Live Encounters Poetry & Writing Volume Three November-December 2024
Aotearoa Poets and Writers Special Edition
An Unbeatable Offer, poems by Tim Wilson.
An Unbeatable Offer
This poem will save your life,
all you have to do
is accept you matter, and read.
See! Insects scatter, moths
kamikaze darkness instead of light
in anticipation. This poem will save your life.
Consuming it, you’ll shed illusions. They’ll plunge
like Ilyushin bombers over Berlin, circa 1941.
You’ll love more deeply, work less, want less, have
more kids. You’ll spend longer looking into their faces
that are as perfect as the plates
in the restaurants the 1% frequent. This poem
won’t make you rich, it will only save your life.
Can you hear its thundering hooves?
Will you ride its bucking grooves?
This poem won’t help you dance
better, nor ship you a wife,
a husband, nor even a date.
But you must believe
you matter. Do you?
Do you really?
Even though revelation hurts, like Lego entering
your sole at 2 am, in the dark, on a toilet visit?
Even though this poem has locked itself in the toilet
with a pack of Holiday Menthols and a flask of Samovar vodka,
sobbing as it strives… to rescue you? Even though
I begged it to eschew risk, to not bother,
to count you as a rounding error, it said, ‘No.
I’m worth it. I’m strong. I will go.’
Can you smell its hot breath?
Smoke, booze, tears, and Palak paneer:
the aroma of deliverance, of not turning away,
of being able to confess,
‘Okay…
maybe…
yes.’
Blurb for an As-Yet Unpublished
Collection
Such is the work of decades. Some lines used to be tweets. Please don’t judge us (the lines, me). Look, I self-cancelled. Used to be extroverted before the poet-ising. But art demands sacrifice, so auto-mangling ensued. All the popular, good-looking, spontaneous, fun bits gone, deposited in drains on Onehunga Mall. We used a serrated blade to excise them; it hurt.
Observers insisted still too much of me lingered.
I cut deeper. Washed even less. Dialled up the Jeremiah to ‘full’. Instagram followers fell away. I didn’t open the curtains. Looked into the middle distance while our children asked, ‘Do you still love us?’ Still, the other poets rejected me. Running low on material, I engineered feuds to versify. Prayed for my enemies… to die. Moved to Waihi in the hope become one of those immortal monsters over whom the sophomores of the continuous-present swoon. Every party that’s ending looks and sounds the same. People kept dancing. Disliking sport; having nothing else to do in the evenings, I wrote. Imagine if Frederick Seidel and Adrienne Rich had a baby? Wait… about 30. Yeah. Sorry, the jacket
photo is a fib, taken before I became un-hot.
Can you just buy this? What is it, $25? What else will so cheaply produce a feeling
of superiority? Makeup runs. Friends lie. Children go and talk to their Momma, who talks back, and maybe cuddles them even. These poems were made for
cuddling. Why aren’t you? Like most collections there are about three real standouts.
The rest? Exfoliated Id. Did you buy it yet? What more must I do? Something mind-blowing happens on page 72. Actual people die, then find meaning and
become fully vegan. All the fads are here, including an approving, hopeful eye on the future. You literally won’t believe it’s poetry…
Oh, just go away, I don’t care, I’m sick of you looking at me.
I was happier talking to myself.
A Previous Version of this Poem
Incorrectly Spelled the Last Name
of James Tate’s Wife
No-one asked us to meet, yet here we are. The poets Dara
Wier and James Tate stay in a hotel
in Washington D.C. Miraculously they’re upgraded to the Vice-Presidential
suite worth $5000 a night.
The table sits 18 on carpet memorialising Congressmen killed
in office; more Democrats than
Republicans. From the balcony they watch
boats swirl in the Potomac’s
eddy, just above a weir.
Trees materialise, backlit,
as indifferent as nudists.
Your children will become what you believe they are.
Dara and James climb three flights of stairs to reach
empty, echoing wardrobes. Sunset catches the
headstones at Arlington
National, illuminating them with an almost satiric melancholy, bombs falling
upwards. The things I love have
come to hate me. Darkness settles. The boats describe ovals,
turning and turning, growing indiscernible, more
meaningful. Their bathrobes are pewter,
and clank disobediently when you sit down.
Money has so many different sounds.
It’s Wier. W. I. E. R.
How often must we tell you?
© Tim Wilson
Tim Wilson’s writing desk is a blue 2008 Suzuki Swift. Previously he has had work published in Aotearoa Poetry Yearbook, a fine line, Mayhem, NZPS Anthology, samfiftyfour, Tarot and Turbine Kapohau.