Goddess Muscle E-Book

Karlo Mila

• Herausgeber: Huia Publishers
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 145

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Beschreibung

This long-awaited poetry collection from award-winning Pasifika poet Karlo Mila spans work written over a decade. The poems are both personal and political. They trace the effect of defining issues such as racism, poverty, violence, climate change and power on Pasifika peoples, Aotearoa and beyond. They also focus on the internal and micro issues – the ending of a marriage, the hope of new relationships, and the daily politics of being a partner, woman and mother. The collection meditates on love and relationships and explores identity, culture, community and belonging with a voice that does not shy away from the difficult.

Leseprobe

First published in 2020 by Huia Publishers

39 Pipitea Street, PO Box 12-280

Wellington, Aotearoa New Zealand

www.huia.co.nz

ISBN 978-1-77550-400-9 (print)

ISBN 978-1-77550-404-7 (ebook)

Text copyright © Karlo Mila 2020

Illustrations and graphics copyright:

Illustration cover photo © Karlo Mila

Cover illustrated elements © Isobel Joy Te Aho-White

Carving image on dedication page © Papa Sean Bennett-Ogden

Page 10 © Naomi Maraea

Pages 50 & 68 © Delicia Sampero

Pages 70–71, 74 & 78 © Meleanna Meyer

This book is copyright. Apart from fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced by any process without the prior permission of the publisher.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the National Library of New Zealand

Ebook conversion 2020 by meBooks

For Papa Sean

who gave me the language to describe another world

Contents

Your People Will Gather around You: Love after Love

E Ngā Mate, Haere, Haere, Haere

Malaga: The Journey

Oceania

For Teresia Teaiwa

Bottled Ocean

A Conversation with Hone Tuwhare

Letter to J C Sturm

This Is How We Make a World

Tagaloa: The Order of Things

In the Beginning

Papatūānuku

Te Awa: Love Song for Manawatū

Matau Mana Moana

Mana

Ngatu

The Good Wife’s Prayer

Lonely

Readjusting Great Expectations

A Woman Scorned

The Unfaithful Heart of Her Quiet

Bruise

Terms of a Treaty

Enter Hot Man at an International Conference

Itinerary of Infidelity

summer, bed, awake, alone,

Let Me Tell You What I Remember

Whiro

Love Isn’t

The Good Wife’s Prayer

Hawai‘i Found

What the Students Said: O‘ahu 313

Tūtū Pele Intervenes

Our Generation: ‘Āina Aloha

Intergenerational Healing: Lessons from Hawai‘i

Anchoring the Cry from Within

Kūkaniloko

Demigods in Archetype City

Shark

Hina: Advice Column across the Ages

The Tale of Hina and Sinilau

Hina and Her Pool

Rupe/Lupe

What Trees Will Say

One Last Lifetime

Dry-docked

Wedding River Song

Is That a Sex Poem?

Go-betweens

Bloodshed

Carved on a Pou

You’ve written a lot of poems, he said

Odyssey in Black Sand

How to Break a Curse

Telling the Other Side of the Story

After Reading Ancestry

Son, for the Return Home

We Find Ourselves Statistics

Finding Our Way

Our Fears

Moemoeā

A Tongan Reflection on Tino Rangatiratanga

Tūhoe Boys

For Tamir, with Love from Aotearoa

Now THIS is Reverse Racism

For All My Sisters

Lost and Found

The Sounds of Princess Ashika

Spirited Leadership

Lost and Found

Poem for the Commonwealth, 2018

Kapihe’s Prophesy

Matariki: A Call to Kāinga

The Art of Walking in Dark Light

Te Korekore

Te Pō: The Dark Ages

Te Ao Mārama: The World of Light

Unbecoming

The Art of Walking in Dark Light

Goddess Muscle Meditation

Acknowledgements

Your People Will Gather Around You: Love after love

Your people

will gather around you.

Your family

who prepared

a place for you,

in a lineage

that connects you

all the way back

to the beginning.

A family

that dreamed you

possible.

It is their

soft singing,

cellular love songs,

the chanting lyric of bloodlines,

accompanying you

all the way

through the lonely.

The benefactors of your bones,

blood, and body.

Each is a love letter

folded in your DNA sequence.

With double-helix tongues

they whisper you

into your dreams.

Why you are here.

What you are meant to do.

Hoping you have ears

in your waking life

and eyes to see.

