Song of the Sword by Christine Anne Borra

(Soldier)
Into battle
I take you
By my side
Do not forsake me
Cold Steel
Made to kill
May my foe
Be worthy

(Chorus)
For today is a
Good day to die

(sword)
I will not
Forsake thee
I will not
Betray thee
I will not
Falter as
You drive me
To the hilt

(Chorus)
For today is a
Good day to die

(Solider)
You weigh heavy
In my hand
Tempered to
Withstand
The breast bone
Of a man
My enemy
We face as one

(Chorus)
For Today is a
Good day to die


(Sword)
May your arm
Be strong
May you drive
Me in
May his warm heart
Feel my COLD STEEL
Bury me deep
Within

(chorus)
For today is a
Good day to die

(soldier)
Should I fall
I will not rise
Defeat is not
For the brave
If we fall
We fall
Together both
COLD STEEL

(Chorus)
For today is a
Good day to die

aubade by Laurice Gilbert

Were there roosters in the yard

crowing their dawn clichés

I could not pretend to

keep you here a moment more;

but the ducks, well,

the ducks quack and the drakes

mumble and they rearrange

their feathers and nests

throughout the night,

pairing and separating at will.

It is 3am, or 4.30

or midnight; dark at least

and not yet time for you to leave.

It is summer – the nights are short

and surely we have time to spare.

Somewhere in the world

an alarm clock does its duty,

but not here, not now.

Listen! The ducks have ceased

their fussing and settled

back into restful sleep.

Later they will assemble

at the gate, begging for breakfast,

their night over – there will be

business to conduct:

splashing and preening,

dabbling and laying;

but not yet, not now.

Published by Muse-Pie Press, 2012

http://www.musepiepress.com/laurice_gilbert_feature.html

Life is a Grocery Store by Laurice Gilbert

My father was a general manager,

stock-controller, check-out man –

a holistic server of people’s needs.

My mother cut cheese, bagged flour,

and weighed onions –

maintenance tasks out the back.

Sometimes Mum filled in at the counter,

protecting the till while Dad

made weekly deliveries.

                                    The Grocer had a car.

In Newtown everyone knew

everyone else – and their business:

“The Grocers have another daughter”

            (The Queen has had another son).

Feelings were kept on the top shelf

where children couldn’t reach them.

Published in the whole wide world ed. Vivienne Jepson (The NZ Poetry Society, Wgtn, 2000.)

Are We There Yet? by Laurice Gilbert

when we get there

there will be bright lights, loud sounds,

a midwife, murmurs and smiles

when we get there

there will be balloons, loot bags,

ice-cream, pizza and games

when we get there

there will be grades, exams,

music, drama and life-long friends

when we get there

there will be speeches, jokes,

feasting, toasting and fruit cake

when we get there

there will be showers, gifts,

long nights, nappies and tantrums

when we get there

there will be car pools, concerts,

sports days, meetings and reports

when we get there

there will be late nights, phone bills

old cars, dating and tears

when we get there

they will be flatting, landing new jobs,

marrying, going on their OE, and fears

when we get there

there will be gardening, bowls,

grandchildren, hospitals and funerals

when we get there                                                                                         

there will be flowers, cards,

eulogies, caskets and asparagus rolls                                            

                                                                                                                    

when we get there   

Published in Bravado 19, July 2010

Exactly fair by Charmaine Thomson

In this fugitive house of boxes

we are unpacking a betrayal

Some appliances, but not enough

to furnish a basement

you missed the car warrant,

too involved in grieving

and legal manoeuvring

with frost on your throat

Let us have a day of non events

just to be equitable,  

It is exactly this,

a payment for decamping.

 

Night Shift By Asa Boxer

The owl skirrs for mouse
and in his gut, he turns her
inside-out. The bat weaves

through the criss-cross trees,

wings upon her sonar pings
to trap the bug and feel him sing.

Owl, wise anatomist, studies

the tissues, then spits the gist:
the shag and bone of what exists.

And bat, dread acrobat, flips

the forest upside-down, and all
the creatures underground,

the shrew, the hedgehog and the mole

fall out like rattled soldiers
from their tunnelled holes.

