shoot

me from
a long
copyleft 2009
distance
david_merritt
with a
high
powered
sniper
landroverfarmpress rifle
po box 243
whanganui if...
new zealand
winter poems
david merritt

shoot
me from
a long
copyleft 2009 distance
david_merritt with a
high
powered
sniper
landroverfarmpress rifle
po box 243 if...
whanganui
new zealand
winter poems
david merritt
If I start to become distant and
removed from all my roots, cultural,
social and economic and then one
night find myself totally pissed in the
company of sad-arse strangers with
whom I have nothing in common
and who secretly despise me
or ...
If I start to become distant and
removed from all my roots, cultural,
social and economic and then one
night find myself totally pissed in the
company of sad-arse strangers with
whom I have nothing in common and
who secretly despise me
or ...
If I start driving around in a big
stupid V12 Dodge Viper RAM
XLRS car, or any car, modern,
worth more than $7000
or ...
If I start driving around in a big
stupid V12 Dodge Viper RAM
XLRS car, or any car, modern,
worth more than $7000
or ...

If I ever appear on breakfast
television promoting anything
or ...
If I ever appear on breakfast
television promoting anything
or ...
If I start to use any anti-bacterial
products such as soaps, wipes,
sprays, liquid gels, air fresheners,
bog cleaners, mouthwashes,
deodorants, bin liners,
toothpastes, toilet papers
or ...
If I start to use any anti-bacterial
products such as soaps, wipes,
sprays, liquid gels, air fresheners,
bog cleaners, mouthwashes,
deodorants, bin liners,
toothpastes, toilet papers
or ...

If I find myself casting a long,
dark arid shadow over the NZ
poetry world, so blocking of light,
so opening and closing of gates
that nothing else can and will
grow in my proximity
or ...
If I find myself casting a long,
dark arid shadow over the NZ
poetry world, so blocking of light,
so opening and closing of gates
that nothing else can and will
grow in my proximity
or ...
I start to believe in the madness,
the unsustainableness of the modern
consumerist lifestyle and bombarded by
wide screen plasma radiation, become
completely desensitised by Hollywood
fear and violence DVD and the TV eye
of hell forensic crime, cooking, dancing
and home rennovation program crap,
dumbed down, miserable, alone and
suburban.
I start to believe in the madness, the
unsustainableness of the modern
consumerist lifestyle and bombarded by
wide screen plasma radiation, become
completely desensitised by Hollywood
fear and violence DVD and the TV eye
of hell forensic crime, cooking, dancing
and home rennovation program crap,
dumbed down, miserable, alone and
suburban.
 © the 12
stages
copyleft 2009
of the
microsoft
david_merritt

addict
landroverfarmpress
po box 243
whanganui
a precautionary tale
new zealand
david merritt

©
the 12
stages
of the
microsoft
copyleft 2009
david_merritt

addict
landroverfarmpress
po box 243
a precautionary tale
whanganui
new zealand
david merritt
1.
I acknowledge that my addiction is
unfortunate but not irreversable.
2.
I know that my addiction costs my family
and work and the Government billions of
dollars in software licences and
consultancy fees every year, the modern
equivalent of setting fire to money while
the kids are starving.
1.
I acknowledge that my addiction is
unfortunate but not irreversable.
2.
I know that my addiction costs my family
and work and the Government billions of
dollars in software licences and
consultancy fees every year, the modern
equivalent of setting fire to money while
the kids are starving.
3.
Microsoft is a dinosour stuck in a tarpit
of its own doom voraciously eating
everything within its reach. Repeat this
every lunchtime.
4.
Microsoft is the virus and the sooner I
realise this the better.
3.
Microsoft is a dinosour stuck in a tarpit
of its own doom voraciously eating
everything within its reach. Repeat this
every lunchtime.
4.
Microsoft is the virus and the sooner I
realise this the better.
5.
There exists a whole other non-Microsoft
universe of software in the Apple OSX and
open source realm. I cannot blindly ignore
this any longer.
6.
Almost all common Microsoft software can
be easily replaced by better, more robust
software that negates the need for
antispam, antiviral and antimalignancy.
5.
There exists a whole other non-Microsoft
universe of software in the Apple OSX and
open source realm. I cannot blindly ignore
this any longer.
6.
Almost all common Microsoft software can
be easily replaced by better, more robust
software that negates the need for
antispam, antiviral and antimalignancy.
7.
The network is the key. So is the speed of
the network. As the network spreads it is
bigger nails in the Microsoft coffin.
Repeat twice.
8.
I need to be a contributer to digital
culture and not just a passive consumer.
7.
The network is the key. So is the speed of
the network. As the network spreads it is
bigger nails in the Microsoft coffin.
Repeat twice.
8.
I need to be a contributer to digital
culture and not just a passive consumer.
9.
Digital rights protection and copyright
issues are a crock of crap and a whole lot
worse than many, many other things.
10.
There should be a game called Life Without
Oil and I should get used to playing it
every hour of every day of every week of
every year of the rest of my life.
9.
Digital rights protection and copyright
issues are a crock of crap and a whole lot
worse than many, many other things.
10.
There should be a game called Life Without
Oil and I should get used to playing it
every hour of every day of every week of
every year of the rest of my life.
11.
Open Source software is green and recycles.
It is made collectively by really smart,
geeky people, often with very pointy heads,
from all over the world.
12.
My cellphone is already running a version
of Linux.
11.
Open Source software is green and recycles.
It is made collectively by really smart,
geeky people, often with very pointy heads,
from all over the world.
12.
My cellphone is already running a version
of Linux.

