wrote as they chose 
With passionate spirit?’ Well who do I dare not name? 
Do I let him ride by, then, that man who’s planning tax cuts
For all his uncles and despises us from his feather cushions? 
‘Yes, button your lip, instead, when he sallies by: 
If you even say: ‘that’s him’, you’ll be marked as WOKE

Stephen from Balclutha is completely pissed off
There’s no problem with Claire on a toilet seat
No-one got fired for that, and Jamie-Lee led them
all a merry dance and now he’s a popular pimp
and what about Barbara messing with justice
poor Stephen is shaking his head, it’s not fair
they’ve cancelled me, bloody PC just crowd put him to bed
But Luxon is fiery and roars in reply… we won’t
settle for this stuff and Nicola nods almost cries
We’re much better than this and even if you
Privately think Jacinda is like Hitler, says Erica
With a perfectly straight face and straight hair
You just can’t say it out loud

Better watch out, the National party is out and about
They won’t let you get away with it any more
They’re chasing down votes and set Stephen afloat
Dreaming his dreams of  Covid and nubile young things
In retirement
As he reddens and sweats, his conscience new-stricken by guilt. 
Then, there’ll be anger and tears. So think about it first, 
Before you go posting misogynistic jokes… too late to regret