plane

I.

I'm sure some
people
read
just to be
seen
reading

but
don't we all
do things
just to be seen
doing them?


II.

I had a half-finished poem
nestled in my glitter-pummeled bag
between the fake eyelashes and reluctant leather
scrawled over some
post-party
serviette
illegible, inebriated ramblings
I pulled it out to announce
that
"I
 am a
Poet..."

No, I pulled it out accidentally
whilst
rummaging...
declared myself
A Poet.

"Oh read it! Read it out!"
my adoring fans cried --
All three of them.
But I declined.
Because they never sound the same out loud
as they do when
heard by eyes.


III.

Every time I call someone
"man"
these days
I feel
hyper gender aware
like I just yelled
"CUNT!"
in someone's pretty face

but they all call me --
and each other --
"babes"
so I dunno, I think it's O.K.


IV.

There are no poems coming out of me
for one week, almost
then suddenly
a heavy dog wearing cement shoes
walks by
and I throw up
four.

new favourite where there were no favourites before

"I try to keep people

out of here.

people

never

do any good,

especially their

conversation.

after listening to them

for hours

I realize that their words have

nothing to do with

anything

that they are lonely and

cowardly

and just need to

expel their

spiritual gas

to be

sniffed by me."

-- Charles Bukowski. 

so many words that need to

come out of me

I can't even

don't

can't even 

put them --

on --

page, so many

words

come out of me

requirement

sitting in

hotel rooms at

night ... requires 

Poetry

be written.

flight

with the sun draping itself over my neck

snow spine to be seen right, delicate

but without tendon speech

less speaking

and with time to hear that deepest, driven

electrical hum, which will comfort me now and

in August

I remember my previous fear

and think--

You didn't think.

I know this.

"all the words, you know, it's hard to tell if you're truly in course or 

on some vanity trip: how much can be said, how much has 

already been said, and why? 

other writers' words do me little good, then, why should mine be 

special?"

-- Bukowski 

0000

somewhere in height, full moon
(everyone writes)
but clearer in shorter nights

bath

Having opened my solar centre; all the world's vagrants trudge up to my footsteps. They tell me stories of The Modern Ice Age. A real tragedy, whereby your eyes freeze over from blocked-up roots.

The vagrants come hurtling at me as soon as I am off the carpet. They stubb their toes along the rusty asphalt. This is to make sure they can find their way home. And all the everyones who don't care can CSI the clues. I have howled as loudly as this woman hurricaning along Bath St. -- but never as publicly as her. Her head has been raped by the world's cleanliness. And her father, she claims.

"I'm not sure I understand," I say. "Are you okay?" Though of course I understand when she says to me plainly:

"I just need to walk across town. I'll be ok."

I understand.

"O.K.."

You'll be ok.

So into my car I re-close. My bumper-fucked Volkswagon. Having opened enough for one day (but still, a part unable to shut within the 12-hour)...

So that I am salt-wounded in my car. In the office. On the bus. In the theatre. The flood will not subside until the shit has been rushed aside. Thought tsunami. Intellectual ache and skinferiority. This Pakeha thinking to herself, I would love to be within these arms that whisper Te Reo. I would love to be woken by the world's karanga each morning. 

And when he replies, "Kei te pai," my elsewhere head autos, "Pardon?"

"I'm good, thanks," he says.

I come back to the floor. "You said, 'kei te pai'". A child in realisation.

"Ae," he says. "I did."

We both smile sadly. I think about the woman on Bath St.

I'm directing your youth but you know better than I do

(And this one visits me again

some weeks later.

I like him, I do..

Just come back in a year,

and promise to play fair --

Maybe I won't leave you

at the bus stop

at the wheel of your car

Pay your rent, twofold

and I'll pay time

to your bed.)

"Reading is pivotal. Another human being's syntax is the soul's water. While walking a mile in another's shoes is impossible, caressing a stranger's paperback spine is the closest you will ever get to fully understanding another human. So sink into a chair every once in a while. Sit outside in the sun. Cuddle up next to a lover. A window. A fireplace. Just read. Don't you dare read on a damn Kindle. Your fingertips need to feel the pages. Your nose needs to smell the pine sacrificed in the name of literature." 

From http://bit.ly/163xySG

red

I am stood in a shallow wash of sick, sugary, semi-translucent red; the world's smallest man-made lake: plastic/glass-encased. Running red over my callused toes and hive-enraged ankles.

There are parts of me plastered all around the soap scum stained walls (plastic): Melting onto Courtney's all-natural facewash (bought on my advice), creeping over Paula's razor, my razor, my soap (the soap-scum culprit). Red ripping down my back, having birthed at my forehead and nape. Someone added food colouring to the cocktail; it's a little to thin to be real. Traffic-light mocktail. Has the red settled or sunk?

Pulled from between me, still more red. Pooled from me, out of me and in me. Real red now, the kind that took so long to be trained into tame, to regular -- and today, at once, that regularity culled. There's no use for it sitting in my body.

There are no seasons within me, so why should I fall to the acronym which takes it's onomatopoeic name almost maliciously? What right have they? Those spiteful three letters "S.A.D." naming me seasoned. I am seasoned.

The parts of me ran out of me and off me are lapping out the rubber seals. A bold and natural quest for venture out the shower door. But no walking for the legless. Chemical within chemical-induced discard. I can "rinse til clear" but my insides will keep overturning that sugar-spelt velvet floss. The maternal roots of me gripping, never trusting since birth. The faults of me insipidly inherent -- determined before womanhood though only apparent at.

The wigs of my youth have called for other disguise. I put on and shed; manufacture and shed; wear, cry, loathe, love my favourite colour.

I am red. She is read. Wear'd to red; From Red to Led. Led by unleading, unwilling organs. Those twins who refuse to produce twins. I am red. She is red.

All these truths we have been fed not by others but by the knowledge of unfortunate, unavoidable, unignorable self-navigation that 12 year olds all over the globe know. That waking to find one's hair colour does not fit, so it has crawled into the sheets.

I am full of dreams.

Dream the dreams outwards, into the

real world.

Sappy floor-soaking dreams

Spelt, at least

In beautiful letters.

"Mamma, the more I know of the world, the more I am convinced that I shall never see a man whom I can really love. I require so much! He must..."

          -- Marianne in Sense and Sensibility, Jane Austen. 

("Remember, my love, that you are not seventeen," replies her mother.)