WHAU/FAUX/EDEN

The mountains smart, held in “trust” by flagstaff

March & January and no matter how uncommon your public figures

It was coastline

Made the first sighting;—blockchains of islands & clouds so

Numerous as to validate the Enlightenment ideal of spirit.

War fought explicitly

In the imbalance

Bushland blown out wild catalyst like a heart torn

From armoured interior. The cape erupts. Just add water.

To think this isn’t still a garrison town like a punchline that

Makes any fault trivial

The “Great South”

Network of redoubts at steep dawn; counting on heavy losses

As if to outnumber only violence itself & even bloodshed

Was stolen—

Yet pioneers of the name who pass down space in the throat thus

“Discovered” the admiralty fossilised in cloudy tombs of wood

Looking very much like

Misinformed 19th Century

Anatomical drawings,—still the arrow of time suffered the utmost

Creeping of titles; each second a misspelling of the last & what

Could it mean to give new names to mountains when

On geological scales it’s not even useful to think of them as old?

But first steps

Continue no matter the gilt tongue of signposts as much a part of

Invasion as anything else as though pointing the way to

Flat Earth

In the face of waters built like pyramids in their every ripple.

Don’t be resigned to “official” use: a nice view whose only purpose is

For you to hurtle yourself to your death

Once there

The mountains that will not negotiate because land is

The very definition of terror. Which name for our adultery? Whereof

One cannot speak

One must climb.

Chris Holdaway

Chris is a poet and bookmaker from Northland. He's the author of HIGH-TENSION/FASHION (Greying Ghost, 2018), and a co-founder of both Compound Press and Minarets journal.

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