India #1 of 5

the smell of India
is shit mixed with wafting jasmine flowers
lotus incense masked by sun-stenched, fly ridden fish
asphyxiating leather varnish
and Ayurvedic oils
rose petals delicate with curdled milk
exhaust fumes and cinnamon
sugary tea and rotting rubbish dumps
masala sweat
and
overpriced marijuana

eve

We're lying under
the vast stars of pre-historia,
our eyes see the colours of Christmas,
backs arched against impossibly-held rocks,
precariously heaved into each other
like consoling lovers.

We imagine aliens might have passed through these
enigmatic landscapes
-- or at the very least, dinosaurs...

a Very Yellow Lights darts right --
"Look, Tom, a shoot-- ... a satellite...," I say.
(My Christmas eyes must have deceived me.)

But it hovers a while, then
comes to a stand still.

My Christmas eyes deceived me. Now it's
stopped, completely.
"Oh, it's static," I suggest.
"Just a Very Yellow Star."

A very yellow star.

We imagine xeno-scandinavians
landing from expansive avian pursuits,
we uncover possibilities for beaming telepathic calls
into space; we let our consciousnesses leap
from mountain peak to mountain peak,
following the soft pad-prints of Hanuman.

The Very Yellow Star
starts across the sky
impossibly swiftly
it flares into a
Large Yellow Sun, a
nod to the yellows and twinkling golds
of the wrists below it.
It disappears instantaneously
into a hidden black hole --
it's
Gone.

My Christmas eyes blink, my heart
swells with the same fiery yellow light
and won't shrink, won't
follow the disappearance
but stays loud and thinking in my chest

"That was a U.F.O.!" says I, stupidly
stating the uneasy, alluring, impossible obvious.

We sit a while in silence
taking in the expanse around us
then make our way back to the house.

Murali

she's sitting on the floor,
cross-legged, bare-footed,
bright yellow gold and jingles,
peeling the vegetables with some heavy iron instrument
her eyes salt up slightly
as she sheds the skin off the onions,
wiping her sweaty cheek with the
chaste edge of a pungent hand --

she's so happy,
all smiles
and cackling
laughter

(her age inflates and deflates -- I'm not sure
if she's forty-something
or sixty-five... no
grey hair, body soft --
and that brattish beautiful grand-daughter,
that cackling glee...)

but when she squats below the steps
to feed the hysterical chooks
her face falls tired, empty
her head drops to her open fist one side of her neck
and I see she's worn,
desperate, pitiful

exactly as I feel, and I've only been here
five weeks

Gokarna

The distant, floating echo
of some disillusioned psychedelia
hovering behind
the shattering click-clack-crash
of metal wheels
jarring against metal tracks
[if-out-of place Palm trees
made a sound
it'd be semi-tropical green]

on an overnight train to Mysore

we're like boomerangs
going in reverse
returning back to where we
came from

part "Fantasy Hotel"
past the coconut palms
back into the cold
to come out the other side:
into the scorching heat, again -
we search out the extremes, we
won't settle for mediocre

except there's
no such thing, in this country, anyway
so we couldn't find it, anyway, even
if we
tried

I've never seen so many mangled bodies
I've denies them my four cents
because that's the rule here
and then I mourn
my own apathy
and console myself
by holding your head
with the
two good hands
I have

I walk past a
foetus of a man
nestled between the motorcycles
almost certainly an empty body
and I wonder why nobody
does anything
while I also do nothing

we descend back into the mountains
there's barely any streetlights
but I recognise their shadows
from the last time we were here

in a budget hotel in Madurai

from two a.m.
until six in the morning
you chuck your guts up, seven
or eight times
until you're
empty

you sit naked on the tiled floor
amongst your insides,
I drag myself out
of REM sleep
to pour you salty-sweet mixes
you can't even
stomach --
I pour four, three
end up outside of you

I wear my jandals in the bathroom
I wash my hands compulsively
I label our drink bottles
I kiss you only on the cheek --

and somehow you still look beautiful,
somehow I love you more.

