Poem 520

I’ve got a particular classically noble-browed and imposing Wellington mental health consumer in mind here but have transposed the scene to Auckland as they had a facility right in the city …

Escaped Deity

God is a man
at his best at fifty
hair galloped to grey
because it suits him
whose eyes are blue lances
of power whose nose hooks
and plunges at the world
like a stallion

alone on a corner
the frame of the day bends inwards
under his weight
                                    I go by in a bus
the driver fights the wheel
to stay away from him
traffic rubbing and squealing
like a blackboard under a fingernail
all the ice cream signs are tearing
off the shops lawns
rippling in six inch waves
birds hauled into
a black funnel

above the rising storm
his hair snapping in the magnetic wind
no one listens to
the siren at Carrington
still ringing