astro lovers

when I lay down to dream,
I invite them all into my bed

I wind my tongue around the mouths of un-strangers,
beckoning them to come and lie with me
(or at least, to omit the truth)

I astro-travel to be with anyone
whose head matches mine,
I wait until my lovers are asleep
and then wake them up inside a small sphere
known as the universe

I coax them to put their hands over my flesh
and intimate kind words to them

I never make them breakfast
I never do their laundry
I always tell them they're beautiful
I never tell them
               that I love them

but I wonder what might happen
if I dragged them into the living?
would they come out and still love me, or
would they scatter back into the night?

banks peninsula

-- I press myself into you,
and the birds make themselves known;
the waves lap up towards the edges of us
and we fall in and out of sleep -
the wind winds its way through the open roof, and
through my hair --
                      and yours--
--knotting our salted heads
as they nod left and right,
my mouth slightly open and sharing itself with your sleeve...

children howl down the hill,
dragging skateboards, push-scooters, other apparatus behind them
and eventually being dragged behind them, themselves

everything seems simultaneously
hectic and quiet

We wake, and the wind's subsided;
we eat a hundred pieces of fruit
and follow the winding road
back up to the lake to sleep at it's shore
pressed into each other, in the back of our small van...

everything is good,
everything is safe,
everything is full of love.

in/hale

After I inhale,
all of that leaves me -
I feel heavier and lighter all at once,
I feel clear and yet hyper-aware

but the next morning, I'm still
there, though every now and then
I feel the daily state and its
slow creep of reality
etching its way back in

it lives in me but sometimes
I wish I could live in it.

Everyone sits calmly outside
and does what they do -

sometimes I feel so lost
when I'm not high.

I like to go travelling inside my own head
the safest and furtherest place
from home that I could be.
I've no idea how to get there
but it's so easy to return

I've a road map inside me
that points to all possible destinations
it goes around in circles
and then spirals
up

I like the mountains because they're unascendable,
the oceans because of their vastness
I like the places that are endless
I want the trip that never ceases -

but that's known commonly as insanity,
and generally disapproved of.

Purakaunui #3

Most people have coffee and cigarettes
but we have coffee and marijuana -
we don't quite wake-and-bake,
but we get-up-and-potter-and-do-the-dishes-and-get
-stoned.

We get low on the high
and then bump it up with caffeine,
jumping about
from one fork-edge to the other

and even though we're far from home
we're more than home -
smoking local air,
swimming local beaches
and sitting next to friends of friends of friends.

We're in the thick of it, this summer
and it hasn't even started;

we're in the heat of it, this summer,
and it isn't even the solstice.

I hear the waves of my own world
pouring out around me
and it pleases me to see them
running out of my fingertips.

Purakaunui #2

Even in the cold, my hair dries within minutes -
the heat comes from the inside
out: the hot goings-on
of my head,
blood and oxygen circulating
and the thick, muggy humidity
of long, grey cloudy air...

Even in the cold,
my hair dries quickly
it feels beautiful and earthy
even though I've
not washed it in weeks.

Purakaunui #1

We submerge ourselves under
the shattering icy glass,
it breaks over our heads and
spikes the surface of our skin

my toes search upwards
and my lungs become the centre of myself,
two lumps of flesh floating
within a blue body, my heart
makes itself known

my hair scatters in lines out from me
my head a Medusa of snakes and storms,
the salt clings to it and
eats at my scalp pores.

It seems easier to bear alone,
it feels almost baptismal,
a perfect morning ritual, a perfect
offering to Tangaroa,
a quiet unsquealing,
an un-uttered gasp.

We submerge ourselves under
and the ice shatters overhead

I feel my blood boiling over
and then I put on a beanie.

Cascade Creek

We sleep in the most shaded

corner of the campsite,

we sleep -

before seven’s become eight,

most people have risen,

undertaken their morning rituals

and left to make their days.

We have no plans, no structure,

no timeline to adhere to,

we wake when our bodies

have taken the rest they need

(we were the last awake, too,

howling around the campfire).

