A Mystery

Wished there was a way
to convey to you
my journey at this stage ...
When reasons fail me,
and lack of understanding
        seems blinded by darkness
I can’t get out of!
Feels like
         a stumbling block
A mystery to myself
as I thought I’ve out grown
this type of dilemma.

I feel like a dry desert,
my soul burnt to cinders
In my solitude I try
         to pray
My thoughts stray
         and can’t recall
What am I praying for?
If theres a purpose
         show

It pleased me heaps seeing them run away all together, as if they had planned it before being separated by the clouds that spat them out like an angry mother wanting its solitude, and then joining in unison again like they always had a little clever plan. Clever raindrops, you deserve a smile and your freedom. At least you were honest with yourselves and brave enough to do something about it. Yep, you deserve admiration.

What to tell mum, what to tell mum? I saw the train

Fragile?

Fragile States
sitting on a bespeckled ocean.
Like humpty dumpty they desperately
try to put you back together (again)

When will they realize that you
were never the golden egg that all
the king’s horses and all the king’s men
Lusted after. Rather, your beauty escapes their
Blind eyes and continues to live on in the tautala
of our ancestors and the pride of the tauvala…

The richness of us that will
always evade those who subscribe to the belief
that they

AOTEAROA SAMOAN CHINESE
By Rev Mua Strickson-Pua

Aotearoa
where I was born.
Samoan
Malaela and PapaSataua.
Chinese
from Canton China.

My Gafa
my whakapapa
my family lineage.

Who I am

POLYNESIAN PANTHERS By Rev Mua Strickson-Pua Urban Pacific history records your noble deeds young Pacific women and men working together standing up for our people repaying a generation here and those yet to come. A contribution of a struggle so fundamental to breathing for lifes

At the inaugural PEN Asia and Pacific Writer’s Conference, held in Melbourne, November, 2005, I was one of three keynote speakers alongside Aboriginal author Alexis Wright and Kirpal Singh. This was an incredibly exciting and electric conference, directed with skill and deep humanity by Berni Janssen, PEN and all their helpers.Tales of torture and threats endured by many of the Asian authors present gave a wider perspective to the concept of writing for survival. We acted as