The archaeology of wind
The archaeology of wind
Is a moment in the shape of a cloud
A style of humidity
An inflexion of temperature
The invisible colour of blue
And vectors that flower from crystals
Troupes of wings
Tissues on fine ribs
Algebras of curves
The geometries of curvature
Vibrations of laminar flows
Kicking it
The fields wind themselves
The fields walk into the moon
Get with what you’ve got
What you’ve got
The maps trickle mica plates
We fall into the trapezoidal air
The bright is darker
We’re all just doing what we can eh
We’re all just doing what we can eh
Walking back down to the base of the ladder
Kicking it
Kicking it
Blinded in the jungle
I am blinded in the jungle
Walking upon the photosynthetic
Dodging the ferns and low hanging branches
Hopping skip
Doing the bend down
Touch the wet soaking
Terpenes in lignin and cellulose
A braun blanquet on dipterocarps
A chi square measure of association
Take Flight 4 out now
Click on image to download PDF of Take Flight 4 featuring poems by Michelle Elvy, Piet Nieuwland, Aaron Robertson, Arthur Fairley, Jac Jenkins, Martin Porter and Vaughan Gunson.
Nga Parua 16
trembling archipelagos of birds
gusts and eddies of tribal gull calls
the sky populated
by a deluge of caressses
between black sheets
on fields of extinct lava
the silence of shadows
and the girl of honey who swims there
living in that tree
a glow of lunar light
she spreads out
under her skirt of tui
the fristion of lips
sleeping slips of minute lace dancing
in the marsh of night
perpetual triangles entangled
Puriri Moth Dreaming
by Piet Nieuwland
puriri moth dreaming
under a midnight moon
on ridgelines of obsidian
hangs the emerald cloth of spring
from te moananui a ranginui
floats a rainbow by moonlight
in this sacred night
clouds of kowhai in rivers of stars
the desires of our hearts
are moonbeams of puawhananga
at the dawn moon
a piwakawaka throws jewels of waiata
in the chaos of love
love is chaos dressed in kisses
* * *
This poem is posted as part of the Aotearoa Affair Blog Carnival. It was written during a short stay at Opononi on the shores of the Hokianga Harbour, a singularly romantic place. The puriri moth is a large black and green moth with characteristic patterns on its wings. The moon was rising, a full moon. The dreamtime is a spiritual connection to my ancestry, and the Hokianga has inspired that in me as a human living in Northland. The poetry I write frequently comes from the places of Northland, and has been doing so for the last thirty years, although there is usually a connection to another part of the world or another culture. Most of my poetry is love poetry but it is often disguised. I love to play with the many varieties of language and what is revealed in translation from other cultures.
William Macrae at Karikari December 2011
Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori
It is sweet to die for ones country – that’s the old lie according to the WW1 poem by Wilfred Owen.
William Macrae was a very busy man who loved the place he lived.
Many say, including Al, it is the greatest living place on earth.
It is the greatest working place on earth.
And now for William the greatest dying place on earth.
William did die for his country.
He was not fighting on the fields of Flanders to which Wilfred Owens poem refers,
although in many ways the scene is not too much different –
fire, flame, fear, noise, explosions, terror, gases, smoke, falling embers
But he did die for what he believed in
Ranger Visitor Services Kaiarahi Taonga Manuhiri
Protecting this bloody amazing beautiful country
Piece of hot summer coastline crimson bloody red.
Piet Nieuwland
Two worth another read…
Watch How the Slip Tips
watch how the slip tips itself over and flies headlong into a dive that wings into an arrow riding on the force of the throw and the magnetism that large objects emit, following the curve of vectors and wind resistance, the shaft vibrating through hillsides of toetoe torched with lightning, the satin plumes splinting the blue horizon with fire stippled bursts and shards, trapezoidal crystals and zags.
in my mind is a wave, a surging crest of intelligence breaking upon an open sandy beach on the western coast, it rolls up into the shallows and foams into a long line of surf, tearing open the pent up energy of a large ocean crossing, pulling a net through the deepest passage of currents and tidal floors, enveloping the wisdom of fish and seabirds that plunge through masquerades of reflections, the wave it bursts and throws out incandescent showers of sparks and glowing particles in an effervescent mirage under a dome of mirrors repeating themselves thru infinity by factors of prime numbers and combinations of polygons and floating orbs that drift slowly like bubbles, and coalesce
-Piet Nieuwland
-appeared in 52|250‘s fourth and final quarterly among the best submissions for Week #49.
