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What to say

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To a man who ran out of his way
without a thought for himself
into the face of slaughter

His mum is proud, the gunman
dead, the rest of us are reading
about him, amazed

we are full of praise and wonder
if we would have the guts
not many of us

we are keyboard warriors
mostly full of eloquent rage
and impressive impotence

few of us have been to war
fewer still even held a gun
but we rage

social media fuels our
rage and now it fuels
our praise

so happy to have a hero
at last
this chap, who ran into the face of slaughter

saving your mum, your dad,
your son, your daughter


saving us all somehow, briefly

Haircut

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I’m passing on the pavement and
through the shop window I watch
a barber and his customer both
transfixed gazing into a mirror

The barber’s head is slightly higher
than his customer who is seated
but he’s bending his head to fit
inside the framed reflection

The freshly trimmed beard, shaved
back and sides, all his own work
the customer galvanised by 
his own image mirrored back

two men transformed

That moment when a new haircut
is briefly life changing for both cutter
and customer and then it’s gone
and I’m gone along Jackson Street 

to catch my bus, head down, into
the wind, carrying this image with me
this perfect moment, cutter and
customer locked in mutual admiration

all our hopes on a haircut

Face to face on Insta

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We used to meet in cafes, face to face
Now I lie resplendent on fresh linen to scroll
while Annabel is talking earnestly from France
(to me), well not really, she’s got followers
And she’s not the only one, there are women
with the same intensity and earnest pleas
wanting me to know about foundation for old
skin like mine as they rub liquid in circular motions
blinking, speaking, as if they are right here with me
in my bedroom and I’m the only thing that matters
It’s a new skill, this earnest, look at me, I’ve
Something to tell you and no you are right
I’ve never met Annabel in a café but
You get the drift and drift I do from one reel
to another, skipping over Middle Eastern Eye
with all its subjectivity, voices from both sides
carnage, each claiming their morality
The carnage in the next presenter’s skin
Is just fortunate old age and Annabel
is now at a village BBQ somewhere in
France with lambs on the spit and wait
there’s a wine fountain, all you can drink
It’s hard to think about the less fortunate
almost seems churlish to do so



When life gives you grandchildren

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When life gives you grandchildren
(while watching Life gives you 
Tangerines)

Watching Netflix, Korean drama about
Hanyeo, Jeju, places I know as a tourist
Volcanic rock, women divers, motherhood

I’m drinking a Pinot Gris in spite of believing
I have pancreatic pains because I am
creative and overwrought and loving

Umma, Mum, Mama, Mom, even Mummy
And I might cry even without the wine
Who needs subtitles to comprehend

Last night, I pat-patted goodnight to my
darling mokopuna, Sonja, 손자 granddaughter
her hands grasping both mine tight

locked in, waiting for a change in her
breathing, the gentle sound of a snore
or the pip pip of sleeping bliss

before

I untangle both hands, with the stealth
of a haneyo, halmoni, or Kiwi grandmother
and slip from the bed like a happy thief

to be woken by the hot breath and thick
hair of love in pink pyjamas clasping
my hands again, a reclaiming

so tonight, in spite of old age signs
of possible problems, I abandon
caution, ignore health warnings

watch Korean Netflix and celebrate
motherhood, miss my own mum 
and revel in being a halmoni

if this is old age, then, here I am


The Sisterhood

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Brooke Van Velden has a way with the flick of her hair
a nonchalant movement that says to us all, she just doesn’t care

Not a wit or a worry about changing the Bill that will 
stop fair payment claims for our sisterhood, how dare she

but you see she’s in thrall to David the Atlas guy, he of
the Treaty Bill if you will, and the school lunch revamping

an 8 % vote but don’t worry, he’s stamping all over the PM
our hapless, and hatless, and utterly witless blue suited man

who always gets tongue-tied while trotting out slogans
wherever he can things like What I’ll say to you – yet he

hasn’t clue he’s the fmcg guy, aisle ends all the way
most of the time on a plane, and flying away from us

while Winnie takes charge blaming all things too woke
crying get back to basics where a bloke is a bloke

and a sheila knows better than Winnie for sure
when it comes to the pay check the bloke he gets more

how else could he cop up for all those blue suits
shiny shoes and fine dining, our Winnie’s a winner

Brooke Van Velden is simply a total beginner
She’s sold out the sisterhood but not on her own

shoulder to shoulder the girls they lined up
Erica, Nicola, Judith, Louise, a new breed of women

all eager to please David Seymour  … ?

Bring back Marilyn Waring a girl with some guts
or some guys from the back bench could throw us

a crutch, it’s not as if equal pay is asking too much

The ballot box girls is our only solution, get started
campaigning, there’s no absolution 

for girls with the hair they flick in defiance, pants suits
they button with casual compliance, it’s time for

a change, we need hearts in the mix

Gird your loins girls of all sorts and all chromosomes
the whole bloody alphabet and all antinomes

Let’s show them what we think in 2026





High Wire by Michael Fitzsimons

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High Wire

I went to the launch at the Seatoun Bowling Club. You just gotta love the venues poets choose to launch their books. Mine was launched from the bedroom of the bookseller during lockdown. And more recently, Simon Sweetman’s The Richard Poems were launched in a trendy men’s clothing store/barber shop.