I have said before
I am looking forward to
the longer spring
evenings when
I can write about
more on things,
everything
and scratch my chin
in wonder and
wry smile, wry smile,
wry smile, even now.
A cool wind blowing,
a bolognaise to feed ten on upstairs,
a spring in my step,
a shave to look forward to,
a fire, the fun machine console,
maybe some washing and
a custard dessert.
The joys of little things you know.
This has been david merritt,
environmental poet,
signing off, tonight.
also by david merritt
in overdraft at the bank of human kindness - gung ho 1987
big on old cars - gung ho 1988
which one is the shark? - gung ho 1989
55x5 minute poems - gung ho 1990
hasty notes - frantic scrawl - gung ho 1990
no cup of tea at the railway station - gung ho 1991
good new friend goes swimming - gung ho 1992
Internet - a NZ users guide - Penguin Books - 1995
big book for fourteen letters - one cent press - 2002
the end of the beginning [selected writings - 1986-2003] - gung ho 2004
a mixture of wishes - exit poems - gung-ho 2009
prayers for geeks - kilmog press 2009
under wraps
the game is always for 3 players, eh? - gung ho 2008
gridlocked in grids - one cent press
this is the book of chips
ISBN 0-9583256-0-X
landroverfarm press
Creek Road Mangamahu Aotearoa
Box 243 Whanganui .
©
copyleft david merritt 2009
Authors assertion: Including brief passages quoted in newspaper,
magazine, radio and television review, all parts of this work may be
re-published, re-produced, re-performed, re-distributed or
re-transmitted in any form or media and by any other means
electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording or any
information data or retreival system now known or yet to be invented,
without permission in writing from the author, his authorised agent(s) and his hiers.
the language of the geeks
the grep and the cat, the kludge,
the grok and the ping of death
lets hear it for telnet and gopher
and veronica and archie,
now not mentioned in everyday
conversation
and secure ssh, socks layers
and protocols
and ports
and pinholes
and broken sockets, pgp
and .sig,
unix talk and whois
and
cat pipe more
ds pipe more
the proxy server, abstraction layer,
cache configurations and
preferences
key command sequences
terminal shell commands
man pages X86 kernel recompiling
development fork
beta points and usability testing
I/O and bios overlay,
boot sector and
partition table map
talk in html, xml and css
talk in W3 compliant code.
broadcast those thoughts
out to the giant interweb.
On learning to speak fantail,
to talk fantail and act fantail
eeek eek eek I say as they flutter around me
I am learning the language and the
mannerisms as well as the sound,
the territorial boundaries of each one,
the learning to live with each other.
Its the same fantail that flies around
me in the garden every day.
I am no threat just as I view the
activities of the early birds as no
threat to my gardens but more
as some form of greater symbiosis of life.
And the language of the horse, Joe,
the brrrmmmppphhh and the nose
snorting and the little sniffs he makes
around my hands looking for apples
pears dates and sugar cubes. I know
now where to scratch behind his ears
in order to make his eyes crossover
and how to drape an experimental
weight over the back.
And the language of the dogs, the sly nips
of the hands by the fat labrador and secret
custard rendevous and the talk of the
hunterway who just wants to make
small noises in the back of his throat for all to hear.
 whats
also by david merritt
in overdraft at the bank of human kindness - gung ho 1987
big on old cars - gung ho 1988
which one is the shark? - gung ho 1989
55x5 minute poems - gung ho 1990
hasty notes - frantic scrawl - gung ho 1990
no cup of tea at the railway station - gung ho 1991

the
good new friend goes swimming - gung ho 1992
Internet - a NZ users guide - Penguin Books - 1995
big book for fourteen letters - one cent press - 2002
the end of the beginning [selected writings - 1986-2003] - gung ho 2004
a mixture of wishes - exit poems - landroverfarm press 2009
prayers for geeks - kilmog press 2009

under wraps

rub
the game is always for 3 players, eh? - gung ho 2010
gridlocked in grids - one cent press 2010
this is the book of chips

ISBN 0-9583256-0-X

here?
landroverfarm press
Creek Road Mangamahu Aotearoa
Box 243 Whanganui .

