MITRAGYNIA

shape shifting :

I am the Seer

the conduit

the vessel

the receiver

the maiden,

the mother, and the crone

I bleed and yet I survive

I am reborn every moon

I come full circle

with a depth you cannot imagine,

with your shallow trajectory of pleasure

I am emptied and

I am (fool)

Here Lies Power.

I can dance between all worlds

earth and aether

warmth between my legs &

fire, deep in my belly

even as my head gets stomped on

I am whole, I am green-eyed

salt-licked cheeks

I am wobbly awake in daylight

I am

practicing restraint

I am

perceiving impermanence

I am

the devil's advocate and mistress

I am

not thinking,

therefore

I am

not ?

I am open for inspection &&

totally unobservable

I am full of surprises, he says

which only reveals his blind bias

rushes about his goodness.

he's miles better than his father.

and still he won't allow me

my name (which he so defends)

Woman.

they are afraid

there'll be nothing left for them.

they are

Afraid.

because like fish and fungi

we are shape

                          shifting

we are sh-he-er

we can be all of it

It doesn't mean we don't need you.

We want you to come with us.

Here Is The Portal --

wide open to enter

you pass through whenever you can but

it's more than just getting in,

more than just getting wet --

it's a taxing art,

being received and re-seen

you'll have to be willing

to sing the skeleton back to life

you'll have to be willing

to kill the things you love dearly

to shed tears and lick wounds

to taste iron in your teeth

to kiss feet, temples and hags

to dissolve and decompose beneath us

to be transformed and chewed up and spat out again

unrecognisable

but oh-so-light

and in the brightness, we'll all be new

our children will shine the way forward

the forest will open its wings

and the earth will tremble with joy,

shapeshifting 

in the eye of the beholder

so dangerous to be young --

everyone wants a piece of you

and you have so much to give

everyone gets a limb or two

so dangerous to be aging --

you want a piece of everyone

and you see in yourself

the sharp teeth of a wolf

Like the Colour of Earth (and not Your skin)

infatuation.

(like always)

: my veins desperate to drink

in the gentle copper curve

of your eyelashes

which sit briskly above your quiet cheekbones

over and over

rain-lit ocean eyes and

lips alight with joy

(I see them every time I close my own)

close to sit

and there, should be sensation

in real time --

instead, fantasy / fantasy / fantasy

mind, I see the fixation

dangered delight in delighting in ..

the putting down,

the retrieval /

the casting aside,

the "picking up the coal"

I'd move down you, if you'd let me

softly, just how you know I like

and in the sharpness I'd reveal

all the atoms I'm made of to you,

animus mundi

my polar opposite and twin

-- could you hold me ... ?

or have you not yet grown ?

(though I love your slightness

I love also your strength --

balance is exactly a libran's coveting)

power and abundance lies between us

as in him and her.

the mountains are full of wild cats.

he warned you -- watch out

ate eight ate

before life gave way to redeath,

my acquisition of beautiful things --

off the street, the basement, bar or beach

like some green-eyed magpie

I could build no nest from them

now I practice discipline

(excepting in the forest,

where words re-emerge,

and at night, when catharsis

turns in two gentle streams)

so my hands are clean(ish)

even as I caress the dirt,

even as I lay myself prostrate before you

in the pretense of putting in plants

do you see me fawning ?

or am I too good at opening and closing ?

am I too good ?

am I, too ?

(surely, you are more discerning

or else, more innocent than I)

from there (the discipline)

wisdom uprights itself ;

from there,

maybe,

maybe ?

love-like lettuce grows

something like the quiet, quiet

in my case, mother,

the perpetual stain of 

smoke in my clothes

belongs to a life lived as lover

to the wild

she draws me into her belly and

keeps me soft.

I go in.

within 24hrs I am whole.

the fire starts on a single match.

my veins run with the river’s blood. 

the forest offers dinner with outstretched limbs.

inhale. exhale. song. 

the flames crackle quietly as night falls.

