KIRK LAFFERTY

 

One foot forward Better than two feet backwards Not like we have much choice In these strange times Confidence a fleeting glance Not knowing where we head What choices are available Is it brightness on our path That leads us Of fewer ambitions Even less intentions Or is it just a trick of the light.

Alice’s side room was half hallway, half lounge, with no windows to the world. Everything came from Auction houses. Vintage Sewing machines and Nic Nacs A regular Haberdashery. Ancient Black and white photographs in dusty frames, between Grandfather and cuckoo clocks, not half as cuckoo as Alice herself. “That’s your great Uncle Shultz next to the Plough, our neighbours from Durry Hill playing croquet. Dirty hand Jake, your fathers, sisters 2nd cousin removed next-door neighbour What a rascal he was.” “That’s a garden party with the Jones family. We ate cucumber sandwiches, guava jelly on scones, sipped pure Ceylon from fine china. Here’s a distant Relation, what’s his face, memory deludes me? He played Cello with the Wanganui Symphonic.” In the town hall, Before it burnt down. Even the tar on streets was burning. Only it wasn’t. None of it was true. The room full of forgotten photographs came from

I went to sleep the optimist , a dreamer My head in the clouds I woke up to the age of uncertainty The clouds it seemed Have moved inside my head Only time will tell what dreams are made of. 

The space between people The space between words when people don't speak don't acknowledge Even the dogs have stopped barking A lyric speaks to me When no-one else does "you showed me that silence That haunts this troubled world You showed me that silence can speak louder than words"

I lifted up the pillow,  took one last breath in of the scent left behind by  another. I washed the sheets,  the pillow slips,   my clothes piled up on the floor. Left from a time when the mind spun in circles, and such common feats were beyond me. The rain comes in after it seems many days of summer. When change hits,  it rides on a cold breeze.

Sunset over the Apocalypse  I started talking to the cat Then stopped  People might think me mad There are no, Sirens pulling over drunks  Prostitutes on the prowl Kids out drinking cody's Transvestites screaming "Want some of this baby" Overseas a princes cheeks are looking Rosie And Boris's nurses are immigrants.  The way forward is strange clouds grey have gone Future yet be unwritten.

Listen We are Pakeha; Maori, Tongan, Samoan, Chinese, Korean, Japanese, a bit of everything, of European decent, from somewhere you have never heard of. Not sure we want to say, not sure where we come from, not sure what day it is. We are employed; not employed, recently unemployed, unemployed for what seems like I can’t remember when, don’t want to be employed, not able to be employed, resent being asked that question. We like listening to Bob Marley. We are hip-hop ranters; disc spinners, local music fiends, in the Flying Nun way, record buying audiophiles, country ballad indulgent, Whammy Wine-Cellar regulars, listen - but don’t know what we listen to because it is on Spotify, don’t listen to much at all, annoy the f… out of people by playing music really loud on our cell-phones.             We earn heaps bro; not enough, not nearly enough. Does anyone earn enough. Some people earn to much, bastards, enough to get by. We don’t earn. We are on the dole, sic

--> I recognized him on K Road, just. I remember how, years before he had told me about a night in Rotorua, when he was six, when he was innocent. There had been many nights like this in his childhood but this one stuck out, imbedded itself in his memory, affected all that he was and all he would become. The cat, his best friend, in one moment asleep at the foot of his bed, the next fur in the air, faster than superman, straight out the open window of the washhouse that doubled as his bedroom.   Then he heard the steel capped work boots, thump up the stairs and kicks at the base of the front door. His mother’s latest boyfriend hardly standing hands were busy holding himself upright and holding onto himself while he pissed a yellow fountain onto piles of unopened bills that spewed out of the overstuffed letter box in front of the porch.             ‘Open up woman, open up, where the hell r ya?’             ‘ya got someone else in there ave ya? ‘ She opened t