two weeks in

Incongruous is not a word here.
Incongruous is the only thing.
Every thing
sticks out
abruptly,
like a
lurching foot on an accelerator
at a GIVE WAY sign -

women in ornate and striking colours
dapple the derelict concrete buildings
and pot-holed roads
glittering in the sun alongside
the plastic-lined pavements;
jutting ribs and amputees
beg for the rupee you don't have, but
can most certainly afford - four thousand times over.
on the doorstep of Gucci and Hyundai, people
sit in gutters
tapping away at their iPhone 7
with bare feet
flat-screened televisions shine
divine light
out of brick-and-mortar bungalows, shouting
Bollywood love songs
over the sound of
women being raped
and young hushed couples
afraid to touch in public;

people push and
queue and
tutt for a spot to pray
in the temples, to
meditate in the Matrimandir...

dishonest men
point you towards honest bargains;
honest men
coax you into
dishonest favours, tips, taxes...

The locals don't speak a
word of English
and neither does the guy who's fluent

holy cows roam the streets starving to death,
desperately ingesting
last month's trash;
they're too sacred to slaughter
so we let them commit suicide instead

"Say NO to plastic" signs are dusted over
by a thick layer of smog,
dogs collapsed on their sides
look neither dead nor sleeping
and elephants are at home
in 2x3m sandpits

men hold hands on the beach and no-one blinks an eye,
but they're executed for fucking in private
and I can't get my legs out
in the 35 degree heat -
and it's winter !

on day three
we smoke a spliff
with some college students,
it costs us $6 for half a kg -
but I can't get a soy flat white
anywhere,
let alone soy...
and I can't get one at home,
for that much,
either...

if I want to buy that saree
I must also buy those tights, no
exceptions

I guess all the stares
mean we fit right in,
I'm just not sure
if it's curiosity or
contempt

"The true domain of woman
is the spiritual."

- read somewhere in Auroville.

Auroville

"It is not the old [world] transforming itself, it is a new world that is born. And we are right in the midst of this period of transition where the two are entangled.

But since a radical purge or transformation would result in the body's dissolution, the work goes on in stages, progressively.

If a total transformation of the being is the aim, a transformation of the body must be an indispensable part of it.

The heavens beyond are great and wonderful, but greater and more wonderful are the heavens within you. This should be man's unshakeable faith within himself, because God dwells in him."

- The Mother.

SQ286

all the women look achingly
immaculate, and
the rustle of
a thousand plastic packages
make me want to cry

I go to
say something
to my boyfriend
but he's plugged into a screen I
can't see,
wrestling with the cord
that plays leash to the remote control.
they give us

tiny plastic bags
filled with tiny plastic toothbrushes
and there are more plastic toothbrushes
in plastic bags
in the plastic bathroom

but the women look so achingly
beautiful; their cheeks flushed
a perfect pink
and their ritually rehearsed performance
absorbs even my eyes
- after all, I've also
paid for it.

a love poem, so wut

The architecture of you is perfect.
The peaks of you align - your shoulder and knee,
propped up on the bed
while you confess your love
of Canada's President to me
he has tattoos
and is shirtless
what a babe
he's forty-four

I love the angles of you
your shoulders square burgundy from your pretty little head
as you press ink into yourself
you were once afraid of needles methinks,
and I imagine the lures and tubes they stuck into you
- is it wrong to love you more because of it?

you remind me of myself applying make up:
the tunnel of concentration
that funnels down into your thigh
as you press your mind's eye into it
one inky puncture at a time

I love the bands wrapped around your ankle,
wrist and neck
some stories to match the scars
on your thumb and chest
and how the latter becomes red
in the heat of the shower

the way your fingers curl into your own flesh
and in
to me

the way your eyes wrinkle up when you're happy
you always seem -

and even that one time your eyes were leaking
with the aches of this world
you still were more beautiful
than anything I've ever seen
(of course I loved you more because of it)

I'm so happy sat on your floor
churning out words
for both business and pleasure
they flow in your company

will you let me grasp your skin
will you meander around strange places with me awhile

the settlement

This place is filled with echoes of you.

I wonder why the fire isn't going.
I wonder where the guitar is.
I remember to boil the water first.
I imagine the chaos if you'd done
what you said you'd wanted to.
I imagine if I'd fallen into habit, instead
       of saying no (thanks).