The Sisters of Murphy by Asa Boxer

When I’d no juice left, already cried uncle,

at rock bottom, looking for comfort;

one loosened upon me her furious craw

of indigestibles, another arrested me with guilt.

One, laser-eyed, hurled an ashtray

full of ashes flicked through a night of waiting-up,

while another re-enacted, in voices and postures,

a play to catch the conscience of the king.

If you’re sedentary, loyal as a dog. If you must

stay where you’re unwanted, a family man…

these Sisters will make a raging sibling of you,

and Brother with Sister, conceive Monsters

of Murphy that bring alive the broomstickand

hobby-horses of your cowboys-’n-indians.

It’ll take the nurse, the nanny and the marm,

those generals of the schoolyard theatre, to disarm

your horse-play. They’ll tell you that, however dressed,

sticks are not horses, hearts are not wood.

They’ll grumble that Murphy tied the blindfold on Love.

Attend to the broomsticks. Attend to each room.

The Sisters of Murphy will be visiting soon.

The Penitent Ring by Charmaine Thomson

Ne

me

quitte

pas, he sings

feeding the breadstick

To the young woman opposite

Wasting time with father time, mesmerized by his hands

The bared throat and sling backs say, I don’t mind, you are still young at heart.

At the next table it’s all about the marina

with vain traces of a lush life.

But it is too late

For this dress

and this

gold

ring.

Equilibrium by Charmaine Thomson

I

can’t

find it

anywhere.

Equilibrium:

completely annihilated

The sinful wreckage of wardrobe survivors burning

Colliding in three dimensions

Beating gravity

Holding back

until

it

stops

Arohata by Charmaine Thomson

They stripped the hills bare

Leaving only the compound

stretching for the sun

The pines held the prisoners

And played them muted

lullabies, chasing the past away

They left the clay banks

Unfinished and untidy

as an added punishment  

Arohata is a women’s prison in Wellington, New Zealand.  Arohata means “the bridge” in Maori and indicates a wish to provide a bridge between past offending and a future in the wider community.

Sinner Sinner by Christine Anne Borra

I am a sinner of great degree
I wish to list my sins for Thee

But where I start, its hard to know
My life You said is like driven snow

So you see dear God do you need to hear
My list of sins said loud and clear

I think you should in all Your might
Know the sins I committed alright?

For what is the purpose that I must bestow
To You my sins you already know?

And how on earth will an earthly prayer
Miraculously make sins disappear

So it seems the act of contrition be
Less about You and more about me

Amen

The Gardener by Christine Anne Borra

roses show and mingle, clipped tight against
the white steel frame of the old wire fence
nurtured from unwanted sticks, like children

across the worn driveway crimson petals spill
announcing the end; their bloom brief and delightful
as their moment ends, another competes for place

the gardener administers brutal love as she cuts
and trains, the vase of life for a while is full
until the last petal falls exposing her work

now vulnerable arms stretch from mature roots
unsure and naked they face the harshness of winter
are they strong enough to endure the elements of life

the coming winter has stripped them bare to the waist
it is useless to cry for their lost youthful beauty
so they grow thorns upon thorns of protection

forgotten for now; they will lie dormant
until the burst of new life brings them back
to the notice of the gardener, to marvel again

her handwork, her legacy, pruned to create perfection

TUESDAY by John Smallshaw

It was Tuesday late in the day when we met

and raining so hard we were both soaking wet.

I talked to her like she was an old friend

And I realised soon I didn’t want this to end.

So I said “fancy a coffee “ even though it was late

She grinned and said “shall we call this a date”

And we talked as we walked and it got really late

So I said “let me walk you home,at least to your gate”

We got to her house and she said “coming for a drink”

“Yes please” I replied I didn’t need to think.

The evening passed to morning we laughed and we joked

And saw the new day dawning.

Then we kissed and my heart missed a beat

Then we kissed again..a double measure..neat.

Her lips tasted of the morning mist and once again we tenderly kissed

And undressed as the Sun’s rays hit the counterpane

and I knew I’d never be the same.