©
copyleft david merritt 2009
Authors assertion: Including brief passages quoted in newspaper,
magazine, radio and television review, all parts of this work may be
re-published, re-produced, re-performed, re-distributed or
re-transmitted in any form or media and by any other means
electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording or any
information data or retreival system now known or yet to be invented,
without permission in writing from the author, his authorised agent(s)
ferry observations
and his hiers.
 6. There is a continuing sense of dread to watch these break-
1. The ferry provides a microcosm- of the breakdown
downs, the boys spending the bulk of their childhood with-
of the modern relationship, the demise of the nuclear
out the access to almost any masculine role model, with the
family, the new and modern ways we have of making,
struggle of the solo parent and in particular the mother in the
changing, amending the ways of our forebears.
scenario, the destruction of the networks of bloodlines that
have bound us together in the past for better and for worse,
2. I watch in slack-jawed amazement at the forced
but which still gave us an illusion of family, of place and space
fits of our new non-nuclear family models, children
- a home to call our own.
from previous relationships and marriages blending
and trying to fit into one amorphous mass. Its a worry
7. Witness the current property boom as we try and shoehorn
seeing this breakdown and rebuilding process up so
into place the principal capitalist construct of family (sic) home
close despite the fact that I live with these new con-
ownership. For every three in five marriages nowadays that
straints on a day by day basis and have done so now
end in separations, divorce, acrimony and alimony, it ultimately
for the best part of twenty years.
places a demand upon the property market to find a place
where these noveau-dispossesed can call their own.
3. Its the return to the south island thats prompted this
rash of thoughtful thinking about the whys and where-
8. Property has to continue to increase in value due to these
fores and how comes of the modern family permuta-
demands placed upon it. The modern relationship requires us
tion. With the shiftless young, the maritally disposesed
to live in seperate existances, divorced from community that is
on both sides of the gender equation and the craving
increasingly unable to keep the delicate fabric of our dysfunc-
deep down for the ideal state of nuclear monogamy
tional society together in one patchwork entity. We are now
that our parents seemed on the surface to be so
quickly unravelling at the edges.
happy with.
9. Boys nowadays are not bought up by fathers, they are edu-
4. Whats the rub here? What has happened in the
cated by devices and devices which are particularly unsuit-
last fifty years to see the nuclear monogamy model
able for teaching the young anything except the gratuitous, the
reduced to an empty and hollow sham, a shell hol-
immediate, the violent, the uncaring, the shocking, the blood-
lowed out internally by the machinations of the epoc
thirsty.
of capitalism, which has both provided for the nurtur-
ing for the family and at the same time in the last five
10. Our own personal culture for what it is worth is demeaned,
decades served to sow the seeds for its present near
cheapened and continuously eroded by a flood of malformed
extinct and endangered status.
displacement that spills over constantly into our lives from a
5. Its the lack of focus and concentration, a desire for
heady mix of Hollywood, Disney, Microsoft, fast food outlets,
immediate gratification and a lingering feeling as con-
MTV, mp3 players, cellphones and many other instances and
sumers that everything is always greener everywhere
examples of the steady diet the young and impressionable are
else but in our own backyard.
now spoonfed from an early age.
also by david merritt
in overdraft at the bank of human kindness - gung ho 1987

matt
big on old cars - gung ho 1988
which one is the shark? - gung ho 1989
55x5 minute poems - gung ho 1990
hasty notes - frantic scrawl - gung ho 1990

is a
no cup of tea at the railway station - gung ho 1991
good new friend goes swimming - gung ho 1992
Internet - a NZ users guide - Penguin Books - 1995
big book for fourteen letters - one cent press - 2002
the end of the beginning [selected writings - 1986-2003] - gung ho 2004
a mixture of wishes - exit poems - landroverfarm press 2009
prayers for geeks - kilmog press 2009

under wraps
12 year old

geek
the game is always for 3 players, eh? - gung ho 2010
gridlocked in grids - one cent press - 2010
this is the book of chips

ISBN 0-9583256-0-X

landroverfarm press
Creek Road Mangamahu Aotearoa
Box 243 Whanganui .

©
copyleft david merritt 2009
Authors assertion: Including brief passages quoted in newspaper,
magazine, radio and television review, all parts of this work may be
re-published, re-produced, re-performed, re-distributed or
re-transmitted in any form or media and by any other means
electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording or any
information data or retreival system now known or yet to be invented,
without permission in writing from the author, his authorised agent(s)
and his hiers.