I imagine -

I fall into habit
       anyway,
But I insert You into the conversation.
      open, I flow,
I flow with loquacity -

This place is filled with echoes of you
I remember dropping anchor
Six-teen-times,
      I remember
being woken at 2am
to make polite conversation
with a stranger
I remember this oceanic palette,
these fabric folds of the shore
I remember
reciting
my vows to this place,
myself; these thirteen

I remember these same blisters
in the palms of my hands, like small jewels
now I hold
two sapphire shells instead

I remember walking to the end
and finding you behind me
and feeling afraid
and feeling alive all at once
(the same reason I ever do anything)

I remember these soft orange colours
over these wintery forest peaks

I remember two-fold
calls on the walkie talkie: do you
copy?

I remember the smell of you
and I wish I'd brought
your shirt as you suggested

I remember
your warmth
I remember your arms locking mine into my
body

I remember
kissing your cheek
I wonder how many people here
saw
She certainly knows.
(for the first time ever, I lied
at exactly the right moment -
or at least, I choked
just in time
on the truth)

This whole place reeks
with the smell
of you
And still I invited you in -
I allowed you both to kiss my cheek
- why do they
insist
on doing that?
after
everything?

On paper, on paper,
but we didn't see
into the water together

I've borrowed from you a-plenty
to give everything
to him.

"The destruction of love can be brought about most swiftly when one love constantly demands of the other, 'Do you love me? Do you really love me?' while the other, at first, replying, 'Yes, of course I do' and being met with 'Are you sure?' has no place to go but away."

- Janet Frame, The Caparthians

starling

the skies cracking open
horizons appearing
the clearing of oceans
the searing of sun

gas station

we've slipped

in\to 

that day-to-day habit

the Dance of the Mundane

- it's okay, I think

we flow

in and out, sometimes

faces smushed together, 

sometimes

heads towards 

opposite ends

- it's okay

because the universe

(and all within it) 

is spherical, because

everything

must always

return

home

our fingertips will eventually

weave themselves

back into each other

and we'll remember all the lives

that have flushed themselves through us

birth / day

there are things that cling to me
that are not mine -
things that have come
from somewhere
else

they like to latch on to the tendrils
of me, at first I don't notice
the scratch at my periphery -

suddenly, I feel
my brain
dragging,
my
reproduction organs
tugging themselves into swollen knots

and I know.
I'm
holding
within me
a parasite

at least
I know.

it's still revolting.

at best
I can stand
by the window,
and invite
the rain to wash over me,
to wash them off

at worst they'll cry through the tips of my fingers
make their way up
into
my throat

and flood out my eyeballs

mostly, I don't mind.
I'm so good at playing host.

but other people mind
and they mind that I don't mind
they will encourage me
to fix, or
get fixed,
"okay?"

though I know fix begins
with staying, still.

I feel the parasites out,
their little footpricks on my skin hairs -
trying
to get
somewhere, too

They also want out.

They've another destination.
it isn't me
and I'd be self-absorbed
not to realise

A place that isn't even at this volume of gravity -

and eventually, after climbing
beyond capacity to fill
they'll slip down my
face, rest
briefly in my mouth
and continue back down
through the earth
to inhabit some other soil

I'll be empty
again.
and I'll wish to feel
the echoey ding
of those ferocious ghosts

it kind of feels like a lie

to say, "when I 

was in New York

I made out with a stranger

who barely spoke English

with crosses on my hands to mark 

DO NOT SERVE

my dad and his partner a few 

meters away

in a nightclub that 

felt like a labyrinth

and I was scared

and I loved the adrenaline"

but it wouldn't be a lie

that's a thing that happened

and it's probably 

no big deal,

anyway

en Pinnacle

Tomorrow

I will emerge into the forest
and I will wonder how I could ever
not be okay

or,
I will be
traversing
the phlegm-caught lungs of my chest
and wishing
i were alone

I will be

carrying the spaces for us all to sleep
carrying, again

I'll be thinking about her
and him,
him, him

and all of them
and all of that

I'll be

(I'll be)

standing in the puddles of myself
without your kiss on my forehead
but
with someone
who gave me one, once

(because I coerced him into it..)