Dreams nor goals even stir us,

the day stretches safely into the forever-eve,

night becoming day long after the clock would say so.

I enter the day quite before them,

spilling words and coffee around the campsite,

already strewn with relics of the night before

and dewey from the shadow of the mountain.

Dawn at Shotover River

There’s light, everywhere;

it stretches into the all the forever-corners of the long, languid day -

as midnight draws near, I see

still a hint of yellow on the horizon

and it creeps back into my other eye only five hours later

The light is everywhere;

it saturates the day

it pushes our dinner backwards

and shakes us out of morning’s bed

as if we’re food in a hot pan

It changes the colour of our skin

it changes the colour of our insides

it makes us see better without carrots

it prises open our lashes with it’s soft, ob-long fingers

It opens its arms wide to encompass vast mountain ranges,

wild oceans, icy lakes;

it shows us everything in blue and green (and colours thereof)

There is light, everywhere...

For too long, I’ve been looking with my eyes shut.

in a car park in Rai Valley

Chet was there then, too

nestled in amongst those dark blue giants

hovered by lightest grey clouds

and held in the hands of the youngest man

I asked for him by name at Te Kainga

but I was the youngest girl, so

The Shins rang out instead

and that was okay, except

now they make me nostalgic

and are mandatory listening on South Island road trips

(just as The White Stripes were, briefly,

for a short while 'til Chet fixed it)

and so there’s something unnerving

about the unfinished house in this paddock

and the rolled joint sitting in your ear …

except you’re reading me a book and

cooking me a meatless meal.

renegade joint

renegade joint:

we pass it back and forth between us

lightening speed, the opposite of green -

windows down and A/C on,

natural lavender scent sprayed,

sunnies on, beer in hand -

waiting in line on a hot stretch of tarmac

I recall how easy it feels -

my breathing flows in spheres

and it seems unfair

that this isn’t default …

my eyes rest

my peace returns

my lips relax

I actually feel happy

I think, and I

stop thinking

I am “not thinking”

about thinking

Everything is dancing

we float on the water

moving easily between islands

the captain conducts a drill

and nobody moves.

Fortrose in the Catlins, Otago, Aotearoa New Zealand

It's so hard to be with the world today. 

bump

I don't have a Wednesday.
Wednesday disappears from me -
it scampers away like the mischievous child
that time is, climbing up the rafters and
tripping people over when they least expect it

Wednesday is the steam evaporating off the bathroom mirror:
I wipe a small clearing with my perfumed fingers
so I can see myself better,
stare into the forever-abyss of
my own reflection

time winds back and forth and back
and forth

My Wednesday is
the last pages of a very good book,
but my weekend is the world
in which the main character comes alive.

sgel

oh, I know
                   that sight lingering in the eyes
               that heavy breath,
           those off-hand truths spoken
                                                      in and out
                                                                 of context 
that gently self-loathing
                                  emergence from the bedroom

the Sunday morning, next
      as you rummage through your own vomit
         a brief flutter in a spate of normality

the waking up early, cold secrets
that soft melting 
                     in the corners of the eyes
that horrible crash 
                               of parallels
oh, yes
             I've known it

that intimate and (unavoidable) forever
that trip to the shower 
cold
I've felt it;
                  I've wrung myself out
                  down someone else's
                                                   drain
 
That shattering quiet, that
              shared omission

that piercing stillness --
that nervous withdrawal,
I've also 
               agitated it

that space
           alone, afterwards

that fumble with the light/s off
that listening for the right timing
that 9am escape trick, I've also
                                                  attempted

I've spent Saturdays 
                            not eating
and Sundays watching
                                      sad films
just to hold some skin afterwards
                                                       - trust me, it's not
                     worth the wait.

