PAUA HOUSE BLUFF

Fred and Myrtle Flutey

On entering, you come to the conclusion

that the Baroque

was not recherché or evolved, but happened

naturally, spontaneously

- it had to.

Welcome to the Kraken's grotto, an atmosphere

of artful contrived

mermaids mermade from stingrays.

Sea-opal on the wall, Gaudi's mutating cathedral

wedding cake resized on a more

human scale          fit for a small town –

a simplicity

that breeds terraced cloudscape palaces.

This is the childhood forest

bristling with paradox where unconscious

archetypes go to die.          A magpie's eye

is home among the chaos

of souvenirs:          collect collect

collect - horde up other lives against the word.

If anything

be reassured that somewhere still

boys dive for pearls, girls wrestle with wolves

for magic love-charms.                    Here

in the magic storeroom of impossibility lie

the unanswered question

and time bomb third wish.

Here the forgotten, Tumbolia of lost things: the keys

to Limbo: the Kingdom

of Alien Logic.                    Go

curator of the hardly possible, historian

of hyper-reality kitsch dreams, Mr and Mrs Quixote,

radical semiologist, Minister

of Kiwi Kultur.                    Tell me

the syntax of paua shells.                    Go

to Paua Paradise.                    Children of all ages still

will come in giggling groups to breathe found curios in

the good witch's cave.

Earlier version published in Trout 8, 2000.