Wish list

For a start

we’d all stand up

outside Starbucks and Maccas and Burger King and Pizza Hut and Soda Stream

and all those other companies

we’d rain down on them like bombs out of the sky

we’d shred them like the shrapnel

that shears the little limbs off the babies in Gaza.

And then:

we’d wrap ourselves in Te Tiriti

 we’d tattoo ourselves with the word our government is murdering

we’d all walk around with

principles on our faces

principles on our chests

principles on our backs

on our arms

on our legs

all 5 million of us, so that word could not be fucked with.

And then:

we’d all write poems about racism

and colonisation

we’d write songs or jokes or graffiti or comic strips or shopping lists about racism

and someone would make them into earrings or hoodies or bike helmets or umbrellas

we’d wear those words for everyone to read

and we’d get in trouble for telling the truth about racism

all 5 million of us.

And then:

our government could release 5 million press releases

and 5 million Official Information Acts

on 5 million people

for making art.

And then:

we would all learn the haka

Ka mate

and we would all learn to write haka ourselves

karetao o te Kāwana kakī whero 

we would walk in the steps of the real warriors

the Poua

and the kids from Freyburg

like Te Rauparaha

we would shout

It is death

It is death

And we would leap into the air

on the legs of a sixteen year old kaitaki

so high

so high

we would come down again like a fighter plane

barely skimming the surface

again and again

leaving  the earth

and landing

leaving the earth

and landing.

We would spit

all of us would spit

into the earth in front of us

a shield

against the three headed taniwha

who ravages the earth

eating the bellies of school children

and breathing the kings of tobacco.