I can't help but berate
                               my tired nostalgia

I can't help but want

unfolding infinities
my future my past

Anawhata - 2

I love how open we become
the words flood from your head
(and mine from my fingertips)
your senses made manifest
a private exhibition for my curiosity
(mine published on the world-wide web,
a public reassurance for my inner existentialist)

Anawhata - 1

I love how wild you become
blinded by a vision of white,
your forearms braced around my chest
in hap-hazard triangles,

how far my back can turn to meet you and
the way your hand sometimes creeps up to my throat,
the window almost always open and
space flooding in, the night
flooding over us - and even the
ocean crashing softly in the distance
- or sometimes just cars -
the manic pursuit of exhaustion,
followed by the beautiful rest...

waking in the morning
and finding ourselves still skin-to-skin.

legs

oh, I know
                   that flush
               that glint,
           that close-by sit
     those footsteps down the
                                              hallway,
that gently euphoric
                                  emergence from the shower

that suppressed
       flutter through normality

the waking up late, warm in the cold
that soft melting in the eyes
that lovely crash of
                                juxtapositions
oh, yes
             I know it

that (after) separation
that trip to the laundry
I've held it;
                  I've hung out
               someone else's
                                             bed sheets

That beautiful quiet, that
              shared omission

that piercing stillness --
I've also held it

that
        space alone, afterwards

that fumble with the light/s on
that listening for the timing
that 7am escape trick, I've also
                                                  done it.

I've spent Mondays making sticky pancakes
and Sundays watching
                                      bad films
just to hold some skin afterwards
                                                       - trust me, it's
                     worth the weight.

I can't help but indulge in your
                                                   present-nostalgia

I can't help but want

to re-live, to unfold
my parallel past

I spend most of my weekends in a state of high anxiety
some invisible claw curled around my throat,
a pin stuck between my eyes

the ultimate self-sabotage
there's no down time in this body

its head is restless
and the only way to sedate it
is to administer some heavy fists
so then at least I'm crying from pain rather than guilt

but soon enough the ghoul surges, back from the living
looking to suck out my eyeballs
it doesn't care how I look in the morning
much less how I feel right now

he turns me into a gasping mute
whose words are mouthed rather than spoken

I spend my whole week waiting for a break
and when I get it
it breaks me, alright
it snaps my ribs one by one
and then suddenly
it's Monday again
and I begin my week
as a well-composed pile of bones

liive

on stage
I've committed many suicides
and had others commit them for me
knowingly and
                         unknowingly

I've died many
tiny deaths, I've
melted into the
masses, drowned
in their arms.

I've performed my own baptism
I've held a chalice to my lips
I've swamped myself
in a duck-shit-filled lake
in the name of art
I've snuck around the sleeping
I've begged, borrowed and stolen
I've clambered through labyrinth limbs of strangers
I've lived inside a tiny box

I've stood for five hours, freezing
and rinsed myself blue
I've broken bones
and worn out tired kness
I've scraped the inside of my stomach
I've let strangers put their mouths on mine

I've breast fed plastic dolls
I've stood on giant pedestals
I've exposed my flesh
over and over, so many times I've lost count

I've been lifted up, trodden on, dragged
                                                                by my hair
I've let people cut my hair
                                           off
I've let people
                       etch signs into me

I've left my sweat in foreign cities
I've stuffed food into / onto my face
I've flown giant birds
I've borne the the onslaught of abuse
and made many people smile

I've written countless bad poems
and never spoken one.

I've died many tiny deaths
and orchestrated countless suicides

I want the certain ritual
of being
reborn.

a poem that shouldn't be written but I'm writing it anyway, in what I'd like to think is a moment of bold honesty, but probably is more like embarrassing stupidity

i.

I want to fuck you
like the dirty fucking whore
I once was
/ still am, but
not practising, like a bad catholic who's
skipping church

I want to
open my mouth
wider over yours, and take giant gulps of you
run my tongue along your teeth
and smash my jaw on your edges

and even though I get off
every time with you, without fail, and even
almost always
more than once, I just...

feel complacent in my climax
coz it's just so
goddamn easy

I want the performance back.

