tuuaahu tears

semi-permanently
are my eyes now

worn red
with life's heartache

Every
Thing
Feels like a Mis-Take:

the solitude I so 
desperately desire

enforced, rather than chosen

December '23:
I had no
idea

(no-one can see you crying

if it's pissing down with rain
if you've all got your

eyes 

closed, ohm)

my eyes
swollen like
my womb
the puncturing of which
began the tears

(this banshee comes out
only under the cover of bush)

swiping at the deadwood
as if it was his fault

grief festering in
my left lung.

unsurprisingly,
I'm sick

I'm ageing,
I'm dying

ngaaruawaahia in autumn

 I know where the words went ! -- oh,
     they were lost in
     not enough time 
     Spent Alone,
too little Timelessness --
     they dissolved into
     schedules, stimulus & strategies

-- nothing to do with
     inhale, exhale
 or
   creative sap
   running dry...

making love
    might bring them back.
hibernation, contemplation, full moon dreaming
    ... yes.

It's the shape & sound
    of a warm bed with an 
    old lover
this autumnal, transitional air

yes -- it smells like the majick I remember --

except --
      I am All Here. 
No smoke, 
      no mirrors
I still find myself in desire
      but I see it, quickly,
      easily. 

Visions -- Capital "V" Visions 
      can ride on the back of me,
      for sure --

it's City Energy
      in the dead still 
      of small town / middle of nowhere

this time, I will 
       Not Abort --
visions can and will and MUST
Descend to Earth. 

This I promise You:
We Will. 

Space will be carved out /
The most important thing
       done first. 

ropar, punjab

 i.
all in a rush
       the words return.
perhaps the rest, the reading or the bleeding
       drew them out. 
perhaps the heart unfurled
       as life was put on pause
       and purpose.
... whichever, they're here.

ii.
when I marry,
       I will marry a whole world.
what I love,
       what I have always loved,
       is the whole universe -- 
the sprawling bracnehd limbs
       of a being
       suspended in dependent origin,
no part isolated
       nor whole in its own right,
and yet --
       imperfectly complete
       in perfect complexity.

iii.
there's little else to say,
       except to describe
the sheer joy
       of watching time and space /
       folding in
on itself. 

iv.
it should be your hand, mama
      carving forms, shapes, colours here;
instead,
       mine.
       revealing what's heard. 

defector

I wanna be like Jack
with a world for a pack 
and the fearless form of two legs

straight thru, east coast to west

I wanna nirvana my best hedonist heathenism

and kick up a sweat
rolling in dust 

I wanna dusk and dawn forever,

a scramble of beginnings n ends

and skip out the uncertain 

blur of choice; 

I want

whatever I want whenever I want it,

and what I want 

I want it

now

and I wanna be a right bikkhuni,

living with nuthin’ but praying 

all night,

waking up 

enlightened

I wanna get my legs out in the summer,

propped up on thick boots

and bloody cut knees

I wanna eat humble bread

and $15 cheese

and survive on nothing

but a lonely alms round

I wanna cook on fire and empty 

my desire under the embers of dying stars,

resenting the biological need

for sleep

resenting sheep and yet spinning

a regular 8-6, goddammit

(with plenty of coffee breaks

but never the dukkah of diabetes.)

I wanna live forever and die young.

I wanna live forever in the Sun

and become brown and crusty

I wanna be a goddamn Queen 

and break bread like Jesus, 

entrepreneurial the beheezus

out of modern capitalism 

I wanna play the game

and fuk it all up,

infiltrating from the

inside 

out

I wanna be as high as a kite 

and earthy as a bleeding bow

I wanna speak with immensely profound clarity 

that rambles on rhymes with no reason 

I want each and every season

every month

on tap

I wanna be in the present moment 

and I don’t wanna have to wait for it.

I’ll do whatever I’m told

and love resenting every inch of it

I wanna kiss the life back into cold loves

and stuff my hurt back into my

womb

and feed it blood and bone fertiliser

and watch it grow each moon

I want to give Him a baby 

and then hand it over,

a good honest Concubine

with full rights on Joy

I wanna go back in time

and forward in space,

I wanna see the empty atoms and
holes in my dead face.

I want to remember every acre of every
memory across the aeons;

build it \ tear it down,

and build it up
again

I want a narrow tunnel of a vision

and the deafening suck of the city’s hum

I want gentle drum beats and roaring karanga,

a mish mash of the 

21st mind that 

changes
every 

instant 

I want a proper diagnosis, a

checklist of “yes”,

a fat booming throat 

whose tongue lashes,

“NO!”

I want to know time 

before it happens.

I want 

out

and I want

in. 

I want the 

nekkhamma of poverty

and the 

ability to give-give-give endlessly, honestly…

I want a First Rate Lover

with little-to-no defects;

As New, a

World of Worldly Wisdom

\ Made To Order;

a strictly monastic companion

bought On Tap.

Down into the big, gaping gap we’ll reach

and gasp, “Oh God!” when we

touch the Void.

right off the edge we’ll fall,

knowing it all all at once

and with

nothing to show

for it

down the rabbit hole we’ll swim and

never
come back for daze

and of our esoteric ways,

friends and strangers alike will say,

“gee, what a pair!”