I kissed her eyes,her neck and ears

It nearly brought this grown man to tears.

She whispered “don’t rush just take your time

and you and me will make each other mine.

If I ever thought that I wanted to die I now know for sure

that this was a lie.

She made me want to live

She made me want to give

and after when we felt just so..her cat jumped up and bit my toe

But we laughed and began to touch and I wanted her so much.

Then later over a cup of tea

She said “ does that mean you really like me”

“Yes” I said,”I really love your feet and my heart skipped another beat

I love the way you sway

I love the things you say

Your nakedness is branded on my brain”

My heart was racing like a train.

She smiled and said “ I like you too”

I said “ I want to make love with you”

though I’ve not had too many lovers she took me under her bedcovers

and heavens did she make me moan and yell

By doing…

Well a gentleman just doesn’t tell.

Then the bell went clang

The telephone rang..I opened my eyes and to my surprise

I was alone in my room..it might as well be a tomb.

Just another wet dream though for a while it did seem

So so real..

So so good …
but then I suppose it would.

The Turtle and the Stone by Asa Boxer

The turtle moves as slowly as he does,
because he desires to be counted
among the stone-cold, the rock-solid.

The turtle moves as carefully as he does,
because he wants to live forever
and somewhere in his amphibious brain,

the longevity of coral, the persistence
of mountains and boulders have impressed
him with their stubborn immobility.

The turtle is but a step away from stone,
and he hopes, each day, to slow his pace,
to approach, within a fraction, a dead halt,

and thus come so near death as to learn
the secrets of eternity, and strike the deal
struck by stone.

The Damselfly by Asa Boxer

She is a surveyor of the lakefront, the forest, and the field.
Shifting from angle to angle, the damselfly stops at intervals
to triangulate the picture. She dead-halts in air, threadbare
wings moving so fast, they disappear and leave her dangling,

perfectly still, a hovering stick, a broken rule. She darts
and ducks the deadly possibilities. Her survival depends
upon her ability to distinguish between lizard and rock.
She can’t afford to confuse the quality of patience

with the unshakeable promise of stone. The lizards
attract her with the humility of their devotions, imitating
the hard modesty of pebble and rock. From their head-bones
to their tails, they offer the safe shelter of a jagged ridge.

But theirs is the cold hunger of stone. In her world,
even the rocks hide deadly tongues. This is why
the damselfly darts and flits and buzzes in fits.
She too grows stiff as stone, ever on edge,

anticipating a sudden softening of the hard world,
expecting an agile pounce, awaiting a limber lunge.
She only settles because she must. She’s wired stiff
on a turtle’s back, her thousand eyes alert but unaware

that an eyeball — slow as the world’s turning —
has peeled back its green lid, that a wrinkled head
has decided to inch toward water. The mountains
and the rooted trees are about to topple, the anchored

lake, about to spill its awful weight. She hovers in place
as the turtle-shell leaves her feet with a gulp. She is elated.
She is the measure that flies in the face of nature. Now,
as the damselfly passes, every stone holds its tongue.

The Lobster by Asa Boxer

Sunk behind its dingy window
in a supermarket aquarium,
the lobster turns a muzzy eye
on the great élan of air.

Exposed to every scrutiny; it waits,
claws bound, an antenna snapped.
Not a crawl-space, nor a shadow,
still as stone; invisible, it hopes.

It hopes a lobster’s coral hopes,
cramped upon a shallow shelf.
But its brains cannot conceive the sea
outside the lobster-shell. Desire, thus,

keeps slim to fit the narrow life within.
You will never hear the baffled lobster cry,
“What crime could be so great it moved the sea
to single-out a bloated shrimp like me?”

It’s a muffled clatter, this life that smudges by:
rattling cartloads of death perambulate past;
smutchy children nose and thump the glass;
vague eyes and teeth wink pearl hints

of what’s to come. This wispy world
suffused with light; a lobster’s carnival-
afterlife. Where each impression colours and brews
through nerve, and muscle, and sinew.

Where a thorny heat keeps life fired
to a reddening shriek. And God,
God boils it through.

