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.