We Have

The News is averting us from the reality of our existence

It is helped by every institution in this country.

We have a Soul.

It is starved of fundamental foods like Truth and Equality.

Kindness and Joy are being killed by Money.

We have a Heart.

The internet is giving us anything we want

But we still want more than we need.

We have Love.

The supermarkets and Malls are feeding off us

Hunger keeps us stuck to the plate of our own demise.

We have Needs.

The power of the indiviual is being subverted by Greed

An appetite too big to satisfy itself.

We have Enough.

A white man calls me greedy while he owns the world

He is sicker than I thought and he is contagious.

We have Miracles.

Inspite of all this unruly and unhealthy stuff I am powerful

Enough to create all my own thoughts.

We have Words.

She is Fiji

The island smiles at everyone that passes her shores

She is languid, she is perfumed, she is dressed in aqua seas

She is Fiji

The island is land of mango, pawpaw, coconut and cassava

Frangipani and fish in coconut cream, she tastes fresh

She is Fiji

The island is close to Tourists who want to live a dream

Snorkeling on reefs, sipping cocktails by the pool of life

She is Fiji

The island is covered in hotels and resorts inspired by

That awful American dream to look five star at lowcost

She is Fiji

The island is a republic, majorities reserved for ethnic Fijians

Indo-Fijians left in the thousands after the 1987 coups

She is Fiji

The island has had two coups in 1987, then in 2000 and 2006

This was followed by a constitutional crises in 2009

She is Fiji

The island is being raped by a capitalistic white man

Under the guise of being good for the black man

She is Fiji

The island has a prime minister and a president

Two lovers who do not always agree, or care too

She is Fiji

The island is where I spent two years of my childhood

Eating lollies out of squares of newspaper and milk iceblocks

She is Fiji

The island is buses with no windows and banks with air

Conditioning that we run into to cool down, she is hot

She is Fiji

The island is a botanical garden pronounced Bot-a nacal

And the boys who can t get into high school yell peanut peanut

She is Fiji

The island is full of interfering do gooders who are half dumb

And half good.  She is not judgmental or needy or adverse

She is Fiji

The island is a paradise exploited by greed and ignorance

She does not erupt or rebel, she does not kick anyone’s arse

She is Fiji

The island is owned 80% by Fijian Villages and leased to farmers

Sugar cane thrives there because she is a sweetheart at heart

She is Fiji

The island is the most famous of all the pacific islands because

She is populated with Fijians the nicest people in the world

She is Fiji

The island though small has had military takeovers, kidnapping

Treason every other season and officially imposes disabilities on Indians

She is Fiji

The island is so beautiful that nothing stops people from visiting her

Not the race conflicts, not the nasty resorts, not the greedy capitalists

Everyone still wants to swim in her seas because she is FIJI.

TraceyTawhiao©2012

Blessed 

Came to Colonize

Called it Civilize

Impact minimize

Land no compromise

Roads chopped out

Driving into Trees

Less Leaves more Disease

Oil fueling machine

Machine fueling Man

Man fueling Money

Money fueling Greed

Greed fueling depression

Depression fueling disease

Disease fueling Money

Money fueling greed

This disease breeds

Now we realize

Less is more

And more is less

SO

Love fuels Good

Good fuels Happiness

Happiness fuels Peace

Peace fuels Love

SO

Slow down man

Your dance is insane

Break out not down

Say after me:

Best is Blessed

Blessed is Blood

Blood is Real

Real is Now. 

Fleeting Words

The Newspaper is a cyclone of paper pushing words

Lines of words strung between poles that should be Pou

I want more more than these half true lines for which trees died

I know how to swim the shallow water before I sink to the deep end

All these words are filling the air with pollution and noise

Bank balances of the few are the only thing I see improving

Life is a breath away from being death words will not find us

They will not touch us they will not sacrifice anything for us

Stop using them to convince me of a lie the truth is fine

These daily scheduled uncertain lines of fleeting words

That crowd us into thoughts we need not waste time having

I get more from a wordless tree uncut for your newspaper

I get more from the silent clouds opening a portal to the moon

From the grass growing longer and greener and stronger

Even the Spiders mammoth efforts to live give me more than words

Yes I throw them hurtling from a high ridge words on words

Poets take words from places silent in the world and create with them

No apology required if you read this and feel the loss I feel too.

Tracey Tawhiao (c) 2012

Will it

Unsubscribing to the online sales

It’s worse than I first thought

This computer is choking on my words

I am so closely connected to my tools

The breathing saints regurgitate goodwill

Still death is near no matter how far away

The spirit is more than what we call nature

All machines are affected by us man made

New Einstein is working on the equation

While I experience the revelation

Every action has an equal and opposite

Mankind is a prime example of it

But we fight it, kill it,  murder it with war

Until it stops violence is a great success

Unsubscribing to the order to date

It’s holding back what is already late

Imagine we create our own fate

Before you lose the opportunity too

The spirit is more than what we call nature

It participates in every action at our will

Will it, will it, will it, I will, will it.

Unsubscribing to players of negative vibe

Your teams over there losing against my positive side

Unsubscribing to fundamentally flawed family feuds

Nothing personal but how does fighting help

The spirit is more than what we call nature

A blazing light nurtured by armies of millions

We all turn on our light by will.  We just will it. 

TraceyTawhiao©2012.

