A Garden City Requiem

Ma, I got buried
beneath the bricks
in a foreign city
no more to hear the dialect
of my homeland

.. Please leave me a message

The smoke is overwhelming me
I hear no others where before
our lively chatter
filled this space
with hopes and dreams

.. Please leave me a message

Ma, I am dying
no more to see the sun and feel
the warm Nor'Wester
sweep across the dust yellow summer fields
of Canterbury

.. Please leave me a message

.. Leave me a message

Please

Related news articles

• SMS vital during dark hours of Christchurch earthquake (textually.org)
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River Dancing

On a summer night you can hear the snap
of a jack
ripples in the silver twilight
pursed lips towards the moon of mayflies dawning

in the still heat of evening making love
on the fatal attraction of
discarded waders
in a life so short and a dusk so long

and as blackness envelops
the memories cling like arms
passion sated
the whip of line laid low on water

stalking, still
the stream of consciousness unabated

A Whale Of A Tale

It's strange but true
that whale poo
according to the pundits
can clear the world of CO2
so lets have it
in abundance


Roger Smith  June 2010

Source: Sperm whale faeces 'helps oceans absorb CO2'

Queenstown

In the boiled bone
miasma of the morning
the ochre brown of a cockroach
its dead legs spread towards the sky
and the soil
a root claw holding back results of rain

The two glazed elephants
are standing guard
next to the purple of a bougainvillea
while nearby a man with sinewed legs
searches for life
in the dry canal

Roger Smith.  May 27, 2010

My Soul Is In Fort Canning

my soul is in Fort Canning
long before the march of progress
incendiary sounds and shouted orders

there are some places you never leave
still others where memories live
amongst the quiet and verdant green

you can feel me in the dank surrounds of battlements
the stillness before the tropical rains
a rhythm of droplets on spreading fronds

in truth I have never left you
the forbidden hill of legend
where empires lost were never reclaimed
and royalty wept at your feet

my soul is in Fort Canning
a quiet meditation still
of universal peace.


Roger Smith. 2011