I first met Michael when we were reading poems together in Kapiti at a Retirement Village and indeed we also read to one of our most receptive audiences in the dementia ward of that village. An unforgettable and unexpectedly heart-warming experience for all the poets involved.

Early on in this lovely collection, Michael writes:

My poems seem to appeal
To people who don’t read poetry.


He got me, right there and then. I feel such a connection to these words about my own poetry. I’ve been picking his book up every day to read at random and each poem brings joy. There’s a theme of gratitude throughout. The poems speak of the ordinary with such love and affection and too, the profound. His love of family is palpable and joyful. He speaks lightly of a brush with death (more than a brush, a serious cancer diagnosis which he has written about in an earlier collection) but he manages to be uplifting and grateful in all his observations.

There’s delightful humour and I just love this poem/anecdote – yes, Michael pops poetic anecdotes into this collection, stylishly and inspiring.

A friend buys bulk chicken on special from PAK’Nsave.
He divides the chicken into meal-size portions and freezes them. You have no idea, he says. A few bucks a meal.

He and his wife live on the pension. They eat enough chicken to fly business class to Europe every three years.

Another poem that leapt out at me and I just love, is about his daughter coming home to watch the All Blacks snatch a 16-15 victory in Dunedin … the poem talks of Razor Robertson’s first test …

Surprisingly for an All Black
Coach, he’s a talker

This made me laugh out loud as I said almost exactly that when I listened to Razor’s after match chat.

Then there’s the very beautiful love poem The Fin with dolphins and orcas but at the very heart is love, romantic, domestic and true.

Another that spoke to me On the white carpet – musings about moving into a house with white carpet and spilling coffee. Memories for me of white shagpile carpet in an apartment in Auckland in the late 70’s. Play us a tune Maureen an evocative family poem reeking of all things Irish, family, history and heritage. A gorgeous glimpse into the author’s roots.


There’s so much to love in this collection. It is uplifting and for a poet, it is inspiring. I rushed to write my own poem about an encounter I had at our local Pavilion Café, after reading Michael’s delightful encounter at his local 4Square Four Square Philosophy.


The final poem in this collection Credo is one of my favourites. It’s a perfectly placed poem to end such a loving collection. It feels like a questioning of faith and yet a deeply embedded faith too. The final lines …

So when you step out the front door
by the olive tree,
you have something to take with you,

something sustaining,
like a cut lunch.

How Good is This? … (the title of another poem).

The legend of Jenny Blair

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There's a chain link fence
that marks her grave
Only 21 when she died

He proposed they said
when she lost her leg
perhaps on bended knee

I was young and filled with awe
that love could be so grand
now the bar was set for me

Romance lit large by a chain
link fence at the local cemetery
that he had asked for her hand

I still get a shiver of something
whenever I pass her grave
on the left before the tree

when I go to visit my family
graves, that chain link fence
still speaks to me

of a time when thoughts
romantically were forming
he set the bar quite high

I was almost ready to lose
a leg but not quite ready to
die for love, but a ring, oh

Oh a ring as a thing
back then for sure
embodied perfect love

the tombstone has an
angel etched, the white
chain fence protects

her grave, romantic love
enclosed and we never forget
that he proposed

Laughing with pigs

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Laughing with pigs

It’s 1973 and I’m breathless with
life hitching a lift in Norway
it’s dusk going on evening and
a truck stops to pick me up

we chat with my newly learned Norsk
a real conversation, I’m feeling fluent
the truck driver is happy to chat
a friendly bloke with no English

I ask him what he’s carrying in the back
of his truck but he has no words so
he pulls over, stops the truck and
we get out to look at his pigs

I’m riding in a truck that is loaded with
pigs… pigs, I say, pigs and he says griser
back and forth, pigs, griser, pigs 
he slaps his thigh with one hand laughing

back and forth, pigs, griser, pigs, griser
all the way back to my hotel where I work
loving this shared hilarity of new words
feeling fluent, pigs, pigs are griser

He drops me off, and we wave goodbye
like old friends and it’s barely a week later 
one evening in the bar when I learn that 
pigs with a Kiwi accent sounds like

a Norsk word for male genitalia
my affection for the truck driver
is renewed… no sly slant, just
genuine laughter and a lift home

If this was Netflix, I’d be dead by now

Drool

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(Wordle word of the morning)






Double o vowels, a long, interesting sound





with the consonant ‘l’ as a flourishing finish





to drool is to savour perhaps, to desire















babies drool and we wipe their cute chins





an old man drools, and we see his decline





like spit when a friend spoke during Covid















sunlight lit their spit as it flew towards





you, sparkling, dangerous alive yet deathly





so that we dodged even while fascinated















that this flying drool existed, so vivid





illuminated, lively and terrifying hitherto





unnoticed and now possibly fatal















A poet should drool perhaps on each chosen





word, or wish to inspire a drool from a reader





the long double o sound with an l to land it















let’s drool