summer skin II

There's a particular skin
   to camping, to
    this time of year:
  it's a little
       evaporated, it
   sleeps next to the shhh of the ocean
it has a new ochre colour
   and
- sometimes -
 burnt charcoal;

Summer's skin knows long nights,
   dripping mornings
  waking up stuffy, it wears
 smoke-stained hair
it has friends and lovers
   brush up against it
it knows sugar-and-salt

it's
  better
 and
  worse
 at the same time.

Sometimes I feel
like the particles of me are
   summer, like
the essence of me
is summer --
 that as equally as I am
human
   I am
          this time of year.

Perhaps that's why travelling
pulls so strong --
I'm in the wrong place
   at the wrong time, half the year.

(Tawhitokino at New Year's.)

wave

You are part of that wave -

did you 
feel it ?

For all my uncertainty, I've tread 
around you the same,

I've sought your advice

for things I'd 

with you...

Though I don't know how your arrows sit

I know, at least, they're 
anchored in sincerity

and having spent my other currency

 at the beach

    above the mountain

        in the cellar -

all places glittery -

I'd still sit in spotlights first,

if you'd let me.

Addicted to not sleeping. 

colour war : shape shifting

No-one's organized enough to save the world

Because we're all busy doing things that destroy it. 

so - lo

There is something
psychedelic
about lying under
the kaleidoscopic Punga fronds

watching them spiral in and out, above me
- and my back at some too-steep incline.

I've felt this posture
before, in suburbia -
induced by those cardboard triangles
(truly love at first sight,
the lust-cry kind of love)
with all the intensity of the forest's music
swirling around the tall tree tops...

and I, on my back.

Let me be clear
that when my hand traces its way
across my stomach, over my
hip bone
and settles beneath me, between
me -

that this is all for me, from me
through me and inside-out of me,
- not in want of some other.
I am my own lover,
just as I will love and
be loved
by another.

gift to 599

there is power
in our youth, and I can
feel it.

I can hear it in the syllables
that lilt over our tongues
and see it in the thoughts
that pass over our foreheads.

I have seen our beauty in our laughter :
sitting at the corners
of her smiling mouth -
and his, wider still
nestled in the salt in the corners of his eyes...
in that shedding, in that vulnerability
there is power.

I've felt that push up the hill, knees
crick-cracking, muscles
aching
with heat and fresh blood, blood
sniffed out
by the forest's wolves
teeth bared, ready to
kill - or, to
cradle...

As mothering dogs do, carrying
in their jaws
their pups, by their neck-skins.
In that choice, there lies power
on that edge, lies our power.
there is vulnerability in our youth -
I have felt it:

we have wanted
and needed, we have spent
nights alone in the dark,
slept in infinite jagged peaks
carved our beds in dead earth
alive with insects

So steer our eyes each morning
towards that emerald mirror
and there we will know our power
because we'll see it ourselves
knowing that we've stood from this same dirt
as all the world's life has

well, then we have already risen

unlike some of those ahead of us
who have spent
their lives, gazing at the horizon
of their own deaths
we
will stride forward - if
blindly, courageously -
toward living

There is power in our youth
and we should feel it,
and we should clench our teeth with
all of our tenacity
to keep that wolf from feeding
There is power in our youth.
I can feel it !

So let our journey
  be relentless
let our immersion
  be in fullness
let our discoveries
  be in conquest

all that we have seen in us
must now settle
in us
and trust
that amongst the chaos, we are
powerful
calm, beautiful, touched, marked, perfect
we are full of possibility - brimming !

we are
unsketched question marks
forests unmapped
oceans with the tide out
lightning not yet touched down

Pelorus

that river, winding its way
down the earth's
plughole of grit
       and stone
not far from that bridge
where the first of us
       died -
Pelorus
lured him in
wrapped his arms
around the
       flesh
and boy saw beauty
for ever.

they reckon
drowning's
most peaceful, but perhaps he
cricked his neck
on the way down.

