Five poems from My Bourgeois Apocalypse
#16 (Shall we try again with another year?)
Well, it wasn’t quite the year I imagined – I did not imagine a
global pandemic and to be locked down at home. ‘The present
becomes the past through increments too small to measure;
suddenly something that is becomes something that was, and
the way we live is not the way we lived’ (Rebecca Solnit,
Recollections of My Non-Existence). I could ask him to be more
honest with me, and ask him what he wants. I was under the
impression that he was ok, but then when we went to see him
in the evening he was not very good – his speech was hard to
understand and he was very tired and looked so tiny and
pitiful. The theme of my year is Vivere – To Live – but we
came up with another motto for the year yesterday: ‘Mostly it
would be better to be dancing.’ We both felt determined to be
warm, and we were. Ma cosa beviamo? Which is not to say
that I don’t still have a busy life of the mind – I certainly still
overthink. What did we talk about in the car … ? So much
soul-searching by Americans who want to believe their
institutions are sound, but also were so shocked by what
happened and want to understand it. I must be more careful
today. Sometimes I tell myself the sad version. I think I have
never danced so much as I did during lockdown. I felt very
passive – I didn’t resist, but didn’t encourage. I don’t know if
I want him to. I hope she realises I mean to be kind, even if it
was annoying. I did make friends with the cat though, and that
was nice. ‘Fade to Grey’? What surprised you the most when
you came to New Zealand? The terrible, terrible lunch (at Café
Breton). No wonder he wouldn’t suggest it. Certainly there
was sometimes room for confusion. I seem to have fallen off
the face of the earth. In a favourite children’s book someone
gives a bored little boy a magic stick – when he put it in the
ground, all kinds of interesting creatures would gather around
it for him to watch. So it’s not like I didn’t know, but somehow
I didn’t want to let myself believe it. I actually cried, because I
had been kind of girding myself. L and I danced with smiles
on our faces and our hearts open. ‘Right Here, Right Now.’
They listed suggestions of how to make things better at the
end. How to sneak in. I think it’s so important to tell people
that we appreciate them and what we love about them. How
could this bright light not have blinded me? And then nothing.
Or is it just how people are? But I guess I also kind of know
that it will rise again, and fall again.
#21 (We find ways to connect, even during lockdowns, especially during lockdowns)
Wednesday was the first of September, first day of spring, and
it was quite a gloriously sunny day. Last night, towards the end
of cooking dinner, and just as I arrived back in the house after
picking up the books I had left for N in the letterbox, which
she didn’t pick up because I had missed her, I was hit with a
sudden fury. After she mentioned Thoreau on our Zoom call
the other night, I listened to a podcast about him from In Our
Time. I phoned C – for the first time ever probably, but I
wanted to see how he was directly. It’s raining. Feeling like I
had some agency and control. She falls in love with him, and
he presumably falls in love with her, but they don’t really
speak. The houses are different, the views are different, the
giant macrocarpa presents a different face – I can see now that
it divides into several equal-sized trunks very low down. I
know how it feels to move within my body. Sometimes I think
you are no longer a person to me. The things I am walking
towards are the same thing, but different. I should have more
self-respect. Back now from an excursion after the 3pm
briefing, which told us we’re in level 4 until Tuesday. We got
pretty deep pretty quickly and I loved that. Losing the top
navigation is disorientating. I had a chat with V – we were
talking on the phone and she said she would like to show
people the woodland she was almost in – and so we switched
to a WhatsApp video call and it was her first one ever. But of
course it is untrue to say the most profound or intense. All in
all an unproductive day, with nice things, but it felt fraught.
But the main advantage of going the ‘wrong’ way around the
block is the difference in perspective.
#33 (I am no longer afraid of quicksand, but is that a mistake?)
I am waiting for something to happen. And I am feeling a bit
poorly, like I’m getting a cold, though I’m hoping to fight it
off – perhaps with the mulled wine I’m now drinking. There
seemed to be a light shining. I think we are both offering each
other something, but I’m not sure what. I had a coffee with
O, which got me out of the house. It reminds me of something
I read recently on the internet – where someone was noting
how out of proportion to reality the childhood fears of getting
caught in quicksand and the Bermuda Triangle were to their
actual threat. Maybe it was the yearning thing, the thing that
takes the place of god. Studio Italiano da sette anni. I couldn’t
quite articulate it to myself yet, but I wanted to talk to him. I
felt up for making dinner even. I like it when we don’t have to
shrink back from each other. Did SingStar! Especially enjoyed
the rosemary. When you said you did understand me I felt like
you could see into my soul and all the secrets there were laid
out for you. I kept thinking Spinoza was somehow going to
be important in my exploration of doubt, but every time I read
or listen to something about him I am left with impressions,
but few specifics. We did talk on the way down the stairs and
now I feel I probably should have been politer to everyone
else – asked how they were, etc. . . . S and I went for a drive
around the South Coast and because it was busy at Scorching
Bay we ended up at Polo in Miramar. Today I want to keep
journalling and maybe I’ll read, and maybe I’ll do some
gardening – I have weeds to pull out and also plants to plant.
