A conversation in poetry with Vaughan Rapatahana

Vaughan Rapatahana (Te Ātiawa) commutes between homes in Hong Kong, Philippines and Aotearoa New Zealand. He is widely published across several genre in both his main languages, te reo Māori and English and his work has been translated into Bahasa Malaysia, Italian, French, Mandarin.

Vaughan:

I’m having trouble with words

[ko ngā raruraru ki ngā kupu nui ingarihi kāore ō taku roro]

I’m having trouble with words,

you know

        the usual ones

              the english ones,

they bloviate me

in their revanchist fury.

I’m having difficulty with speaking,

you know

        the same-old stuff

              those english stresses,

they imbricate me

in their minatory strew.

I’m having issues with writing,

yunno

          the extra script

                these english letters

they resile me

in their philodox dudgeon.

I’m having trouble with words, 

&   their         fuscous       anglophile        peculation;

s  p  r  e  a  d  e  a  g  l  e  d           o v e r           EVERY      poetry        page.

they’re    di sin te grat i ng    my  da sein

       spoliating all aspects of design,

I’m going   kāpō  myopic   pohe     blind.

[ko ngā raruraru ki ngā kupu nui ingarihi kāore ō taku roro =

the worries with the many english words not segueing into my brain.] 

KIT

often wake to the words

there because

must have thought in that direction

left for crumbs to collect in the night

for stones to shine

so to say

titles could come in anywhere

because the poem won’t yet know

if it’s beginning or ever will

I follow phrases down into the page

improvise just on this theme

were they there already?

come steady from the rain as well

sometimes I come in with them dripping

even ironic sunshone

I work the shadows for a doubt

find a self folded into the text

also always there already

that’s the voice to run

VAUGHAN:

Ano e hoa.

alien poet

I am so              far                                outside

the spectrum.

I am an alien poetic being.

cannot write

in    re  gim  ent  ed  

lines

cannot incorporate rote tropes

& structured stanza.                        [cannot/will not]

e pirangi ana ahau kia tuhituhi ki taku reo tuatahi te taima katoa hoki

englishisms trap me, snap me, rap me

because they incorporate/inculcate concepts        well  b e y o n d  my ken.

aaaaaaaaaaah is my sole reaction

aaaaaaaaaaah is how I feel

aaaaaaaaaaah is what I am

hindi ko gusto na ito tula

wo bu yao/wo bu dong.

existentially desiccated

ontologically fried

globally fraught

a fricassee of oblique ingredients;

I arrive from some other place, a planet not yet found

my tongue is trifurcate, bifurcate, complicate

while my brain does not function how you would have it suppose to.

bugger & screw this bugger & screw this bugger & screw this bugger & screw this

awopbopaloobopalopbamboom

set the controls for the heart of the sun

my journey, my escapade has scarcely begun.

[Translations -

e pirangi ana ahau kia tuhituhi ki taku reo tuatahi te taima katoa hoki – Māori -

I want to always write in my first language also

hindi ko gusto na ito tula – Tagalog – I don’t want this poetry

wo bu yao/wo bu dong – Mandarin – I don’t want/I don’t understand]

KIT

on the trope ropes!

bouncin’ off ‘em eff ‘em

I’m the Martian got yr postcard   

you could have picked a better view

things like each other, next to, far

is it really as bad as that, down there?

too much bloody sun

can’t see the creatures anymore

mourn the billion under words

gone – that’s life for you

I trained a telescope

but it’s off for its jollies

imagine aliens beam down

a locust lot to party

you cannot even list what’s gone

insurance mob will laugh it off

and out of court

ye know not the hour

.

     

here’s alien object visiting

this happened while we weren’t paying attention

what happened to Border Force

out at the Oort Edge?

why were no passports checked?

alright it’s

planetisimal?

