Thursday, May 1, 2008

Jack Ross: THE PERFECT STORM

.
We’d rather have the iceberg than the ship
– Elizabeth Bishop
.
Fire
.
Mainly chicks smoking:
· Office-clad in Elliott Street, dragging on it like an aqualung.
· 14-yr-old (?) walking beside her boyfriend, cigarette in hand.
· Two women at the table opposite in the Albion at lunchtime. Lisa les déteste.
· Now, in Freyberg Square, a knot of four nestles in one corner, one tailor-made between them.

Right outside the heart attack
he told her – waddling to town
Give up your seat
..................................to ladies
“Sit on my lap”
Blonde, bluejeans, scarf

Queensland, June 25th: ‘We are still trying to come to terms with what happened. We never will – and although every one of us wants to forget – we never will. We owe it to the Palace fifteen that they are never forgotten, ever,’ a British backpacker said. Others spoke of love found and lost, and of working alongside each other picking fruit in the Childers district.

The girl in maroon leather pants isn’t eating; her friend with the knitted jumper is – stuffing her face with a muffin.


The Storm

.
Monday, July 3rd: Rain and flooding in Auckland – an anticyclone over the South Island keeps the weather stalled in the North. Coromandel takes the brunt. The creek’s up. Your shoes are sodden, socks soaked through, raincoat ineffective. But you’ve done your walk.

The Perfect Storm “hits” today – so do school holidays: the gang’s all here, clustered round the cardboard display for The Road to El Dorado – “It’s really funny when these three guys call those two gods,” explains a small(ish) boy.

Girl with steel comb
like fangs
adjusts her hair

Cheekfuls of popcorn
keep the boys’ mouths shut

Everybody’s got a radio, everybody’s mouth is open, screaming out instructions, commentary … It’s quite a storm.

Dem waves iz beeg
I hope we don’t git sunk
Git outta dere!


Fusion
.
Did that strident smock-clad girl accost you in Whitcoulls, wanting you to paint a still life? Same colours, or different? Did you choose different, and daub some grapes with manifest incompetence? Did she pounce, accordingly, on better prey? Was she promoting an artist’s manual?

More beautiful than death
than a boomerang in flight
the pain of that

stab a compass in your thigh
the sunflowers


At the Inaugural Massey Fashion Awards:

It’s basically just life in general,
& whatever you see ........................................450 copper studs
..........that’s what life means ..........................140 belts
....................to you ..............................................70 hours

Tanya: Cultural native look [palm fronds tied round her black frock]
Chris: Cultural all-round-the-world look [Old Glory wrapped around his bits]


Poetry Live
.
This is how it is / in this moment / we just want to feel good

Björk/Sinead clone ullulates in red behind the Alleluya microphone – now quietening down to decoy us in for orgasm: I cherish this.

Too much Kerouac in the air. Ramón has a dribble of red wine down his chin, as he buys a drink for some splashed habitué with his many, many cashcards – almost too drunk to stand. Silvana sits waiting to tape herself, looking monolithic. Vega scowls malignantly.

“She is a cock-sucking woman,” shouts Ramón, egged on by his entourage of bozos.

Tonight
walking past George Court’s
I saw the legend

Press # key to start
on a plastic box

I’m tired of being the outsider – from now on, The Insider (Russell Crowe). Driving home, I see tendrils of light connecting me to the road: like spider silk, or parachute strings.


by Jack Ross
Auckland, New Zealand

No comments: