Stink Hood
Bro, Roskill ain’t the same after Big Wednesday
Fresh bomb dribbles down the post box
We got post-apocalyptic streets, post-quake, post-Enola Gay
McDonalds sacks leave the gutter clogged
alongside jerkied dogs. Hedgehog guts evaporate.

Picket fences shed their paint like snakes
Sewers puke soapy water. Each lawn
is strewn with Woodstock cans. Council grades
defame the best budget curry shops; the best restaurant
is Mobil On The Run: hygiene rating A.

Busted bus stop glass, like Kristallnacht was yesterday
Central Leaders dumped in the impotent river.
Insomniac airport traffic, sooty highway
Chinglish bakeries, displaced refugees, lost trolleys
Alkies commiserate with their mates: Cody, Jack, Jim & José.

Twisted-postured bums, their work shirts greyed,
fish in the bins, compete with hovering wasps.
Work & Income’s drawn its roller doors, a sign declaims
Closed: Saturday. We’re as trapped as a pot full of crays.
So, to the TAB, the boys, the race


We dawdle on the crossing, huffing spraypaint
In the pub haze we slap backs, swap disses,
wipe Lion Red from our lips, beeline straight
for the urinal, biff extinguished ciggies in the foamy piss.
Zipper’s stuck? Fuck it. Go untucked. Horse ain’t won? Delay

despair with 20 menthol Holidays.
In the Two Buck Shop, we nick a hi-vis vest. See,
Hirequip has us shovellin’ shit for minimum wage,
Like tweakers scrubbing windscreens for their grams of P.
Or the matai getting exercise for his aiga lugging Mad Butcher snarlers in a suitcase.

Coz Maungarongo Roskill ain’t no celebrity volcano, no Surtsey, it’s just most of us are stuck here like stone bodies at Pompeii, cast in
The same old molds: Māori, Somali, Hindu, Honky, Iraqi, PI,
beanie, hardhat, turban, burqa, beret –
you are what your Community Services Card says.

A burb bent as a boxer’s nose, Roskill wrecked and remade,
In alleyways, mobs of Mongrels in jandals walk pigdogs on chains
MAGS Boys and Baptist Bloods one-out in the Domain.
Our hood’s a fob watch which runs on rusted cogs.
Roskill, dawg: impoverished and rich. Where do YOU stay?