Blake

"We've not laughed enough
in the last five minutes,"
said he

and then
proceeded
to orchestrate joy:
facilitated falling, instigated happiness -

baby Blake,
bare and boyish
buoyant in his
exhilarated youth
bursting with nineteen
following the feel

Moetapu Bay with a guitar and 12 humans

nestled under the harakeke
and those rhythms
tumbling out
those limbs
tumbling out
those air bubbles
hurtling
out of our
lungs

we are
young and beautiful
we are, we are -
we are full of possibility
questions marks unfinished with dots
tracks not yet carved
skies not yet flooded

for / ever

marry me
to those infinite jagged peaks
let me gaze
into that teal-emerald glass of water
let me fall asleep
with the moon's soft rippling stories
in my ears
forever

sleep me always
in the sunshine
find me frequently in the quiet night
plant my feet
firmy
in that potted earth

carry me always
on a lover's shoulders
settle me
forever
in this temperamental cloud

invite me to dance
on your shell-cracked shores
pirouette my toes down into the water,
through the sand

let my immersion
be relentless
let my discovery of these forests
be relentless
let my introspect
be where needed
let my giving
be generous

let me find warmth
in the sun going down
let me find my name
in Papatuanuku

ship's cove

the words all sank down into me
and so there was nothing left to come out
- all crept into my intestines and
insisted on sticking to the walls

they no longer pieced themselves
together in my head
no longer queued at my
extreme-most knuckles
they've been loitering in darker places,
my beautiful words

they're vagrants now,
bums who once had a home yet
now have given up

they feel they've been doing the same thing
over and over again
and they'd rather explore
some shit-filled crevasse
than the same pristine
white page, white page

so now all my poems
are about not being able to write
poems
anymore
and that will quickly become
repetitious, too.

jigsaw

what's
sticking
in my mind
is that
you couldn't
get over
how soft my hair was

like you'd forgotten the feel of it
(in two weeks only)
just
newly washed,
that's all -
nothing
special

and still, delight
in this
for me.

then, the usual
overwhelming sadness
(I still don't understand it. It's
like some foreign, in-hiding
part of me)

and then, the usual
vine-limbs tangling
turning into
heads pressed together
turning into
lips softly searching in the darkness
turning into
me finding your collarbones
turning into
you
turning yourself
into me

and myself and yourself
turning ourselves
inside
out
together

"one more creature 

dizzy with love"

- Bukowski

summer ghost

I keep thinking
I hear
footsteps
up the path to our house

but really it's just
the plastic sun roof
growing
in the heat.

bug

my head is so full of the world

and so greedy to glutton myself up with it

all of it -

so hungry 

I don't know

which bite to consume first

so anxious 

I can't step forward 

into or out of my peripheral 

14-15

comfort won't fit
wth comfort-seeking

and staying
won't hold
for longing

I've thought of all the mountains and rivers bedding me again
but you're worried of what else I'll --
despite the fact that
I've had to sleep in your mistakes
(well, at least you
changed the sheets...)

last summer
drowned in fibreglass,
this summer
determined
to float on indecision

'love'

Of course
there's some
sad irony
in the fact that I feel small

but then
when I see you
wondering
at your
semi-neighbour's door
excited for something
(though you don't 
feel excited
- about anything -
anymore)
I know that in fact
I am tall
the tallest I will ever be, in my youth,

tall like only those
before the post-teen barrier
who have already surpassed me
and know without superiority
that they have long surpassed me
and this wants for keeping and
holding
etcetera

like all my thoughts that are of myself at 18, 19
that have jumped ahead of me,
through my fingertips
right now ('15)
and are holding the 'successful' 30-yr old me
to ransom
(I can feel myself shaking in fear, laughter
or maybe
it's just
vindictiveness)

so right to say
"it's as if everything changes"
and so right to say
- as I did -
"I wish".

triangle

all those fragments that shot through so fast
into some perfect formation of language
and then
snuffed out the other side
knowing they existed, now
in a place that is not
beyond, but
under
my consciousness

having spent the longest
seconds and
inches of hours with me
and knowing all of me
like some fast-forward future
intellect system
with the same principle as me
though slightly less
blood
in both veins, hands and sink

