NaPoMo NZ Day 7 - end to beginning

[just mercedes]

Rules: Write a poem for national poetry month on the topic or form described. Each poem should appear as a separate reply to this thread. The goal is to, at the end of the month have written 30 poems for National Poetry Month NZ. 


Topic 07: Write a poem, somehow referencing NZ,  that starts at the end and ends at the beginning. Anything, on any subject.

Form : any
Line requirements: 8 lines or more
 
http://history-nz.org/maori9.html
 
http://eng.mataurangamaori.tki.org.nz/Support-materials/Te-Reo-Maori/Maori-Myths-Legends-and-Contemporary-Stories/Ngake-and-Whataitai-the-taniwha-of-Wellington-harbour
 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_New_Zealand
 
https://www.backpackerguide.nz/11-new-zealand-souvenirs-for-your-friends-and-family/
 
 
Have fun!
 
 

[Todd]

When I Observe My Eulogy

Death has no dress rehearsal.
The day comes, and you leave
the speech for understudies.
Those who know you best,
never knew you at all.
There was always the element 
that was unknown
on the periodic table of you.

When I buried my mother,
I was closest to God and a practical atheist.
Parents being stand-ins for the divine 
in love, in wrath, and now only in dust.

There are tears and dry solemn faces
like leaves that crunch beneath your shoes.

I imagine my love will continue 
to radiate like a furnace until the embers go cold.

Those left will find it strange,
 how few things they remember,
how many questions they forgot to ask.

I hope I look as if I’d counted
ten thousand sheep and my eyes
simply slipped shut. Perhaps,

it’s all a dream
and I’ll wake.

[vagabond]

trade

no one ever is
ready for guns
we were not
the muskets had their own will
we thought
we made a good deal
gun powder
too real
not real
dreams of power awoke
we fell asleep
our land, a dream
we never knew them
the consequences

[just mercedes]

Thinking of Rua Kenana tonight
 
 
To me it ended when they shot my son.
He died in hiding, frightened by the noise.
It started differently for everyone.
 
Some joined me, refugees, life on the run
preferable to slavery mere boys
to me. It ended. When they shot my son
 
they knew we wanted peace. They thought they’d won
and moved us on their maps like little toys.
It started. Differently for everyone
 
at first, I taught that love can overcome
and faith can heal the flesh that guns destroy.
To me it ended. When they shot my son
 
they killed a threat, my heaven, both in one
and history writes down what suits its choice.
It started differently. For everyone
 
the vision of our own land, its own sons
and daughters singing out the land’s own voice.
To me it ended when they shot my son.
It started differently. For everyone.




(a villanelle instead of a sonnet. hope it counts : 

[CRNDLSM]

NZ  beginning ve ber careful,
hiding, gliding through de shadows
Alvays vary of verevolves,
stinking cowards,  had those 
beasts, eben, never
mind.  I digress. Ve
don't care so much.  Never
have I ever cared less.  Ve
vill not last much longer.  Seasons
and centuries vill bin in ZN.

---

That's a damn fine villanelle

[just mercedes]

Todd - strong work - a keeper. Vagabond - oh yes, I like the way we end back in the dream world, before consequences.

---

CRNDL - this works on different levels for me. Satisfying and enigmatic too.

---

Watch it on rewind

See how bodies and debris fly
from the river and its banks,
through the sky, back into the train
as it rises, Car Z first, to the bridge
now whole again. It backs away
increasing speed, vanishing
behind the sign that reads
‘Tangiwai. No
refreshments.’

https://www.nzonscreen.com/title/the-tru...l-disaster

[Anna]

---

sometimes 
glass becomes the Whare 

and what kind is that? 

sometimes 
Whare becomes the Utu

and what kind is that?

sometimes 
the song is sung, dispersed

and what kind is that?


When the Pa is the Whenua and the Waitata is made to be the Tangi, does it matter: who, who cries her heart out for the ground shatters as would glass, the Tangihanga does not sing a Tillana, the Taua to kill the pain...an Utu is not the purpose at all, it is Tandava macabre, buried deep, released high, tapu, dowsing the world with frankincense...for somewhere between the boundaries of you and me or they and ours, all of us are magic, tears shed in the Thrul Lu from the lips of the Rudali  echo the same sorrow, love.sorrow, love, leaving, left, going, going gone, the void filled with something less wholesome, and what kind is that? There are no hosts, only these Whare, made of glass, made of grass, made of skin and bones, how fragile, how fragile, how fragile that fortress that holds a seventy or a thousand, or a one hundred and forty, how fragile the anger of destruction, how inert everything in extension, Mathe, Mathe, Mathae, Jagathjanani, give us a healing, Mother Earth, Bhoodevi, grant us a prayer...

[Achebe]

Christchurch - a poem (of sorts)

In time, I'll move to Christchurch, always building, unfinished project, like Berlin. And follow the Canterbury plains to the foothills of the Southern Alps, sprung from the collision of the Australasian and  Pacific plates. Thus is land born, as it has been born always, before there was a New Zealand, before Australia, before Gondwana, and before Pangea, before Rhodinia, and before supercontinents that have not left a trace, not even in cratons, where ancient zircon lies entombed within ancient zircon. The Pacific ocean is disappearing beneath Aoraki, and being reborn near Antarctica. We, the mayfly children, in the long summer of the earth, are scattered to the winds and are reborn where we fall as bullrush, weed, then become the wind again, on and on, until the sun turns red in the fullness of time, and the oceans dry out and scatter in the solar wind to reach other worlds, to stir the seed of life anew, and continue the project of building.

[Lizzie]

Christchurch - a poem (of sorts)

In time, I'll move to Christchurch, always building, unfinished project, like Berlin. And follow the Canterbury plains to the foothills of the Southern Alps, sprung from the collision of the Australasian and  Pacific plates. Thus is land born, as it has been born always, before there was a New Zealand, before Australia, before Gondwana, and before Pangea, before Rhodinia, and before supercontinents that have not left a trace, not even in cratons, where ancient zircon lies entombed within ancient zircon. The Pacific ocean is disappearing beneath Aoraki, and being reborn near Antarctica. We, the mayfly children, in the long summer of the earth, are scattered to the winds and are reborn where we fall as bullrush, weed, then become the wind again, on and on, until the sun turns red in the fullness of time, and the oceans dry out and scatter in the solar wind to reach other worlds, to stir the seed of life anew, and continue the project of building.

Nice one.

[just mercedes]

Anna, I love the comparisons of culture, the realization that human experience is the same for us all.

Achebe - powerful! Good writing.

[kolemath]

Echos of our ancestors


creation myths
pang for generations 
their blind fingerings
no more
real than 
Te Ika a Maui
a history or movie

[just mercedes]

You raise the question 'what is real' and leave your reader unsettled. I love 'pang for generations'.