Note and post by Michelle Elvy
* * *
Ulysses Reconsidered
Just like Farnese’s birds, whose voices became caught
on an unchanging view of palaces in ruin,
you fell into a dream: one of rivers that ran
with sentimental ease before your family seat.
But left to choose, you changed the eternal for light,
where gifted canon’s robes allowed your mind to turn
from thoughts of chimney smoke and gardens seldom seen,
the limestone of your end betraying words of slate.
The Fleece still hangs unclaimed, yet slowly I’m pulled back
to forest-covered hills and hard volcanic rock,
unsure of how the tide has brought me to this shore.
Your counsel holds no truth for sailors who have come
to crave the open sea, when mesmorized by fame
you never knew the life you claimed to hold so dear.
-Aaron Robertson
-appeared in 52|250‘s fourth and final quarterly among the best submissions for Week #50.
Note and post by Michelle Elvy
Then touch is distant light
then touch the distant light as it fades into shadow, the Tutamoe clays roll over in verdant velvet smooth ridges and Maunganui the bluff lies slumbering against the aquamarillion haze, thunder rolls over Waipoua, light splitting out from rewarewa crystalline caught in sunlit flash, the river boils, surges, rushes over rapids hissing and laughing, the forest tastes the roar of water through canyons of kauri their cold trunks and asteliad gardens dripping fungi bloom in myriads of cinnabar and soft myceliae, mosses saturated burst open glowing translucent breathing new sporophytic generations, nikau pregnant gestate creamy white florets beneath green cupped sheaths, the visual extravaganza of moonlight and milkyways and cloud masses silently drifting across the canopy, its knitted surface of leaves, conical crowns and pyramidal spires, optimizing the shape of leaves and emergent rata epiphytic and moody the patchwork of life histories, deposition and falling of leaves, branches, cones, fronds, trunks and flowers, all the colours that make the shade, the seedlings, the single organism of networks that is this jungle
With Those Faces
with those faces looking up
what they see is you
what you see here
is the ragged edge of you
it is not just blood spilled by birth
or bones in dunes with snails
taro patches or shell heaps with kahawai
terraces or pits or pa or death explaining itself with teeth
it is the ragged edge of you
it is a landscape of margins
tensions between histories born into blood
the versions and those who tell them
it is the sightline walkline fencelines
between puriri strainers and battens
headlands firing te manutukutuku
and raupo groves flexing to calls of bittern
it is those eyes on Tohumoana
catching cetaceans spuming pods with calves
and blubbers melting in fumes
in those faces are you
ringcounting the rimu kauri and matai that fell
across cadastral lines
dividing and subdividing in pounds and signatures
in the you of those faces
are cattle sheep plunging down gullies
behind dogs barking to echoing whistles
and families in that house
deciding when to sell when to buy when to cut hay
fix the gate shear drench eat scones or go fishing
in your face that is air wet
saturated in temperatures of spring
it is that solitary ti kouka
the vanished kahikatea
which flax
aching for profligate company
and throats on wings
in the faces you are
it is epiphyte laden puriri and pohutukawa
arks watching flightless insects
fall into hot dung on gravel deltas
in a face of yours
are streams exchanging kokopu
with kotare elvers with heron
and nymphomanic nymphs
in faces of you
are rata wire lineages
from telecom outstations to transmittered teal
and mirages of futures finding pasts
your faces can see you
its ragged edge
In the rough ash
in the rough ash when the clouds fall away
and skeins of flowers bounce out from the sun
with the air polarized and columns discharging
the friction of water falling and elastics of liquid
magmatic foam transpires the humidity of enclosed space
and minerals sweat down their planes of symmetry.
the saturated tents drape over spars beams and poles limp,
pulled into curves by the migration of rain through cloth
and the dripping from heavy edges, cables and wires taut,
a stilt legged bird, it beats like a drum in the shower.
the rivulets spouting from catchments that swing and fold,
they shake and flap as the wind buries itself into the porosity and tension.
the day opens like pipi closes like tuatua
and in between the roll of fish on sine waves tombolo lizards
and rhyolite cones, obsidian slivers pulled through trade
current jelly on flax twines, rafts on the Waikato
and slit gong drums beating Whangamata Whangamata.