Grease and Rust by Asa Boxer

Every tool is the anointed king of its work:
even as it waits and fades into the general mess,
even if it sinks to the status of a handle
poking from a box behind the curtain

beneath the counter, a wire coiled
round the grip, its head near drowned
in a pool of screws... A coat of oil
repels corruption while the handle waits.

The vise is seasoned black with grease.
Black grease is cleanest in the shop
where rust is the enemy; clean means
strongholds of metal free of rust.

Everything blessed with oil, like the hair
of heroes and saints, prophets and messiahs.
Grease fills the surface-scratch that’ll never heal,
settles deep into the score against all agents of rust.

Each tool is patient and confident it is meant
for the job it was designed to do best; it will wait
if it is used for only a moment in a rock’s life
or for a thousand years in the tribal life, it will wait.

The workman has observed this waiting,
this slouched hanging from the board,
like the one square hanging in the ready
with a level to get it all straight

the way the other levels laid aside wait
with bubbles of air, like held breaths that can tell
when all is aligned and gravity agrees
that the work is plumb with the heart of the world.

Some say the patience of the workman
is the virtue of his shop, but, truly, the virtue
is motion. Rest is not how things get done.
Rest is how rust creeps into the world.

Life Without Limits by Brian "Porte" Portland

As they say… “Every story has a beginning” mine is no different!!

I guess life changed on October 3rd 1973, when I lost both my legs above the knee in a horrific train accident.
Like most other 21 yr olds, I was “Six foot tall & Bulletproof” well.. I was actually.. 6’1? and fighting fit, loved the outdoors, surfed, cycled, played sport, did all the things one does at that age. I had taken a job working on the railway, shunting trains – dangerous work, but well paid. I had decided to give University a bit of an interlude and go make some “real” money.. I could always continue my studies at a later date, or so I thought. I was to be married on October 20th and life was good!
It all came crashing to the ground at around 4:20pm on that fateful Wednesday afternoon..
I had started work at around 5:30am and was asked if I wanted an extra shift… Not wanting to turn down the dollars, I said yes..so here it was, 4:30 in the afternoon on this hot Spring day and I am laying under a railway wagon, thinking “this is going to be ok”..Well, it wasn’t ok. I did not know the extent of my injuries at that point in time, I figured I had broken my leg and was pissed that I would be in a plaster cast when I walked down that aisle. Little did I know!!
Once I saw the emergency teams arrive, I figured this might be a little more serious. “If I have broken both legs, I am going to be REALLY PISSED”!!
Finally through the heroics of one of the fire crew at the scene, I was pulled from under the wagon. I do remember that hurting somewhat!! and like every young blooded male, all I wanted to make sure of was that I had my “jewels”.
As I was wheeled into the Emergency Department at the hospital, I recall the nursing team cutting away my trowsers, I remembered my mothers words.. “Always make sure you wear clean underwear.. you never know when you’ll be run over by a bus”.. Ok,so a train is not quite a bus, but still I was glad I heeded her warning.! I could hear the bits of scoria being picked out of my mangled legs and dropped in the sterile kidney dish..
Next thing I remember, is one of the nurses letting out a bit of a “OH MY GOD!!” she had gone to lift my foot on to the gurney when it came away in her hand, boot and all. By this time the morphine was more that doing its required job and it was “goodnight nurse”.
I woke some 18 hours later in the Post-Op room with a bunch of doctors & nurses standing over me with somber looks, some with tears.. I remember as clear as I sit here now, writing this.. saying “What’s the problem?” no one was prepared to say a word… “WELL!! what’s the bloody problem?” I think my language may have been a little more colourful, but finally, one of the surgeons spoke.. He just said..”I’m so very,very sorry!” (yeah ok, sorry for what?) at this point the thoughts were racing like a jig saw on a time limit…. “You have been in a horrific train accident and we have had to amputate your legs”…. I just replied..
“Yeah, ok.. I’m alive!!”
At this point one of the social workers in the team muttered something about me being in shock… post trauma shock…and that they should just keep me heavily sedated….
I guess it was at this point that my belief in “ATTITUDE” kicked in… you see, I have always held the belief that Attitude is everything… I did then and I still do now…. “ATTITUDE, ATTITUDE, ATTITUDE”. HELL, I HAD JUST SURVIVED A HORRIFIC ACCIDENT and am here to tell the tale.
I guess there is such a thing as a “second chance” at life and I had been given it.
The next 48 hours were the most painful, a gamer of “cat & mouse” was being played out unbeknown to me.. I knew what had happened, my family had, or were in the process of being told along with my fiance (after all, I was due to be married in 17 days!) so as it went, they didn’t know that I knew that they knew that I knew. I just really wanted to get on and get out of this place.
Unfortunately things took a bit of a turn for the worse. Infection had set in and at some point, I was given about a 10% chance of making it through the night. That was, until a young doctor, an intern, came up with the idea of putting me in the hyperbaric chamber and pumping pure oxygen through my body. It was a LIVING HELL for the next 5 days, but it actually worked!!
This young man pioneered the technique and as they say, “the rest is history!!”.
If I had a dollar for every conference, every lecture he attended talking about this treatment, I would be a wealthy man, but, I guess he saved my life by taking a chance. For this I will be ever grateful and I thank him for his belief!

