Sacred Pulu

let me rip off
your images
and write about the bleeding beetroot pink purity
of Cook Islands potato salad
melting into subtropical mango horizons,
let me crap on poetically papaya
inhaling the bottle blonde fragrance of gardenia
let me pop some pods of vanilla
and talk dried banana bullshit

let me write about
the mountains of Manu’a
from the flats of Mangere town centre
let me shower you
with falling frangipani fakeness
$2 a lei from a Chinese shop in Otahu
let me keep it real
with the bitterness of lime from Foodtown $15.99 a kg
for raw fish ota ika perfection

let me bowl you a type of stereo
that sings lotto-ad-styles
hula hip hop
wop de fob
fresh fresh fresh
out of the deep freeze

let me scream a Niuean chant
like Xena
and slap my chest ma’ulu’ulu style
till my Wonderbra sings like a coconut
let me siva you away like Sosefina
last song, feeling up the dancefloor

let me romanticise us
away from
the grubby white sneaker existence
stuck to chewing gum of Otara markets
carried into the CBD of Saturday night
the fruit is so bright
we need shades
Gucci
electric windowed over blood burst eyes
still leaking with the ecstasy of last night

let me write about
doing the do
that hasn’ t been done
to death
quite yet
with a little help from high street friends
black grace on white powder
so nesian mystical

yes, look up from your pokey poverty
and get angry about this poem
you’re always a gold coin koha
away from winning lotto
one lotu away
from the salvation day
and yes
we’re halfway between
buttnaked and never-never land
Hawaiki
it’s a trip
I’ve never been able to save for
I tell you
stuck in rainy days all the time
Hawaiki
so far a lave lave away
from us all

Listen to the poem