1. Matthew is a typical 12 year old geek, small wiry with a sense of
bubbling enthusiasm which he was finding hard to control. As ex-
pected he was very shy at first until he realised that despite our huge
age differences I could speak his language. He talked in short sharp
bursts, often in acrynoms, like a hyperactive two-legged cellphone txt
message.
2. His mother had no idea that her son was operating on a permanent
software and hardware fuelled high consisting of playstations one and
two, Xboxes, laptops and XP professional. He wanted World of War-
craft. He played Halo 2 and Runescape. He asked me about shareware
and freeware. He said he had a virus on his laptop because it made
a funny noise all the time. He was wondering about the Vodaphone
broadband offer and if I was using XBox live.
3. He was amazed and startled by the sucessive inflamatory statements
that I made to him about computing such:
Like he was a 12 year old microsoft addict.
that computers could be used to make stuff, music, videos, writing etc.
and not just be a platform for the playing of games.
that san andreas III was an R18 game and he shouldn’t play it
that there was no library in any of the games he was playing.
that 12 year old boys drive the computer industry
that he was the living, physical embodyment of moores law
that microsoft is the virus and the sooner he realised that the better.
4. I drew some charts and flow diagrams and tossed in some words for
him to google or wikipedia later at his leisure. I gave him a 64bit Linux
install that I was sure wouldn’t work on his computer and showed him
the wall of gaming consoles, dating from over 25 years ago, we keep
stored and hidden out the back. I showed him an early transistor the size
of my little finger and then a CPU from a later P3 computer that had mil-
lions of transistors packed onto razorthin slivers of silica.
5. I watched his jaw go slack as he did the maths and saw a histori-
cal overview of the Intel, AMD and Mac G series of processors from
8. There is no library in San Andreas2 I tell him, nowhere where you
the first 286 built by IBM in 1984. His eyes spun when I explained
can go and learn how to make goats milk cheese and synthesise soy
the crucial differences between cathedral copyright and bazaar
protein into tofu.
copyleft software and how historically the unix operating system
arched over the entire decades of the seventies, eighties, nineties and
9. Now whats the good of spending hours driving around the hood
now half a decade into the new millenium, spawns forth into OSX
in a stolen car, best Ho by your side, shooting at the various home-
and Linux ready and waiting for whatever savvy desktop user may
boys until a tank or a helicopter or both appeared, forcing you to
exist..
steal a Hummer and flee to a saved game point. Now you tell me
how thats going to help Matthew out in later life when he’s still
6. Matthew must be one of tens of thousands of kids just like him
undergoing trauma counselling bought about by unfettered exposure
all over the world produced from the same cookie-cutter of video
to video nastiness at such an impressionable age.
games and high tech hype for the last 25 years that kids have been
exposed to such things. I thought that he was just so representative
10. Matthew might know a lot about computers and technology. In
of his type, over active and overly sensitive to the worldwide pulse
fact he knows more about them than his mother and his teacher at
of technology.
school combined, enough to run rings around the hapless parent on
an endless upgrade treadmill of better connectivity, service packs,
7. I told him that I only play rally-driving car games and intergalac-
faster video cards, processors, memory, DVD burners and all the
tic shoot-em ups and couldn’t say anything good about any other
rest of that.
games - especially those which were pitched at a more violent,
More to follow.
mature audience.
 Up
through
the
gears
go the
middle
classes
copyleft 2009
david_merritt

landroverfarm press
po box 243
whanganui
new zealand
no tradesman nazi in a ute ever stops for
hitch hikers. the new neavoux, they have the
money and the arrogance nowadays to for-
get their roots. Its one thing not to expect a lift
from the scared middle classes or the elderly
peering over their steering wheel, but its the
climate of fear that gets me, everybody is
afraid, afraid of each other, afraid of
getting left behind, of having less gadets and
widgets than their neighbours. its a funny old
world and it takes something as small and
grounding as hitchhiking to realiase just how
sad and fearful and insular a nation we have
become. its the startled look of fear and
apprehension that fills their faces - the jew-
ish tourist up the road has the best chance
of both of us so I let him go first, visitors first
please I say, his preesence vaugely
troubling, a zionist on the side of the road
in nelson, raphelite curls but one year basic
miilitary training under his belt and a desire
to flee dodge city and get the fuck as far as
possible away from the threat of palestine
rockets and mortors and suicide
bombers. not all jews are zionists but all
zionists are jews. and there is that old
trueism that no new car ever picks you up,
no prado or pagero or big horn - nothing
that the scared middle classes cowering
behind their inexerably upwards house
values - its all that life means for them none will
make eye contact. some are openly derisive
and derrogatory. no ute and no SUV will pick
that hitch hiker up - nothing towing a trailor or
a boat, nothing with a body kit or a spoiler or a
whaletail, nothing with some teenage horror sit-
ting in the passenger seat telling her boyfriend
what to do - who grows up into scared and
nasty middle class old trout still telling driver
husband what to do. nobody has the spark of
youth anymore this property boom has been
too serious and too life changing, rags to riches
stories abound, people fortunate to own at the
trough and fortunate to sell at the peak - make
a bundle - heard the story a million times now
of chance get rich schemers up through the
gears quickly go the middle classes - gotta
get to top speed as fast as possible nothing
with mags stops either. and there is an in-
verse proportional ratio that says the bigger
and more empty the car the less chance it
has of stopping for you, like the higher the de-
cile of the car owners. So the poor arn’t mak-
ing car journeys any more - only the middle
classes and the rich - so what chances have
the humble hitchhikers got to be picked up
now - up through the gears goes the middle
classes. into top speed as fast as possible, al-
ways focussed on the destination and not the
journey people are scared of each other now
in this country they are scared of the
differences between socio economic classes,
nobody is talking civil war but many are now
thinking that its a historical inevitabliity,
sometimes the tradesmen tease - they slow
down and look like they are going to pull over
- and then honk honk and the fingers and a
yell -out the window by the passenger and a
bottle tossed at you if you’re unlucky under
the cover of darkness. Nothing like throwing
bottles at hitchhikers. nothing like being a red-
neck bastard in a small provincial town where
your views go largely untroubled from cradle to
grave - nothing to shake your stupid
complacency and narrow minded ignorance.
the poor people armed with weapons, looting
and food rioting will shake them, if the middle
classes don’t actively participate anyway.what
with the prices of petrol, the number of tourists
(who never stop for other tourists - its a reverse
kinda snobbery) I also have another theory - the
fatter and more obese the drivers and
passengers are the more unlikely they are to
stop so obese people in new SUV’s means
not a show. a solo woman driving by herself, a
nuclear family group, a mum and dad or young
couple, a boyracer and his girlfriend, no truckie,
no tradesman, nobody towing a trailer, no
tourists, nothing with ski-racks on or those
stupid coffin things on the roof that wreck what
little aerodynamic stability your SUV had in the
first place.
Morning tea poem #3

