New World In Island Bay Poem by Keith Shorrocks Johnson

A 2-litre bottle of Diet Coke
from the New World Supermarket
here in Island Bay now costs $3.39.
When local poet James Brown
wrote ‘Disempower Structures in the New World'
twenty years ago, it cost $1.95
that's a 70 percent mark-up over time.
The car park is always full.

James spends much of his poem
decrying the 70 percent mark-up
charged by the local ‘dairy owners'
on Diet Coke, vis a vis the supermarket
- the offending capitalists in 1998
being first generation Gujerati immigrants
who run small, shabby corner shops
where you can buy milk+ at unsocial hours.

James seemed to think that
the seven-days-all-hours were making
an unjustified potential retail profit,
gouging him with a net consumer loss -
and went home counting his change
carefully after one convenient walk,
seeming to resent the dairy owner
talking in another language
as he gathered up his crying daughter.

Well, I'll have to talk to my mate ‘Alan'
about what he charges now for Diet Coke.
He used to give my little sons treats,
including gummy crocodiles or ‘crockers',
when we lived down on The Parade -
and my wife and I would chat to him
and his wife about India - both having
spent time there - Jane more than me.

Mind you, Alan's job is almost done
what with two sons now through
university and into secure, well-paid jobs -
and he's too stiff to bowl off spin nowadays
for the Wellington Indian team in Hatatitai.
I miss chatting to him - and his cheery
evening inquiry 'bisi-day? ' but we moved
to a bigger house up on the hill
and have to car down now to New World.

The young mums are still beautiful
But they are not the ones that either
James or I knew in our respective primes -
they don't notice an old feller like me
and I have to flirt with the checkout girls
with their squeeze-out smiles.
I saw my gay friend tonight with his
Lovely little daughter holding his hand tightly.

The dairy on Dee Street has closed
and the one on Mersey Street is closing
killed by lack of parking and the new cycleway

Now and again, there is a young white guy
who sits on the pavement
looking purposefully miserable
outside the New World,
with his beautiful, over-fed black Labrador,
begging for change and low denomination notes.

Oh, wonder!
How many goodly creatures are there here!
How beauteous mankind is! O brave New World.


P.S.

But bloody hell James, for all that,
what are you doing drinking Diet Coke?
If nonetheless you are still an addict,
FYI the 2-litre plastics are going for $1.95
'on special' at PAK'nSAVE in Kilbirnie -
setting aside nearness and one-to-one!