Dystopia holds the key
To this worlds future misery,
Coagulates the values old
Man, in times past, used to hold.
Flocculates the chances caste
To, wherein once, the Gods might ask
Why seek this path to empathy
In thy chosen, cold, eternity?

M.
16 June 2021
Planet Earth

Coincidence, is defined as an improbable synchronicity of events, on face value, unrelated but occurring with no apparent causal connection.

Like the time, several years ago, when I told my little sister to pause a few minutes, ( before departing a bar we had never before frequented and had spontaneously selected for a casual beer stop), because I had this strange feeling of certainty that in the next few moments Sue and Pete, (visiting friends of mine from Australia), were going to walk in the door and join us……and of course they did. All un-arranged, all of us spread throughout the vastness of the nation…. What were the odds of this happening at this particular time in this particular place? “How could you have known” Asked my little sister?

The long arm of coincidence strikes again.
A texture where the delicate arm of life’s fabric has rippled, unbidden, unwanted but inexorably presented in the inexplicable here and now.

What are the odds?

And again where, on a spontaneous, unplanned quick trip to Britain in 1979, I suddenly bumped into Foxie in Trafalgar Square, beneath Nelson’s column where a million people, at any given moment, teem and mingle in their frantic rush of busy, busy life. Foxie was, at that time, a neighbor from Raurimu, a remote and dwindling woodcutters hamlet, Embedded in the depths of the King Country of New Zealand. I had no idea Foxie was in Britain nor he that I was there. Ten seconds either way and either of us would have been swallowed by the rushing crowd, Arabs, black Africans, Algerians, Russians, Jews and Bengalis all teeming in their own tangent in a crossfire flood of humanity…and we, oblivious to each other’s presence….just bumped into each other….Foxie! What the f..ck are you doing here?

Again, what are the odds?

Many blame the paranormal, some put it down to extra sensory perception, the religious insist it is the hand of God, intervening. The huge majority of us put the long arm of coincidence down to happenstance, blind luck, burying our suspicions in the hurly burly of our lives, burying the disconcerting actuality amid the great unknown in that murky corner of our minds where the unexplained is deposited, unwanted, in that repository…the too hard basket.

But the chaotic nature of life throws up coincidence with alarming and disconcerting frequency, defying the principles of probability, intruding into the realm denying rational explanation. Leaving us, with the vaguely uncomfortable pretext that Albert Einstein theory that the phenomenon of unexplained coincidence should be interpreted, until proven otherwise,
......as “GOD’S CALLING CARD”!

M.
Foxglove, Taranaki NZ

Plundered in the gentle light
Yet felt that this was, oh so right,
Succumbing to the wafting way
Of oriental, ****** play.

M.
Cambodia 1966

All men dream: but not equally.
Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds
Wake by day to find that it was, vanity.
But the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dreams with open eyes, to make it possible.

You, Korts, are linked inexorably to the likes of Wint, (in his ****** odd way), Natto, (in his Hebrew way), Victoria, (in her Liverpudlian way), Joel, (in his essentially cynical way), Terry O’Leary, (in his rhythmic tongue), r, Cyd …..and many others far too numerous to mention….and of course myself…for we are the progeny, the genetic linkage to the fabled and ancient, “Legion of Storytellers”.

In times past our forbearers roamed the globe when very few others chose to or, in fact, could. They found themselves orating nightly at the fireside, surrounded by spellbound, wide eyed listeners intent on hearing every nuance of wondrous tales of elsewhere. Tales of bravery and beauty, tragedy and outrage. Tales which caused the listener to weep, to wonder and to laugh uproariously. Tales which captured the imagination and sent the ordinary soul on his way pondering, expansively, things beyond his ken.

And in the morning, before the fireside ashes turned cold, the Storteller would be on his way to the next village, the next gathering of waiting listeners….for that is the role of the Storyteller in this life and beyond, spinning tales of immaculate colour and endeavor, laying the fabric of dreams and inspiration, painting the fantastical wonder of it all in the minds of the many.

And that, Korts, is what we do, thee and me….The worms which drive us impel the pen to write, impel the mind to create…the elixir of spindrift of that which we must.

Cheers Brother
M.
Planet Earth

Pathogens spontaneously perforate the way
When ideological madmen infiltrate the day,
When fools bearing doctorates infect with excess
Where halfwits in spandex concur in distress.

For intimidation's message of ignorant plight
So paves this pathway, cadenced in fright,
Belligerence caste in a dark hue forlorn
Obliterates normality's wavering form.