I want to dress up in thigh-high socks
and short skirts
and still be wearing them
when you come inside me
(my top off,
but in my bra)

I want to find you in a gutter at 4am
and lick drugs from your sticky palms
I want to wake up on your floor
with broken wine bottles everywhere
and stains in the carpet
that aren't from the wine

I want to smell myself on you
when I walk back into your room
after pissing in the morning
and walking back through your lounge
your conventionally good-looking flatmate
half glaring, half gawking

I want you to smack me across my face
I want you to dig your nails into my spine
I want you to chuck me around your living room and break a
very expensive heirloom

and tell your girlfriend all about it

and write poems about it

I want things that grate entirely
with my actual
ideologies

I want the sordid satisfaction
of you thinking I'm something I'm not
and knowing you can't comprehend
human duality

(or you know it entirely, and
that's why
you're here)

I want the pleasure of having power
over giving you an alter-ego
like, fuck yes this same
binge drinking, cock-sucking slut
also votes green, shuts down the patriarchy and
recycles correctly

and sure you can take me home
if you buy me a vegan burger first
coz I'm a dirty little hippy
with zero dollars to her name
but you're gonna buy me breakfast -
not because you're the male
but because you fucking owe me,
because you already want to see me again
and it's only
the morning after

and I'll answer your 10pm texts
coz it feels like summer,
and we all want that

I'll walk through the park at night for you
I'll risk my life to open my legs
I'll play the right song
and postpone sleep

just to feel in control
just to feel like the mad seductress
just to bear the weight of your form
and hear the aliveness of your breath

and conquer
and know
and decipher
one by one


ii.

here's what I don't want to do:

I don't want to go back to your windowless apartment
I don't want to hold your soft, spineless back
I don't want to pretend I'm enjoying it
I don't want you to shove yourself inside of me
I don't want to eat your fucking pumpkin seeds
you sad excuse for a vegetarian
I don't want to
go fucking slowly
I don't want to be fucked the way you want to fuck me
I don't want to wear a short skirt because you told me to,
I want to wear it because I fucking want to wear it
I don't want you to tell me to be quiet
I don't want you to be such an ugly, pathetic excuse for a man
I don't want you to
have me

I don't want to cry on your bed afterwards
and try to politely, kindly
explain why i feel revolted,
disgusted,
sick to my stomach
in a way i can't even comprehend, yet
and tell you sweet little lies
about not being attracted to you
when really the truth is

you fucking shoved yourself inside of me
after I literally said no
what the fuck was that ?
what the fuck was that

the time I stepped outside of myself
the time I played the game but no longer for the game's sake
the time I put myself in danger
the only time i wish i hadn't


iii.

I want them to enact my nostalgia

I imagine them sneaking across the hallway
at unholy hours of the night
mis-matched lovemakers
sharing rooms within a shared home
existing between the spaces of the house's other inhabitants

I imagine them indulging in the easy tension of holding a secret in the kitchen
the morning ritual of opening the fridge
and boiling the jug
the sterile intimacy
the stoic lust of taboo
the heroic triumph of doing the forbidden thing

sometimes the only way to appreciate someone you don't get along with
is to put yourself inside of them,
let them wear your skin
and shower together afterwards

pre-apocalyptic walnut

I imagine our brains
becoming two halves of a single walnut,
enclosed within an old shell ...

and then I remember
my atoms
aren't mine
      anyway,
(and suddenly (this poem)...)

and nothing really matters

that boring cliche
is cliche
'cause it's true.


... Forget about the walnut.
I want to wake up
dribbling on your pillow
every morning,

Most mornings.

Sometimes
I want to wake up
and sneak out of bed before you
have time to disrupt my
fantasy routine
of apple-cider-vinegar-homemadekombucha-alkalinewater-yoga-mediation-readingabookleisurely...

...

... but I also want to
melt my skin into yours,
fold myself into
your shell.
forever
which is an utterly stupid concept,
I know that, but
still I...

-- and then the ellipses come out.
Ah, see, now we're getting there -

and then the ellipses come out,
the poems go nowhere...
but they arrived
so ...
whatever, really.

in an ideal world
words flow
in an ideal world
I write everything by hand
and it still has global reach
In An Ideal World

in an ideal world
there's tea for every meal
I never question whether honey's bad for me
flute music is always funny

in an ideal world
laughing in motion
isn't met with cynicism
in an ideal world

writing really bad poems

21st century zen

Nothing will let me go under.