(I keep imagining the door opens, but
I suppose that's
what I
wish would
happen - like some old ritual before I
fell off the stage)

and like you'd wind deeper and deeper into your computer made colours
I can traverse forever
into the curves of my own words

like everything at 23 it
goes before I get to have it

and I suppose - like you said
why would you have some skin
when you can have walls and her
and fate

ava

between me
is leaking -
not for cycle, but nuisance

my shame
guilt
fear -
my femaleness -
dripping, gluggily, steadily
out of me

I went to the doctor
but as usual, I'm a mystery
can't figure myself out
so why should someone
else
?

http://postsecret.com/2014/09/13/classic-secrets-43/gooday/#main

g&t

sometimes
you just need to be
drunk
to know what's going on

the sober mind is too
busy
it gets in the way
it sees things logically - and
that
is a problem

and maybe I'm heading
towards that NZ cliche
but heck
I think it's good for me
it's good for me
well...
not good for my liver,
or my stomach,
my lungs - BUT
it's good for my mind
and let's be honest

that's what they
value most
the brain
the brain
fecck.. what's a body?

6h 28m

what an awful
/ typical paradox

that the weeks I'm in my own place
I'm 'coping', yet at yours I
love for two days
and then
forget myself, for you, I
reduce like some sad atom

and you, in our opposites
supposedly love me
there but
suffer the distance
the minute I am gone

just be here
just be
be here
You know I'd share
all of it.

and to make matters worse
(here comes the self-pity)
the words have fallen out of me
I've fallen out of myself
out of my body
my head
my eyes have fallen out
all fell out when I fell
(or seemingly so - maybe that's another
blame trick...)

and back up again -
again
there's no time to back up
back up, but
I forgot
how to
walk

trying to love backwards
across, over, out
I'm all out -
I'm all out.
I'm all out
but not finished

daisies

I've never been to places

where daisies are 

at night

but tonight I 

went, and they were all

closed up. 

90 minutes

Yes, we have

Changed Bodies

you-me-I-you ...

maybe that's why

I don't feel here

anymore

and you're 

content with your place

we've shifted 180

I open and open

into a gusty vacuum of heart

and all welled pre-Saturday's

found its way to my eyelids

Baby and Love reunite

Baby and Love are feeling heartbeats:
though no hands on pulse
they know they're alive

Love's flown far, as Love can
Baby speaks languages the angels left on his tongue

Baby and Love hurt over a bottle of wine
over a few hundred kilometres
over two easy weeks
needing touch but
touching scalds their palms

Baby's put her heels on
sweated her skin clean
re-figured herself

she's worded harsh to Love
but Love knows
Baby's harsh is of heart
he still takes her to her bedplace
still wraps Baby up
Love still loves her, his baby Baby

... ghost hears them quietly,
her earthly weight suddenly apparent
because the most beautiful things are also the saddest

the TV plays on,
no-one, quiet,
ghost retreats
to some small space sadnecessarily.

"This world beats all around me but nothing here feeds to satisfy, 
so I've grown this face
perfect in disguise so you don't know what I feel each moment

I don't fit here
I feel like I don't fit anywhere

Make your first move and decide to be conscious 
and god of each moment

Let's see if I can change
I want to feel something here
but I don't wanna change

faster than I used to feel
so faster than I ever dreamed."

- Lines, Dead Letter Circus. 

ebbs and flows -

like the tide, I'm currently

out 

boutique

got to
keep face
when all I want to do is
put my head under
(or out)

the water on my back
like the heat of you
opens up all of me

vulnerable

little change

My sadnesses used to feel full; intense and permeating. Now they feel small and melancholic; bland, empty. 

morning

how beautiful I feel 

after I've been 

with you 

"No one could pinpoint exactly when Estha had stopped talking... It had been a gradual winding down. A barely noticeable quietening. As though he had simply ran out of conversation and had nothing left to say. Yet Estha's silence was never awkward. Never intrusive. Never noisy... A sort of dormancy, the psychological equivalent of what lungfish do to get themselves through the dry season, except that in Estha's case the dry season looked as though it would last for ever.

Once the quietness arrived, it stayed and spread in Estha. It reached out of his head and enfolded him in it's swampy arms. It rocked him to the rythm of an ancient, foetal heartbeat. It sent its stealthy, suckered tentacles inching along the insides of his skull, hoovering the knolls and dells of his memory, dislodging old sentences, whisking them off the tip of his tongue. It stripped his thoughts of the words that described them and left them pared and naked. Unspeakable. Numb. And to an observer therefore, perhaps barely there. 

Slowly, over the years, Estha withdrew from the world. He grew accustomed to the uneasy octopus that lived inside him and squirted its inky tranquilliser on his past. Gradually the reason for his silence was hidden away, entombed somewhere deep in the soothing folds of the fact of it. 

-- The God of Small Things, Arundhati Roy

on being "transient"

having brushed (fleetingly) the southern of our islands

and ascending northwards again

I wonder if we've in fact been here...

these hills framing the tarmac

feel a part of myself, a

"home"

of sorts, though 

I wonder if I've been here...

those gothic buildings

and the bogan lovers,

the girls braving the Friday night cold

I wonder if I've been here ?

that nowhere-grey void, levitating us 

over bumpy air (like the skin of a tuatara)

suggests I've "been" but been 

absent --

not been, have been

seen but unseen

familiar but scarcely known

that old Scottish town where race

has always been hot topic

filler

where have all those words gone?

     leeched, leaked

  into the cracks

     trying to fill the 

           gaps in my foot

   where no weight will be taken,

 clogged up with calcium 

    "don't step on the cracks"

Well -- I can't help it:

   the crack's in me.

 I take it around,

   my pet crack,

   for small walks 

              and at the end of meander

I'm all out of breath,

      all out of words. 

ake

death 

     and dying, they -

all five wahine -

   lie flat horizontal

curling and curving 

        upwards to small standing:

 backs arched

 left to rot, twisted

 contorted squatting

birds pick at their bones

  then their bones

 return home 

what would my bones look like?

  without my flesh -

     would I have cracks in me?

would they eat me, those five 

kete-headed birds?

or would they bury me? 

cigarette duet

In summer, you looked so good 

with a cigarette in your hand.

Something about the traveling and Jack White ,

and sleeping in your van. 

Something about striking up 

conversation in a bar, sharing an infrequent 

ritual with a stranger. 

Something about being drunk and wild.

Something about being young and feeling it.

Something about nothing.

... about a sense of unwritten, unrecorded, unfailing nostalgia.

Something to go well with a coffee, the sex, a beer, the pot.

Something about the view - 

breathing just wasn't enough.

Something to keep your hands busy. 

Some smell to remember you by.

Some relief from the beauty and cleansing.

Something to go with not showering for four days.

Something to waste your money on.

Something to take time out from the time out.

Something to stick to.

Something to hold.

Something to shock mother with (also a smoker).

Something that suited you,

Because it was you.

You looked so good 

with a cigarette in your hand, in summer. 

of power and vulnerability

there is very little

that is quite so nice

as your back opening into my palms

your fingers lying between my ribs

your nose pressed into my sternum

your temple's heartbeat pulsing under my forehead

your limbs spaghettied around my skin-cells

your weight causing my organs a delightful nausea

your hands tracing their way over me and into me 

your eyes narrowing slightly their whiteness -

first, of focus

and then, of pleasure

let's just pretened
that that ankle doesn't have that incision in it
that I can dance like it's 21.12.13
that we are free and summer-ing

that there's no time or place
except for this week

that there's only coffee and yahtzee
or else sunsets and lakes
and vans parked in places without mirrors

you

having stood on my own two feet for so long

and suddenly,

   four..

four as in wheels

four as in weeks maximum

and four as in for

and for, and for...

for us and for you -

for me,

having stood on two legs so long -

four causes anxiety

how does one balance with extra limbs

how does one, 

how does one...

and with all the extra weight 

and lack of 

and lack of

I wonder how one dances

when one has an extra body to hold ?

from some time towards the end of last year

by accident I

    caught
the veins of his arms --
 they felt like
                  your scars

I felt the salt coagulating in my eyes...
        Still briefly;
 maintaining

(found on the back of a receipt inside a book I never finished)

"Some things, once you've loved them, become yours forever. And if you try to let them go... They only circle back and return to you. They become part of who you are ... or they destroy you."