A flight of justice, flung far away,
Impinging the right in this wrong on this day.
What price this quest for stark racial gain
When the conquest won, is a recidivist's pain.

M.
24th February 2021

Ive got pangs of nostalgia
For tenderness, then
When simplicity painted
An honesty, when
Words would build pictures,
Responses relate,
Giving meaning to warmth
In diminish-ment of hate.
Empathy's gift
For those tears on his face,
And the baring of souls
In our poetry's grace.

The candle burns for all of us,
Now, from time to time,
Contention does, occasionally though,
Cause the teeth to grind.
Sometimes a belly laugh erupts,
While others wonder why,
Some weep at words of falling rain
Against an evening sky?
Mostly, it's the warm
And familiar words from you
In uttering a smiled response
To help my tough day through.
A companionable chortle,
A joke, a helping hand
Or even just that tiny note....
To say you understand.

You hit the Nail on the Head, Joel.
M.

Unenthusiastic in the undertones, my lovely,
Couldn't find the overtures to make
Lost the thread of all the actualities, my sweet
****** if I can find the strength to take.

For once I loved a King who said I couldn't,
He stole the very focus of my dream,
Amputated all with intensity, entailed,
Said expediency would cauterize, the scheme.

Speechless, nay with outrage, I exfoliated bare
Extolled the very essence of my ire,
Screamed his traitorous intent rendered my belief, spent,
My constituents now caste on the pyre.

Treachery suffered is treachery sent
It slices the heart like a knife,
Expediency spent incurs such discontent
That all trust is severed...for life.

M.
Taranaki, NZ
Feb 12 2021

****, you remind me of Mother,
Sixty years locked in the grave,
Weren't for luck, shoulda joined her
Except, thank the Gods, I behaved.

Smoked cigarettes till I spat blood,
Drank brandy & guitar in tune
Chased other men's wives in abandon,
Drove that hot old Ford like a loon.

Can't quite recall where she's buried,
Think it's away down the back
Thick in the weeds of Moorabbin
Likely, as not now, un-tracked.

Complication's diversions
I skirted the rule of law,
Disappointment's anointment
Strangled the guilt in my craw.

One of these days, I'll make it,
Scrape the weeds off her tomb
Toast the old girl with hard liquor
Sentimentally, sing her a tune.

****, I'm reminded of Mother
Frail with her big saddened eyes
Lost to all in her misery
But threw me a laugh, in disguise.

M.
Saw her last in 1959, didn't get to kiss her goodbye.

Wheresoever went the way
Of Wycheproof's bright Summer day
Way back then, back then when wheat was King
With bountiful supply
You could hear the growers sigh.
As the tills began, abundantly, to ring.

With silos overflowing
And wheat trains ever growing
In Wycheproof, back then,
When wheat was King
With the young girls laughing happy
And the blokes all dressing snappy
Prosperity led Wycheproof, to sing.

But then an apprehension
When this "Climate Change", was mentioned,
Dismissed as merely "here-say" by all,
For "What is now has always been"
With life in Wycheproof, serene,
"What tragedy, could possibly, befall?"

Now Wycheproof is Mallee dry
Where wealthy men complain and cry
When hot northerlies whip topsoil to the wind
As it parachutes a million miles
Which is fine for Wimmera wheatmen's smiles,
Fine and dandy for the growers living there....
But for locals un-empowered,
Watching windblown topsoil scoured,  
There's a seriousness in Wycheproof's despair.

No topsoil means ya can't grow wheat
And the shortened seasons growth, deplete,
Dust storms are primarily....THE FEAR!
Surmount successions mounting debt
And final deadlines... all unmet
Foreclosures ...are chewing up the cheer!

Wycheproof these days is still
No man nor beast on flat or hill,
The shops are looking derelict and closed
And the pub' though selling beer,
Is indisposed and rather queer
For there's no wheat.... and no joy fills the day.
Future's looking bleak
And it's getting hotter, so to speak,
in  Wycheproof ... and ****** all to say.

M.
February 8 2021

A Crown of Thorns worn to bed,
Woe betide the swollen head,
****** is he who  knows it all
For entitlement’s no birthright call.
Hangs like cloak of stone cement
Endowing wearer nothing spent
Entombing wearer, largely, doomed
Expectations now entombed
Few measure up to mark of man
Most spread the wings to seek the span
Encompass more than ever thought
But expensive shortfalls cheaply bought.