I promise you, I'm not trying to run away.
I'm trying to run into.

I want to run further into myself and further
into us, I want to
      get lost
in the labyrinth of the world -
                  but in a good way.

I want to know before knowing
I want to see without ever having to
     open my eyes
I want to hear everything
     but still
take part in the conversation

I want to cut off my own ears.

Nothing will let me go under.

I chew it
I smoke it
I bake it I
grind it
I blend it I
extract it, I inhale it
I
avoid it
I digest it
I tip it from the bottom of a
brown glass bottle
into my throat;

nothing will let me go under

even though I've been on top of it
for so long (so long),
so good
so good
so well-
behaved...

Nothing will let me go under

It's as if
I'm meant to be here.

But it's not that I don't --
I mean,
I'm just trying--
to go
    deeper,
really, I'm...

and then ...
when I'm sitting in my own silence
in the after-stench of glutton

it comes to me

there's just too much
nothing will let me go under
'cause I'm already swimming in it
already bashed about by the current
already
miles beyond my own body,
chasing after my
mind.

revisionalry

I wonder if I should
                                 send my poem to you,
                                                                      Ella

   .

imagine
every'neI've
ever
   written
      a poem about

reading
             about
                       themselves

and knowing
                      all their own

secrets,
and

maybe that's why I 

                                           

                                                  (of course it's why I)

,why I                                    

tipped you off, Nicholas

                            because 

                           I wanted

                                     to

I wanted

you

to

know

the things

you didn't know

I 

knew you didn't

know

I knew about you

\ so 

that in 

twenty seventeen

I could write poems about

yearning 

about you

forever

whilst being

perfectly

happy

in love.

in the first line of a poem

in the first line of a poem
there's so much
pressure
              \
                anxiety
to grab you, reader --
especially after
eight hundred
and
     no one
                even
                       reads them
                             
     anyway.

atrophied

when I feel the kinetic energy
accumulating in my joints
and near bursting from the corners of my salted eyes
then, I think of

all those women
who were kept quiet in their bodies
their wind knitted down under their
crinolines and corsets

who never raced through the mud
on bare feet, a hundred miles
who never got into a war
who never beat their best friend

who never smashed their knees into the pavement
or bent their bones over tree branches

who maybe, at best, felt their own way through the darkness

(like I've found myself clawing through
at odd afternoon intervals
in lieu of evening solitude
or actual intimacy, culled
by adultly exhaustion)

all those women
whose flesh was held still
against their own wanting --

how tragic it is
how shameful is it
that they have not felt their own blood
causing through their own veins

that they shall lie dormant
when they could be beautifully volatile

i.
sometimes all it takes
to feel powerful again
(read: normal)
is boots and a denim jacket
a short puff on a small blunt
and walking in to a dimly-lit, music-less bedroom --
alone --
while the rain hits the veranda

and I wonder how I could
ever
not be
good


ii.
when I was getting high
and writing foreign poems
late at night
every night
about the night
and didn't have steel pins in me
and didn't mind getting caffeine\drunk

then I felt like an artist
then I felt like I's creating things

then I felt
like a
human being


iii.
I feel like i'm on the precipice
of being 18 again
thick in the hea(r)t of it
melting into regular epiphany
bordering on genius,
all the while complaining
about being 18 again --

but here's the trick:
I knew more then than I know now,
but I didn't know it

san/

you keep talking about that trip
like you didn't experience the paranoia
I did
like you
weren't afraid of burning the house down
a second time -
I was

you keep talking about it being earth-provided
but there's nothing natural
about my head

dancing out and away from my body
a tiny me-ghoul reminding me
of my own
creeping mortality

every time I am high now
I remember I will die
and I imagine all the ways
it might happen

including you turning a knife on me

there's nothing natural about that

and when I am awake,
alive and
not in other states
I'm caught up in the most
unholy, unworldly of heads -
I'm not even here
I'm culling myself thin