- Kill Your Darlings

courageously

I've a habit

for ones 

looking too close to themselves

the ones shaking those little 

cardboard boxes

containing perforated trays

I've a habit 

for labyrinth 

minds, despaired dreams

unpaired electrons

whizzing around

and yet,

you are still 

more mine, more us -

you are old and new

you are me and myself

yourself, and yourself

and here 

are words 

dahlee

there I was, falling asleep

in Arthur's valley

trains for lullabies

not knowing that within a single

drawn-out

week

my valley would come to me

and four months later

"train wreck", she jumped -

"waiting to happen", spat

and yes my incessant need for busy

entertained the idea

but my body was quieter...

my Heart

- my actual, organ-flesh heart -

in its stillness

knew.

I'll be sitting here a while

and I'll become patient with love

revival

My body stopped
around the same time my words did.

My body put its foot down
down
through the floor
sinking sideways
guilty with pleasure
crushed by the weight of myself

and of him

not the perpetrator
but he
who I gained, and lost, in breaking

felt weak from all the serving
from all the holding of dinners
at the sides of those
k, ok- gestures
to the profiles of persons
and having woken every morning for five weeks
shaking
how could I expect it steady?
Poor foot.
I'm sorry.

Poor foot... poor, poor foot.

so poor it emptied my bank account
all four thousand dollars
I had from
waiting.

and after I lost my blue stone
in the back of the rental car
my throat stopped, too
Stoppered up
or maybe it's because I
entered my third year ...
no, I think it's because I
broke myself, silly.
Or rather, was broken
by forces within and
without

myself.

she put it
right,
her hair in braids,
she said what I'd not yet thought
but felt:

When the dancing stops
so does the speaking.

"Change is not something we should fear. Rather, it is something we should welcome. For without change, nothing in this world would ever grow or blossom, and no one in this world would ever move forward to become the person they're meant to be." 

-B.K.S. Iyengar.

"

you're afraid of lying down with me and never wanting to get up again.

that scares me too.

comfort

that consumes you.

"

(Thanks to Jahra Rager for sharing.)

"Fear can overwhelm but faith has to prevail."

- The F-Word, Bess Manson

without you / sliver

I was 14, 17, 21 again
in your kitchen, 32 --
centre-storm, middle this afternoon
suggesting we
parachute
out into the wind --

how apt.
For in sealing the round of your mouth
over my
red, fleshy
20-something lungs
in the green we were again:
three nights not slept
four days not showered
a soppy vapid downpour
avocado and tomato
Ohope or Omaha, one of those
'O' beaches...
Oh, caffeine and sunrises
sunsets in our sunsights
consciousness and
consequences, feeling out those older
400-year
spirits

smoking so last life
and life-lasting, this lifetime
having held smoke
first: from life, then lungs (yours) --

and even if the space of atoms
insists on touching us
there's always a spare forty dollars
you just gotta find time

excor.

so far round, I could not even
   straighten my spine
curled into: pseudo-safety
throat aching from my
   second spine
   second head
that self-deprecating entity
who lives underneath me

real fake young & hangry

after Holly's appetongue-ising
regurgitation
of non-festive recommendations
and Pakeha revelations,
wandered I
to the street chant.

doled out a cup of soup, I caught
the last of
something important, I thought...
and having felt, with soup in hand,
the hate slurred at those who hate,
the blue uniforms guarding the blue hearts
in their blue party
inside the Rendezvous
thought I: God,
All Humans are awful.

We are all awful.
Why are we all awful?

This is like capital punishment,
this will
not
fix it.

I felt disappointed. The protest ended.

