Kia Ora (hello). Some of you are asking me why I don’t write much poetry these days and just blog about celebrities. So this one’s for you. It’s a poem submitted for Whetu Moana Lua, poetry anthology collection of Maori and Polynesian Poets around the world. Editors are: Robert Sullivan, Reina Whaitiri and Dr Albert Wendt. Originally, I wrote for Whetu Moana when being trained by author and professor, Witi Ihimaera, in the art of creative writing.
To enjoy and appreciate my poetry for its inflections of the Maori language, I recommend using this tool, to understand words you may not have heard of before. Being a hori (Maori) in Hollywood is a pioneering thing, so the online Maori dictionary will help any of you LA types reading it.
My poems from Whetu Moana I, are taught in Universities in America (the mainland), New Zealand, Hawaii, the UK and Edinburgh Scotland to name a few. So…. I’m shouting this out to all you guys and dolls today doing English Literature progams around the world. Thanks for reading poetry. And most importantly, may you all continue to write your own poetry too.
Flip the hood to read:
iMaori
iMaori is the name of my phone
that uses niu media in a hori way
‘the taiaha of new technologies
used skillfully in brown hands’
online it searches the Maori dictionary
–the Ngata version, of course.
finding kupu food to enlighten and
illuminate the wairua and mind
it’s also the Maori stork, delivering
in Rei Tu and Rei Pai legendary fashion
fresh pics of pepi, Jake Kereama
he’s of Nga Puhi Tonu Nui descent
was born into a hapu of Whakapara
while his Uncle Hami played Kupe
in a faraway Hollywood land
my phone houses the inner marae walls
held in the crucified palm of my hand
flickering through digitized sepia photographs
of my grandparents and the many greats
who walked in my moccasins long before
jandals were even invented for big hori feet
where their ancient tribal paths meet the axis
of my globalised Maori self, I still hang with them
iMaori brings me Hotere’s vintage wisdom too
of no ordinary sun poetic epiphanies
of a simple life lived with profound thoughts
defining life beyond an economic atomic
Bush bomb
There are no ‘enhaloed clouds’ in sight, but
an economic recession sits heavy on the moko
iMaori brings me the words of my fellow poets
like a star waka satellite ship of custom-ised verse
man[n]a from heaven for the soul, rained down
cyber fresh, as poetry’s whakatauki reigns to quell
heat of LA desert in a national spiritual drought
when I press speed dial, I ‘korero our brown
words through fibre optic, networks of tukutuku DNA,’
in that moment, I’m a work of prophesy being mentored
yes, I’m living the dream, Maori styles, by thinking,
forming, breathing our taonga words into this world.
By email, I’m fed by sibling warrior poets whose
wairua eyes are as fierce and ferosh as my Nanny Ruihi,
my tupuna whaea, who saw first motoka, then man
setting foot on Marama on her black and white tiwi, what she
would have done with an iMaori phone, is above and beyond me.
Nanny Ruihi in living colour and leading global, wow, how
the mind just explodes.
iMaori brings me my whanau’s reo, carried on the
wifi wings of whakapapa, the toto of a poet’s destiny
riding well the crest of this millennium
we no longer sit in literary darkness, we have inc,
if we yearn for it, we should reach for it, write it
and start to just be what we see.
We are poetry, written down and becoming flesh.
The digital divide between us has lessened, closing behind
for us the oppressive colonial seas, post empire
The overturned chariots are buried in the past, of the literarati
Police, who once kept us on the tools building their sewerage
systems underground, keeping the printing press out of our creative
reach. I see, we’ve now flushed all that nonsense away.
Now we print ourselves and others. We believe, broadcast and be.
iMaori shows me on CNN and Google Earth that my
90210 zip code, sits in a whenua that’s in decline. A country
adrift and sinking perhaps.
Will we be their Kupe next? The political vortex of sinking lostness,
sucks us all in for a closer look. One’s got to pick and choose their battles
you know.
Perhaps if we choose to get over ourselves and let the
World have a piece of us by choice, we might just write
for others a new picture too as well as doing that for ourselves.
Have we replenished and healed in our Maori world enough
to serve by leading other nations forward though?
Maturity comes to those who own humanity and sense
our role as rangatira in it. Living as visionary scribes
from beyond the valley of ancestral wounds is already upon
us strongly as writers. The need is the call, should we leap in?
Realising that all nations are scripted, their laws are written down.
