Aotea Square

 

Finally just us two

reclining on the shores of Aotea square

The absolute epicentre

of any bonafide

Auckland urban romance

 

I’m convincing you the pavers

could almost be sand

If you squint hard enough anyway

But I’ll say any old guff

just to make you smile

 

The sun’s evaluating the skyline

It’s making me drowsy

or you’ve doped me with the pretzels

I swear the odd gradient of these steps

is identical to a beach on the tip of the Coromandel

I can’t quite remember the name of

or perhaps I never knew to begin with

 

Your polygamy story soon jolts me out of my reverie

En masse the city dwellers

are lying around sun-drunk

sprawled all over my fake foreshore

in their suitably fake sunglasses

half watching the Chinese cultural festival

cryptically splash at our feet

 

We’ve got gigs across town from one another

so we’re play-acting

sulky besotted teenagers being torn asunder

by unspecified forces

much larger than our-tragic-selves

 

The IMAX sign looks down frowning, unconvinced

and for heaven’s sake, it would know!

 

Marcus Sellwood

 

 

Marcus Sellwood is a musician and occasional poet. He was born in central Auckland and has lived his whole life there. He likes to write about his experiences of the fast-changing city.