thinner than when I vomited for two days straight
thinner than my bones feel on acid
thinner than the line that's driven itself
between I
and
you

thinner than my bank account
thinner than my ability to talk sense
thinner than my ferritin levels
after rice-bread-potatoes
for three months straight

thinner than the space between my eyebrows
as it slowly collapses in on itself

India #4 of 5

India feels like
being squished onto the knees of a stranger
in a tiny state "bus"
neck right-angled under the
luggage compartment, the
juddering pot holes
of neglected roads

it's a spice-licked stomach,
a flush of water around my thighs
the infected rash of a toilet-paper-less world

a stranger pressing himself in to me
and the adrenaline exerted
in whacking away his hand, my
other hand
in my boyfriend's lap

a scarf enveloping my shoulders
and constantly rearranging it

it's the light step of coconut feni
the heavy pace of too many chappati
the aching backs of poor women
who have no choice but hard labour

the tension of a furrowed brow
that's argued too long about the price
the stiffness of a neck shaking "No, thank you" -
over and over -
and eventually, just "No."

the feeling of India
is suffocation by smog
a billion consumers burning
plastic day into
dusky warmth

a drafty train window
jammed open, forever un-fixed

dust between your toes
dirt in your eyelashes
heat-itched scalp
salvaged by Mysore oils

the rising of chilli
from gut
               to throat

this place locks firm your shoulders
between strong, callused hands
and shoves you sideways -
a hundred humans
desperate
for a single seat

the cold concrete floor
beneath your sitbones
as you find a place on the floor
to eat.

India #3 of 5

the taste of India

is vague, accidental goat

a potent aftershave that chokes your throat
mouthfuls of years of jaggery but never a toothbrush
milk tea politely declined -
or taken, in shame - it
swells the throat with
confusion and
guilt

India tastes of
practised love kneaded into chappati,
soap lingering on fingers
while shovelling rice with your right hand,
the dirt stuck under your fingernails

papaya after pineapple after pomegranate
fennel seeds stuck between your teeth
deep-fried, plastic-wrapped everything

a whole potato-stuffed chilli
stuffed into your salivating mouth,
despite the heat on your forehead,
despite the heat in your stomach;
un-named and unpronounceable
treats, oddities, commodities

the putrid after-taste
of a deeply wounded culture
asphyxiated by its own identity
the hard-to-swallow-truth
of disappointment, bewilderment
and disdain

India #2 of 5

the sound of India
is a restless quiet,
so piercing it has the weight
of a billion
horns blaring
down the labyrinth channels of my Western ear-wells

It stops you in your tracks.

the sound of India
is a kettle that never stops boiling
a thousand children's high-pitched Namaste
a pseudo-bomb going off in a rickety cobbled street
and no-one blinking
a heavy golden eyelid

it's monkeys screeching blood at each other
the sparking of exposed telephone wires
against a puddle of urine
a disastrous tragedy-in-waiting
that no-one will ever fix

it's waking up at 5am
to a chanting Muslim prayer
it's a garland-adorned tractor howling
Bollywood at you, the driver
stoic and sober

it's an apocalyptic shut-up
the sound of blackest midnight
no possible life behind the grey roller doors
cows, hogs,
limping dogs
the only survivors
staring you down
their heavy heads following your rigor mortis walk home,
the rustle of a lone plastic
bag caught in an abandoned kite string

the heavy thwack of a mallet collapsing a sad fish's head
flattened on to the blood-stained cobbled road
echoing through the
four-storey flats

the disjointed "how YOU?!" "GOOD morning!"
the wrong emphasis, the wrong
time...

it's a symphony of toxic snot hoiks
hurled aggressively up through the trachea
expelled from the nasal channels
out a moving bus window
-- it sticks to the side and
adds to the palimpsest...

the sound of India
is the drunken patriarchy, booming,
"YOU ! FREE ! MY ! HOUSE !"
and the soft gradual exiting of women's chappels

it's the host's Uncle's brother's wussshhh
as he plonks himself on your couch
asking you kindly if you're
married and Christian.