Gemma Millar

Hidden Scars

This is life,
You have to play this game,
You don’t have a choice anyway,
Your life, your part - has no mercy,
It doesn’t matter who you are, or what you do,
Life will find you.
Do your best, act your nicest, be at your brightest.
Go home everyday, and pray to the lord that it’s enough.
Hide the pain, no one really wants to know about it, or really know you.
Hold it all inside, put a smile back on that face.
Take off those rose coloured glasses, and stare it all in the face.
Play the game that is life, play along with your friends.
Pretend until it feels real.
Perhaps the pain shall subside if it is ignored.
Perhaps you will be the ignored if you don’t keep the pain appropriately hidden.
Do not break the barrier.
Others will tell you the pain is comfortable, as long as nothing has to change.
Especially themselves.

Choose your path; be a silent warrior, or the hero that stood against the rest.


Gemma Millar © 27.07.2006

Kim Randell

MERE MORTAL MAN

The tasks I must perform as routine every day
Just rob me of another brightly shining act.
My time on this poor planet surely melts away
The more I battle with the darkly morbid fact
That bitter tastes the irony in all our dreams,
The kernel of a nut no mortal man has cracked;
Too short our bodies’ lives to us it seems,
Our mind spans truly crippled by a time span sacked.

When youth had clothed my waking dreams an aeon back,
The Universe I owned, as well as hoary Time itself.
Vast glowing projects plotted for a grand attack,
And many more bright goals just waiting on the shelf.
It seemed Forever’s boundary lines could not be tracked,
Nor did that word Infinity have meaning in itself.
My grand achievements lying more in fiction than in fact,
The world my oyster, gleaming pearl all set in glistening gilt.

As I meandered on along Life’s winding coil,
A chunk of time would dissipate each sleepy night.
Plans and projects moving softly off the boil,
One by one they’d quietly vanish from my sight,
Replaced by daily deeds that paid me for my toil,
Necessities of bread and shelter, holding back my flight.
Bright beacons of my dreams and projects, without oil
That only time can brew, slipped slowly into night.

© Kim Randell 2006

Bernard V Kyle

CALLING ''TIME OUT''

by

Bernard V Kyle
[c] 2006


Things are reflective and hence the invective,
With the bad mouthing & plenty of smut,
The great innuendo needs diminuendo,
In response to the peoples ''TUTT TUTT !!'

For the Country is in need of attention,
And we don't need any one finger wave,
But the whole of the mob should get on with the job,
And the Beehive should learn to Behave.

Nicholas Alexander

On Line

The bits are flying into the furnace
The bright sparks float in the air
And briefly incandescent
Before they depart the desk top world
and hide on the hard disk until December

The phone line is free
The computer is being fed without it
and the lines on his face are becoming
less pronounced
each minute a megabyte
flys past

The world that was once out there
is now in here. Safe and registered.
Locked behind walls of flame.

Kim Randell

COMMUTER

Winding worms of slow frustration,
Muli-coloured metalwork.
Roaring, rumbling, crawling nation
Transiting from home to work.

Choking stench of sour exhaust fumes,
Breakfast flavour for the crowd.
Wash it down with purile comments
From car radios far too loud.

Welcome to our daily nightmare
All those who would city-dwell.
Fools, the country folk who join us
In our patch of modern hell.

If my working life allowed it,
I would leave this grid-locked mess,
Take my family to the country,
Clean and green, a sweet success.

Winding worms of slow frustration
Crawling back from whence they came.
Setting sun spears through the windscreens,
Consumes all in orange flame.

© Kim Randell 2000

Nicholas Alexander

Heritage Buildings

Solid foot stamped hard into rock
walls will not fall as braced by bolts
tightened by twisted steel rope
jack hammer fenced in force
bricks placed with surgical precision
masonry honed stone permanance
four columns is all
the ancient bankers saved
the facade of the old house
stood able to be built upon
history may be important
but these cardboard offices can be easily replaced with
modernity, glass walls that accountants can fall through
reflections that, when you walk past, move with you
and make the transparent towers appear to lurch
upward

EVENTS

Event postings welcome by email - use our Contact us page for details on how to send stuff to info@aucklandpoetry.com.

