Pukapuka Poem #40 Torbay Revisited - Michael O'Leary

Torbay Revisited

went   this

time in a car

            white car

into the

monochrome suburb

            white suburb

inside the

kids watched TV

            white television

and when

number two child

            white-haired

looked up

and saw

my black

hair and

black beard

he was

afraid and

went crying

to mummy

- like

he’d never

seen anything

dark in

his life

before . . .

Pukapuka Poem #39 Takapuna: buy the sea - Michael O'Leary

Takapuna: buy the sea

(America’s Cup review, 1986 – 87)

The whole country

Acted like the ‘Olde Mug’ –

The peasants again duped

By the glittering gold phrases

Of the middle-class gentry

Television pirates:

Protectors of the public mind

And pilferers of the public purse

Nightly filled our hedonistic heads

With age-old delusions

“Both yachts will be

looking for real estate –

but the leader’s got the edge”.

And it was the same on land

As in the inane commentary box

If you told someone

You owned an underwater acre

Off the coast of Whangaparoa or

Takapuna, or Milford, you would have

Made a million for you overnight

But now in the cold grey dawn

Of falling shares and broken illusions

We look and see El Dorado and the Golden Calf

Are just another brick shit-house, and

The America’s Cup is back where it belongs

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Pukapuka Poem #38 'Torbay! Torbay! Torbay!' - Michael O'Leary

Torbay! Torbay! Torbay!

It’s around and around goes the bus

Out of sight of the sea

This suburb seems to go on and on

As we walk together to my sister’s house

Along a white concrete path

The white child of my sister

Looks at the dark woman I am with

As though she is a creature

From another island or time –

Afterwards she tells me what I know

So near to the sea, the sound

Is almost there, like inside a shell

And over the bridge inside a bus

We return to the city together

Carelessly we go to dinner or a movie

Next time I go to Torbay I am alone

The same bus, same streets

Same suburban sounds, near the sea

I am in another island or time

And I am alone, like the sound inside a shell

Pukapuka Poem #37 Morningside Station - Michael O'Leary

Morningside Station

bright blue sky in

            mid-winter warmth

sun beats down and

            heats the station seat

I sit looking at a red

            light in the distance

waiting for it to turn green

            the train ain’t far away

its whistle blowing down

            the line as it approaches

the just out of sight bridge

            over New North Road

gum trees glisten among

            single-storey factories

their blue shimmer heightens

            the fine-edged colours

graffiti gangs battle on walls

            with slogans that defy each other

the power of television images

            proven by these

New York subway copy-cats

            and I mean cats

Pukapuka Poem #36 Livin' ina Aucklan' - Michael O'Leary

Livin' ina Aucklan'

all too soon it is over

stepping down on to the platform

(an almost perfect concrete curve of old-world technology)

and watching the train move away towards the west

like a memory of love

a railway is the most melancholy of transport modes

and when you are aboard

the motion is one of subtle love-making

– as the train pulls out

from the station you stepped down at . . .

it is your lover leaving, rolling down the track

all this on a two minute trip to Avondale

but I defend the suburban services

saying romance is not confined to the Orient Express

and Mount Albert is as important as Montmartre

if you live there

once new and unknown

love is like a railway ticket held in my hand

but it has been clipped

as I stand alone on wind-swept Avondale platform

watching the train pull out of the station, I . . .

Pukapuka Poem #35 'Rock and Cave' - Michael O'Leary

Rock and Cave

at Whatipu

           

the caves are hollow

           

                        and hidden

no light or

           

life can be seen in

           

                        these solitary places

and then

           

the heads of the Western

           

                        Manukau jut out

Buffeted, undermined

           

by winds and

           

                        by rain and salt water

if you

           

stand on the beach

                                   

feeling the force of the elements

and look

           

up to the safety and

           

                        darkness of the caves

then decide

           

on te wahi moemoeä, shadows

           

                        and the half-life

or stand strong, Kia Kaha,

           

and be shaped and eroded

                       

down to the last pebble of existence

Pukapuka Poem #34 'Way to Work' - Michael O'Leary

Way to Work, Way to Go!

The whoosh of smoke

From the car in front’s exhaust

Covers our windscreen and

We drive blindly past Penrose Railway Station

Seems funny to pick up and

Pay money for sand in bags

From a Mount Wellington factory floor

With the smell of a fresh Westfield kill filling the morning air

We hit the motorway northward

Towards the city – across

The Newmarket Viaduct with

Eurythmic music going as loud as we are fast – crazy!

The drive of the dead –

Through Grafton Graveyard

Traffic to the right, to the left

It’s underneath you, and it’s over the top!

