MY ELEGANT HOON
My elegant hoon, my flint by sunrise
Striking tar with her tortured car
You are
The girl whose exhaust drips
The girl whose fan-belt whips
Angelic red strands stick
To bubble gum lips
Meniscus
My elegant hoon, my wildfire flower
Blitzing life with her scorching desire
You are
The girl who picks her nose
The girl who flicks her woes
From dust beaten windows
My fiery rose
Manifestos
HELL’S GATE
Hurutini had a steaming heart,
roiling emotions, toiling soul so
plunged herself in to Devil’s Bath
at Hell’s Gate in Rotorua;
Maori blood now boiling mud,
a geothermal tour, plays Shaw’s lore,
tourists gawk, later snore ‘cos
Chief’s wife took her own life.
Watch me lean on Hell’s Gate: if I too
plunged My Body in Devil’s Bath
to remove the shame stained on
my family’s name from fathers
before me; would that make me
a hero or a mad martyr, and
would that make villains out of
all of you? She’s creaking.
Gates open, point the finger,
wicked witch and war – lock the gate
separate, divide and conquer
Dig your nails in to a burning stake.
Come on down to Hell’s Gate and take
a bath, a mud spa, smell the sulphur,
soak your skin, forget your kin, it’s
good for cleansing, they tell the
tourists, wash away sins, but don’t
forget Hurutini, pamphlet tells me,
the woman who sacrificed herself so
you could have the right to take a bath.
Here, let my honesty save you
some time: the idea of Hurutini’s
bruised, brown limbs, dissolving
in sulphuric mud lava is imagery less
uncomfortable than thoughts of the
reasons why she felt compelled to purge
her body in to Devil’s Bath. Don’t
let the gate hit you on the way out.
Note: Legend has it that Hurutini, a Māori princess, threw herself in a boiling mud pool at Rotorua to escape her abusive husband Chief. When Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw visited the site in 1934, he commented, ‘This could be the very gates of Hell!’ inspiring local Māori to give it the English name, ‘Hell’s Gate’.