When you look up a group

of campus Christians,
Asians and young people has
formed off to your right.

When you look up

a woman is alone, strong,
wiping a tear, being sad, suddenly.

When you look up

the rope head across the road will
jump a bench seat, successfully
high-five his friends as
his skateboard skids away.
It is Friday, early December, a morning
cold as an autumn in Dunedin,
you are smoking but vigilant,
alert and watchful. This is the first
poem that you have written in
three years and suddenly
your own life seems significant once more.
A small list of humble wishes between a
man and a woman
1. that we share the same shallow
breaths of sleep, warm in the dark
2. if we wake up we are not afraid or
annoyed by the snoring of the dog
3. lying between friendship and love, we hear
the sound of a gentle rain on the tin roof
 this is a time of mess #12

usual male bravado,

Big band jazz night / home
All alone, teens on beach rampage,
just me and the detroit dog.
misplaced tragic consequences
we are all alone, alive and cast.
I drink more, smoke less,
it speaks jukebox to me
in a corner the toss of the hair.
the cars the cars the cars

She is the hottest I guess we are just bad luck

property in the allow me the simplest of pleasures
corner closest to the fire, to watch unobserved the
a heat hog, shape of cheeks, jaws, chin.
the best seat in
the house dog, a sliver of attachment
those who stare off in distance
warm
sulpherated, they are remote, truncated
resting, the dead eye, the glad eye
sleepy, its a saturday night cast about,
not like me, its a sly hook
haha. for now I am shy, rumpled.

this is a time of mess #15
When I smile it stretches from me to you to here
its a waltz of grief, grizzled, object
I want to think that you are under the
spell of the smell of my pheramones
I listen, I watch, I look to be writing again
yep this is under control
I forgot the interaction of strangers
openly stalking the last cigarette from its case
I make eye contact with strangers
i smile
across the room I notice the swell of breasts
the rounding of stomach.
I close my eyes and try to think of voices.
I open my eyes to watch the toss and
curl of your hair on the nape of the neck.
I am happy with this careless
exhileration. seamless.
this is a time of mess #27
There is nothing like a week inert and hurting,
full of wonder and misplaced emotion, where
you are fearful to tred, unsure and uncertain.
you are afraid of your own life and how it
stretches out before you for decades yet.
You take the time to enjoy sunsets and dawns,
soft drizzle rain and thunderstorms
you have been living in your car and have spent the
day tidying, sorting and sifting the detrius of the life so
far which puts you into a mood of mild melancholy
bordering on thoughtfulness and introspection.
days are passing here, the weeks of your life.
already you feel a fixture,
posited in a time and space
you realise that you are writing without predictive text
after a while the current sun will set and darkness falls
it is early in late march, you are in your forty-eigth year
you weigh the cons and plusses,
adjust a mental balance sheet
to see in which direction it balances towards.
You are neither sad nor happy, you are alone
as always and draw some small comfort from
that seemingly constant fact.
Lonely man / dinner / stood up
(i)
I was proud of the inventory of our first dinner,
penne, parmesan, basil, clean shave/ aftershave/
incense/ citronella candle/ full fruit bowl.
milk and sugar / cream and coffee acquired,
vacumn cleaner applied
toilet bowl clean
dishes done, dog bathed, feet soaked, nails trimmed.
(ii)
by six water on the boil
by seven sitting outside in gentle rain, thoughtful, waiting
by eight concerned, abject, remorseful, sad
by nine over-caffientated and down to last three
cigarettes
(iii)
by ten, thinking through it all, I accept the inescapable
thought that I have been stood up and that between
saturday and tuesday night the interveening hours have
taken their toll, other things have dislodged our date in
time and space and our dinner together has become a
non-event
(iv)
by eleven I eat alone, savouring all the special trouble I
went to, mentally pricing the ham, the salami, the flash
stuffed olives and how I’d have to live on this food for
the rest of the week, mixed in with rice and weetbix and
porridge.
(v)
Dessert was a nutmeg and cinnamon apple pie with
jaffas and bananas coated in coconut threads and
that was my first salad dressing in over three years
- easy - balsamic, virgin olive oil, lemon juice, salt,
pepper and sugar - it was beautiful on the lettuce,
capsicum and salami salad.
(vi)
I cooked no heavy old bastard male stodge of
meat/ mince/ gravy beef/ chops/
but kept it light, nutritious, the pasta was el dente,
everything mixed and tossed to perfection
(vii)
Look;
an ear infection, a yeast infection, a wrong phone
number, a name, a sunday walk in the park, a bad
day at work on monday, several good coffees or a
couple of spirulina, a violent sneezing fit, a lost wallet,
an annoying tailgating wanker in a subaru.
(viii)
Any or all of these things could have tipped our
dinner appointment from being something firm and
tangible, life affirming with lots of laughter
into yet another night of lonely, bleak introspection.
Mother’s salient info #147
One night a toast is proposed and everyone
will click glasses together but moments later
you realise that during the whole ritual there
was no eye contact which is something that
kiwi men hardly ever do even when the make
they make the beast with two heads, two
backs and eight limbs
but lets not call it lovemaking or sex or
fornication or fucking or even the horizontal
polish folk dance.
No.
Instead lets call it by the worst, most callous
name imaginable, degrade sex of any
emotional meaning and call it bonking, for
christsake, like immature adolescents tasting
the sound of a lewd word spoken out loud for
the first time and then,
we all laugh nervously together because it
makes us both secure and uncomfortable and
comfortable and insecure at the same time.
Enough.
I will not willingly play with this
emotional age group ever again.
Enough. Enough. Enough.
Brand
They put holes through their noses, earlobes,
lips, tounges and belly buttons, they are
wearing blue, black bands of disfigurement
upon their arms and ugly expensive
sunglasses. I guess they are young and are
asserting their identities in their own hard
post-modernist kind of way.
Some make loud pronouncements and
quickly look around to see who has noticed,
one talks all the time but he’s the dork of
the group, shunned, he is just another fool
holding a smart drink in his hand.
But frankly I am not noticing this because
my first coffee and morning cigarette are
reaching a critical mass where both are
needing my immediate attention.
The optimist in me surveys a pile of stuff