The ball-gowned
me-but-not-mes, (young and sharing
(but not sharing) three syllables of names)
jeered at my ugly boots
which are a joke, anyway
acted tactfully (thought they) with a salting of spite
and entered their night of spinal ignorance, backs so straight practically
asking for a stabbing

Supposedly important.

Thought I: what's important are
words spoken in Basements
things said, and heard
not mimicked - in crowds - without ears - no ears on either
the crowds nor the recipients
the recipients without ears because of the crowd's head having holes

I'd rather have my ears chewed, than be ugly
as I'd rather be ugly than
at the ball with both slippers

of twos and threes

I'm the messenger, now
carting jars of cookies
between Edward and Emerald
answering texts on phones that don't yet exist
looking for signs of inwardness --
the "unusual" that is usual in their bodies, two, one

I've got foot gawking in mouth
from all the walking
and talking, this no longer
churns out words
they are stuck below my clavicle
that's caved in and
pressed down
onto crutches (more or less)
for eight months, that's lain on
side and stomach
far too often
that's sat and driven
more than it's stood, run...

that can barely save its breath for some intimacy

so, we make a show about it
and then the show eats all my face into it's
administrative screen

out comes the notebook with the cookie jar
out comes the novel
out comes the mouth, open
out comes Deutsch
out comes friend
out comes tea pot
out comes yoga
out comes overnight trip away
out comes lover
out comes the marijuana
out comes the habits, old and yet-to-be-formed
out comes the prescription, the Tramadollusion
out comes the winter blanket
out comes the bus card
out comes the city, weaving myself back in
out comes the Creative Career, or beginnings of
out comes the notebook, the pen, the page, the laptop, the headspace
but all that comes out,
out, are crumbs.

Rose-lit

Out held Rose
her hand, saw I that
weary organiser's stare -
that smiles
and knows
but is tired.
and not from the
not sleeping
but from the
giving and the
doing outside of job description, and the
thought-ing

the Mother of the people
whose mind permeates all others' decisions
without them even knowing it.

Chanel&Frank

Sat steeped

in past's Purple

kitchen floor settee, where

all strange evenings 

begin in 

this flat

where the redurple leaking is 

not just wild rice

but wild hearts

amongst smarts, I

make gestures at her in the bathroom:

I am brushing my teeth but do you 

love him? She thinks 

she thinks and signs back, 

No.

The sad ones are often the best ones, but the best ones are not always the sad ones. 

guest

She's in the driveway 

screaming 

"This is Nat's house" 

down the phone

but

Nat's not here, she 

left before she arrived

her lower insides have left, even

escaped from her own body --

run away so she cannot run away

It is not possible to do the ol'

stealthy getaway on crutches. 

somnartyrdom

I take pride in being

the last one awake

I wear the holes 'round my eyes 

like badges 

I tell myself 

I am Being Productive

what I am really doing is

RunningMyselfintoTheGround

one foot at a time,

one Ankle...

I recall

that they call that

acting the martyr

theatre

There I was:
day four, horizontal --
but not in the good way.

Legs half in/out
of blanket
but not a good way.

Eyes on my body
but in a very serious way,
about to be opened
but not in a fearless way

No bra on / lip piercing out / nail polished removed
not in the usual way --

They put me in a blue room
dug something in my arm

the highs and lows crept in
then I woke up hyper-
ventilating.

"Possible, impossible."

"We thought we had such problems. How were we to know we were happy?"

-Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale. 

bite

if I could just un-sting myself,
pull that little
vex out of my forehead
to see a bit
clearer..

but the obtuse remark
sits firmly into the night,
inhibits the words
that were meant to go out and off

so that they must be unveiled
tomorrow, instead --
and then tomorrow instead
will come
on Saturday
on your day
and then I will feel guilty
about feeling guilty

flatsomnia

We're each as bad as the other at sleeping
except I've got nowhere to be in the morning.

