south

The houses here are nestled into the base of the mountains, like tiny pups sleeping, curled into their mothers' soft bellies. The snow shines ultra-violet against the rose morning sky and it's easy to understand why these giants were personified by the land's tangata whenua. They are indeed alive, carrying the wisdom of an old kaumātua and the stillness of a person who speaks only when of utmost necessity.

The cold is different here - it's exhilarating, flushing your face with the crisp foreshadowing of afternoon sunshine. It's the kind of perfect air that makes you want to thrust your torso through the open window, forget your mortality and spiral around icy corners just to feel your blood accelerate in lieu of barista-made coffee.

We arrived in the dusk; Now we're leaving at dawn. Last night we turned off all the lights to let the fullmoon-lit snow flood us with its generous ambience in our tiny two by three cabin, inflated by the ski season and allowed by our desire to escape, if only for a few days.

Here, I realise the things that really matter are:
people
being
feeling
releasing.

day / eight

there's these arms
wrapped around
each others'
heads
and at times they look like lovers
but they are daughters, mothers

the arms - three - cut,
choke, slice
they form diamonds over purple eyes

wailing, shrieking, leaking salt
(both in and out the designated space)
index and pinky
strike, point; blank; fight
and all we've seen within our seven sights
manifests,

these women know
the All that all women know
and with the fleshy parts of them allowed to speak
they are
Speaking -
fleshing words out of stacked fists
as their brothers do
scratching sentences from throats
carving mouthfuls out of teeth

for centuries we've been taught
to be seen and not heard
so we will be seen.
and we will not be unseen.

whito

we were in that other plane
as we approached that cave
end of the beach, the
darkness shook us --

I was the first to say it
because I was
unravelling
but you concurred immediately
there's something there
we knew it:
the land was holding.

so we turned swiftly in our sluggish bodes
"sorry," I said aloud
because it was necessary
for it to know
we knew our error.

I wove the reo into my speech,
talking of "tapu"
so it would know
I was friend,
so it would forgive
me, us

I'm trying

-- back to our designated place
where we exchanged money
to sleep by the pou
I wrapped my blanket tighter around me
in lieu of a coat
in lieu of cup of tea
the thing we want
the most
right now

cold enough to know we're here
high enough to know the difference
centred enough to know the thing
and white enough not to see it

old

I want to be not sleeping again
and be alive in it
and be alive in it
and be alive in it

I want to feel the endlessness of night
and still
hear the sun
in the morning

I want to spend hours curled into you
and still
hear the sun
in the morning

I want to create hundreds of versions of myself
and still
hear the sun
in the morning

I want to be not sleeping again
and be alive in it
and be alive in it
and be alive in it

grading

Clarity comes tomorrow.

I'll burst from the moon's glare,
see both eyes level

Mercury and I,
backwards so long
(it feels like we-)
here now I'm forwards,
here I start 

and I felt

                something

                                  in my grip over you
and yours 'round my shoulders

        maybe there's the magic
that'll keep my nostalgia
   from wandering K' Rd
with that light in my eye
matching men who've
                                    fed
                                           my ambition, and
boys oblivious to/o
                                being under it

I worry.
because I know

comfort dictates
         / and denies
that habit of mine

and because I know

my lungs could still love you
and love inhaling the night
       an alternating respiring
of my aloneness
       and / pressing noses with you.          

"Western culture has confused mystery with "something to be solved", rather than something "to be serenaded."

- Helen Avery

We wanted to see, but were made blind. 

So electrified by the infinite possibilities, we rendered ourselves useless, unable to motion a single step towards greatness. 

Our flesh fatigued and our heads weary but wired, we gave in to the exhaustion of our own expectations.

All images by Blair McTaggart.

Everything Anyone Ever Wanted | Black Sheep Productions 

21 - 25 June 2016 @ Q Theatre

everything

The base things that anyone ever wanted can be reduced into a few simple words: Love. Happiness. Fulfilment. Simplicity. But these are not simple concepts. "What makes me happy?" is not a simple question, nor is it one that many people can even answer for themselves. Love often doesn't arrive - not from ourselves least of all - and doing that which fulfils you isn't always sustainable enough to fulfil you totally.

If you could have any one thing in your life right now, what would it be? How would you reduce the thing that brings you happiness into a single word ?

"We live together we act on, and react to, one another; but always and in all circumstances we are by ourselves. The martyrs go hand in hand into the arena; they are crucified alone. Embraced, the lovers desperately try to fuse their insulated ecstasies into a single self-transcendence; in vain. By its very nature every embodied spirit is doomed to suffer and enjoy in solitude. Sensations, feelings, insights, fancies - all these are private and, except through symbols and at second hand, incommunicable. We can pool information about experiences, but never the experiences themselves. From family to nation, every human group is a society of island universes."

- Aldous Huxley, The Doors of Perception. 

in-Orchid (II)

we begin in an empty space
we birth it a life
we root umbilical chords out through our feet and into the ground
when they emerge,
   we hold our children upside down

we run into walls
we navigate one aother
we speak an unspoken language
we pick apart the symbols woven into our bodies

we place our hands on ourselves,
   each other, our foreheads,
   between our own legs
we comfort ourselves by stroking our own hair

we incite mythical deities
   and ingest orchids
we curl our toes towards our faces
we conjure the devil herself
   up through the floor
we drive knives through our ribs
we smash our knees into our cheeks
  not to punish, but to feel
  the empowerment of purging

we study the alchemy of life
we gargle spells to ourselves
  laden with eights, memoirs, directions
we are kings, magicians,
  maidens, witches
we are women, dancers, orchids:
  we cling to dust
  and flourish in dark spaces.