They call you to transform

the weft and warp

of what has been

woven before you.

To bring it back

into balance.

It is their magnetic pull

of molecule

that gathers all that is lost

and redirects your return

to centre.

Reorients you

to radiant nucleus.

Re-sourced.

So you can widen your circles

of compassion; travel beyond

your own limits, beyond almost

what you can bear.

Accompanied all the way.

Yes, this is the large, large,

ever-expanding loving

of everything

that has been the making of us.

Knowing itself

through you

and evolving.

Yes, your people

will hold fast within you.

In the marrow of your bones,

waiting to be known.

Travelling with you

along the soft breathing

curves of an infinite circle

that has no circumference,

and whose centre

is everywhere.

Ever so slowly,

all your people will gather around you,

the ones you realise, when you look in their eyes,

that you’ve known for a life cycle, or two,

who not only help you on your journey

to find home,

but who make it home,

this strange lonely journey,

who make it home as you travel it.

And then time will come

with great knowing,

when you will remember yourself

back to yourself.

Returning

to a memory

of wholeness.

E NGĀMATE,

HAERE,HAERE,HAERE

Malaga: The journey

(FOR ALICE SUISANA HUNT)

It is a spindrift

that rises from the body.

Our final exhale

beyond the breath,

where we give ourselves up

in completion

to life.

Where everything that you are

leaves behind

everything that you were.

Departing

that faithful friend

of the body.

Its soft limbs.

Its forgiving flesh.

Muscles, skin, sinews –

all that held you together –

so gently,

for so long.

A song

of water, blood,

breath and bone.

We acknowledge all

that you have left behind.

All that you have given.

And what a life you have seen,

and what a life you have been

and how we have loved you.

We stay here,

with that precious vessel

that carried you

through this life,

but cannot carry you

into the next.

And may we who loved you,

holding the song, blood and bone vessel of your being,

may we carry the meaning

of your life forward

into the world of light,

so that it will reach

those who come after.

He waka herehere ngā waka.

The vessel that binds us

to the great moving fleet.

We know that it’s your time to depart,

to embark on an ancient route of return,

along the terrestrial contours of this land

that has birthed and fed you,

this land on which we stand,

towards a celestial flight path

beyond the wingspan of birds,

into the stars,

towards the warmer weather of our dreams,

towards islands we have held gently in our memories,

where we once belonged.

At Te Rerenga Wairua,

where two oceans meet,

a pōhutukawa tree still holds,

waiting for you

with a fragrant, green-leaved,

red-crowned,

farewell.

The whole earth heaves

a sigh of release.

And from here,

wreathed in red and green,

you will bid us farewell

and begin to travel the ocean roads.

The sea path traced by star walkers,

past Tongatapu, to ‘Uvea and Futuna,

where with the splitting of rocks, it all began.

You will enter the deep, blue channels

of ocean and night

and move between worlds

of underwater darkness and celestial light.

You will take flight.

Until you reach Savai‘i

and follow the black lava fields

towards the last rites.

Here, you will be cleansed

in the waters of Falealupo.

The final farewell at the seashore.

It is here we face that truth,

that you are westward-bound.

Ia Manuia Lou Malaga.

Blessed be your journey.

Follow the shining trail

of the setting sun

towards the great mystery

beyond all of our knowing.

We must trust then,

in all we cannot understand,

and like the land,

heave a heavy sigh of release.

O le mavaega nai le tai e fetaia‘i i i‘u o gafa.

The farewell at the seashore,

with the promise

to meet again in the children.

Oceania

(FOR EPELI HAU‘OFA)

Some days

I’ve been

on dry land

for too long

my ache

for ocean

so great

my eyes weep

waves

my mouth

mudflats

popping with

groping breath

of crabs

my throat

an estuary

salt crystallising

on the tip of my tongue

my veins

become

rivers that flow

straight out to sea

I call on the memory of water

and

I

am

starfish

in sea

buoyed by

lung balloons

and floating fat

I know the ocean

she loves me

her continuous blue body

holding even

my weight

flat on my back

I feel her

outstretched palms

legs wide open

a star in worship

a meditation as old as the tide

my arms, anemones

belly and breasts, sea jellies

Achilles fins, I become

free-swimming medusa

my hands touching

her blue curves

fingers tipping

spindrift

a star in worship

a wafer in her mouth

a five-pointed offering

she swirls

counter-clockwise

beneath me,

all goddess

all muscle, energy

power, pulse

oh, the simple faith

of the floating

letting go

in order to be held

by the body water of the world

some days

this love

is all I need

For Teresia TeaIwa

I am going to light a candle for you

e hoa, although at our age

candles should be for lovers

and shy bodies ushering in

trust,

or for mindfulness

at the end of a long

short-wick

of a working day.

