Post-Traumatic Growth: A Poetry Collection
empyre
that's just a symptom
you've gotta go to the root
so we hunkered down
reached into the sand
we pulled and pulled and pulled
and the roots kept running up
sand sprinkled
like a flutter of spores
and still we traced
we began uprooting pavement
it cracked and shivered apart
buildings floors began to spilt
still we pulled
pedagogical devices
botanic gardens
war memorials
university lecture theatres
libraries and galleries
fractured and sunk
kneeling in defeat
or guilt
we yanked on
we saw hanging from our finger
beside our nail,
the threaded roots,
grimacing, (no stopping) we pulled
our fingers, arms
fell away like a jersey with a loose thread
into a pile of wool
ready to be repurposed
our veins, arteries, intestines and brains
pulled away like tapeworm
in threads of gore
we are accused of being interested only in destruction
we wish to create.
limitations are a bad starting point
flowers grow through cracks in the concrete
surviving off the dirt that gathers
beautiful as it is
it is a marginal life
we don't want to exist in the cracks
we want to open the cracks
free from constraints
pimples are disgusting,
but it feels good to get that shit out of your face
we were going to get to the root of the problem
the world was overturned
what a relief
a Letter to my People
Someone’s dispossession is another’s possession. (1)
By the barrel of a gun, (2)
pākehā imposed
Patriarchy (3)
Private property
Prisons
Police
Pollution
Paternalism
Individualism (4)
Capitalism
Consumerism
Extraction
Addiction and
Colonial Fictions (5)
Julius Vogel
Prime minister,
Premier
Newspaper editor
Politician.
Passed predatory
policies
public works acts
to dispossess
the People of the Land of their Taonga:
Whenua
A land grabber, yet we hold him in such high esteem,
we named after him a whole street?
For shame! it’s time we came clean.
It’s a pākehā problem,
My people,
we can be better than this.
Their pain needn’t continue, nor our shame.
Don’t just change the world, let ourselves be changed.
Relinquish power, gain: honourable kāwanatanga,
Step out of the way of Tino Rangatiratanga.
Pākehā passivity is complicity,
a delay tactic, of excuses.
Even when we deny we know what the truth is.
University, buildings and roads,
built by the Parihaka, Pakakohi prisoners. (6)
Pākehā, the problem is us, so we gotta put ourselves to good uses.
Colonisation is not past it’s a process ever present,
Unless we prevent it from being perpetuated again and again.
Armed constabulary became the police force, (7)
Pirihi no Mana!
We gotta abolish and uproot it at the source.
Learn from the past & reinvent
Overturn oppressor psychology we inherit by descent.
Constitutional transformation (8)
A powerful vision
To proactively, consciously make better decisions.
Follow the leadership of the katiaki’s wisdom.
Seas rising, fires burning,
Mother Earths demanding we do some unlearning!
It’s time we dismantle the doctrine of discovery, (9)
See it for what it is: religious armed robbery.
Indigenous sovereignty protects. (10)
Treason to whiteness is loyalty to humanity, (11) so it’s time we defect!
Dundas, Vogel, Hamilton, Auckland, Cook.
Change the names.
That’s a start.
Return the land
and stolen wealth.
Restore the health
of the land and a people
who should never have been spilt apart.
Change the names, tear down the statues.
Yeah, that’s a start.
Return the land.
Have a heart.
It’s Te Tiriti o Waitangi,
Not the treaty of waiting.
Māori have always been at the table (12) it’s time we met them there.
For far too long we’ve been unfair.
It’s our responsibility to take responsibility.
Maranga mai, matike mai (get up, rise up) my fellow pākehā,
Unlearning, unravelling, awakening.
Mahi tahi, come work together, let’s play our part.
Thank you to all those whose work I have learned from.
Aileen Moreton-Robinson, Teanau Tuiono, Ani Mikaere, Teah Paterson, Ian Church, Emilie Rākete, Tina Ngata, Margaret Mutu, Moana Jackson, Noel Ignatiev, Suzanne Menzies-Culling, Sina Brown Davis.
Aileen Moreton-Robinson from her book ‘The White Possessive: Property, Power, and Indigenous Sovereignty.’
Teanau Tuiono from his quote “Capitalism wasn’t born here; it came by ship from England and it grew here out of the barrel of a gun.” facebook.com/fufighterarts/photos/a.526082234226005/606660856168142/?type=3&theater.