S16

not many people like
the smell of Rotorua
but to me, it's lovely,
like

the earth's come home
from a hard day,
or,
just woken up
mouth laced with the night's dreams,
like

resting my face
against you, softly breathing
in the scent of you,
after / wards, like

catching us
on me
for the better part of the next day,
like

when my flatmates
burn flesh
I don't want it
but it fills the room

"Ultimately, all things are small because all things are transient." 

- Eckhart Tolle

I edited it your poem.

Maybe you'll find it soon.

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.

wading

This is the second time I've waded naked into these waters. The first in broad daylight, a baptismal ritual. The first cleansing from love, the second falling into. With, and alone - in oppositions of literal and figurative.

The first; dragging him in with me to escape the shift of the years, but very much in my own orchestrated realm. I am so good at that. I instigated, I decided, I enacted, I fulfilled, I regurgitated it back out. I watched him squirm in the hours that followed, coy around the campfire, gauche as his parents anchored ashore the next day. Messages unanswered, him being too young to understand the notion of play - especially from my female end.

And this time, by my own proximity and with joined heads. I have confessed my secret to those with me but in terms that bear no weight for them. They only know forevers, ongoings. The water holds my gushing heart; my body feels lithe with love. It speaks to me throughout the night, crashing: "I know, I know."

I'm glad it knows.

A pod of dolphins swim past us, mum is squealing with feigned delight - this is the perfect story to impart in weeks to come. I'm quiet with love, much in the way that I was when I became awash with bloodflood in the carpark of 2013. Where I sewed myself together and picked him and I apart. A mistake to be repeated.

You've the same triangles as those three, but you know the geometry of yours. And for that, I already love you.

"There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep yourself open and aware to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open... No artist is pleased. [There is] no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a queer divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching…"

- Martha Graham

"...his hands at any rate are intelligent, they move over me delicately as a blind man's reading Braille, skilled, moulding me like a vase, they're learning me; they repeat patterns he's tried before, they've found out what works, and my body responds that way too, anticipates him, educated, crisp as a typewriter."

- Surfacing, Margaret Atwood.

puddled

In the shower. Red hair sits hatched over my wrists, the strands like opened veins. Draped perfectly to demonstrate my anatomy, or at least as imagined; an indication of where my head would like to be: swimming swirling down the drain with the water dirtied by my skin. So much of me has slid down the drain in my lifetime. You could probably produce a life-sized sculpture from the parts of my body that have evaded me - my hair, my eyelashes, my skin flakes, pimple pus. My saliva into others' mouths.

I recall your forearms; their huge, vertical carvings that wield memories of your best friend running two kilometers to the beach to find you in fully-fledged panic. I had only just met you both and had no idea how to help. I probably couldn't have done anything to help. I sat at home bewildered. I tried to cry and couldn't.

Eighteen months ago I walked into Levin town, and thought how easy it would be to become part of the train. I could press myself into the steel and leave traces of me on the tracks, leaving no trace. I didn't feel like a person. I didn't feel like myself. I wasn't myself. I was the insides of you, a part of your organs and their revolting chaos - subject to your self-abuse and adopting it myself. As if I hadn't already swallowed enough into my own lungs.

Sometimes when I'm driving, I think of setting my route to chance. Especially on the motorway. But I worry I'd only sit again, this time forever, and that would be worse. I'm not sure if that idea floats around my head because you suggested it when I was sixteen. Before I had my licence, I berated you for it. And now I am it.

When I'm in high places, I feel like I could jump off them and my body would never touch the ground. I told you this on Friday night as we leaned off the building without barriers. I think there's a term for this feeling but I can't remember it.

One time, I said out loud that suicide is something everyone must have thought about at some stage. Not necessarily seriously wanted, but considered the possibility of. You said it had never crossed your mind. I felt like someone had prised my eyelids wide apart with their fingernails.

palimpsest

I'm a palimpsest
of all the things I've ever been,
ever seen, thought, heard and felt,
everything I've ever ingested
and even the things I've spat out
remain layered somewhere within the folds of me

I'm a walking archive of my own personal history,
an allusion to the fragments of the history of me
that has collided with every other person,
place, being, space
I've ever inhabited,
clashed with, found harmony in,
been confused by -

there's a flicker of me
in every person
whose eyes I've ever met

whether I've traversed their insides or not.
My footprints are in the dust of every city
I've ever held underneath my feet;
in every river I've swum in
the smell of my skin
permeates the water.

