Where's the love gone in Gaza?

The Israelis continue to destroy the houses of the Palestinians living in the Gaza strip. The world does nothing but bleat like neutered sheep. The dispossession of people by the Israeli military machine is a sorrowful and shameful indictment on the international community's inadequacies in solving this viscious and institutionalised war. The Palestinian methodology of violence, car bombs, suicidal sacrifices, and drive by shootings has furthered the ritualised religious bloodshed between these two proud people.

To wish for end to the conflict is beyond any naieve global dream. However, there would be far greater honour in a negotiated partnership of peace that ended this war, than pointing at the genitals of prisoners in an Iraqi prison.

Overstayers

There was a time during the 1970's when Prime Minister Muldoon initiated the arrests and deportation of Pacific Island overstayers from New Zealand. There were accounts of people who were stopped on the street and arrested because of their skin colour. The issue of overstayers has arisen with increasing frequency in the media and there are undertones of a wider racial issue that accompany the question of overstayers.

New Zealand has a history of xenophobic behaviour, like the treatment of Asian immigrants in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. To a degree some of these same attitudes are still prevalent in New Zealand today. New Zealanders have been brought up with a view that New Zealand is a magical multi-cultural society. We are taught that its conventions and benefits are free to those who belong to its society, and that those benefits are precious but in some way finite. Issues of race and overstayers are about the changing fabric and shape of our society, but are also about the way we view our changing lifestyle and values. Some of the issues relating to overstayers reflect peoples disquiet of those changing values, and their unwillingness to share the benefits of our society.

Sonnet Found in a Deserted Mad-house

Sonnet Found in a Deserted Mad-house

Oh that my soul a marrow-bone might seize!
For the old egg of my desire is broken,
Spilled is the pearly white and spilled the yolk, and
As the mild melancholy contents grease
My path the shorn lamb baas like bumblebees.
Time's trashy purse is as a taken token
Or like a thrilling recitation, spoken
By mournful mouths filled full of mirth and cheese.

And yet, why should I clasp the earthful urn?
Or find the frittered fig that felt the fast?
Or choose to chase the cheese around the churn?
Or swallow any pill from out the past?
Ah, no Love, not while your hot kisses burn
Like a potato riding on the blast.

Watching it all change

Where does it all go?

I haven’t written for some time now
not touched the keys
to play silent music for myself.
Instead I’ve lost the knack,
or my nerve, maybe both
I’ve tucked my scrappy tomes
rough rhythms of my life
away for some distant rainy day.

It’s a saving scheme of memoirs
a tatty post book without deposits
only withdrawals,
(The accounts getting low)
made redundant by the 80’s
like some forgotten
Otago shearing town

where after work (if you have any)
you can’t cash your cheque
to buy a beer or a handpiece
or write a poem that means a damn.
it’s date stamped and personal
closed because of cutbacks
in the mental economy
a silent chain of thoughts
missing from me
as I try to regain my savings
or perhaps my youth
I’m not so sure
and perhaps I was robbed?
like those towns?

Rain Rain Rain Go Away

The rain in Spain fell all over New Zealand today and looks like it won't get any better either.

Rain is the least of Presidents Bush's problem and its surprising to see him backing the Rumsfield who clearly looks out of his depth in the recent "press the flesh" show visit to the Pentagon. It just appears to me that the whole Iraqi campaign has been badly planned and badly run by an over confident military.

The scary thing is that a New Zealand non combatant has been killed in an ambush and that brings the whole shambles closer to home.

News of the World

I watch T.V and I read the papers
read about clowns, their political capers
Watch the wars, the rate of inflation
watch the fictions, the birth of nations.
Iraqi hatred and religious wars.
A.I.D.S, abortion, military whores
The iron curtain was torn from hooks
while German children still burn books.
Puppet nations ruled with strings
busines gods, powerless kings.
Cocaine rulers, drug cartels
starving eyes in their living hell.
So where's the chances, where's the choice
"no change for good",no political choice.
"The news to hand", the situation is dire,
if you came for a sale, you missed the fire.
"Lets hear the weather, over to Sue"
life can't be that bad for me or for you
For the prisoner, the beaten, those in pain,
our weather girl predicted rain.

Idol is a winner and NZ is the loser

Ben won and the nation cheered and some mourned. I felt relieved that it has final left the screen and that the ratings war is over.

Speaking of ratings, is it my imagination or is Don Brash about to sell our nuclear free lifestyle to the next sailor who visits our ports bearing trade opportunities in the American market? It's scary to think that such a lynchpin piece of legislation is expendable in return for raising the cholestoral of Americans with our export beef and lamb.