?

there was a line-up

but no formal identification

and it has a name

’Oumuamua

(Hawaiian for ‘scout’, so sinister

but it didn’t come with that,

must be an alias)

long and thin

now too far in

now gone

too far

to see at all

won’t pause

but will reflect

pointy edgy of the otherworldly

and lovely that we can’t know why

could have been a spear

and if we chase it

will it bite?

all skies are edgy with objects and dreaming

but here is a tour of inspection for sure

and comes from another time altogether

interloper, some have said

implying we are here by rights

how breathlessly it goes

at its determined pace

(26 kms / second)

and hear that not-quite-vacuum

whoosh

that might be music

run out of juice

so drifting

a courtesy call?

could be a mercy mission

hunt and here’s the fox

fleet of Vogon poets come

drunk on the ancient cadences

to which all are condemned

chivalric yet

after fire, feast

bone of the anciently deceased

reconnaissance, and so attack?

all hands to glitter at the portholes

I see them micron-sized aboard

what we’d call organism

but be wrong

slaves cling and their masters saunter

(have to get some exercise)

or is this a tomb-ship?

(if not to begin, but now?)

no, animation all suspended

waiting for the wake-up call

a precious light, divinity

the interstellar answer-stone

none of this for the naked eye

though they sex it up with yearning

having come so far

not so much luminous as numinous

transcendental fleck of what if …

of five billion years ahead of us

from a first generation star

no more mundane

the exiled spider

maybe mosquito

(cosmic equivalents, I would suggest)

but why deride doubt’s benefit?

is this object misunderstood?

maybe offer a feed and a drink?

‘come stranger warm by our mild star’

of course it could be a rock

(tablet teeming commandments?)

new options there

was chucked?

discarded clock

a list of guesses

the tabula rasa

speculum

lost sock

kitchen utensil that missed

one way or any other

flying signifier

single pixel

artist’s impression

on which all of our signs reflect

careful of measurement

their Eve Adam shown

truth store / stone

bearing all meaning

putting out signals we cannot detect

or having once done

given out

as ghosts do

and sometimes

it’s just the cosmic cigar

clod or pebble, who can tell?

stone young gods once skipped

but all fed, nestling, tucked up now

and dreaming

the lesson was

‘space is time’

I like to think there was a wager

‘how far until they’ll guess’

’Oumuamua

roll it around in your mouth if you’re thirsty

it starts with a glottal stop

VAUGHAN

ko te mutunga o te atua

so, god ends here;

yet the question remains,

did god ever commence?

whose god is this anyway

& what do they mean by it?

some eminence gris?

or a desiccate wood idol

festooned in spider web,

entombed in some cave?

& who craves their god so completely?

who battles blind for their god,

to the detriment of other living beings?

who listens dumb about their god,

in obeisance to brain-dead TV preachers?

who expects their god

to somehow salve a distraught world

they have themselves sundered?

again,

god                                                                                                          ends here.

                   &

this is not an inauspicious situation.

ko te mutunga o te atua

        āke ake ake

             āmine.

ko te tāima o te kenehi ināianei.

[it is the end of god

forever and ever and ever

              amen

it is the time of genesis now]

KIT

godsbother!

you’ve come round to one of my favourite topics, Vaughan

where to start on God?   and where will we end up

concerning the weight of the soul

I have the keys

I built the cage

cloud come to again

a little forest me

made of some doubt

and stream to run away

so this is captivity?

I always wondered

a day in the dark

sun slipped

sunk in the balance

bobbed up for air

damned whichever way

and blessed

no, never feathered for flight

but gossamer, go at it

like wearing nothing

breathing air

glimpse of all other lives

creature we

phantom worlds in it

darkest crimes

are down to here

just think of an adjective

sunk in the balance

bobbed up for

like that pimple under the skin

or poem you know must be there

pray for me, won't you

(it’s not a question)

first thing that comes into your head

when stars reach down to touch

it's all because you say

VAUGHAN

god is a chain letter

[No one has final authority over the true meaning of any text; not the experts, not the author - Derrida]

god is a chain letter

&

no one wants

to sever

this concatenation.

fear baulks them

@  every  t u

r n

as they trade

in any

nous pour un

truc of an

intangible

nirvana                           no one’s ever tasted.

if they just keep

holding true

to this missive

who knows

what

wonders

they’ll

witness?

prolific promises

abound,

e g r e g i o u s                   in    the     e  x  t  r  e  m  e

&                  yet

with out

a semblance of sense

for any

sentient

soul.