Out of limelight into shade,
Entitled shroud is richly flayed
With overtures of self- import,
Obsequiously seen, as sport…
By other pigs who seek the Crown
Intent on tearing your realm down.
For jealousy incurs an ire
Against you, who dares conspire,
Entitlement as rightful claim
And all within, your ****** domain.

Oh the fires of  jealousy
Burn bright with searing heat
And the pangs of hate come bubbling forth
On cloven, reptile feet,
And what was once was pure and good
Is now, then, dark as sin
And the Gods of Mars and Neptune
Both, with war, come barreling in.

For human nature simmers, hot,
Despite restraint’s cold hand
All preconception, caste aside
Who stays the battle plan….???
What works, though quite irrational,
Is the quiet word of She
Who has determined that this impasse
Serves no man’s sanity
And on threat of dire withholding
Of Country Matters near,
Extracted,  a mute fury,
But a truce, without a tear.

There was laughter in the ale house
Relief in the stall,
Where the horses fed on ignorance
But some men knew it all.
They all played their cards so quietly
With realizations calming stand
When Entitlement yelled, "an early night"
And cashed in his winning hand.

M.
February 3 2021
Taranaki NZ

Light and deep shade dancing
As I stride the mountain pass
My fascination prancing
As appreciations bask.
There's a tui in the cherry
And a magic song he sings
As he annoints the morning air
With the joy a summer brings.
There's a vibrancy a-hovering
And a crispness to the feel
A clarity so scintillating
One might, actually, doubt it's real.
A sky, so blue to be azure,
Extends across, on high,
Cloudless with a baking sun
Impaling you and I.
These old volcanoes soar aloft
They, now quiescent, stand,
Clad thick in stands of Kamahi
And towering Rimu, grand.
Great Egmont with her snowy crown
Rears high above it all
To dominate the beautious-ness
Of ***** and waterfall.
A tiny fantail flits about
And so entrances me
With aerial bombardments, flung,
In near impossibility.
The song of rivers plummeting
Down ferny glades and stone-
Causing me to laugh aloud
In serenade of home.
And sauntering through this wonderous-ness
Of magnificence in green,
This glory of New Zealand,
Is, indeed, the very best ...I've seen.

M.
Midsummer Taranaki, NZ
30 January 2021

Ever bought something you always wanted but couldn't afford....and then, when finally bought, found you really didn't actually need it?

Ever needed a cold, cold shower to ceremoniously, warm things up
...then found it left you, both.... high and dry?

Ever spontaneously warmed to a complete stranger to find yourself hopelessly mired in a compromising, sticky situation?

Ever tried to unstick that which got stuck due, entirely, to your own ****** unstick-ability?

Ever determined to run that hard, long race to bloodiwell win at any cost....then laughed and laughed with delight and utter relief, when you actually came in exhausted, spent...and last?

I have, to every ****** one of em!
M.

Mankind’s show of ebb and flow
Will tax your judgement’s call
Where swings of dubious ally choice
Determine wisdom’s fall.
Who knows selection’s factor?
Why pick this errant choice?
When the oratory of malfeasance
Paints odd the portrait’s voice.

Mankind flies in errant ways
Each individual sings
In voices of a different hue
Each oratory brings?
Why judge him for his preference,
Why colour him insane
When each has lived a lifeline
Where extremes created blame?

To wear the cloak of tolerance,
To sip anothers wine
Engenders an understanding
Which builds empathy, in time.
In any case, this cast is set,
Where ever you may gaze
Mankind will seek his own sweet way
Despite what wisdom says.

M.
At the culmination of the deadlocked Georgia Senate Runoff.
6th January 2021

Thank God, Boyo!!!

…and as you know, I’m not a religious man. Sanity prevails in the land of the brave and the free where President elect Joe Biden and Vice President elect Kamela Harris will create HOPE!

Hope for unity, hope for healing, hope for promise…Hope for a change in attitude to combat the pandemic with science and resolve…as a nation.

Hope that the great division in American society will heal, that America, once again becomes a nation that reunites with it’s allies, that supports worldwide environmental concerns and works positively towards planetary salvation from the  deadly threat of global warming. Hope that once again, America will regenerate its momentum and values to become the powerhouse of production that it once was and the flagship inspirational leader of the free world.

Regardless of Trump’s destructive death throes, his continued agitation and disruption during the transition of power over the next three months…which, I’m sure you will agree, is inevitable…. I feel an incredible sense of relief that, at last, we are on the correct track to righting the wrongs, the excesses, the outright perversions of the last four years of chaos.

This is the best news I’ve had in years….and I celebrate, with all those cheering people out there in the street today…a better, brighter United States of America and a safer, happier world.