Period

Blood you make me feel the womb you are

I surge through veins anguished by the rush

Placid as the force that pushes me and pulls me

I whip anything that will give me time, so much time

Filled with bleeding thoughts on clean sheets

Pouring out of a spout built to take it

I feel the force locked down as it rumbles disgust

Only breathing deeply will placate it.

traceytawhiao(c)2011

The Phantom of the Maori

This is rude I know but why is the Aotea centre packed

one hundred dollars a seat for this mindless toss about

an ugly man who wants a beautiful woman to sing for him

He’s named the Phantom of the opera, she’s supposed to care

He tells her to tap into her dark side so she will think he’s ok

This guy is dreaming, that mask just covers a pitiful egomaniac

We couldn’t stay not even for the quality of the set design

We had to leave before I fell asleep, or worse before I stood up

To shout at the audience for dressing up and buying into this shit

Wondered what we could create with the budget of this thing

The thought of something about our gods, had me lost in the magnificient sets

and the divine dialogue of my forbearers

And if they thought this was a musical they’d be so overawed by our waiata

This thought was only just processed before I started to think cynically

About the scraps over what  iwi had more rights to the story

Who owns the waiata and why we can’t refer to Maui

There’d be endless hui to discuss whether to share this sacred history

Then we’d have to bless the sets each night, a budget for the tohunga

Maybe that’s a better story, the one about the dispossesion of mana

How it turns the concept of Maori into something a budget can cater for

How it has the capacity to make a Maori say and do things for the money

And then I think that’s what happens when you don’t have any money, and your

value system undermined and your culture denigrated and no longer do

your beliefs command any respect

When you watch the reverence those with money receive

You might just want some for the wrong reasons

You might just say something is Maori to get a piece of the action

You might just do what’s been done to you and shit on someone else

I started with the phantom of the Opera but the interesting thing of course is the phantom of the Maori.

TraceyTawhiao (c) 2011

CRITIQUE OF THIS POEM BY JULIE ARROWSMITH

Stopping This

Hard times are strange beasts

Broken in by mans belief

In a potentially bad future

Our future bright on credit

Now the deficit is calling

That big bright loan in

Rich Lists make all the money

So now there is not enough

To put food on some tables

Please Rich List see the need

Avoid contagious sickly Greed

And put on a huge feed

Help grow a system that

Makes us happier, freer

Innovative producers

We have the talent

We have the heart

We have the resources

And now we need to change the system

That is stopping this from happening.

Hard times are fine

If there is some joy in it

Our hunger is a great deterrent

Owing more money than we have

Is a mental National Disaster

Weakening our natural self-sufficiency

Base needs must be taken care of

The cost for this must be calculated

The funds must be raised

We have the expertise

We have history to teach us

We have the Love of People

And now we need to change the system

That is stopping this from happening.

 TraceyTawhiao (c) 2011

I’m Eclipsed

(This is a tribute poem to Hone Tuwhare and  is a combination of Hone’s Hotere poem and what he says in a documentary 2005 made by Gaylene Preston.)

Hone Tuwhare when you smile and say

Give us a smile son give us your best morning one

And then later laugh and say on TV

This Bloody Maori is putting germs in our words

Now with the bloody listener not accepting any dam poems

(Don’t they know) … it’s a prestigious thing it’s the heart of man

Karl Marx armed with a cigarette not a pen

Wandering Pricks everywhere

When you are hard working executive

You deserve a bit on the side a sweetner

Poetry right from the beginning of humanity

Earliest people … basic poetry.

Sometimes its quite boisterous and loud mouthed

And other times peaceful … murmuring

Sometimes it shakes the house and I say

Hey come on back off …

Hone Tuwhare when you smile and say

There’s no fear of dying that’s inevitable for everybody

To advance, recede, shimmer and wave like exploding packs of cards

I shake my head and say: hell, what is this thing called aroha

Spent 20 years in Dunedin you cant forget a city after 20 years

Usually he never got up until about lunch-time did you

He said he had no salt for his eggs so I posted some rock salt

And he told me it’s bad I don’t have an egg either

Ian said yesterday my eyes looked like oysters

I don’t feel so good today I just swallowed my oysters

Ralph Hotere over there in the corner … his anti rugby sentiments

There he is our most political artist

I will have four jars. I’ll get one of my sons to come down

And pick up these jars and a thousand dollars … my son might think oh yeah and Chuck a bit around Kaka point, a bit around Dunedin, Wellington where he was born Chuck a bit in there and chuck a bit in Hokianga and that’s it

I don’t need a tombstone.

I have to roll another smoke man.  I’m eclipsed.

Tracey Tawhiao

Matariki and Ngatoro-i-rangi

Navigated here by the stars of Tane’s wisdom thrown at the sky

By Ngatoro-i-rangi Te Arawa’s greatest eyes of the night

Mapped by Ranginui to our final destination Aotearoa

Five main rocks that bind us to the voyage of our past

Seven main stars of feminine mystery speaking truth

Divining all that we may harvest from this sacred earth

Tuwharetoa you come from great and have made even greater

We speak your name the father of our appearance on the horizon

Tuwharetoa you keep us close to the stars that brought us here

Protected by Rongomai the tui, the patu, the kumara you gave us

And all the while tiny diamonds in the sky reveal seven gems

While earth makes her turns and we read the signs she shows us

By Night sky we are shown the way to finding ourselves

And an ancient mystery is solved in a scientific language

The constant re-occurrence keeps us sharp to your oratory

And I hear you now in the wind that blows us your words

We are the descendants of the Star Gazers, the Amazing eyes

Now look at one another and see the stars of this earth with delight.

(c) TraceyTawhiao2011