The Lounging Lizard Poet of the Floating World

<p>New Zealand literature has no one like Keith Hill. Always surprising a genuine original. - Roger Horrocks</p><p><br></p><p>THE MODERN DILEMMA</p><p><br></p><p>Having spent a lifetime of Western privilege</p><p>doing the limbo while jumping over my knees</p><p>I feel it is my right now to proclaim</p><p>I consider myself short-changed.</p><p>During hours spent stopped in rush hour queues</p><p>I have meticulously catalogued the disparities</p><p>between what people heap on their teaspoons</p><p>and the unnamed ghouls that slink </p><p>past their windows at night.</p><p>I will try to keep it short.</p><p>But there is no way to make it pretty.</p><p><br></p><p>I begin by stating the obvious.</p><p>Everyone is so distracted by abstract nouns</p><p>-democracy religion economics freedom</p><p>biology sexuality orientation identity</p><p>status fashion novelty literature-</p><p>they don't notice what is really going on.</p><p>I refer to the modern process</p><p>by which the machinery of civilisation</p><p>inserts a straw into the brain</p><p>extracts the juices</p><p>then pounds what is left to form</p><p>an attitude a person a career a place in jail.</p><p><br></p><p>How do you stop the juice being extracted </p><p>from your brain?</p><p>Some consider such questions a category error </p><p>arguing being overwhelmed with doubt </p><p>has for too long been misconstrued </p><p>as evidence human beings possess a soul.</p><p>Others petition the ancient prophets' God </p><p>who wrote all his bestsellers millennia ago</p><p>and has long since succumbed to writer's block.</p><p>This has left modern humanity perplexed.</p><p>We are each now a troubled mind staring out</p><p>through the sockets in our endoskeleton</p><p>eyes roaming like searchlights </p><p>across the bumps and crevices of the world.</p><p>Only the undaunted few dare look down to</p><p>observe their toes hanging over the ledge </p><p>below which yawns the precipice </p><p>that separates life from death.</p><p>This is not a sight for beginners.</p><p><br></p><p><br></p>