KIT

everyone is Jesus

if you were to write the books

of what everyone did

the world would still spin on after

as if we’d never been

and so revolves a sun

in the end kind of explodes

takes us with it

that’s not the end at all

so all stars

and further still who knows?

survival of my greatest lines

is really a species thing

stand out

a clear night

anyone sees

it is in fact all about me

there are gospels

of getting the story straight

pretending a truth at a time

as if a new tune had always been

rise bread from the dead

call it spring, summer

sit on your egg

tread water

turn it to vines

and to wine

pass it on

be blessed

cast first stone

it’s safer to think a rock is a bear

than other way around

and you can cure yourself of a book

burn

bury

the lovely dust is stirring still

gods are in all things

god is

see how glory shines around

nothing logical in this

there’s putting the martyr into stigmata

gives the whole thing feeling

you can be word

in the beginning

just as in our father’s art

everyone is Jesus

all wonders we are

and miracle to be

here’s sun for a top deity

and all pray for rain

then put on this wolf in sheep

go on

be righteous

who hasn’t eaten the children

just once?

stiff-necked lot

and where’s my footstool scapegoat?

fists and fear

an empire grows

out of the old excuses

miracle oxygen

ideas run round

gods in odd socks

we each of us are

and all this while

think big

give yourself a funny hat

mutter out things they won’t know

who hasn’t made a universe

thought ‘good job! lo and behold!

done it once…

I can probably do it again’

?

could be white beard

make a manna drop

gets them all praying

part seas

fuck pharaoh

don’t forget your tablets

everyone is Buddha too

sits like that on a grain of rice

and you might think forever

but it all bounces back

you could be Lao-Tzu

come to the border

riddle a way out of the kingdom

do it by the book

fifteen billion years

all expanding

pity the life of a fly if you like

I’m telling you

them’s the odds

there isn’t a single god you can’t be

some only ever cited once

in works no less obscure than this

where

here the lesson endeth:

stay in genre

know your place

best to go unnoticed

assume an unimportance

not mattering

survive

VAUGHAN

on dromology

[how can we live if there is no more here and everything is now? - Paul Virilio]

the stench of entropy

dis          bob     la    tes

com  ^   u   ^     ^

any patina of progress.

the grotesque masque

we all veneer

to some extent,

& which serves

to preach & prate

for us all

a   fine        f  u  t  u  r  e,

is but a humbug

accoutrement.

denude yourselves

my fellow e-travellers;

encounter the 

 v   o   i   d,

inhale deep the wafts

of a world

s

  i

   n

     k                         &  shrinking

       i

        n

          g

into accelerated

endgame

status.

KIT

and I thought speed was something you took

the train comes off the tracks because

yes we all veneer it

and future-forth, on spew

salute the how of why

so you’ll soon find selves all gone

it’s under the eye of eternity

all of this went on   

a little wrestle with myself

tomography

imagine me

sliced right down the middle

equal halves

and everyone can see in

like that cow Damien Hirst did

think of a balanced diet

or mongrel me

go wild with the knife

all kinds of cuts

and ways to baste

dark ages

and here’s my face to light

who to be?

which one?

the city and my woods

where did I stop to be this that?

make a cartwheel once we were

(Aristophanes’ idea)

according to Plato, as he recalls

(see how third hand it all goes)

takes a while to work it out

by I’m the magic pudding

(that’s why always running off)