But, when dead national restrictive words bury the living-dead into
Lives less lived, they’re left naked and undone, stripped of dream
and spiritual song.
We once knew how that felt, but we ‘piki ake’-ed
our fine hori selves up and overcame death’s printed grip.
Our oral words had to become written words freeing our minds
and then the rest followed.
Ka mate, Ka mate, Ka ora, Ka ora.
Ka mate, Ka mate, Ka ora, ‘Kai Ora.’
Only a people who have wairua words can
offer a new way forward with the real rhythms
and redemptive rhetoric for the living
The Maori poet is a rich source of life, more
precious then oil for big Dodge Ram trucks going
nowhere faster on big freeways, yet still wanting more
oil for a Cowboy’s not-so-smart ego trip that’s bigger then Texas.
Nothing much happens in Texas by the way. I’ve lived in it.
But, yes we’re more rare then gold.
iMaori, stores my calendar and to do lists.
Entering in a date Maui adventurous styles, I write, “must save America…”
“… at some point.”
Best of all, iMaori has KFC on speed dial too. Once
in an Inia Te Wiata-esque ‘blue smoke’ moon, I’ll break
from the organic Horiwood diet here in Kosher Land,
and reach for a hot leg or two. I’m so much my Uncle Harry.
Keeping it real, a Maori army marches forward on their puku.
The Ngati Whatua and Nga Puhi in me hasn’t forgotten that.
I’m very un-LA actually, I have only a one-pack set of abs.
Makes no difference, people still crave the Maori poet’s life
but I do tan up rather well, here in California, quite naturally of course.
Once they know you have words that feed the soul,
You gotta keep moving fast. It’s harder to hit a moving target.
My tupuna developed trench warfare to survive, they too
were targeted once, their innovation leading us forward in tough times.
And living a free life, with one’s tino rangatiratanga firmly in tact
You realize that the concept is more then just a red, white and black flag
that greets you as a screensaver on your iMaori phone.
Our words are taonga embedded within prophetic gifts,
for us to exchange and give away as we sense and feel,
not to be extracted by demand from attention junkies of lazy
disillusioned fading empired entitlement, but to those who are
downtrodden, temporarily blind or bound by debt and deserving
of a Polynesian poetic lift.
So much better then a Beverly Hills plastic surgeon’s lift. Our
futuristic, poetic vision is sharper then the magic of lasik surgery too.
I know, I once was blind but now I see. My eyes had to heal from the
indoctrination that to rapidly acquire material possessions meant success.
Kahore! To speak with honesty the words inside you is success.
In that moment the whole world turns on the hinges
of poems penned on lecture notes and iMaori phones, that leave new
insights ajar, hinting to a brighter future that can be entered into.
Poems reveal doorways so that others can come in from the cold.
It is the Maori poet’s gift to the world, to go before and find
what lies beyond in the new frontiers of opportunity. Kupe’s
gift to us all.
Though we may not see it at first, we know something greater is out there.
That’s the story of Aotearoa and how a navigating poet found her.
The stars bearing witness with Kupe’s spirit, while his waka
cut a poem of new discovery across a vast, open ocean’s page.
At best, we will always be poets. The breath of poetry is how
we came to exist. Poetry transported our ancestors and birthed us.
Today, we surf the net. An iMaori waka is a tool to transport us
into finding new people, addresses and contacts that we sense
we should connect to through business seas throughout the world.
The world is still our oyster, you know. We, its poetic hidden pearls.
To navigate forward amidst a multitude of stars, is Whetu Moana
in action, poetry’s honesty providing the sails that the winds
of truth find and blow upon, to speed the journey towards new things.
We must write and create the sails, sit ourselves out in the unknown
and wait for the new winds to blow. That’s Maori mobility in full effect.
No British-American country is going to save us, nations are going broke
the world over. Many still think their ships are more secure then they are.
A poet’s gift to reveal and search out hidden things is the key.
Humanity all sits in the same boat. Time to return to our roots
as great navigators, I think.
Time to push the fleet of our waka out there again. Journeys are ahead.
See, we do not live as Colonised subjects now. An iMaori poet’s
life is exciting and things online around the Pacific are looking all good
from the Polynesian-featured kanohi of my phone.
Kia kaha tatou. There’s mahi to get done, new journeys
and fun to be had. New people to meet and also learn from
in the poetic exchange of destiny’s new waves of ‘kia oras.’
Jake – I’ll see you out there.
ps: thanks Apple, for my iMaori phone. Rock on!