#35 (Teen angst poetry is a necessary evil)
I had a very frustrating dream during my sleep-in, involving
not being able to find things and not being able to get them
to work – and then I think also feeling like people didn’t
understand. White blood cell count – not investigated. 14.
What colour are my emotions? Last Sunday I burned my teen
angst poetry in the roasting dish. It felt necessary. I think I had
lost myself – I was coming apart and I didn’t understand the
pieces. When might he go home? I don’t understand why I
don’t say things to him – why I can’t. I am feeling more my
adult self with my family at the moment, which is good I think.
We haven’t dealt with you before – want to know what your
colleagues think. I was so melodramatic and also really cynical.
Trust. 9. Why I loved horses. But actually, although I don’t
know if he asked me at all how I am – or not in a real way –
he did tell me quite a bit. I don’t actually want to put myself
down like that. I was delighted and said ‘It’s like you know
me!’ Did the intravenous furosemide help? I suspect the
reason I am drawn to poetry is because of my fear of revealing
too much. I’ll just leave it to fate. 11. People I have met who
have been murdered. When we group these people with these
people there is a necessary flattening, the way we see by not
seeing – most of what our eyes see is completely invented by
our active/overactive brain, and don’t even get me started on
memory – that spiderweb full of holes. She asked me lots of
questions, including one about what made Dad happy – I
started crying and said it was hard to know anymore, but after
a wee moment I did say that he liked visitors and music. 3.
Why I thought pine trees were native until I was about nine.
We had been going to get ice cream, but actually neither of us
had any way of paying for it – my wallet was in my bag in the
car with S. But back to last night – we were dancing to
‘Common People’ right up until midnight, when I switched to
‘Ride of the Valkyries’ to watch the fireworks and then we sat
in the lounge and talked. I’ve been telling the story to people
as my main way of processing everything I think. Sometimes
the relief of the build-up of tension followed by loosening will
leave me sobbing out the rest, letting go, wringing out. It was
night already, but the weird light that comes from car
headlights on fog is a different kind of blinding. 15. When I
began to doubt God.
#36 (His last phone call was a mixture of comedy and tragedy – but so is life)
I’m just now thinking about that in-between space, when he
was alive, but a little confused, and he said ‘Graeme
Mulholland’ – though I didn’t then know he was about to die,
but I guess he was moving between life and death, moving
between those worlds. I don’t know how to be, but maybe
neither does he. They’re just a bunch of fucking muppets – at
best – actively evil at worst. Anyway, we went back to the
hospital unsure, but I had a sense that something would help
us decide – that it would become clear and that we didn’t need
to decide that day. He told me they’d been friends since –
dunno, the ’50s? ’60s? I explained this to him, but now I suspect
he was waiting for her to come back before he died. Did
repaint fingernails (they are now blue). I think I said ‘Is he
dying?’, while not daring to believe it. ‘When assessing
greatness, ask yourself how many pianos would fit inside’
(Elisa Gabbert, The Self Unstable). It’s true I don’t quite know
how to ask for what I want though. It was around this time,
while I was leaning against the windowsill (which turned out
to be wet), that he texted me. Falling upwards into the sun. I
want to start doing writing exercises again – I want that kind
of play. Maybe the next thing was that two nurses came to
wash Dad to get him ready for the mortuary. This year I want
to try to have more balance in my friendships – there is
something in there about not needing to be the strong one,
and not needing to have the power – and also about being
seen. Well I’m Sulky McSulkypants really. My feeling was that
time, sure, but what she really needs is to feel stronger, more
substantial, but she was seeming like a bit of a husk. During
the film I didn’t cry as much as the others, but I did at the end,
and then I wanted to hug them all – as real, alive, people.
We’re going to change the car licence to Mum. I can manage
very little at the moment. I look forward to hearing more
about your thinking around what you want and how you want
to be in the next stage of your life. Enjoy time.
Helen Rickerby is a writer, editor, and publisher in Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington. She has published four previous poetry collections, including Cinema (Mākaro Press, 2014) and How to Live (Auckland University Press, 2019), which won the Ockham New Zealand Book Award in poetry in 2020. She single-handedly runs Seraph Press, a boutique but increasingly significant publisher of Aotearoa New Zealand poetry. Her next book of poems, My Bourgeois Apocalypse, comes out with Auckland University Press in 2026.
Helen writes: ‘I started writing the poems that will be published in My Bourgeois Apocalypse as an experiment, using randomly selected sentences from my journals. I liked the results – how disconnected, out-of-context fragments can build up into something; how our brains make meaning and connections. And they expressed some things I had found it hard to write about. So I kept crafting them. They cover six weird years of my life, which included a massacre, a pandemic, and some more individual griefs.’