Black

I'm off for a week, so thought I should post this, inspired to do so by Kmeista.

Stays Black

Kiwi

The sun competes for my soul; the moon betrays my longing.

I stand here in the dark, waiting for my footsteps to begin.

If I lack courage and luck, I will hesitate, and surely miss the call to wander out, surely lose the chance to learn, surely ignore the edict to grow.

But when, as I step out into time and space, time and space envelop me, I can discover all I need to know, all I need to become.

I need to fulfil my destiny.

I know that waiting won’t make me brighter, but dying won’t make me wiser. I know what I know; what I don’t know, I can’t help, but at least I know what I know.

Energy matters, and action spikes my belief. Deep inside, I want that my life will embrace the meaning of an instant. This desire concentrates my ambition. Yet I’m motionless. But don’t confuse my stillness for hesitation. I wouldn’t do this without a reason.

Kiwi Logic

Simple, I stand still for a reason,

I move for a reason, and

I live, and

I breathe, and

I cry

for a reason.

I smell a rat!

I smell a rat before I hear a rat.

I hear a rat before I see a rat.

I tell myself I see a rat, because I smell a rat.

This rat must surely smell me too

Rat v Ratite

The rat reeks of hunger and predation: an odour heralds the advent of a warm-blooded killer, a smell promises violence, a stench proclaims, “Murderer on the loose!”

I don’t acknowledge him.

He doesn’t belong here.

He claims a moral right to be in my world. He will do what he must do to satisfy his need.

But I know what I know.

I see the Hawk’s eyes scanning the ground.

I wait with her.

But the rat doesn’t know waiting. His concern is what he can smell, see, hear, touch, and taste. For him, there are no other senses. He makes meaning of life this way, fresh blood and easy prey. So he moves as quickly as his short legs allow him to move. He races toward me, teeth bared.

I crouch in the darkness, knowing he will soon see me, knowing what he doesn’t know.

He jumps from a distance. He sees me now, lunging toward me. His breath reeks of stale death, his eyes wide, white, and wild. With my heart pulsing red shards of lightning in my arteries, and my eyes burning space into the darkness, all I can do is crouch lower still. Stillness becomes me.

I see his feet in the air, and there they stop, and they drop down for a moment, then they take off from the ground,

and they rise higher and higher.

I hear his cry of shock, disappointment, surprise, understanding; disbelief fading into terror.

Peering out from my hiding place, looking up, I thank Tane Mahuta for the Hawk as she disappears into the tall trees with her new best friend, predator and predator, epicure and entrée.

Now, I must move on. My love waits for me.

On and On

My love waits for me with beauty beyond my expectation.

How could I not fall in love every time we meet?

I need to love, to be loved, to forever be falling in love. We keep our romance aflame without social contracts, or constructions. Simple together, we want only that we carry on into eternity. And, to that end, we copy ourselves onto the fabric of this dimension.

Some parents dread the future and regret the past. We can’t do that; we don’t possess that luxury. Instead, we live inside the instinct of the present. We remain grateful for our offspring, for anyone’s offspring. For what is the future without children? It becomes a pointless discussion, a round of gossip between our hopes, our dreams, and our solid reality.

As we journey along sincerity’s path, humility and gratitude satisfy more than our desire for love, more than our need for companions, more than our instinct for compassion.

Generations of kiwi enter the universe of eternal possibilities. We recognise the responsibility of immortal ambitions. We place our hopes in the hands of what is now forever, and forever now.

Kiwi Creed

Black, black, black

All black is gold.

Black means safety,

Black means victory,

The night pumps black blood through my soul.

But inevitably, the night bleeds into daybreak.

*****************

On and on, the sun competes for my soul. But this lonely sun competes with the universe of time, the universe of space, the universe of no code. Ultimately, the sun must concede defeat to the owner of a higher dimension, the owner of no contests, the owner of no surrender, the owner of no side, the owner of the black.

Always, although the light pierces the black, the black stays intact, stays black.

“Stays Black” Explanation:

This writing came about after reading the beginning of each of the four novels in the paper. By the time I’d finished it, I’d read all the poetry readings, and finished Within the Kiss, Dirty Work, and gotten most of the way through Relative Strangers.

I couldn’t escape a feeling of “blackness” in the pieces. I don’t mean bleakness. I mean blackness. Blackness for me is an appreciation of the black side of the universe and it can involve humour, wit, sadness, happiness, stupidity, hope, despair, anything the author wants. What separates it from other writing is something that may be peculiar to kiwi writing. It’s a knowledge that there’s always something you can’t see, always darkness.

You can shine a light, and that’s a good thing, but what I enjoy about the NZ writers I’ve read so far is their ability to keep some things in the dark.

I haven’t tried to do that in my piece. Instead, I opted to tell the story from a bird’s perspective. This bird can’t fly, can’t escape predators, and can’t enjoy the light. I feel a kinship with the bird.

I’d like to explore the idea of darkness more, moving it out of a kiwi context into a universal area.