Oh! what a cocoon we’ll spin,

us two fantastic beasts

(who knows where to find ‘em)

and from the soft, silky threads of us

we’ll catch

every

last

little 

fly

And then

we’ll die —

just to do it all again

but maybe… better,

next time.

sundays again and never

forever in the dusk
I want to be
dappled in evening sighs
and amber shadows, thighs
tanned and bare and hair
slightly wet

how much higher can we -- ?

your hands \ my ankles
I melted seven years through time
you took off your socks

that sweet relief

she runs over my chest
and into my hearteries
over my abdomen 
and behind my broken knees

I wish you would see me like this
I wish I would let you
I wish we
I wish I

october

I'm still wet with the tears of you
a year later,
little Ngaru

flooding forked rivers
across my cheeks
down the creases of my neck,
whenever the stream of possibility
runs between my legs

I still ache with the sharpness
of the loss you of,
little Ngaru

doubled over and dancing
my favourite dance on all fours,
four teeny misoprostol pills
clamped between my jaws

(perhaps that's why
my teeth are wearing down)

horizontal with grief
and grievous pain

a nook of love turned into a mile

you shook me up
good and proper

like nothing
will never 

and now I know
what I always knew

never.
again.

I must never
love another more than I love
my own womb

strange-r

 1.

and I wonder -
when it's time to fold into you,
will I open?
will the tears of my old wounds allow you in?
will we entangle ourselves in one another with ease?
will I still be able
to be gentle and gently led?
or will I demand you rough me around,
wilding out the nostalgia
of a hundred million lovers' hearts
and a sweet sigh of satisfactory silence?

on paper we're all a dream
but in the flesh, we're something
beyond this world entirely

my heart aches with the sun that never shone
and the warmth at the centre of me
burns with the fire
of every woman who's ever
melted her ribs into this earth

the sand is a thousand trillion tiny glittering pieces,
and so am I. 


2.

I know
I'm impatient
to know you

and I have no idea who you are

I'm wondering about our capacity to melt into one another 
when the sun comes up again
- will the forest breathe her spirit into our lungs
and teach us how to sing together ?
or will she sharply dig her branches into our sides
reprimanding our impatience

it's the apocalypse, tomorrow
and I can't wait to drown in the ecstasy of it all
do you wanna come with me to the end of the earth?
it lives between my legs
I've seen it all die so many times

and yet I'm still blinder than the bat
that fed the soup of this whole damn mess

yes, we're on the ark
it's time to drown. 

3.

go in there at night
and flesh out the skeletons
sing the bones back on 
and don't be afraid of the creature your skin conjures.

deltora

and it's like time folds in and reverses through itself
back, back she goes
moon full and melting into orbit
mapping sorry saturn's incessant turning, 
a churning choke for the decade's change

she goes out, she bursts open &
floods herself red,
gentle streams and devastating torrents and
dreams of sleepless sleeping
and eyes across the hallway
it's all amplified now, it's
all on record, all recorded --
keep your bluetooth razor sharp
and your mind in the mush

green holographic haze 
and dazed fickle fingertip imprints,
(this is where it hurts,
she says, poking below the ribs)
inter-continental existence interrupted
by a never-ending wish list
and an existential hiccup --

well, here we are.
this is what we were walking towards
when we decided to enter the stream:
it's a brave new world now, darling
so dream whatever you can dream. 

tendrils & mirrors \\ anarchy & lentils

I landed barefoot on this land --

touff, touff --

left then right,

a soft and gentle padding after years of ocean-spanning flight --

anchoring the arches of myself down, down into the soil...

I listened sightlessly through my soles

seeking to transplant Her DNA through the veins of me,

atom by atom,

taking back from Adam.

searching for a bottomless cavern, 

in which to send out the tendrils of me

sssshhhjjooumm

into the murky darkness

sssshhhjjooumm

searching a cushiony embrace to drown in the depths of

and stealthily like water

the tendrils made their way into every crevasse, every crack, every fracture...

seeking out every millimetre 

until nothing's left.

When I'm baptised, I run

and when I run, I keep running,

and I sprint

and I keep sprinting

until I'm back where I started

... because then I surely know, 

I've been everywhere. 

I've seen every corner, 

every signpost,

excavated every Every --

I'm the perfect Millenial

the rushing woman / searching soul

I want every Every

and what I want I want

now.

So where is that deep spaciousness?

That piercing sensitivity?

I lost her in the expanse of me --

some have restored it, others leeched it away

always restless,

morphing, 

metamorphosing relentlessly 

transforming through different shapes of me

endlessly, endlessly,

ebb and flow,

like the glow of the full moon.

Where is her deep spaciousness?

Her striking sensitivity?

I see it in the iridescent circle of the moon,

stained by little boys' charcoaled fingertips,

yet still halting time for those who stop and sit with her a while. 

I hear her in the stoic ancientness of the land beyond the water --

she knows my name and asks me to speak hers 

(when I do, others stand next to me).

I feel her in the shifting dusk, reminding us

that everything must die.

elmira avenue (in autumn)

     
       || -- something comforting, nostalgic
       in the micro-mountainous footpaths,
       disrupted and distorted
       by the ageing roots of searching trees ---


                                                 stronger than cement &
                             reclaiming the earth below the earth
                                              restoring urban to jungle,
                                                           & chaos to order


                                   I   t r a v e l
b  a  c  k       i    n            t  i m  e


   I have a pink-and-white bike;
streamers flap from the handles
                                                   on either side,
     
       beads clinking in the spokes of
       wheels clinking over footpaths:
       ||
       an obstacle course
       crafted just for me
       by my friends, the trees, the trees, the trees
                             and in the autumn, crunch-crunching
                                       reddish-yellowy leaves, leaves

        || 27 ||||||||
        alone
        barefoot through the breeze
        folding my entire self in slow heartbeats
                                                       of the trees,
                                                       of the trees.