I am the Māori Jesus
A response to Baxter

i AM the Māori Jesus
And i don’t like
mussels and parāoa
Give me fish ‘n’ chips
with tomato sauce
Fresh white bread
and loads of butter
Butter makes
this country great
So feed my whenua
to the cows
for all i care

My father Hōhepa
worked at Watties
where they made the sauce
at least until redundancy
Now mother Mere
works behind the bar
at the Metropol Hotel
and does some cleaning
in the mornings

And you
will know me
by my Kēnana hair and
my wrap-around sunnies
whose eyes
you cannot see
But trust me
they have seen
my other Father’s light
and not
been blinded

So i can say
that i have met
the Devil personally
and been tempted
by his retinue
of sweet-mouthed whores
and silver salesmen
dripping promises
of Mammon
and extravagance

Yet underneath his
snakeskin smile
he wears a bland suit
of a nondescript shade
that fits him quite well
and he spends his days
conducting secretaries
who write infringement notices
demanding restitution

And i have been up to the temple
where i met the moneychangers
who offered me
a competitive rate of interest
and a little pink plastic pig
to put my shrapnel in
and fee rebates and a free holiday
in the Republic of Fiji to go with my
Visa card and my mortgage

But my other Father’s house
has many mansions
and i don’t pay no rent
so i don’t need no mortgage
and anyway the bankers
turned out to be wankers
who didn’t know their numbers
But all that imaginary money
went into somebody’s pocket
Sure as Arabs own oil
and your arse points downhill
and Mom & Dad America
got foreclosure sales
and dead kids in the desert but
STILL THEY BELIEVE

Meanwhile there’s a whale
needs saving
up near Kaikōura
but the bros got there
before DOC did
and they ate the bugger
back at the marae
like so many loaves and fishes
They made taonga whakairo
carved treasures
from his teeth and bones
So honouring the beast
and showing its
true worth

i shot up in a filthy flat
with a skinhead panel beater junky
who had his own name
tattooed on his dick
that you could only read
when he was hard
The implication being he was hard
when the needle bit the flesh
and spelled BARABBAS
i sold him
the last taste of his life
and saved his junky soul
in doing so

i lay down with
a wahine named Mary
Ah sweet Mary
So many Marys
and not enough time
to lie down with them all
And don’t get Freudian on me now
though she does bear

some small resemblance
to my mother
given grace
And bless her anyway
Her willingness to suffer all
the rage of Men
Yet freely shed her tears
with love
upon my tired
feet

i walked the roads
i raised a deadman from
the street beneath a tree
where pigeons routinely
shat upon him
dead or alive
i shared his bottle afterwards
drank a cheap toast to his life
before he told me to
piss off
But before you go boy
give me back my bottle

It don’t matter eh
Coz i got my brothers around me
My apostles twelve in all
or maybe thirteen i dunno
Been a while since i counted
but we’re a righteous crew
Staunch as
Patched up
Yo-fuckin-yo-bro

i got Jake the muss
and Tū the freezing worker
and Billy T James
in a black shearer’s singlet
i got Hone Tuwhare now
there’s a man who likes his mussels
i got a Rastaman from up the coast

ts threadbare weave
The kahukura has no
feathers
Free as death to fall
with grace
before your tired feet

i got several of his brothers, hell
i got the horses they rode in on
i got a slick-suited lawyer
from the city
and i even got you Hēmi
Every crowd needs a doubter

So you won’t catch me
walking on Wellington Harbour mate
Too bloody cold and windy eh
and too many bureaucrats pushing
compliance with occupational
safety and health regulations

Na not me man
i’m off up north with the bros
to the Hokianga
Choice dak eh
and a nice place
forever to leave from
Warmer too bro

Ben Brown

“First publication of I am the Māori Jesus was on a CD I recorded in 2009, for Dogtown. I performed it for two or three years before recording. I recorded Dogtown with Creative NZ funding. It was a 5 track CD with beats recorded independently as Fly on the wall productions. 
Had fun doing that.”
Ben Brown

Michele Leggott Plays Favourites

What is the time of a poem? Or, rather, how many times does it have? When Ben Brown walked to the front of the Old Government House lounge in Auckland in 2010, his signature poem ‘I am the Māori Jesus’ was already well on the way to becoming part of the long conversation that is Aotearoa New Zealand poetry.

The occasion was PHANTOMS AT LOUNGE, a collaboration between the New Zealand Electronic Poetry Centre (nzepc) and Phantom Billstickers, organised by the late Jim Wilson to launch another edition of his poem posters. Ben was part of the line-up that read poem posters for poets, local and international, who couldn’t make it to the event. Then he launched into ‘I am the Māori Jesus’ and his Auckland audience — students, poets, musicians and general hangers-on — sat up and tuned into the extraordinary echo chamber Ben was creating right in front of us:

“You can’t get through a poetry gig in Aotearoa without some kind of Baxter buzz so this is mine. On the Writers’ Walk in Wellington are cement words facing the sea from the Baxter poem that begins:

‘I saw the Maori Jesus
Walking on Wellington Harbour.
He wore blue dungarees.
His beard and hair were long.
His breath smelt of mussels and paraoa.
When he smiled it looked like the dawn.’