Not for this.

He tangi oiaue.

I will light this candle.

The spendy kind,

cradled in glass,

that burns for days

smelling of coconut and vanilla

and I will say prayers for you

even though my prayers

are like bad poems

and are often wordless.

I hope,

at the least,

you will feel the

long-burning

flame of my intent,

warming the space

between us.

You are the first of us

‘young ones’ –

the OG feminist:

Dr Dusky Maiden,

who famously

cried salt-tears

and sweat ocean,

creating a wake

wide enough

for so many of us

who followed.

In the deep multicolour

of your wide, wonderful wake

I am thinking of a word: Huliau,

described to me once

by a Tongan artist,

but no Google search

reveals its meaning.

And as you well know,

the stuff really worth knowing

isn’t found on Google.

Although I see in Hawaiian,

huliau means climate

and sister –

climate changer

feels right to me.

We felt you

change

the climate Tere.

Daughter of Oceania,

ambiguously native,

kin somehow

to all of us.

(Even us polys,

while calling us out,

our volume,

and our

repetitive

raw fish.)

You are,

Maraea nailed it,

‘kaupapa as’ –

unafraid,

yet overburdened

with community service,

with marking

and mentoring

and doing all of this

and all of that,

with so much

determination

and good grace

it escalates

around you.

Contagious.

Although I for one

wish you had more time

to write poetry

and just sit, very quietly,

wherever you liked.

You are the reason

I sat with coconut cream

in my wild hair

on a wilder beach

in west Auckland,

with other curly girls

in a salt pool

in dark black sand.

You told me via story

that a tatau should never

point to your sex, giggling,

pointing to your paradox.

We were standing, at the time,

next to a replica moai,

but still, it was on a beach –

nobody can laugh at

that southern-most water

too cold to swim in.

And in Wellington,

in a sea of Palangis,

in the windy, wide-eyed dry,

I was thirsty for your stories

of tatau and French Polynesian authors

and an Oceania

more expansive than mine.

Shy admission: more than once

I caught my breath

with how much

there was to admire.

Diplomat: representing us overseas with your not-missing-a-beat articulate.

Truth teller: revealing and peeling off your skin

in front of students unaccustomed

to real,

in school assemblies

when in uniform.

Activist: in front of everyone

that little bit braver

than the rest of us.

You are

a voice,

a song,

a poem,

an essay,

a direct quote,

a protest sign,

a presence.

Beloved.

You are

my prayer.

Botled ocean

(FOR JIM VIVIEAERE)

i)

We shared a beer once.

A quiet conversation

that quickly moved

to what lurks beneath.

You showed me your work:

dark purples, subterranean colours,

images like bite marks into

the deep flesh of memory.

You-made-it-so-beautiful

Bat-winged boy remembering

i-felt-it-so-painful

but

you-held-it-so-lightly

such gentle eyes

the way

one

might bottle

a moving ocean

changing

forever

what is seen

behind the glass.

ii)

Yes,

that exhibition

made it all the way to my hometown,

Palmerston North,

right on time.

Flooding the old, tired,

savage story of us.

Blotting and plotting

lucid watermarks,

washing up another vision entirely.

You were always at the forefront

of the wave.

Even in the unkind infrastructure of cities –

betrayals of bureaucracies, blood, flesh, and bone –

where soft, brown-eyed boys

are broken

and split open,

betrayed –

in windowless rooms

where tenderness

is turned

in

on

itself,

and will never

return.

boys2men

You found

the whakapapa trail

back to the

open-harboured arms

of unconditional ocean,

ever-present,

where all lost boys

can be both lost

and loved,

with warm waves

promising distant shores

beyond the blue,

where we might be received

by holy women,

fragrant with flowers,

welcoming us home.

All of this dream,

you bottled it.

With a fine eye for

beautiful blemish,

the alchemy

of soft anxieties,

the luminosity

of dark depressions.

Juxtapositions of

plastic and pearl

ancient and fresh

real and surreal

loss and light

gift and grief.

Finely shaped,

carefully thought,

gently wrought.