Cheers mate
Dad.
Taranaki, NZ.

Seeping out from Asia’s shore
The Miasma from the evermore,
A creature from the Scarlet Tide
Permeating out to hide
Indiscriminately, through man,
To decimate, in stealth, by plan.
Across the globe, throughout the world
Insinuating self, unfurled,
So deadly in its secret way
Of insisting humankind, now pay.

Insidiously slipping by on gossamer mute wings
Invisibilities’ blue tide of lethality hued things,
Slipping by to render all across the spectrum wide  
Causing indiscriminate suffering amid the flotsam tide.

America is failing, Africa now seethes
India is reeling and all Europe concedes.
Britain is defeated and China’s telling lies.
Now the whole planet’s bleeding as this organism writhes.
Financial systems decimated right across the globe
As nations stall in lockdown and economy’s disrobe.
The dominos are falling, now, one by one, for all
And the killer is, this plague is with us till the Judgement Call.

M.
New Zealand
15 August 2020

Janet and I awoke before the freezing dawn to a cacophony emitting
from my phone. A deafening, repetitive alarm
....What the Hell is that?
My immediate thought was of a massive tsunami wave threatening the  nations shore???

Coronavirus has re-infected us and the government has jolted us out of  sleep to take the matter seriously.

Auckland has been slammed back to Level 3, the rest of NZ to level 2. We have a Polynesian family of 5 who have all been tested positive from an unknown community source.

This has jarred New Zealand out of its smug complacency. This has shocked us all beyond belief. We all truly believed that we were beyond this menace, but the insidious plague has reinserted itself among us.

....and we know not from whence it came?

M
12 August 2020
New Zealand

In truth, boyo, no one wins
Except the dogs who conjure sins,
They who set the snare for thee
To lose for all eternity.
While they grow fat at your expense
Knowing there's no recompense....
Laughing up their Satan's sleeve
To lance your writhing, sick unease,
Your weakness.... knowing now and then
Tomorrows bet you'll lay again!
M.

Hold catches charity chastising morning
Forenoon sees sanctity assigning shame,
But no one caught evening whispering secrets
For that was midnight who shouldered the blame.
Shall she wear criticisms chill of morning?
Is she entitled as spokesman of throng?
Savouring rumours that snicker from new light
Or roaring, pedantically, dark dawns song.
Such is the chorusing catcall of caution
Such the disharmony ebbing from soul
Coughing suspicions embedded in discord
Entrusting it all to a miscreant’s fold.

M.
30 March 2020

Sunshine up the coast, just a single line of bright sunlight shining through the, ever present, rain.
The ocean lies flat, barely a surge on the West coast, which is a rare thing. They tell me they can't get out of the harbour on the East coast,
Big waves rolling in from the Pacific. There is nothing but a vast ocean between the shores of Chile and New Zealand then to the South, Antactica with it's massive glaciation surging to the sea.

That Great Southern Ocean, with it's parade of icebergs and permanent population of killer whales, that ocean generates the atmospheric depressions which whirl up in tight formation and hammer the islands of New Zealand with those titanic South East gales.
They only blow for a day or so but in that time they tear the place to pieces.
Curling into Cook Strait between the two islands the South Easterly generates mountainous seas which slam into the inter islander ferries, quickly shutting down operations. The big boats with their cargo of wild eyed, green, sea sick tourists and chained down vehicles, heaving wildly in the giant combers and fleeing with all possible haste for the shelter and safety of a lee shore port.

Blasting North from Wellington leaving deserted, rain soaked streets in the city, the South East gale howls up the island to concertina up against the 8000 ft flank of the Egmont volcano this further compresses the gale transforming it into a howling banshee which allows no man to stand upright.  100 year old giant mamaku treeferns thrash about like matchsticks, the gale shredding huge forests of vegetation, a phalanx of leaves and branches flying horizontal with the ground surface and freezing rain which sears when it hits the face and leaves the toughest men running, with panic, for shelter wearing torrid, bright pink, stinging cheeks beneath their wildly, startled eyes.

The gale endures into the night, all power is gone and no repair crews will venture until it is safe to do so. Outside the monster moans in it's fury and the wife and I cower sleeplessly under the covers, in bed waiting for the juddering roof to be torn off our dwelling allowing the deluge to saturate and destroy all.
There is no sleep to be had and as the night progresses the terror rises incrementally with the rising shriek of the gale and the blast of the teeming hail impacting like bullets against the windward windows.