Event posted:

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Poetry Live

Tuesdays, from 8pm

upstairs at

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Queen Street

Auckland Central

If you have a poetry event to post here email info@aucklandpoetry.com

Kim Randell

JAFFA ANTHEM

(JAFFA: Just Another Fabulously Fashionable Aucklander)

If you could fly at night beyond where eagles may,
And look upon the isthmus from that height,
A diamond choker, Auckland shines into the sky,
A glowing beauty filling up your sight.
You can't but feel your chest expand with rightful pride
And hope to never end your awesome flight.

The Waitemata harbour on a sunny day
With yachts like scattered pearls upon her back,
Will lift your mood and sail all dark thoughts far away,
To scuttle them in some deep distant crack.
This ocean gateway to our fair metropolis
Perpetually brings the cruise ships sailing back.

From Ferry Building at the city's harbour edge,
To Aotea Square by old Town Hall,
A tiring travail up the Queen street shopping strip
Will have you asking,"What? Is that it all?"
A few boutiques and many little tourist shops,
Our hard-core shoppers live in shopping malls!

A saunter down the road in stylish Ponsonby
Displays to you Humanity anew.
The quiet clink of conversational coffee cups,
As patrons on the sidewalks air their views,
Café aromas truly cosmopolitan
Traverse your path, there's always something new.

Each evening greets a jungle at the Viaduct,
Rhythmic beating drums and strobing lights.
Young and old, a dazzling bright kaleidoscope
That spins and flows far into every night.
The music, dancing, laughter, change the Viaduct
Into a world where fancy does take flight.

We're proud to share our Auckland with all visitors,
To show them all our wondrous sights and sounds,
From Kelly Tarlton's place upon Tamaki Drive,
To Western Springs where you can walk around.
So fare you well, and take with you kind images.
Please come again and visit our fair town.

© Kim Randell 2006

Kim Randell

MISSION BAY EVENING

Sea breeze softly stirring shoreline trees,
Setting sun paints fading twighlight glow,
Harbour waters gently lapping sand,
Seabirds hushed in clumps along the shore.

Sparkling jewels of night adorn the strand,
Hints of bistro wafting on the breeze,
Mixed with muted laughter and with song.
Night's promenade proceeds with quiet ease.

Trails of light with muffled hiss and roar
Wind serpent-like and slowly through the eve.
Night riders ghosting by on mystery quest,
Quiet couples stroll the beach before they leave.

© Kim Randell 1999

Dr Charles Frederickson

Casino

No clocks shades of addiction
Drawn day indistinguishable from night
Rotating mirrored ball twinkling stars
Crystal sconce fixtures teardrop prisms

The setting sun flipped like
Tossed coin suspended in midair
Calling heads landing tails clinked
Into Lady Luck slut machine

Winsome charmer on the prowl
Fixated on evening score for
Last time’s losses re-vowing commitment
To never again in vain

Spinning roulette wheel beyond control
Snake eyes crapshoot no dice
Ace of hearts in hole
One-eyed jack about-face drawing card

Deep pockets turned inside out
Embossed last chance silk linings
Bloodshot eyes saggy hangover lids
Yawning one for the road

Time to call it quits
Pick up chips can’t afford
To still have plastic justifications
Credit limit not yet spent

Bernard Vance Kyle

Infamy Revisited

By
Bernard Vance Kyle
Copyright, 2002

Some tales will Thrill & some will chill,
With Schemes of Daring Do,
And some can Sicken to the Heart,
The likes of me and you.

And Fiction palls in Earthly Halls,
When Truth with Courage stands,
And Heroes rise with smoke dimmed Eyes,
To help with eager Hands.

For Infamy did rise again,
When Planes with massive Powers,
Pierced the Sky to let all Die,
And Collapse the Great Twin Towers.

So Forget ye not, this Heinous Plot,
Come Raise a prayer to Heaven,
For History will mark that Day,
That Day of Nine eleven...