Knights Templar

Magpies are Knights Templar

Resplendent, gloriously

Clothed in their heraldry

Of the white they aspire to

And the dark means at their disposal

Steel beaks like paddock judgement

Menacing in twos and threes

Clear and cunning glassy eyes

That know where every shiny thing lies

The magpies are not from here

They're from some distant land

On a mission, or a slaughter

Colours flapping in the wind of battle

Paused their princely pilgrimages

To tarry in the fields

Police the country paddocks

And go hunting for their meals

The tūī and the kērērū

Have been chatting, and agree

The magpies are quite welcome to go home

At any time they please

empathy outside my window

The wind speaks so loudly up the valley

To anyone that will listen, it is yelling

The trees are full up with understanding

Despite their unfortunate deafness

So with their many piney branches

They talk a quiet, broad sign language

Enfolding, embracing the gales and gusts

They calm the desperate soul of the wind

a moment in prayer

I felt lost and a bit overwhelmed and disconnected

I said in my head

that I felt like I was on a hill looking over Galilee

Or down on the water

On a boat

And wondering what would happen if I fell

Frisson divine rippled over my body

And I was not alone

I was not alone.

"All is not lost, child."

In the voice that isn't a voice

But a calm, voice shaped hole

In the silence around it.

My middle is softly warmed, almost

Imperceptibly

Antithetically

By a million tiny cool pinpricks

On my outside

For He knows every hair on my head

And every follicle on my body

And loves me

And loves me anyway

my soul is an electromagnetic whale

My soul is an electromagnetic whale 

Swimming in spiritual space 

Coils energised, twisting 

diving into the world

radiating at certain frequencies

From the edges of my fins as I turn

I need to come up for air

That breach, that upward yearning

Pirouette in open space

Are you there, Lord?

At apogee

Far from where I'd normally be

Dancing through the Van Allen belts

Of the invisible Spirit, the aura of God

My ferrite bones, my coils thrumming

One link in a chain of spirit, 

electromagnetically charged by the next

Refilled once more by the breath of love

Gracefully,

Now full of grace

Falling back into the cold ocean

To radiate anew

Technician's curse

Technician's curse

Everything in my life

Almost works perfectly

soul lens

She is a lens of a telescope
focusing heavenly light
which she cannot herself perceive

She gathers the light
swims with it, collimating
coruscating
she cannot hold onto it,
she feels only dark
and confusion

But the light found her, chose her
when it passes through, it grows
only sweeter
and no other lens will do

No other light is better
or more lovely
or more true
than the light that shines
through the lens
of her soul.

She used to look at the stars
with her dad, and his
Telescope

And now sometimes
just sometimes
his light comes down the reflector tube
just to shine with her again

__________________________________

For my Becca,

from Morgan

The end of an unnecessarily long Reddit comment

Written as the Ritalin
Wore off completely
Half an hour before midday Monday morning
As the neglected guilty workload 

of the week was dawning

new guitar pedal day

Cutting blazing lines of fuzz
across the edge of thought
chords dripping with oblivion
neon sonic battle wrought

P̶̲̺̹̾̋̿̕L̴͔̰̫̃̐̓Ŭ̷̥̲͈̑͌ͅC̴̼̍̀̄̅K̴̗͉͇͑̀͝͝ ̸͓͙͓̍̐O̸̙͚̫̒̒͝U̶̧͔̚T̴͎͖̬̲̪͠ ̵̰͖̲̦̼̈́̈́̈́͘M̵̟̏͜Y̵̡̠̗̲̘̓́̊̐ ̶͔̀Ë̸̞̤̟̗́̂͊̅̽Y̷͕̰̮̊̎E̸͖̬̱̒Ş̵̥̣̠͔̇̈́̕

Pluck out my eyes
Want to be blind

Stumble no more

Need to be blind
To seek the truth

And stumble no more

My immodest soul
Father make whole

See only flesh
Behind closed lids

Stumble no more

Overwhelmed and terrified
Will my soul forever die

everyone relentlessly
awfully beautiful

Don't want the male gaze
Only need to see His face

P L U C K     O U T     M Y      E Y E S

Radio Monitoring System

Mount Rochfort Deva

sad electronic songbird

mating calls by email

A 'Deva' is a device that monitors several radio stations and then sends you an email if one of them is abnormal or off-air. Sometimes the Deva power supply dies slowly, and the Deva starts sending erroneous emails when the stations are actually fine. Nobody has any pressing need to be in Westport to fix it however....

Yes I took my Ritalin this morning

Stuck behind
A taxi
And a bus
A four by four
with a fear of water
And a snorkel

Stopped uncertainly
By the divine right of the sceptred hand
At the lollipop man
Citizen cones in single file
Esteemed gentlemen
From the order of the stripes
Of orange and white

Held back by
Thoughts that won't start
Mentally hovering
behind the brake lights of the bus
One LED is flickering

I am late for work
There isn't much on today
It's weird that nobody minds
I forgot what I need to do
And I haven't even started

I wish I was a bus
Or a taxi
Or a traffic cone
Honourably observing the royal procession

I wish that it felt rewarding
When the route comes back to the start
That I felt joy when the thing begins again
The holy royal twirl when the stop becomes go

I am sat at the lights
Waiting to feel fulfilled
Ready to start, ready to start being
Air-conditioned into feeling nearly okay
Nearly awake
But not quite