I am a palimpsest of my own experience of the world
and the world is a palimpsest
of me and all the others
that've been here
and left their bones
in the vast, beautiful graveyard
that is this planet.
We're all decomposing here, leaving
tiny pieces of ourselves
around the place
hoping someone will glance the glimmers
and remember
us ...

I'm a living document of my own life
and I want to be read
I want someone to study me
and meld their words with mine

I want to write an extraordinary story.

swim

here I am
writhing in doubt -
when all I really need
is that salted veil on my skin

and perhaps that's why
I'm always looking
to douse myself in chlorine
from the inside out:
to find some pseudo-happiness
and melt myself

into the psych/ic ocean of the universe

true happiness will come
from nature's purging

when flooded and floating
in the salt of me, not
leaking from my eyes
but emerging from
the pores of my skin

karamea

We're at the top of the West Coast. I've never been here before.

Last night being a de ja vu of 10 years and one month earlier - strange humanoid shapes in the sand this morning. A full metallic moon arching over the vicious waves. Short shorts that do nothing to keep the sand from the creases of my skin. With an almost/not-stranger and much more self-awareness, more assertiveness. Still a healthy dose of youthful naivety. Running away in order to arrive home. Your friend inadvertently tagging along. Jumping in when it's cold. Walking towards bonfires (real and imagined). History repeats.

And actually, there was the start of the words. Not the very start, but the conscious beginning. Deciding to write. The first of what would morph into hundreds of moments inscribed, thousands of secrets etched. It began with a list. How very pedantic.

Not a list of things he finds difficult about me (which could include: the destination; mumbling; refusing to say "pardon?"; speaking cryptically; slapping; being forgetful / taking for granted) - but a list of self-improvement to-dos. Similar but not the same to those existing in my head now.

... You keep referring to a future. Maybe ours. You're worried - but for yourself, not for us. "I hope you don't become sick of me." I find that peculiar. I've always needed the ones I can't quite figure out. I'm not sure if this is problematic. It's probably self-sabotaging.

Maybe that's why the other, for all his honesty, doesn't quite sit right. So beautifully transparent in his goodness.

But then, glimpses of the palimpsest himself. In which I see a self-certain mystique that I like. Maybe it's his elusiveness that is elusive.

rules for sleeping with flatmates and colleagues:

1. its going to happen

2. don't be weird about it 

away

It's because going somewhere else is like taking a step back. It's like pouring your thoughts onto another's ears so they can speak fresh words into your hands. It's like showering the day's chaos from your surface before entering the nightly catafalque. It's the same as stepping into the ocean so you can forget land for a while.

It's like pushing that tiny triangle under your tongue to both leave this place and sink deeper into it. It's like gripping someone else's back and learning the etchings of their skin, so your fingertips remember them when they're not there. It's like recalling sixteen and aching with your future self's nostalgia for now.

In the end, time and place are nil. They are not anything except arbitrary configurations of our desperate, grappling minds. They are paradoxically the most quintessential and least tangible things we have. And yes, those of us who bleed are the lucky ones - we're not sitting below ground. We're melting into the same universe that the world's air is snaking its way through. We're necessary to everything else as everything else is necessary to ourselves.

Without us, there is no world. We're the stars that guide the earth's orbit, and we're the gravity of our own souls. Indeed, if it weren't for the hollowness of my body, I might float away, and see it all for what it really is.

from and to

Remembering being with you sends that warm, melty feeling down my legs. It's not just sun. I've felt like this with you in the dark - and in the rain. I feel like this with you inside four stark walls. I know that there's something in the waves matched with my memory of you. I'm very aware of the distortion and I'm okay with it. I suppose because I hope there'll be a future where these two circumstances co-exist. It is certainly moments which I fall in love with, and with recognising myself in others. Even just a glimmer. It is in our mouths inhaling the same breath that us lives. We should bleed if we are to know where we are. Otherwise, I am here on the beach's edge alone, falling in love with the sound of the waves, permeating a final sunset.

dreaming of sleep

All the bodies that were ever present on this earth are still here on this earth. Body-less bones sit strewn across the land, underneath its skin; or are pelted into dust and carried whistling along desert air.

