Heads in the Sand

After work we meet by the bay

to a shoot our film

I’ve brought the props: plastic bucket and spade,

champagne flute, a report from scientists

to feel the force of my heel.

The late summer sky is turquoise paua

with silver cloud flashes

a strong wind hassles my tie

as we shoot fast in the fading light.

The work we do after work

is our true occupation 

it’s what we do now:

Videos, events, marches, gatherings

we who are about to be watched,

about to be listened to

we who shall never know the profile

on our files.

And you

Who watches the watchers?

Who tracks the quivers in the listeners’ lies?

I play you in my suit like an ill-strung mandolin

My arm outstretched to the petrodollar reserve of raukawa moana

My splayed palm waving away public dissent

Come dine with us.

And you

What do you see when you see the ocean?

How can you hear the breakers with your head stuck in the sand?

A phone rings in a superior’s office

What is the market’s exit strategy?

Who aside us will take that call?

Last shots. Voice overs. Over dubs.

Our promise to you

When the day comes there shall be more of us.

Inaction by NZ government on climate change 

© Harvey  Molloy

 

Coal Action Network and Climate Action groups throughout New Zealand are calling for people to turn up a designated beaches throughout NZ on December 7th to show the governmental what they feel about the lackof action on climate change. There's more on this planned action at https://www.facebook.com/events/1542095289341789/

Sunday Review

The first of our four poems this  week was The Boris Bridge by Janine Booth, a deft,  brisk and scathing comment on Boris Johnson's plan for the construction of a so-called 'garden bridge' over the Thames where the public will have no right of way and 'No bikes, no rights, no access after dark'. Regular readers will know that Boris has not infrequently featured here at Poetry24  going back, for example, to 2012 and my own Holding Out For A Hero. Things haven't improved since then; in fact, taken overall, the situation seems much worse.

Tuesday brought us another, very different but similarly frequent visitor here. Rose Cook's poem, simply but engagingly entitled Russell Brand Talks About Revolution, is a response to a video in which Brand talks to Guardian columnist Owen Jones. Russell Brand begins the interview by talking about his early life in Grays in Essex. He describes the sense of despair and alienation that he experienced in that environment. Now, whatever else you may think about Brand - and regular readers will know that I like him - you can take it from me that he is a hundred percent right about Grays. I grew up in the village of Aveley where Grays was a short bus ride away. It was bleak and soulless. It did breed disaffection. I left in 1984 and, returning there quite recently, was shocked to feel the emptiness and see the consumerist squalour of the town,

The third poem of the week was the very powerful Culling Humans by Jacke Biggs which bore witness to some of the lives lost to welfare 'reform'. We at Poetry24 deplore the fact that such a poem should have to be written. On the other hand, since it clearly does need to be  written, we are proud to be the first to publish it.

Out final poem, A Story of Our Time, the work of regular contributor, Luigi Pagano, focuses on another shameful state of affairs, the fact that a report has now concluded that organised child sexual abuse is, after all, 'widespread' throughout the country. Some of us who are survivors of such abuse. whether 'organised' or not, have been trying to tell them that for decades. How is then so that, still, so many people turn their faces away?

Well, a bit of a bleak week here but important work has been done. The good news, though, is that this evening, Saturday, at The Melting Pot Cafe, Krowji, I will be attending the book launch for Wave Hub: New poetry from Cornwall. This is a new collection of the work of Cornish-based poets in which I am proud and grateful to be represented, The book has been edited by Cornwall'a own Dr Alan M, Kent, academic, poet, novelist and dramatist, and published by Francis Boutle. More details are here. Have a good week.

Abigail Wyatt