Then down to the oil installations

The noise and smell, the sea and sky

And the sand we bought

Now blasting through a nozzle

Knocking off last generation’s paint

Off petrol pipelines as the sun beats down hard

Pukapuka Poem #33 'Thursday Night' - Michael O'Leary

Thursday Night at the Naval and Family

Listening, looking, thinking and remembering

First, listening to the island band

            same old songs week after week

            the rhythm moves my feet

            and the drink and smiles

            make me feel like I’m sort of at home

            the voices and the words

            foreign and familiar

Looking out the window at O’Malley’s Corner

            and following with my eyes

            past other Karangahape Road neons

            up to the lines of old Auckland roof-tops and sunset sky

            then inside seeing 

            all the pretty girls dancing

            talking and singing and smoking cigarettes

Thinking why am I here and

            why do I keep coming to this place

            where some nights I’m the only local

            although I can’t see that

            and no-one else seems to notice

            and the foreigner I’ve been all my life

            doesn’t exist here

And remembering the Pacific Island music

            my mother used to play on the gramophone

            and the Pacific Island woman

            who shared my life

            and dreams for a short while

            - as the music wafts over me like waves

            I stare into my glass with anger at separation

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Pukapuka Poem #32 'The craic, the kai, and the whiskey' - Michael O'Leary

The Craic, the Kai, and the Whiskey

(71^st memorial of the Easter Uprising) for Karen Urale

What’s happening and where!

It’s the place and it’s the drinking

Went to the Eden Terrace factory

Kissed my love by the wall, but it’s only a song

                                    and then (will we go ta midnight mass or no?)

In the pub talkin’ and drinkin’

Drivin’ through the night

- the moon rises, clouds are drifting

And everywhere the city grows and moves

(Thinkin’ about the girl I just met)

So it’s off with the top of the Tullamore Dew

And down it goes

Firing up the organs like a mainline steam engine

Is it yourself? Who knows -

As all the constraints of reason

And morality get lost in

The craic, the kai, and the whiskey

It’s a wild unremembered drive

Through the Balmoral night

- I awake in the morning

To a vision of O’Donnell driving

Straight towards a Concrete Wall 

Pukapuka Poem #31 - Michael O'Leary

30 cent inner-city fare

Hop on the big yellow

            banana bus

and go from station to stop to stop

initial surge of power throws you –

back, back as banana on wheels

pushes forward past phoenix palms

and then flows around what was

once a beach – now a road

into, but past also anzac beach head

then, the battle been fought, into the mainstream

maelstrom to follow local custom

left, through the turquoise northern shadow – great!

the pacific (south) lost now in large seas

and the queen lies spread-eagled and eager

to engulf all-comers . . .

up you go and she is before you and following

as you move in fits and starts

– a sexual epileptic

fish tank vision of the people

and the crane-like cranes hanging their long

necks over building tops to check your progress

as you check their progress at a red light

a swarm of people descends and then moves

– as you move . . .

bathed in a golden glow the hint of the wide

open country-side

the banana moves up and up but never away

now the fantasy movie is all but finished

but the real illusion continues

– they are building more of them and more of them

and just when you think you might get lost

forever in the orgasmic firmament

            going up further and faster

            than you can ever remember

the banana bends to the right, missing the sky

                                                            by inches

and slows

            slows to reveal human faces

laughing and sad, moving and still in K-Rd

time to hop off the big yellow

                                    banana bus!  

Pukapuka Poem #30 'Passing Young's Lane' - Michael O'Leary

Passing Young’s Lane

As the early morning train pulls out

Of Newmarket Station it dives down towards Auckland

Towards another working day: The bells ring

And the warning lights flash at Young’s Lane

I look indifferently out the window

Expecting to see nothing other than dark-grey skies

To my right a shaft of golden light

Transforms the otherwise sullen landscape

Beyond the marshes and swamps of Öärkei

Straight down the Gulf I see Waiheke

Where you two moved to the other day

Waiheke is the place where the light is strongest

Suddenly the train lurches to the left

We enter the Parnell Tunnel plunged into darkness

Pukapuka Poem #29 - Michael O'Leary

Foreshore in Black and White                        

Paekakariki Images: dripping from the mad dog’s eye

                        i

darkening skies

equalled by the darkening earth

a cliff-side disappears inside

a rusty rail

a tree grows out of a re-treaded pile

black, white, grey

the colours of the day

                        ii

parallel to the sea and sky horizon

jutting out above the lapping, lolling waves

a branch of an ancient fallen tree

emulates the also jutting land

-         a little bird sits comically, looking

back to the shore from the tip of the elongated wooden finger

                        iii

elemental, old as the hills, enchanted

dancing sunlight on water

thick-jointed, a long extinct life form

the perfect line between sea and sky

reveals there is no question why?

                        iv

a city stands

De Cherico-like

in sands

and surreal

distortions

approximating straight lines

against the curves

of nature and time

rust and water and wind-smoothed wood

explode into splinters

which join the shifting

hills and sands

of time . . .