The only bodies not still here on earth are some belonging to astronauts. But mostly, the earth is a vast gravesite. It absorbs the bodies living here, continually; it feeds on them and then feeds them back to us. We are sustaining ourselves via long-distance cannibalism.

All the bodies that ever existed are still here.

When I die, I will join them - all those bodies held captive by our God mother earth. One of them will be me. Maybe it will be soon. I feel my flesh weary enough to become voluntarily battered. The lumps of me are gravitating towards the outside edges of me, trying to escape each other. My body doesn't even want to hold itself together, or to hold me inside of itself any longer. It's too exhausting. All of me wants to lie down alongside the world's many billion other skeletons. It would be so easy to lie still and reset a while, rest a while, rest white.

All the world's bodies are lullabying me to sleep. They mouth wordless words gently into my eyes, lips curled around my sockets, a few hours into each day. I begin living and then I am tired, and they are so courteous beckoning me to sleep. They are the earth's hosts, recruiting permanent guests. Most people don't have ears, but I've spoken their language since I was eleven. I hear their invite. I'm ready to lie down.

too many beginnings and
too many ends,
as usual

take two - 2

fluidity is found

not in the grapple of exclusive certainty

but in the acknowledgement

that we
are separate entities

fluid in our mutuality

gifted by our diversities

finding our ways

around and through each (an)other 

and shifting alongside each (an)other

with dedicated peripheral

our eightsandfives implore us

to get-give as much as we can give-get

trip #8

All the things that have manifested are

ugly. (but they are beautiful at the same time). 

And they are not so different
from what I know of myself
in the light. 

I'm the same but with a new opened channel

to articulate it all, or rather:

the mode by which I output

becomes unlimited,

  ideas are free to flow, just as they need.

even here, now in this morning-after writing.

That's why wrath for self and/other 

were made from June, 

though I'd intended something different -

because I had opened.

and fortunately I stayed opened long enough
to pray the pretty pictures of my head

onto the others' bodies

and they danced the dance that was made in me,

they told everyone that which I couldn't speak,

not for lack of ability or words,

but for fear.

That tiny 'Fraid which resides in me,

she underpins everything -

she's still hanging around. 

Sometimes, when the right song is playing, it feels that it would be beautiful to step out into the traffic and go walking with the red man.

new ritual

I was birthed into this year

screaming into the wind,

drowned out by the storm of myself,

hurtling through the hours

and there, for seven days, 

I've stayed.

I'm still lying in the grass

next to the rickety fence

that knows to stand the gale

the tears in my cheeks haven't healed

in fact, they're

splitting wider

I wish they were smiles.

there's something awful in me

and I don't know what it is

there's some terrible

self-loathing

that manifests staccato 

bursts of breath

open-mouthed speech that

doesn't bear words

a foreign language announced by 

caustic 

silence

I hate it.

I hate mostly

that it makes me 

hate myself.

There's something awful in me

and I don't know what it is

I can't imagine where it came from

except, 

that 

it's riding on my back

escaped from another

a parasite transversing 

not only

bodies

but 

time

it's leapt 

from the year I couldn't

into the present

(so)where things are different, but 

still

the same.

I want it off. 

I want it out.

I've told it to go.

It's still clutching and leaving scratches

I saw them on his back

I knew it was it

when he said, "you did this",

pointing at the claw marks and

me, without recollection

"No," I said,

"it was the other way around -

you were the one

taking the back of your hand to my face

while it dangled off the bed -

I never marked you."

But he insisted I did

and I knew

it was her

that creeping little parasite

that sits inside my throat 

and glides between

my forehead and my belly

when she is bored

- and she always is

we gave her a name,

after he

and those colours

woke her up

Her name is 

Vanessa

She's got to go.

bflood

my brain is flooded, swimming in my
thoughts leaking out of my eyes

flooded blood-red fury
that blurry spot begging to be

re-energised
between the heads of my femurs

drains an achy relief
already laughing to crying

sugar cubes made redundant
I've resolved to alone

but I've not resolved anything
my head can't keep up

with my churning womb
my history burns itself

for what's at stake
(little more than my mistakes)

there's something breaking in me
much worse than spilt milk

leaking eyes the first fissure

haven't seen what
I need to see