the adytum of luminous spirits (one)
by Piet Neiuwland
catapaulted voices crowd the
silence of a bleeding sky
in the mild maritime season
love is an embryo of bubbling auroras
in a black idea of eyes
we stray onto a meteor of hail
circled by ravens, pelicans and swans
you float on gossamer wings of sound
recalling the innocence of birth
waiata of the dead call to the unborn
and we become prey to angels of islands
your fingers blossom on my eyelids
my lips flower on your thighs
pellucid sighs abandon in a tide of ancient moons
on a ridge corroded by rain
tears speak of an invisible silence
blood clots of cloud spill into muddy rivers
marshes stir with footprints of pukeko
Tawhitirahi, Aorangi trumpet rhyolite castles
in an ocean, in a sky of all blues
engulfed in hurricanes of currents
moulded in our stone hands
in the ritual of gardens
you choose an untravelled path
between kowhai and stars
Language and Place on the Edge: Six Poems
Aaron Robertson
Vers au Vert
From centre to circumference
we drift, crossing this great expanse
to speak in tongues considered pure
by uninitiated ears.
Old words, once tentatively used
then fashioned thin as life imposed,
become an enigmatic code
charged with the trace of others’ deeds.
Deprived by empire of a waiting
embrace, language devolves, begetting
forms like those strange conventions now
spoken in parliaments of two.
Vaughan Gunson
Big Love Song #17
the golden night has locked down
the unreal day gone, thank you, for now.
the persistent thud of a million feet
stamping the ancient cobblestones.
I laughed, the outrageous image of you
seated next to a fat satyr from Hellene,
your thigh raised to the sky
tapering to a desirable end.
the threatening cataclysm
is more than a grim tattoo.
the responsible hordes hold in their hands,
for the first time, the battering-ram.
Martin Porter
The Tree at the Edge of the World
Clawing onto the cliff
Face into a salty purge
Tenacious
Stunted
It has given up flowering
Starved
On exhausted soil
Rooted in the underworld
Grasping at the air
Where the dead
Leave the living.
This is the tree
That clings to the edge
Of the Earth.
Piet Nieuwland
the altar of wind
my country is an idea born on the altar of wind
earths deep blues carried on galloping horses
lizards names etched into knotted stone archways
we drink cups of obsidian Columbian coffee laughing
in blood drenched gardens candles melt tanekaha perfumes
nikau palms dance cities of moonlight frenzies
WairoaRiverveins nourished by children throwing petals
a thousand tui chant dawn prayers
from puriri groves kneeling on aging hills
the skies cloud mask pours nipples of rain
voices of birds name the deserts language of maps
flocks of black coated women expand covering all distances
matuku moana call from blue fired clay minarets
on your breasts whole kukupa sheens breathe in
what you breathe out
you are venus bathing like an orchid
in loves memory of the moment
kahawai inhabiting a river mouth
hear pebbles hiss in your depths
your hands move in cascades of feathered leaves
mottled oyster skin a pale silk of ice trembling
your name is a gift of lavender in luxuries of passion
my heart a burial ground in the mutilated colour of dunes
as drops in the tide we evaporate into manuka fires
flying on humid rituals under tents of mirrors
Michelle Elvy
The Other Side of Better
Running up a hill
tripping upwards
falling downwards
making deals with the devil
or God — whichever works better
Radio’s on
Bush is burning
I turn it up and feel me yearning
for your devil grin and thunder heart
or God — whichever is better
As I listen and wait
I soon find myself
in a song
it’s you and me…
in tune
It’s you and me who won’t be unhappy…
in love and singing
– this is better
Bernard Heise
Cause–Effect–Cause
Sleep. I can’t.
Why?
Alcohol – much too much.
Drinking began yesterday.
Crashed car and burned house.
You left.
I destroyed
everything. Everything
destroyed. I
left you.
House burned and car crashed
yesterday. Began drinking
much too much alcohol.
Why
can’t I sleep?
NOTE: The Other Side of Better by Michelle Elvy and Cause–Effect–Cause by Bernard Heise were originally written for 52|250: A Year of Flash.
