A poem by Ockham finalist Anne Kennedy.
from ‘Thirty-Three Transformations on a Theme of Philip’
32
The present pulls the plug on the present moment by moment
Hands fly to the black tiles like pigeons to a rooftop
The objects in the room join a passing train
The thoughts in the room climb aboard a train
The temperature is high and low and indifferent
Temuera and Eileen! I’m with you on the internet
The hottest January drips like a water sculpture
Brass is green and grass is brown
The coldest July is through a shattered windscreen
Meteorologists and the homeless give a fuck
A woman feeds cats on the galeforce corner
I’m with you on the internet
A satellite like a god indicates your whereabouts
Sadness rises like silt after an earthquake
How fucked it was before civil rights
Happiness struggles out from your outrage
Pretty weeds bust over the plastic roof
You want greenness but hate gardening
I’m with you on the internet
A bedroom is like a jar for an insect
Through the curtain light grows and dies
Light runs up a beach and recedes
The things in your room are on or off like settings
I wish your lot were running everything
I am with you in spirit
I’m with you on the internet
The house is dissolved like a sixteenth-century monastery
Where you laid down your head is thin air
Where the dog ran in a figure eight is air
On the street is wilderness and newness
The movers know us better than we know ourselves
The theme has ceased to reign over its unruly offspring
Look through your sunset hair at the remains
I’m with you on the internet
The air is bright from the invisible ocean
The sea is behind a wall of corporations
What you can’t see you must imagine
What you can see you cannot imagine
People look into the next moment like a pool
You are a citizen of the Pacific but it’s complicated
During childbirth I sang om to relieve pain
A song is a pathway to the sea
A song is an internet between people
I’m with you on the internet
Nothing can shock you anymore nothing
There’s a numbness in the hands and feet
An enormous message to very few people
Meaningless words for the whole of humanity
This is probably the crescendo of the world
The thing you don’t want to do is wonderful
The thing you don’t want to do is so bright
The thing you don’t want to do is what you have been waiting for
I’m with you on the internet
I will meet you at the house in the days of recollection
I will meet you where you laid your head as a baby
I will meet you where we have imagined we will meet
‘Thirty-Three Transformations on a Theme of Philip’ appears in Moth Hour by Anne Kennedy (Auckland University Press, 2019), shortlisted for the Mary and Peter Biggs Award for Poetry at the 2020 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards. Winners are announced Tuesday, May 12.
The Friday Poem is edited by Ashleigh Young. Submissions for The Friday Poem are currently closed and will reopen in May 2020.