KIRK LAFFERTY

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