landfall..

[jeff geddes]

on my way home this night
in the fright of aged forgetfulness

a box of books marked 'free'
parked outside a Salvation Army op shop
caught my eye

there in the midst of a collection of
medieval junk lay New Zealand's 'Landfall'
issue 216

this is the supposed highest order
of intellectual poets/writers in pursuit
of pretty things to say wreathed in obscurisms

reading the contents by a street lamp
reminded me of distant insights of my childhood

here within its pages a coterie of self deceiving
grandiosity attempting proficient intellectualism
to perfect pretty things to say
and why we are degenerating into the fully-fledged
ape of our ancestors

I asked myself
where is this stuff taking me
has it the enjoyment of beauty
the enrichment of imagination
the awakening of inspiration
the discovery of a self with purpose?

NO!
here in the shape and sound of intellectualism
was mere obscure propaganda dressed up
to appear as excellence
in a form of fictitious epilepsy that distorts
and twists common sense

words/phrases concoted with benevolent intentions
of some form of intellect which is in line
with war-time comics 'Beano' 'Dandy'
'Rupert the Bear'

there was a treatise on a C.K Stead
by a nobody name of Worthington i pursuit
of pretty things to say thst would rate some
proven worth for this C.K. Stead

there was a few poems sprinkled here and there
by suposed poets I have never heard of, some
boring wearisome dissertations in the lengthy
lines of archiac Homers/Virgils

and one by name of Eggleton whom I once read
of his troubador efforts on the streets of London
now, a firmly ensconced member of this
intellectual fraternity ,,in decay

in the pages of the poet's finest Utopian magazine
in decay in a battered box of free trash
outside an Salvation Army op shop

that has long lost the meaning of the word SALVATION.
*
JAFFRAY GEDDES