                        v

clouds dance

twisted tires

and broken iron

point skywards

in a pirouette

of silent passion

chips off old blocks

witness, as audiences do

the movement of impermanence

                        vi

the quiet, semi-sinister

sentinel

sits alone

looking seaward

surrounded by sand

and scattered driftwood fragments

of life on the floor

the breakers roll in

roll in, roll in

raw, but never weaken

only tire

the one who watches

from a wooden

expression

                        vii

monolithic, statue-like creatures

stand, as though the first dawn

had just broken

the great brightness of black

and white illumination

the darkness of Polynesia

and the slither of light

along the line of sea-sky

circling and shadowing the

heavy and ethereal formations

in the sky and on the land

the sea also sends echoes

as though nothing has been quite born yet . . . 

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Pukapuka Poem #28 'Just Like a Bird' - Michael O'Leary

Just Like a Bird (song recorded by Dunedin Irish band Blackthorn

Words by Michael O’Leary)

Candlelight flickered, I was half in a dream

As the moon rose through clouds over the bay

You came to me like a light on a beam

Now your image is with me to stay

At the end of this long working day

CHORUS . . .

            Just like a bird

            My words will fly to you

            Across the dark and stormy waters

            High over hills, down the valleys below

            Where they’ll reach you as a whisper

            Just like a bird

As once I held you close in my arms

Tonight I hold you in my memory

The thought of your touch even warms the chill winds

Which sap the strength from my body

In this place where I’m working so lonely

CHORUS . . .

Sometimes I call you on the phone

The words we say bring us together again

Hearing your voice reflecting my own

I feel such sweet melancholy pain

Then the coins run out, leaving me alone again

CHORUS . . .

The only fear I have in this life

Is that I will never see you again

So hold me in you heart tonight

My love, as I sit in the darkness

When the candlelight flickers, I see you again

CHORUS . . .

Pukapuka Poem #27 - 'In North East Valley' Michael O'Leary

In North East Valley

Your milk splashed up into my face

Tasting warm, moist, slightly insipid

Not sweet like the milk of a coconut

But of the same tangy texture

It was your farewell gift to me

A koha that stayed all day on my tongue

Later, on the north-bound train, I thought of you

And couldn’t help but laugh to myself

The way you held your beautiful brown breast

Squirting at me like a child’s water pistol

Now I’m a thousand miles away from you

Our lives are probably back to normal

But today the Auckland rain splashed on my face

It looked milky-white and reminded me of you

Pukapuka Poem #26 'On the Death of your Mother' - Michael O'Leary

On the Death of your Mother

That morning I woke up and I put around

My neck the black and white scarf

Which several years ago I stole from your house

As a close memento of you to wear

I had not worn this, my favourite scarf,

For many moons so I knew something was afoot

When Des came running by the Raumati shops

Not a place I’m normally at on Saturday morning

And told me that your mother had died less

Than an hour before I felt the scarf tighten

The surprise was no surprise, this is the way

We are, bound together but we must be apart

I spoke to your father and gave him my aroha

And I tried to contact you and others all day

All were travelling to or from somewhere

All were out of touch through their journeys and grief

When you rang me in the late evening, saying

You needed my car to take you home to Whanganui

I felt neutral, even aloof, just waiting for the deluge

Of thoughts and feelings which I knew would come

I met you off the train at Paekakariki Station at midnight

And when we walked arm in arm along the platform

That closeness and aroha I have only found with you

Rekindled like embers left sleeping overnight

I kissed you goodbye and realised a fulfilled destiny

The reason why I had bought a car at all

Many years ago, had in my mind, been for you

And now, when you needed it, it was here

It all fitted so neatly like a fate unknown

Until its revelation, which is then shown

To be so simple, and openly mocks us

So deceptive and beguiling that it shocks us

I didn’t need to go to the marae to farewell your mother

As I had planned: my role was yet again to support you

-          I cannot hold you . . .

So I take off the scarf till the next time we say goodbye

On the Death of your Mother

That morning I woke up and I put around

My neck the black and white scarf

Which several years ago I stole from your house

As a close memento of you to wear

I had not worn this, my favourite scarf,

For many moons so I knew something was afoot

When Des came running by the Raumati shops

Not a place I’m normally at on Saturday morning

And told me that your mother had died less

Than an hour before I felt the scarf tighten

The surprise was no surprise, this is the way

We are, bound together but we must be apart

I spoke to your father and gave him my aroha

And I tried to contact you and others all day

All were travelling to or from somewhere

All were out of touch through their journeys and grief

When you rang me in the late evening, saying

You needed my car to take you home to Whanganui

I felt neutral, even aloof, just waiting for the deluge

Of thoughts and feelings which I knew would come

I met you off the train at Paekakariki Station at midnight

And when we walked arm in arm along the platform

That closeness and aroha I have only found with you

Rekindled like embers left sleeping overnight

I kissed you goodbye and realised a fulfilled destiny

The reason why I had bought a car at all

Many years ago, had in my mind, been for you

And now, when you needed it, it was here

It all fitted so neatly like a fate unknown

Until its revelation, which is then shown

To be so simple, and openly mocks us

So deceptive and beguiling that it shocks us

I didn’t need to go to the marae to farewell your mother

As I had planned: my role was yet again to support you

-          I cannot hold you . . .

So I take off the scarf till the next time we say goodbye