You must never lose sight of what is important
revenge can be sought
love lost.

A thud of large, grey footsteps
A huff of dry earth

His shadow casts a warm darkness

His memory is the world’s tallest library

Around him
the trees sway in unison
branches hold the future

His ears are sweet butterflies in the wind
He sounds his constant trumpet

Sunshine rains down

Only to live

As the great Elephant

 

by Olivia Whyte
Yr 12, St Andrew’s College

I know the endorphins which

make me feel attachment

are also employed when I

defecate and exert

I know that though I label

this pairing one in a

million, maths negates,

renders this obsolete

I know that what I’m doing

is done by all humans

and the rush I am feeling

is best described as fake

I forget about all this

with two tongues in my mouth

Sam Spekreijse
Yr 12, Wellington College

You are a door locked,

key swallowed.

You are a room.

Outside people look

through frosted glass

at outlines that seem

to shift and settle

like overgrown moths.

Inside you are

cluttered ideas piled

high, accumulated

knowledge filed

haphazardly on shelves;

you are movements

disturbing dust.

You are the deliberate

spaces between things, gaps

like wide open mouths waiting

for more.

The empty light socket;

the carpet across which shadows pool

but never meet.

You are nothing but echoed footprints

and settling silence;

a window that stays

closed against sound and sun;

the dust that is never let out.

Beth Rust
Yr 13, Karamu High School 

‘Queen’s Horse’, Joanna Braithwaite, 2011 (reproduced by permission of the artist)

Regal head wrapped tight like Tegel Chicken,

Braithwaite uses a paint that makes her easel glisten.

With the same air, manner or mien

of her royal majesty the queen,

cock eyed stare suggesting her small gene

pool, something they have in common,

not common as in those folks that shop at cotton on.

Inbreeding; something that might be followed by some kind of legal proceeding,

then maybe an alternative pleading, disbelieving and a debriefing this evening –

quite some insult if that’s where this painting’s leading.

Comportment; more prominent than the obvious lack of an assortment

of certain royal adornments and ornaments.

Arie Bates-Hermans
Yr 13, Wellington High School

you’ll remember
that one summer
it was me and you
and tamati
and sometimes fabian
(who calls their kid fabian anyway)
but their mum was a bit
weird, eh,
made us that quiche with
sultanas
gave me the big
bit cause i was the
only girl
i didn’t mind

couple of things
from that summer
stand out:
when we egged alicia
suarez’s house
she pushed fabe in the
fountain
the bitch;
and when we jumped
into the
river
out the back of your house
it was
freezing
i didn’t want to
didn’t bring togs
you pushed me in
i was sure
(and i’ll only say this now)
that you had a
crush
on me
would explain some things

thing is
that summer
(or was it autumn?
greymouth, man
not orlando—
rained every second day)
i’m starting to forget
there was something
that happened
there was you
there was me
i forget
i know you’ll remember

 

Catherine Marshall
Yr 12, Rangi Ruru College

If I ever write a poem

I will not let the main point parade around

dressed to the nines in simile and metaphor

bejewelled in allegory and rhyme.

I will let it wander around in the nude

drawing stares from puritans

shocked by anatomy they forget they possess

under their own buttoned clothes.

In fact, if I can have it my way,

there will not even be a main point.

I will merely write a list of facts

that will not dissipate like the noble

and nonexistent abstract concepts

that disintegrate the moment

you hit a brick wall.

When food is scarce lady bugs will resort to cannibalism and eat the elderly.

The common garden worm has five pairs of hearts.

Scorpions have venomous stingers but some have twelve eyes,

I’ll write. And I will put down the pen

knowing that I have not romanticised nor ostracised the truth

staring it down in some humanised contest

where one of us will inevitably be broken

and remade as something less than whole.

 

Maria Ji
Yr 13, St Cuthbert’s College

I wanted to marry the beekeeper.
I wanted to soothe his stings,
tell him that each one is a death,
a coffin filled by one of his adopted children
(thousands and thousands of them, sleeping in rows).
Another of his Queen’s soldiers lost in a misunderstood battle…

Let him teach me how to listen to their murmured symphony.
My beekeeper, the conductor
(behind the smoke screen).
Kick the ashes into the air with your soft soled shoes sweet man,
put them all to sleep.
Their sweet snoring, sounds like they’re humming our song…

Honey sandwiches for our picnic my dear?
You never cease to surprise me.
Sticky swallowings with that ‘school lunch flare’.
I lick my lips.
It’s time to open my parcel
(honey smeared on brown paper).
Stop biting your tongue,
we both know what these yellow booties mean to us.
We’ll make them soft shoes, we don’t want anyone to get hurt…

The babies will come in pairs you know.
You’ll kiss their foreheads as they sit in their pram,
I’ll take our little family out walking while you stay home to wash the windows
(too many little lives snuffed out, trying to reach you).
I know this makes you cry,
but only a little and you don’t wipe your tears away, they say this makes you more of a man…

The women whisper about us you know, my sweet bee man.
They say “That’s the beekeeper’s woman and his two bastard sons.”
But don’t worry my man,
my sweet, sweet man.
I know it’s all lies.

For our confession of love had one million witnesses.
Each guest gently humming me down the aisle…

Ruby Solly
Yr 12, Tauhara College

His hedge is a different shape
each time; I think he lives here
but I don’t really know;

the seal does. He smirks and shows off
to the mermaid
who sits on her tail and watches.

Once I sat on his lap and watched him
take out his teeth;
his top lip swallowed his bottom

and all the tattoos up his arm
of boobs
and The Sailor Man.

His legs were red kumara
just waiting to be picked,
waiting to fall off.

Most of the other people here
are nurses
on their day off.

We’re all doing fine;
Helen’s annoying us
just like usual.

Some lady got up and
said a tribute to you
about somebody else.

Jade Trim
Yr 13, Taradale High School

Annie Stevenson
Yr 12, St Andrew’s College

for our mother

you are still the androgynous three-year-old

dangling on the arms of a

faded Diana caricature

but in one month two weeks five days

she’ll ship you off to Pennsylvania

I’ve seen the nights crossed off in her diary

(though she only reveals this

burden after I have fetched the wine)

I won’t feign my liberation

from your one-sided vendettas on Marxism

or was it Wall Street

because of this need of yours

to play devil’s advocate

your genesis into the real world

is bittersweet

tell your roommate, your

professors, that man

standing behind you in the checkout queue

of our morning car rides as you

scribble last minute philosophies

and yell at me to turn the Oldies off

recall our mother’s

tear-stained pillowcase

can you trace us from this place,

trace me?

when our time zones intervene

put on Etta James and

write me cheap postcards

on Saturday evenings

Haro Lee
Yr 12, St Cuthbert’s College