October 12th 1973

October 12th 1973

Life just got better from that point and by October 12th, I am sitting up in my bed planning the wedding that was to go ahead on October 22nd in the day room of the hospital, despite many many protests from parents, priests and friends, apart from the only one that did not want it cancelled – my fiance.

So, like the script for a movie, the fairytale wedding took place in the day room of the ward (ward 7) not with the hundred plus guests, but a mere handful which included family and one or two friends, along with doctors & nursing staff, oh, and the reporter from the country’s National newspaper! It was a long tiring day, I had not really sat in the wheelchair provided, but managed just fine.
Now, you must remember this is 1973.. People with disabilities were still considered as “social outcasts” Cripples, Handicapped and some what not the full quid!.. So, when it came time to get into the chair to go to the day room, I had a sheet placed over the front of the wheelchair, “Don’t want any one to be alarmed or frightened!” as the Ward Sister put it. I could not have cared less, all I wanted to do was marry my sweetheart.
The nursing staff, orderlies and doctors had made the room as nice as they possibly could..after all, it’s not often you get to have a wedding in your ward. Let alone with someone that should not have “made it”.
To be perfectly honest, I could not tell you too much about what took place as I was still pretty well sedated, but, I do remember the most important bits – saying “I DO” and the words spoken by the Priest..who, not a week before, he had administered the “Last Rites” as I mentioned. I was not supposed to make it through that night.
As they say, “the rest is history” some photos, a TV reporter gathering comment for her story, glass of bubbly, and cake, along with other little treats ended the day, but not before my new bride and I had some private time. When I reflect on this time in my life, I’m reminded of the strong “Faith” she had, the belief in me and that somehow she knew we would get through this… together!

http://workingwireless.com.au/category/life-without-limits/

copyright Brian Portland

Rise up by Christine Anne Borra #song #lyrics

Rise up and be counted
Your day has begun
The past has been written
By the prodigal son

Say no to the demons
that scream in your head
think only of
Victories that lie ahead

Rise up Rise up
A new days begun
Rise up and follow
the sun

Your futures untold
Like the clear driven snow
Step carefully stranger
Your footsteps will show

Rise up Rise up
A new days begun
Rise up and follow
the sun

Though your days are
all numbered
you know not the day
the hours, the minutes
slip slowly away

Ride on with now with purpose
waste not your time
bow down to high
mountains that you
cannot climb

Rise up Rise up
A new days begun
Rise up and be counted
Times on the run

Regrets are excuses
and lost chances my friend
they all will be counted
when you're at the end

Grasp life with both hands
and hold it to you
and take from the living
as long as it's true

Rise up Rise up
Your time will come
Rise up Rise  up
when your day
is done

Rise Up Rise Up
and greet the sun.......

copyrigth Christine Anne Borra

Sunrise Riverstone Terraces Upper Hutt New Zealand

Riverstone Terraces Upper Hutt New Zealand
 view from my deck 8 September 2011
Photograph by Christine Anne Borra
copyright