Tauira Ano

Ano

    

       

Poem with keys on your belt

writing like a touchstone,

at ease

with ink on the page,

hoping the rain will take away the whakamaa

miss

unlocking and locking the doors

miss

the group 

being a student

hope to play please stay sit down

wholes holes and despite the crossings

away with the fairies

holed up hold up holdup

thrown a bone a leaf falls a thousand

leaves fall – that was deciduous Autumn the insignia

insignia the rope white – reedy,

hope persistent against the clay

slip and tension,

It’s the wheel turning, the pulling

of the jeep the van the needed escape

movement inertia

and up on the road again,

prestigious in development of notary blade synapse

Spin spin spin the world packed up

reeled it in thrown

a line and peeled the skin

of the fish caught gaping

knife through brain little boy

It’s got to be dead now

but it’s wriggling then

throw it back little boy drop it in,

see the swim push of all the fins?

In the middle of the harbour

Rinsed out

by blood on the inside

I wished for the colour of the tree

I held the tree and planted it

I chainsaw the tree and I wished

for the years of life in a story

sapping, what has happened

I have wished far too hard,

far far too

because now I have all the stories

cook ups cockups my freeing light

ever hopeful flights

miss

calculations

my fatal mistakes my

disconsolate pressured divulgences

the inalienable slum in the back,

the slump of my spine her chin

in my kitchen

yanked

up by the tendons at her back

like a parachutist yanked from the mud

by captors

these stories these stores

have so much to do with us

so much over us

the soldiers in us

and how can we assuage that?

It’s not fine weathering that.

you can’t expect us to 

not take it off.

In the middle of the harbour

the Mataa

Use a boat if your arms aren’t long enough

take the men if your arms aren’t strong enough

hold the weight steady then drop it

down drop it down