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.

lavender and sage smoke

I feel my sexual energy come back to me -
winding her way through the grungy labyrinth alleyways
of some depths of my mind -
with a sharp, burnt orange melting
that gorgeous, wild woman
slides back into the bowl of my pelvis
with her silky skin and shining teeth,
stretching her beautiful ankles.

I'm in his neck,
my back body the crescent moon
against his swallowing sun. We're moving
deeper and deeper into the shadows.
There's gentle warmth,
a lot of it.

We're smiling.
Easily.

I'm back in the possibility of creation,
words flow again from my fingertips;
one and one make three.

I'm back with the artists and the makers,
the dreamers and the doers -
the ones who've learned to transmute
their love and share it with the world...

I've always sought out these spaces and knowing faces,
warmed my feet by the fires
of cosy beaches and backyards,
drank the sweet smokey scent out of my clothes the next day,
passed the Garden around from right to left.

He leaves and I return,
we all Come Home.
He moves to go home; I become it.
I beckon her back to me, that fiery Wildess,
a crooked little finger waggling underneath the dinner table.
We eat a feast, and she eats me.
She devours me from the red up -
and when she's finished, there's just light
shining top down, brilliant and blinding.
The particles of me scatter themselves wider
and traverse different realms, drinking from every ocean
until she's tasted them all.

don't forget
to dance
with your ancestors, daughter -- 

use that house within your bones
which we built you from,

use it !
to shake stories from your limbs
and speak aeons with those faces

fill your lungs
with thousand-year-old air

(we came out of the water)

and don't forget
the earth you walk on
-- let gravity hold you down.
she's heavy enough for the job. 

here I go,
biting off pieces
      of my own salty flesh
      one by one
I'm severing
      my atrophied limbs
I'm draining my own blood,
      wallowing in a bath of
      milk and tears.
I'm stoic
      but I'm fractured.
I'm a house without foundations.
I'm a mountain that can't be summited, for I have
      no base
      and no peake --
   I'm the rocky ground in between;
      a few stray trees
           leaning into the wind.

I'm a heart on ice,
      waiting to be transplanted
      and even when I arrive,

I still won't belong,
      mis-matched to some body
the doctors deemed me suitable for.

I'm a map
     with no directions
I'm a compass
     unable to point north --
     the arm comes close, but ticks over
I'm a head without a body
I'm a face without a name
I'm a fire without fuel
I'm a sleepwalker
      caught in the middle of the night,
      pants down,
      climbing over the fence,
           feet covered in mud and
daisies.

I'm a receptionist's desk
      without a bell for help
      and everyone who arrives at me
      must wait
      for service
      -- including myself,
          I am the end
                  of the queue.

I'm a vast garden
      without
      any flowers
      or vegetables
I'm a groom
      waiting at the altar
      for a bride who never said yes
I'm a planet spinning infinitely
      into a black hole
      -- or worse,
          the sun

I'm a single perfect note
      followed by
      a deafening silence

illuminated

here's walking on water:
          two rugged cliff faces,
          white crests in between

here's walking on water
                              on water
                                    on water

my head floods green
         with a generous gift
          from the man with / out his pounamu
          (his green talisman shifted itself
          while he shifted green energy with green plastic...)

... and I think about touching
           your quiet ribs,
           your hair gently at the edges
                   of my smiling face

and I feel green,
         not with envy, but grounded
         green in the earth

         my head is misty, like
         a morning in the tomo,
drinking elixirs and inhaling smoke
in the portal.