The night is interminable...and then, suddenly, the eyes crack open to a beautiful calmness, the morning sun, guilelessly, pouring in the bedroom window!

M.
Foxglove, Taranaki NZ
5 July 2020

Ridden the road the hard way, son,
Left my soul in pending.
Forfeit all the good things gone
Remembered well, their ending.
Recalled that special moment, son,
When I met your mother.
Trouble, son, was at that time
I sadly yearned another.
Now complications ebb and flow
And for reasons, now forgotten,
I chose to back the wrong girl, son,
Who turned out, simply rotten.
Besides my heart she stole my cash
And left me by the wayside,
Badly beaten and forlorn
Despondent on the down slide.

Your Mama came and picked me up
Drunken and in strife,
Slapped my face and dressed me down
And fed me facts of life.
Realization, like a thunderbolt,
Plain hit me in the gut
That, she, the only thing of value
Made me keep my big mouth shut.
I walked on eggs for days, son,
Played my cards so well
Then quite suddenly it struck me
That she caused my heart to swell.
The days, thereafter, shined so bright
The nights began to spin
And love arose in splendour, son,
To pave your passage in.
You came about like thunder, son,
You paved the way with gold
When all at once, my baby boy
She gave to me, to hold.
Never was the sun so bright
The night, the stars, the moon
When Gabriel stepped forth to blow
His most resplendent tune.
When life took on a magnitude
When she and thee and I
Did elevate beyond the cloud
To soar into the sky.

But weakness be my failing, son,
This weakness be my sin
When, then, a lithe and wanton ****
Did undulate, with talent, in.
I broke her heart, I let you down
I threw our life away
Descended into purgatory, son,
...And thus, I shall now pay.
I've ridden the road the hard way, son,
Left my soul in pending.
Forfeit all the good things gone
Recalled, well, their ending.

M.
29 June 2020

Rain pelting,
Sky shredding the hills with grey.
Chickens invade the yard for pellets, sodden, accusing and noisy.
Tussock leans over heavy with raindrops and the grass lawn grows greener.
Yesterday the tussock performed in the stiff West gale, bowing in howling unison amid wet, moss boulders, a symphony of grass in thrashing tune with wild wind whipping.
Today it just hangs in wet exhaustion, dripping.
Puddles reflect the white light falling and the sparrows shelter and complain among themselves.
She, wants to go shopping at Manaia for particular biscuits for her ailing sister way up at Lake Rotoma...it's her day off, you see..so whatever she wants...and anyway, it's raining.

M.
Wet week in Taranaki
29 June 2020

Takes years to build a friend, my friend.
Takes seconds to destroy,
The bellicose, the blunt, the wrong,
The insults and the coy?
Takes seconds for it all to blow
Like gossamer in wind....
With that in mind, what chance ya give
Destruction to rescind?
Chuck in the pearl of humankind
The hate, the greed, the sin
The you'll begin to realize
The depth of **** we're in.
To win this fight, to win this war
To exorcise a change
Will mean we let the women rule
The world, to rearrange
Priorities of human nature,
Mans tendency to fight,
And the way we just discard the peace
As if we had the right?
Ponder this my brother,
Cast aside your wrath
For human kinds survival
Is dependent on this broth.
M.

Where in the world is the sanctity kept, when the truth seeps away to a lie, how can it be that a few furtive puffs, separates the low from the high?
Can you promise, in honesty Sir, that a black man can make like a white, or that whites make adjustments to be like a black, knowing difference indelibly bites?
Protest pedantically puffs up the crowd, though most go along for the larks, but the whole world contuses in radical rage because cops use their dentures like sharks?
Blue the shade of endless sky, black the shade of pitch but green's reserved for envy, friend, when trading with the rich.
How then the love that all kids wear, is as shallow as mist in the air...and their Kardashian cravings make millions for some, but leave most in utter despair?
What's with the content she rattles around, on the average day in her head, for the blood that she bleeds obscurely deceives, even though it's a bright shade of red?
Sacrifice counts in a family way, though a marriage may fast disappear, when the glue dissipates then the thing that rates, is that  maintenance payments are dear?
Where are the leaders to show us the way, how can we possibly see, when obsession and greed are compounding to bleed...Can this really be happening to me?
Surely goodness and mercy shall furnish the way...Now aint that the teaching of Church... or should we confess that it's all such a mess, that we're, now ******* bricks in the lurch?
Maybe the sun will shine today, maybe it will rain, but the one thing you can bet on, pal ....it'll, definitely, come with pain!

M.
10 June 2020
Sittin n' grizzlin in the rain.