I have walked barefoot,

my hair is curled wet,

the days remind me of my insignificance.

and I am content. 

truly there is nothing more I want

than the being-ness of this. 

aniwaniwa

I love that the rules change 

so I may survey every atom of you 

when we’re bony bare-skinned 

and three days deep in the forest

you, all day, reciting my name 

me, the night, an offering of affection

as if 

you’re my only lover 

in the whole wired world

in truth, I know,

our fingertips

never’ll meet again 

damp beard and charred hair

a soft-and-sharp scent from the nook next to your ribs

the river walks us downstream 

hand in hand

shivering

you talk about avoiding war whilst falling into conquest 

she should have known better

but you were young and hungry

as you are now

totally infatuated

and me, with life 

I guide your hand over and inside

pull your neck down to my chest 

in the morning, it’s easier, more delicious,

complete 

you feed me peanut butter on a chopstick 

and though we’ve had not two hours sleep —

I feel alive

I feel like royalty. 

the beech trees bow their branches in approval

a sister kisses my feet before we leave 

and the man I’d rather have held

gently presses his lips to my forehead,

not before asking if he may —

I love him. 

Of course I accept. 

Every atom of me loves this place. 

clay people pt II

clearly conceived is the future, 
and presently visions materialize

a twin, an equal
a hybrid of 2 + 40
the irises of insight
the darker corners of a generous smile

as if the dead ends and death were holding patterns
to keep me here
keep me where,
until
just as when I 

and here I was:
"how can polarities exist in the same global body?"
of course they do, it is I, libran utopia
its name is balance,
the dance I desire

and I love being stung
myself, the air on fire
rushing down the river
some reminder I am
flesh and blood,
water and stone

it is all right here, as summer blooms
the world is on fire

eyes piercing through the atoms of my ecstasy
we will never have to sleep again

all you have to do is ask

manopubbhangama dhamma
manosettha manomaya

clay people

as soon as I’m courageous enough

to be foolish

I fall in love

immediately — 

totally inebriated 

by the world proliferating

beyond the threshold

of their faces

I want to reach inside

and touch every inch of them

we could lie down and never get up again,

traverse the valleys and mountains of 

the world between the membranes

of our skin

and I’d feel satisfied 

november nostalgia

legs up the wall reading poetry
as in twenty fifteen
except
I am sober
and less licentious

winter, sick as anything,
Pōneke, carving shapes into bodies
the composer, brilliant and
grossly underpaid

there was always
"success" 
and then
a dead end

start again, start 
again
this week, how the bills ?
dumpster dive and sublet
I didn't need anything
just a body beneath me, now and then

I miss the volatility of it
I miss dreaming and dancing it into being
I miss ___________

but I do not miss
smoky eyes, volcanic skin, asphyxiated lungs
I do not miss
the volatility of my own head

karakariki

and suddenly it all
makes sense again:
head under rushing water,
gentle wander through woods --

I remember the reason
why my feet should walk this earth

I couldn't tell you what it is, but
(it is being)
I relocate it within me

and it is all like this:
wither, incubate, bloom
forever and forever
and ever (even) beyond death

cannon

your goodbyes awkward as his
and all everything, the same --
half a decade of subtle memories
sitting in a boy's body-mane

we go up
                \ the falls
(who held and hid me
mid-winter)

and I go back in time

The Universe and Everything
some weird pang of nostalgia
for a future never visioned

i can be
with /
         out it,

my only complaint is
i can't --
              feel --
                         
the water on my skin:
a decade demands modesty
though reversed, it's couture:
I could be with 42, the Answer to the Ultimate.

and my only other complaint is:
Slow ! Down !
there's no time to breathe or be
are you afraid of the stillness,
where we see and are seen ?

still, I like flying
let me get high with you
prayers answered on a rooftop
and he lived in the spare room

we go up up and up

I'm wise enough to know now
it's hormones and spinning seas

they churn 'em out bright these days
smart as phones and fearless worldly

I remember that
before the blood
and my heart on his sleeves

when I still manoeuvred magick
and whispered to the trees 

(each moon I crawl back into myself,
get reborn and come out kinder)

he told me I was selfish
but he doesn't have to bleed