Te Ao Kiko Kiko
On the trampoline of light over te ao kiko kiko
Karoro circle with karearea in the iodine black sky
On winds of painted eyelids dark rushes in across the emerald landscape
The horizon unfolds with flowers of the puriri zodiac
In the garden of futures and chrome yellow dreams begins the adventure of lips
You burst open into the rose of hours with colourless quantities of grace
Your disobedient breasts luminous in the black heat
Under a long moon – piet nieuwland
under a long moon
evening weaves into the white blood of stars
the escalading light you are
is carried by micaceous fireflies
your eyes are a lapis lazuli ocean kissed by foam
the bird of the morning wind
sings the dialects of your limbs
and in a valley bubbling with sunlight raining
the frenzied dance of heat is bluer than scarlet
35 43.43S 174 19.60E
35 43.43S 174 19.60E Piet Nieuwland
On this viewpoint of land
island of blood
falls a corpus of light
and the pollen of stars
in the lunar calm of sleep
lies a white body of silence
the rain sleeping in the soil, the sand, the earth
in the penumbra of dawn
violins of fog and the curling mist of your hair
a line unravels from beyond a dream
your soul of champagne
spills a volcano of flowers
roses of a million petals
burst with elliptic kisses
wing beats of embrace
fan your phosphorescent waist
from the catalytic fires of my bones
I kiss your hands with acrobatic glances
Your eyes of kohl undress the afternoon
in feverish rapids of flesh
delirious floating stanzas
blushing vermillion buds
with lips laughing threads of honey
in kaleidoscopes of golden hours
raining mosaics
opalescent amorata
of diamonds and lace
gorge viveza
Call to you – from Flights on Spirals of Placostylus
i call now to that winglet of flame that flickers in glowing sheets of combusting gas, i call the edge of leaves, the shape of mountains,
the vast greenery of the huge catchments that flow down through Amazonica, call to the hearts of whales that sonorous and deep make their way into the shallow bays that warm in inclines to that edge of mangrove and kahikatea on the fringe of the Piako Plain,
that delta, call to weta in the litter and cicada on tree trunks sunning themselves, call to passages of oystercatcher and stilt probing the cockle banks with crabs, call to you all,
those wet and gleaming frogs, call to you the lizards and skinks basking and shedding skins, call to the fragrant mass,
the community of trees and ferns, call to winds that spiral across, call to the silver dusks that play on quiet bays,
the sweat of clouds that beach themselves on the promintory spire of steep incized mountain ranges, call to you the dolls that play with patterns of arms and legs, cloth moulded around torsos and the parallactic curve of breasts, call to you,
those prints the long tressle of hair plaited and intersewn with feathers and thin strips of silk, and diamonds of leather hung together, and the sway of hips,
From THE METABOLIC CIRCUS
On the Fringes Diving
on this island of ecological principles and energy cycling,
the nutrients that find themselves embedded in cellulitic tangles and mesh,
calling it a forest, describing it a jungle,
a piece of subtropic, the Pangea of ngatui,
on a path that epiphytes nikau palmate
and the ranges Tutamoe
roll their smooth contours and bluff over maroon clay,
at Mirowharara Waipoua junction,
Primnopitys and Dacrydium,
stood there and leaned,
putting the package on it,
re-ravelling the thread that knots and tied tangling
on the fringes,
on the fringes diving
The Alphabet is an Ocean of Diatoms, Plankton, Radiolaria and Whales
This is the long dream that flies to languages never before imagined, where stars are taniko clocks and Mare tranquilatus soaks up nights vortex, hours circumscribed as Bryophyta, kowhai, cicada and grasshoppers pouncing on flies ants mozzies and aphids, soaked in gelatine, molten in trajectories Te Ahuahu, Ohaewai, Puketutu, and puriri at Ruapekapeka, the pakeha mezmerization of silk turquoize and limbs, in this place throwing out and collapsing waves the numbers the symbolic scripts.
Walking across a field, in the distance the hills roll purple, sun blares clear, in a city climbing trees, the branches describing names talking into a day, the walls sing violins my heart fills with the sweat and clamour of Asiatic bazaars spiced air in smoked chicken and dust Palembang, Pekanbaru, Bukittinggi Sumatra, overloaded buses churning up gorges and ravines, skidding over tracks to villages huddled in the scarified ruins of jungle cutover and swamp river deltas breathing monsoon rains and fish
This is the conformity of my language the cage I shake, accents of speech the sings of discourse and rhythms in conversation, my vocabulary evacuated. It begins with algebra, arithmetic, a calculus, intersticies of paradox that click and fold away, displacements over these surfaces where air and water meet, coordinates filtering through magnetic anomalies contoured; primal alignments rotate, a chord stretching to Aleutians.
Withdrawing into whare pataka, cayenne paprika kumara and cashew summits crossing aubergine tomato citrus pulling hydrogenated ions oil rivers slipping on orchid fine where ivy crawls from scoria walls, I fall through cataracts of glass wings flailing in a furnace of materials moulded by equations of valency and spark, molecular weights, the catalytic fuse that streaks like mynas tearing open the day, scraping off shearing anthracite skies cast and brittle with the impression of continents, galaxies and stars, the coal it leaks fermentations of gum and volatilites, perfect symetries of carbon and halides, that flame tweak twist and burst Maungatautari, Maungatautari, Maungatautari
-Piet Nieuwland
Take Flight 