Packing is this process, the shuffle of things from

one space to another, its an enclosure of life, an
introspection, as boxes of books and papers and
coincidences
pictures pass before you in a procession of sad
and stupid moments from your past bought to the
The newboyfriend arrives in your life about the
surface pictures, lost sisters, lovers, friends, small
same time as you take the big Alsatian
random pieces of yourself, the 36 banana box
back to his original owner.
whole that constitutes your life up to and including
this exact point, a couple of working computers,
It’s a significant swapage.
a favourite typewriter, finding shit, stuff, gold, flot-
Both weigh about the same,
sam, jetsam, the amazing co-incidences and tan-
both sit in the same seat in the car and
talising fragments, ready for fame and death and
both have the privilege of sharing their
obscurity and success and failure and plans and
evenings and big chunks of their life with you.
schemes, this and that stuff, it’s all here - whats not
been burnt or tossed, lost, taken to dumps in the
Both get to go on walks and
trailer load by malignant ex-wifes, flat mates and
both can be subject to tender administrations
landlords - so what are you doing - taking stock
for any small foibles like skin
at times as you pack. other times are moments of
eruptions, bleeding wounds, hair loss.
pure blind panic shoveling as you close your eyes
and say to yourself ‘I will deal with this particular
Both can be made to bathe when they become
bit of past-life heartbreak another time’. You revel
smelly.
in small joys. unearthing the bad also exhumes
Both can be told what to do.
the good, as some kind of sunlight-driven breath
Both can be trained to do what you want.
blows life as lovers from ten years ago take shape
Both can be kept either on a short leash or
and ideas, scrawled twenty-five years ago, ger-
can be let off the chain.
minate and feel right again. So into this curious
new light I go, fore-warned as always, ready for
Both are your companions and now
anything, pencil behind-my-ear-attitude. so there. I
both have the honor, dubious or not, of
have amends to make, things to do, places to be.
being your bestfriends. Nice analogy, eh?
Stuff to write.
Today. Today. Today.

forgetful
poets are their own creative autobiographers.
And most importantly, they have the
license to make sense of things,
to use these feelings for themselves.
It’s better than mourning, doing nothing
and I do feel better already. Cheers.
ill wishlist #225
I hope he smokes with scant regards for others.
I hope his breath smells of beer and ashtray and slime.
I hope he still lies about on a tattered single bed,
watching a small black and white telly,
perpetually switched to the racing channel,
being inspirational.
I hope he gets pissed every night.
I hope he has a small intellect,
a tiny vocabulary and a stupid
penis he uses as a battering ram.