Ani Mikaere’s work has informed me a lot on the colonial imposition of patriarchy in Aotearoa. Particulalrly here article titled ‘Māori women caught in the contradictions of a colonised reality’ waikato.ac.nz/law/research/waikato_law_review/pubs/volume_2_1994/7
Teah Devine Paterson’s poem Love Letter From the Pain Body is being quoted here instagram.com/p/B5uEnyZp1bq/
Tina Ngata ‘Kia Mau: Resisting Colonial Fictions’
J.C. Sturm’s poem He Waita Tēnei Mō Parihaka & historian Ian Church’s book ‘Salutary Punishment: Taranaki Maori Prisoners in Dunedin, 1869-72 and 1879- 81’ informed me here
Emilie Rākete’s article ‘The Whakapapa of Police Violence’ informed me here https://thespinoff.co.nz/atea/04-06-2020/the-whakapapa-of-police-violence/
Margaret Mutu & Moana Jackson’s mahi must be acknowledged here
Tina Ngata’s work has informed me a lot, especially her book ‘Kia Mau: Resisting Colonial Fictions’
Sina Brown-Davis’s work on indigenous sovereignty and environmental justice has been in/formative.
Noel Ignatiev, is quoted here newyorker.com/news/postscript/noel-ignatievs-long-fight-against-whiteness
Suzanne Menzies-Culling taught me this
Reciprocity (a longing)
We believe in your humanity, against all the evidence
- Andrea Dworkin 1983
I hate men. That’s what you say.
What a simple excuse to not look at yourselves.
I wish it were as easy as that.
I am angry at men.
But still it is not as simple as that.
Scratch the surface, dig deeper
I am hurt by men.
I am in pain.
I want to be heard by men.
To be respected by men.
I want to be loved by men.
To be cared for.
I want men to show up.
To be present.
To pay attention.
I have a longing for men.
I have been let down.
I am so sick of being hurt,
Being disappointed.
Not even being surprised anymore,
Expecting nothing better.
I have been told:
I love you.
I care about you.
By every man who has ever raped me.
I don’t care what you have to say to me.
It’s just a head fuck anyway.
You love me.
You care about me.
You say.
So do it.
I don’t believe words on their own.
Love is a practice.
So practice.
I said I love you at the end every phone call to my dad for more than a year before ever hearing it back.
Still, now I say it first.
I am sick of carrying the weight of two people.
Sick of being the one to go out on a limb.
To be vulnerable.
Sick of being generous and supportive.
Sick of being unsupported.
Sick of having a greater hope for the kind of person you could be than you are willing to imagine.
Man oh man.
Boy oh boy.
Do you see how lazy
How easy it is to say I hate you?
I have aspirations for you, I wish you had for yourself.
Have you listened?
Have you looked at yourself? Reflected.
When you’re running away from your pain like salvation is at the end of
a bottle
a blunt or
a video game.
When you’re trying to so hard to not feel
or grow
or change.
It’s so much easier to lash out:
She’s overreacting
A man hater
A crazy bitch
To deny.
Misrepresent my feelings and your actions, in one go.
Two birds one stone.
I have so much love and so much care for you,
Men,
That I have never received in return.
Not properly, not in practice.
You.
If you were this hurt and let down.
Had to live in injustice.
You.
You would be angry too.
With many thanks to bell hooks whose writings on love have impacted me immensely, love liberates.
Weeds
Mold starting growing on grave stones
Desecrated
Large weeds sprouted up along side the walls
Some would tear at them, try to uproot them
But most wandered by without even a shrug
Or a glance.
They would appear alongside buildings
Strangle weeds crept up polls and posts along the footpaths and campus.
Every five metres you would stop to tear them down.
Why are you doing that?
What’s wrong with it?
Why don’t you let them grow?
They have a right to be there just like you and me
It’s a weed, you would say
It may look harmless but it’s aim is to kill
Looks fine to me
But you have to look closer
I promise you, it’s a weed
They sprouted and grew
Strangled and expanded until we were overrun
We slashed and we writhed trying to free ourselves,
and we wished more people had seen the weeds for the weeds
And taken the time to tend to our garden.
Seedlings
Our differences are exaggerated to separate us.
Mythologies are spun convincing us we are Day and Night. Incompatible.
Could not find common ground so shouldn’t try.
But when we talk and when we listen.
It all strips away.
We smile for we are no so different;
Though we have our differences.
Violence and dehumanisation is encouraged,
To sow seeds of distrust.
Fear wedges us apart.
But we can see the tools of division for what they are: dīvide et imperā
We must mend the social fabric that was torn.
Cultivate trust and mutual respect.
Our friendship and support, we gift each other with, is our strength.
We suffer and are weak when we are apart.
We must re connect.
For, we have been separated but we belong together.