Yes I took my Ritalin this morning

Warning on a toaster's power cable

WARNING!
the bread may burn
red hot
like ten thousand stars
lost in a nebula or
nichrome whirlwind
The toaster should be attended when in use

Te Raikaehoe, Princess Bay

White horse heads
Roll and rumble
Caressing the shore
Neighing over the rocks

Stopping to circle
and graze on the seaweed
In the little meadows
Of the rockpools

When they're full
The herd twists and pulls
Pale manes rippling
Back out to mysterious depths

Whisked out swiftly
On gentle hooves in steely blue

Popcorn

Growing up was like walking into the end
Of a movie
Called the twentieth century

Nothing left but the PFAS
From the empty lukewarm popcorn

Maiden put out the Final Frontier
Like all music had now finished
Songs soaring into final black abyss

I asked about noisy guitars
Slow chords like shimmering bricks
In monolithic walls of noise,

We did that in the eighties!
They laughed
Said I had to be there

All the maps had been drawn
All the continents found
All the poles scraped
Lunar litter already left

The careers counselor
Had me fill out a survey
There aren't any jobs
we can match you with

Every path had been trodden
Every road needs refinishing
The council never upgraded the pipes
In the heyday of prosperity
We were conceived during.

Now we ride the rollercoaster
Of blown out dopamine
Microplastic surprises
Cost of living crisis

And unwanted advice
From a century we were never invited to.
We can't afford the popcorn now
And we don't have time for movies

Mouseybro

Mouseybro
sleeps
in the oven at night
pops out for a peek
when no movement of light

disturbs his little world
his warm steel home
his toes on the burner
fan by his nose

I know he's in there
though I've never seen him
he leaves little gifts
like seeds of his presence

Fracture

During Lent

A soul
Washed up as jetsam
At a high tide

And as the waters recede
I am lodged in a pew
I am here, Lord
I sorry that it took
your whole ocean to move me
But I am glad that it did

Executive Dysfunction

Am I-
I-
Am I?
I want to
I want to start
I want to know how to start
I want to want to know how to start
I know I should start
I am guilty that I cannot start
I want to create easily
To flow from one good thing into another thing that is good
To fail gracefully

I sit in the ashes of doubt
I can only turn and not accelerate
creatively blind
Well fed and exhausted
Mind frozen and broken into pieces
each piece thinking in loops unconnected

I don't want to do what I am doing
And I don't know what I want to do

Racktopia

Welcome to Racktopia
Where copper-fingered
aspiring wire-gardeners
trim over-grown looms
into beautiful rack-topiaries

Migraine daydream

My feet are planted firmly between
mind-rattling throbs,
those BEATS of pain
like injuries in the inbox
of your cognition.

I am standing in the middle of a bridge

Gently the top half of the skull separates
and rises,
the split forming slowly backwards
from the outside corners of the eyes

The cranium lifts up and back,
wisps of steam curl away
from the underside

The brain rises gently
like a flower in time lapse
the folds open out and forbidden air
begins to dance through them

The eyes lift heavenward and forwards
still tenuously connected to the brain
totally free of the skull
coloured static pulses indigo with the heartbeat

A cool Antarctic breeze
Christchurch, in June, at 10 in the morning.
When the frost is still barely clinging
to the grass, and the wind is no faster than a walk

Relief falls from the remains of the tear ducts
the pain begins to tumble away
bark falling off a eucalyptus

I fall
head dismantled and finally, perfectly cool
right off the bridge and into the Heathcote river

Gently swept out by the breathing of the tides
and the diligent paddling of the ducks

diving for their lunch

out into the comfortable dark Pacific

Overwrought

When I open the fridge
The light does not come on


Words on the page
Lose their captivation


Single bulb on the porch
All the moths are gone


Empty webs in the wind
Spiders left before dawn


Turn key in the slot
Starts once and then dies


There's no fuel in the tank
No cash in the bank


Pick up the guitar
Cry on the floor


Notes have all left me
Gone out the door


The windows are leaking
The pipes are on strike


And the roof is not far behind.


Fists have been lifted
Like antennas to heaven


The station is off
And the bread hasn't risen


Take to the streets
An inappropriate hour


Sit by the water
With a furrowed brow


Amid fires of thought
And spirals of doubt


Cold hits the bone
The moon has gone out


Take me far away

make me someone else

make someone else be me.

the noise is so deafening

on this most silent of nights

Pickup slugs

Pickup slugs like
silent ferrite judges

hidden fields 

touchlessly caressing,

grabbing hold

of the six steel souls

in all their enharmonic

and inharmonic moods

the jury is four thousand ohms

they don't like the defendant

oh, my volume knob was down.

Gregariousnesses

 Diminutive 

g

G

Gr

Gre

Egg

Actual

Reg

Greg

Gregor

Gregory

Extended

Gredger

Grëëëëg

Gregorios

Gregurtha

Greggsson

Gregormatic

Greggstopher

Gregstravaganza

Greggggggggggggggg

Gregiddywreggiddywrecked

Greggthemanthemyththelegend

SaintGregoryTheGreat64thBishopofRome

Wheelie bins

Wheelie bins
popped up silently
in the gentle dark
fruiting bodies
of a suburban mycelium

Embraced

They separated as the daffodil buds began to bloom
in the chill early springtime

a year apart in stony aphelion,
still orbiting

Upon the daffodils' return,
they embraced

Emergency

Ambulances like white blood cells
patrolling the arterial asphalt
down the lonely avenues and
suburbs of the city's circulatory system