Just a quick burst
He must be an intellectual collosus and
he must have a phallus like a god
fit to worship at your temple.
He must possess the strength of a
hundred men and the emotional
fortitude of Ulysses.
He is Homer on the saturday afternoon
quest to the pokie parlour or the TAB or
to the supermarket to get some greenmilk
or tofu or your golden fleece.
He must have the patience of Moses and the home
making skills of Betty Crocker
crossed with a no-expenses spared vegetarian.
He must possess a car so that you can
be driven around and for you to
slowly fill with your rubbish.
the Databug
Lord
the databug must be the size of a cigarette
packet or smaller.
It must employ the latest autosensing
chameleon cloaking technology to render
it virtually invisible as it climbs up the
sides of skyscrapers or hovers just outside.
It must be able to scan all frequencies
of sound siluntaneously,
It must be able to capture all forms and
formats of data, suck it from all digital
devices within its 500 metre range such as;
cellphones, computers, printers, fax
machines, photocopiers, microwaves,
TV’s, CD, MP3 and DVD players,cameras,
routers and firewalls.
It must be able to store all data to memory
or seamlessly stream it to your waiting
laptop up to 8kms away at terrabyte
transmission rates, where sophisticated
software will create a real-time data map
of digital information awaiting further
investigation.
Cheers Lord.

Sweet dreams
Your car leaves during pre-dawn darkness.
It must be a cold drive home at that time,
frosty, crescent moon hanging low in the sky.
Maybe you’re tired after all that cunnilingus
and just want to crawl, liquid and languid
into your own cold bed.
Post-coital sleep comes to you easily.
You have sweet dreams. Nice.
the smell of the well-off
outside the cafe downwind
I take advantage of the southerly
to appreciatively smell the perfumes of
middle class woman walking past on their
way from the hairdresser and beauty
saloon
the scent is cloying and familiar -
I once lived within its olfactory
reach on a 24 hour basis,
not vicarious from a distance like this
but in deep, up to my neck
with high maintence issues like winelists
mains and dessert menus, shoe selections,
accessories, jewelry and car leasing
agreements and dinner parties.
glad to be out of that, finally
and with no sign of a resurgance in any
shape or form.
prayers for geeks number nine
or lord please make the digial swiss army knife
with a;
2 terrabyte usb flash memory and a wiki tarball of everything
an lcd video projector
and gigabyte wireless ethernet
cb and sw and fm and am radio
cellular phone and paging
mp3 player, digistll and video camera
microscope and a telescope with
a connection to the hubble,
and a microwave for cooking food.
a dictaphone and a microphone and an answerphone,
swipecard and magnetic strip and barcode reader,
g.p.s. and emergency locator beacon,
universal t.v. slash car alarm slash door opener remote,
torch and mirror and cigarette lighter and can and
bottle operner, a toothpick a laser pointer and a plasma cutter.
and lord
this device is no bigger than an iphone,
there are no cables on this device
and lord
may its black gunmetal titanium case be both
solar powered and leech its electricity out
of the static charged cosmos fog
and lord
may it seek its own video device nearly or use
a h.u.d. to a cool pair of geek glasses which
gives me as much or as little digiglitch info as i need.
and lord
may i type and play a keyboard on a
pressure sensitive hologram as well as speak to tell it what
to do,
and lord
this device should be an electronic encrypted
wallet, emulate every sytnthesiser, game console
and computer and o.s. ever, be an interweb and realtime
streaming metadata server, an alarm clock and barometer,
a kickarse drum machine and 64 track recording and
playback studio.
and lord
it must suck data from everywhere around it like a vaccum
cleaner and it should open every filetype known to
computing, ever
and lord
this device must last at least 35 years, always be updated
for free and working always as perfectly as the day it was
first made.
cheers lord.
I just have to laugh...
because of the little things
that make you realise
that you are not dead and rotting
but alive and kicking and typing
as you watch your breath
condense in the cold night air.
Cool.
romance / wet blade shave
Shaving is like an extra
three hours of sleep,
applied by cold water,
foam and razor blade,
looking in the mirror,
you take stock of the
fact that your eyes,
bloodshot from no rest
still resemble
road maps of europe.
I’ve been watching mass produced pullets,
caged reared, learning HOW TO BE HENS
and not battery chooks, spooked
its as if sunlight is a powerful force never
before experienced, it makes them stop all
activity and they spread eagle wings and
stretch and fan and prostrate all in one
kind of graceful movement
first experience of rain, cold wind.
eating grass, scratching, pecking.
sleeping on roosts instead of the
sloping wire cages.
silence, space, room to stretch wings room
to run and room to try and fly or glide.
room to be spooked by the dog, friendly
labradouring and slobber
room to nestle, fluff about. room to drink their
fill, room to meet pine needles and get to
know them. room for roads and gravel and
earth banks, thistles, weeds, clay, clumps,
insects, bugs, snails and worms
 the
also by david merritt
in overdraft at the bank of human kindness - gung ho 1987
big on old cars - gung ho 1988
which one is the shark? - gung ho 1989
55x5 minute poems - gung ho 1990
hasty notes - frantic scrawl - gung ho 1990

game is
no cup of tea at the railway station - gung ho 1991
good new friend goes swimming - gung ho 1992
Internet - a NZ users guide - Penguin Books - 1995
big book for fourteen letters - one cent press - 2002
the end of the beginning [selected writings - 1986-2003] - gung ho 2004

always
a mixture of wishes - exit poems - landroverfarm press 2009
prayers for geeks - kilmog press 2009

gridlocked in grids - one cent press 2010

this is the book of chips

ISBN 978-0-9582952-0-8
landroverfarm press
Creek Road Mangamahu Aotearoa
for
three
Box 243 Whanganui .