Installations of

Urbanesia:

incisions,

bite-marks,

we slash and cut,

stitch and sew,

bind and lash.

On urban drift

wood, we pull

out our blades

and carve

new pou,

muttering karakia

for these times,

black inking

our steps.

We mark

our stories

in flesh.

We dare

to be here.

Carve

our own

freshwater faces.

We take our places,

among the ancestral real.

We sit among

the all-seeing eyes.

E pou,

You are an ancestor at the apex

of this new meeting house,

where our artists gather

to determine our fate.

A Conversation with Hone Tuwhare

Hone,

I can afford to buy-you-by-the-book

these days

instead of take you out.

Small holes in

my pockets.

Middleclassy.

It can put an honest man off.

You boilermaker,

fabricating lyrical weld

from blast furnace

of sun,

slowed,

stopped and

set

on white horizon

of page.

Flames on your fingers, Māui,

wrestling words and worlds.

Nothing ordinary about it.

Like that alchemical asshole

crawling into places he shouldn’t go:

repipe, retube, repair.

Hine-nui-te-pō

has had her way with you –

but still

you speak

on page –

a fantail laughing.

Trickster.

You and I both know,

the ones who break the rules

get the chicks.

You and I both know

how after a while

we stop dedicating poems to our

loves, crushes or would-be-loves.

There are too many

who could drape those

fancy, flimsy stanzas

against their ribs;

stretch them to fit.

OSFA.

I think of your lips

slurping the genitalia

of kaimoana.

Endless odes to small holes.

When my memory

of the sound of you

is translated,

it tastes like

fish.

letter to j c sturm

Dear Jacquie,

I have repeatedly tried to write the poem

‘Dear Jim’. And failed.

May I call you Te Kare?

I looked it up on the online dictionary:

1. Kare (noun) dear friend.2. Kare (verb) to long for, desire ardently, to whip.3. Kare (noun) ripple, surface of the sea.

Te Kare, will you be my friend?

Can I tell you my story?

I can’t write anything for him.

My mother and I,

we went to Hiruharama, Jerusalem

after Hine-nui-te-pō

visited us.

Fantails were flapping indoors

alarm birds winging,

alarm birds ringing.

Our matriarch lay dead.

My grandmother

moved between worlds.

I am still in the soft, dark feathers

of Hine-nui-te-pō.

I am not ready to come back.

Wreathed with grief,

fragile with fresh mourning,

I read Baxter’s letters,

tasked with writing back.

So many pages. All his words.

His too-many words,

so many written for other women.

He grew smaller

and smaller with every page.

His over-published words,

until I had nothing left to say to him.

But moving under all that surface skimming

was you. Rippling beneath

every page, Te Kare,

His longing, the whiplash,

the reliable tide.

All depth to his shallows.

I sought out his biggest idea.

Heaving in your direction.

My mother and I took

the winding roads

to Whanganui

in search of Jerusalem,

to see if his vision

had borne fruit.

The world is full of men with visions.

We stopped at the museum,

met the hei tiki

of Tahupōtiki Wiremu Rātana

around the neck

of a green-eyed woman.

Nosy, she said, his taonga was nosy,

as I told her our business.

And Jacquie, to be honest,

I was carrying my own ache.

Not just the death of my matriarch,

but an old-fashioned

broken heart.

He is the river.

And the river is him.

I am waewae tapu here.

To show our respect,

we pulled over and parked.

I took off my jandals,

did a small mihi

to a great awa.

I watched the alchemy of sunlight

transform liquid mud

into slow-moving molten.

Gold is the only colour

you could call it. Te Kare.

It’s a cliché, and neither you

nor I are fans of those,

but I have the photos to prove it.

Te Awa Tupua,

ancient highway

of the human and not-quite human,

all sorts of things travelling

in a full-veined,

gold-blooded

river-road.

Motorway

of a waka-nation.

On the winding land road,

we passed through London –

Rānana, Athens – Ātene,

Corinth – Koriniti,

unexpected reincarnations

of faraway places.

Settled uncomfortably

on the hips of the old awa,

like new ideas that haven’t really

been thought through.

We finally found Jerusalem.

His big idea.

The one he swore might reunite you.

He hoped

the church would one day

have a carved

whare-whakairo face.

But I am sad to report Jacquie,

although it may not surprise you,

the kōwhaiwhai patterns

were made out of cardboard.