And they are some beautiful words for a good Catholic white boy from Otago with Māori sensitivities. The only problem I have with them you see is:

i AM the Māori Jesus
And i don’t like
mussels and parāoa
Give me fish ‘n’ chips
with tomato sauce
Fresh white bread
and loads of butter
Butter makes
this country great
So feed my whenua
to the cows
for all i care”

Lyttelton poet and performer Ben Brown (Ngāti Paoa, Ngāti Mahuta), takes on the poem James K Baxter published only once in his lifetime, in a little magazine in 1966, opening a dialogue between Pākehā observer and Māori subject that looks straight back at the Jesus figure Baxter posits and which Ben rejects. Detail by detail the younger poet takes apart Baxter’s water-walking Christ and his mission among the urban down and out, putting in its place a different lived experience.

There is humour, cockiness, and harder truths than Baxter was prepared to entertain. Nevertheless Ben’s poem, in the words of Paula Green, jams with Baxter’s from the moment its speaker declares ‘i AM the Māori Jesus / And i don’t like / mussels and parāoa’. It brings on board Alan Duff’s Jake the Muss and Apirana Taylor’s Tū the freezing worker; Billy T James and Hone Tuwhare (‘now there’s a man who likes his mussels’). It might even loop in McCahon’s enormous ‘I AM’ canvas, Victory Over Death 2, with its wall-hung words to  walk past and wonder at.

In 1966 Baxter couldn’t know he was already on the road that would lead to Jerusalem and the commune he founded there three years later. But his poem knows, and Ben certainly knows, and that is why the later poem heads up north to a home place on a harbour that is the equivalent of a long drive up the Whanganui River.

‘I am the Māori Jesus’ is the kind of poem you don’t want to end. It’s rich in texture, amused as well as irritated by the older poet’s construction of a protagonist meant to draw down sympathy for the oppressed, Māori and Pākehā alike. Except, says the younger poet, they aren’t alike and why should we pretend they are.

Does ‘I am the Māori Jesus’ extinguish ‘The Maori Jesus’? Hardly. Instead, it amplifies the earlier poem, widens its circle of reference and provokes its later audiences with wit and graceful substitutions that link back to Baxter’s poem.

Then there are the first lines of ‘The Maori Jesus’ in stone (actually concrete) set into the pool on the northern side of Te Papa as part of the Wellington Writers’ Walk. On the opening day of the walk in 2002, Baxter’s son John McColl Te Wharematangi Baxter (1952-2026) leapt into the pool and threw arcs of water over his father’s words. His mihi was caught on camera by Evening Post photographer John Nicholson and remains one of the most memorable moments of cultural consonance I can think of.

The two poems, decades apart, are perhaps best understood in their powerful performances by poets who know how to send waves of sound over any audience that wants to listen. Listen to Ben Brown performing ‘I am the Māori Jesus’ for nzepc’s Six-Pack Sound in 2016 (link below). Listen to David Eggleton performing ‘The Maori Jesus’ against an atmospheric soundscape by Wellington composer David Downs for the CD Baxter released in 1999.

What is the time of a poem? Any time a voice carries it into the future.

My thanks to Ben Brown, David Eggleton, Paula Green, Paul Millar, Tim Page and Philippa Werry for their help with piecing together the layers of this appreciation.

Michele Leggott

A timeline for two poems

1966: James K Baxter publishes ‘The Maori Jesus’ in Eikon, issue 2, December 1966, p. 18. Reprinted in Collected Poems, edited by John Weir, Oxford University Press, 1979, pp. 348-49. Reissued in 1995 and 2004.

1997: Bruce Morrison and Paul Millar include ‘The Maori Jesus’, recorded by Michael Hurst, in their TV documentary The Road to Jerusalem. Commentary and poem at 58:40:

1999: David Eggleton records ‘The Maori Jesus’ for Baxter CD with a soundscape composed by David Downs:

2002: Wellington Writers’ Walk features the first stanza of ‘The Maori Jesus’ in a pool on the northern side of the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, facing the harbour.

2007: Ben Brown (Ngāti Pāoa, Ngāti Mahuta) performs ‘I am the Māori Jesus’ for a Green Party fundraiser at the Lyttelton Coffee Company. The poem is recorded in 2009 for his CD Dogtown (2010).

2010: Ben performs ‘I am the Māori Jesus’ for PHANTOMS AT LOUNGE, 28 April 2010.

2013: ‘I am the Māori Jesus’ appears in Ben’s debut poetry collection Between the Kindling and the Blaze, published by Anahera Press. Review by Paula Green for Poetry Shelf.

2016: Ben records ‘I am the Māori Jesus’ at the University of Auckland for Six-Pack Sound, 30 March 2016.

Ben Brown (Ngāti Mahuta, Ngāti Koroki, Ngāti Paoa) writes children’s books, short stories and poetry for children and adults, general non-fiction, freelance articles and memoir. In 2006 he won Best Picture Book with artist/illustrator Helen Taylor in the NZ Post Children’s Book Awards with their book A Booming in the Night. His poetry has been published in various anthologies here and around the world and Radio NZ and The Radio Network have also recorded him. In 2011 he was the Maori Writer in Residence at the Michael King Writers Centre in Devonport Auckland. His poetry collection Between the kindling and the blaze was shortlisted in the 2014 Nga Kupu Ora Aotearoa Maori Book Awards. In 2021 he was appointed inaugural Te Awhi Rito New Zealand Children’s Reading Ambassador. He was the Te Kaipukahu University of Waikato Writer in Residence in 2024. He is also a father of two, which he considers his best work to date.

Michele Leggott’s recent publications include Face to the Sky (Auckland University Press, 2023) and Groundwork: The Art and Writing of Emily Cumming Harris (Te Papa Press, 2025), co-authored with Catherine Field-Dodgson and long-listed for the 2026 Ockham award for illustrated non-fiction.