©
copyleft david merritt 2009

players
Authors assertion: Including brief passages quoted in newspaper,
magazine, radio and television review, all parts of this work may be
re-published, re-produced, re-performed, re-distributed or
re-transmitted in any form or media and by any other means
electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording or any
information data or retreival system now known or yet to be invented,
without permission in writing from the author, his authorised agent(s)
and his hiers.

david merritt
 Fiveminutesofpeace

it’s been a good game but... I like the way it’s going for me. Mozart.
Solitude. Fire. Poems flowing.
it’s a game which ends when Sun warm. Waterproof.
a player can’t take it any more. I am at peace for five minutes.
And the game always ends in
Until I close my eyes
sorrow for one player and relief for the other or
and I see you and him,
maybe a combination of both feelings. Cha!
walking an imaginary dog
down an imaginary beach
into an imaginary
endless sunset,
over and over and over again
everyday at dusk
for the rest of your jolly,
happy, satisfied lives, eh?

Content in a tent, haha
Tonight I’ve decided that I have no time to waste.
I’m waiting for the sound of the rain
to provide soothing static to fall asleep by.
And not close your eyes and
know you are
fiftymetres away
and I am in a tent,
alone and no worse off for it.
Fleeting shadows
Did you know that I stand outside
my place late at night, thoughtful and smoking.
I am watching the fluro patch of light just across the
road there for your fleeting shadow.
Did you know that’s when I can’t sleep?
I just have to close my eyes and there you
are, fleeting, moniochromatic in the shadows. Nice.
it’s over, again and again and again...

The game is over when one of the parties

refuses to play and
the game is over when one of the parties
declines coffee three times and
the game is over when one of the players is
injured emotionally and Enough, game over #44
has to be carried off by his former lover for
rest and recreation. The game for two players ends
when one player calls out foul play and
The game is over when one of the players clearly says the words ‘enough’ five times.
realises that the opposition plays dirty.
The game is over when you move your
carpark across the road.
And the game is not yet over obviously.

It’s just that the oranges have run out

after our many half-time breaks.
Team talk

At half-time you have have a huddle with yourself.

Currently it is the closest thing to intimacy in your
life.
Send in the clowns
I’ve got to get on top of the other player, you tell
yourself. The game ends when one player acknowledges
I have to gain parity in the tight and then swing it that he or she has a broken heart.
out wide. No medical assistance is present at the game and
you are stretchered off in the 18th month,
After the game your old friend never joins you in your playing career with this person looks to
the be over for this season at least.
showers. Instead she has parked her car just
across the
road in her own half of the playing field,
where it will park night after night after night.

You slowly realise that she is fiftymetres away,

driving you mad with love and sorrow and
sadness and hope all rolled into one.

Time up on the clock
The game ends when one player
runs out of puff, steam and space out wide.
The game ends with a blind side move
that leaves you gasping at its sheer cruelty.
You wear sprig marks on your heart for years.
(sameasiteverwas sameasiteverwas)
relationship round table
The game ends when one player
realises that the goal posts keep shifting
and the game ends when one player
realises the playing field is uneven, tilted, lumpy and
the game ends when the playing field
becomes a quagmire, a bog, treacherous conditions,
slippery underfoot

injury time
The game ends when one player is nursing an old
heartache,
it flares up early in the first half and you
are constantly troubled by it
eventually the game ends and the heart heals,
leaving a permanent scar in the places where
trust, cherish and care once resided. Nice.
you played a good game but...
the game ends when one player signals exhaustion
or player
burnout or despair or madness or sadness or all of
these things.
The game ends when one player realises
that the game is no longer pleasant or fun.
The game ends when one or more player realises
that
playing the game is the equivalent of a full-time
eight hour dayshift of agonising ambiguity. Cha!
Working title #15

The game ends when the laughter ceases

to exist and
Collateral damage
the game ends when there is no joy or
love left for the game.
The game ends when innocent spectators are hurt.
the game ends when you loose heart to
The game ends when the pitch gets invaded
continue for another minute
by your new friends substituted off the bench.
the game ends when the game ends. Full
They are impact players,
stop.

Game over #34
The game is over when you realise
that the rules are constantly changing and
the game ends when one person refuses
to play any more, even in a friendly match.
the game is starting to end...
when you run out of ideas, new game plans and
set moves from the base of the scrum.
The game ends with a broken heart, just fiftymetres
across the road, typing sixteen exhilerating hours a
day.
More game analogy #443

Game over when one of the players realises that the game hurts,
that it has brutal forward movements, a shut down back line and
a lack of gameplan as the game wears on.
Game over #63
You try another gameplan but the rules have changed,
your old gameplan didn’t work and now the new one won’t and The game for three players ends when one player
all future gameplans forever will be useless. realises that they have been paying for the game
all the time and have now permanently run out of
twenties.