New Zealand literature has no one like Keith Hill. Always surprising, a genuine original. - Roger Horrocks
THE MODERN DILEMMA
Having spent a lifetime of Western privilege
doing the limbo while jumping over my knees
I feel it is my right now to proclaim
I consider myself short-changed.
During hours spent stopped in rush hour queues
I have meticulously catalogued the disparities
between what people heap on their teaspoons
and the unnamed ghouls that slink
past their windows at night.
I will try to keep it short.
But there is no way to make it pretty.
I begin by stating the obvious.
Everyone is so distracted by abstract nouns
-democracy religion economics freedom
biology sexuality orientation identity
status fashion novelty literature-
they don't notice what is really going on.
I refer to the modern process
by which the machinery of civilisation
inserts a straw into the brain
extracts the juices
then pounds what is left to form
an attitude a person a career a place in jail.
How do you stop the juice being extracted
from your brain?
Some consider such questions a category error
arguing being overwhelmed with doubt
has for too long been misconstrued
as evidence human beings possess a soul.
Others petition the ancient prophets' God
who wrote all his bestsellers millennia ago
and has long since succumbed to writer's block.
This has left modern humanity perplexed.
We are each now a troubled mind staring out
through the sockets in our endoskeleton
eyes roaming like searchlights
across the bumps and crevices of the world.
Only the undaunted few dare look down to
observe their toes hanging over the ledge
below which yawns the precipice
that separates life from death.
This is not a sight for beginners.
