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.

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.

juni

I really do hope we
fallintoeachother,
somehow,
kind of settle into the edges of each other
and float about the earth's surface,

that would be
nice

take our tickets and
run
not to be away
but
to get to, to find
the world
and be found in it

I'd like to thread myself through you - I already
feel
the spike of your being
in my fingertips, non-urgent
with the patient clarity
of certainty

there's something in the smell of you
that will be found in me
regardless
of whether time follows
us
or not
that even if I were
to enfold myself in another
you'd be within them.

oder

I'm not sure if I've

never been in love,

or loved 

everyone

who had a smile and 

a secret. 

we are all hopeless
romantics, and all the more
hopeful for it

from the horizon

there's a small piece of my aliveness
floating in the waters of Anakiwa

it's swimming around
looking for itself

it doesn't know where its whole is, but
it knows
that it is
Home.

it is torn between
all the things it loves, of which
there are
many -
too many, perhaps -
and found in various places,
moments, people:

nestled in the embrace of many beautiful arms,
sitting in the corners of many beautiful smiles

- and especially, in this moment, in the
slightly ochre cheekbones
of some ridiculous but successful
luring tactics
who I'd have happily stayed put for,
who neglected to remove the glitter from my eye

who was part of this week's opening,
heart-pouring
beside the ocean

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.