pettifogging

Some impossibly ochre light 

has cast itself over,

setting the trees olive-khaki 

against the city-navy sky

6am, last of streetlight-elder

casts itself my very own insta-filter

my very own 

matte kaleidoscope --

my psych-thriller mise en scene

ambient with morning's cues

the slight possibility of Phone Call

sugar-rimmed with Tramadollusion

things I realized while walking the dog

eye in hand of hand's eye

and I, and 

by and by

bylines and by-sights, by chance

(sharks in both sleep and swimming)

two lines of time, sign of concentration, beautiful edge

mark the other eye:

number three --

three with three and twice three,

the third three mine

and now -- in time -- yours too...

threes in signs and avian divinations

"sign of the times" he says, says she

but three deliberates

three's unsure

three necessitates thought

eye gravitates towards the hesitating; hesitation being

the crux in which feeling fluctuates

in and out of time; the

eye opens and closes, flutters it's lashes

voraciously against the hand, occasionally

lashing out in love but still will

retract and sigh, the eye

skyward as if we should all 

gaze upward

but little occurs there,

mostly it's all here with the

Earth

nesting in the valleys

sleeping at lake edges

restlessly meandering

certain of chance and change. 

quite hilarious

Quite hilarious
to see the businessmen of Hamilton
standing urgently
importantly,
constrained in their perturbedness
'gainst the mannequinned
windows of an
Adults Only sex shop.

scall

I'd like to drink you with my palms,
press the heels of my hands into your eye sockets
and hold your forehead for a while.
press the edges of my fingertips into your veins,
I'd like to catch all the fluid
I would

take it into my own
bloodstream, siphon it through my
heart-thing
round and round
all sixty two
thousand
miles of me. Until I felt
purple from the
red-and-blueofitall

then I'd have a
crooked-er smile,
I'd stay in the water for longer.
I'd speak dog and
bird and
I'd speak.

jack white

"Give and receive fearlessly."

Dale

half your life ago

was one-third ago mine

you cross your legs to pack your pipe

rolling your spliff with concentration

you take my clothes off 

outside on the deck

with classical music accidentally 

and a view you photographed earlier

you buy me jellybeans and beers

you say you want to live here

you check in that I love you, 

"eh?" 

You know.

and you Admire me,

very seriously --

you sit legs all tucked up under me

like I've never seen any others,

with me

entangled in me

you save the last chip for me

You stand in line for me.

you hold my hand across the passenger seat

you keep your shoes on 'til the last minute

you let me drive.

you push me off the jetty and

into the lake 

you put your underwear on immediately 

after sex, you go for a walk 

alone

you pour me a glass of orange juice

every time you have one

without asking if I want ...

you talk to me in a 

concerningly compelling French accent, you send me

photographs of yourself with swallows

you talk to me during sex

you touch me in public

-- and refrain from touching me in public

you bring me acid on your 

tongue, while I'm playing 

volleyball with my friends

you do the dishes

you cut my hair

you soap me up

you dry me off

you worry about your hair

you sit a bit too far away from me

to eat your bacon

in the morning

we fall asleep to Deftones

holding hands

/not holding hands but

touching feet

you buy me a silver key and a

rainbow robot

you carve 

slightly incoherent messages

into my notebook

amongst my ambitions

you tell me I've

Changed you. 

I lead you around the supermarket,

semi-blind, half

seeing

I play you music

I tell you things

I wear my hair up !

I omit "I" from your poems until the last moments

I wonder --

and I feel: happy,

about us.

We are now.

We are present.

We are here.

We are love.

We are 

here, now

memories 

in action. 

poem for fuck-ups and the fucked-up

We've all
  seen it
    said it
      been it
        done it
          do it
have it
  want it
     need it
       want it --
we all want it

but nothing ever
   comes
   came
       will come
out of nothing, never

we all
       try
  and try
  and try
  and try
  and try
and
   fail...
try again, and
      try
 and try
 and then we
die -- if we're lucky

You might get lucky,
   you might
or you
  might not.

You might get lucky
or you might
die.

hiatus

All the words have gone and
made themselves heard:

in the vacuum of
Neverland, where skies lie
violet-indigo
and fire.

They've all tripped off my teeth
(the words), they don't
melt so easily off my fingers, these days
and it saddens me

because I need to be talked to, too,
for all the listening that I do