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.

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

plane

I.

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

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


II.

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

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

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


III.

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

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


IV.

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

so many words that need to

come out of me

I can't even

don't

can't even 

put them --

on --

page, so many

words

come out of me

requirement

sitting in

hotel rooms at

night ... requires 

Poetry

be written.

flight

with the sun draping itself over my neck

snow spine to be seen right, delicate

but without tendon speech

less speaking

and with time to hear that deepest, driven

electrical hum, which will comfort me now and

in August

I remember my previous fear

and think--

You didn't think.

I know this.

thoughts on time travel

Scouring each city, now
's the target
and we win this year-long game
finding him

six months above
(my younger half)
better honest at twenty-and-five, now twenty-one-and...
last I forgot yours
now forgets to ask mine, and so I
decide to forget to tell
more direct questions for me
instead, anyway.

... As when I jumped on Sano's sleep
with my first height,
Saturday's child
in his first height, supposedly
snatches my hand to carry me up Regent
(the very first being Rydges, now I remember)
"I don't believe you," I said
prying his sparkling passive
eyes open

"I am," he said.
"I am I am I am."

I doubted.
Though granted, in the morning:
Something Changed.

awards

And so that same drooping, drawling, inherent sadness sets in. Like the day settling into beyond its final hours. After the official minute of sunset (as per the paper) has come, but for a brief time there's still light. Settling its passive, slight weight over me. Hello and welcome.

On the first Dunedin day of rain, following the eruptions of the previous night. One: That post-concentration explosion of focussed energy, the last scraps of life being extracted from the bottom of our selves; Two: That pent-up suffering felt by many for many years but never articulated between the skins. We bury ourselves and bring ourselves out again. We drag our buried selves out of the ground, vomited up dregs by the mouth of inebriated inhibition. We do the things we know will tirelessly bring restlessness. And hope that this time they will bring us peace. This time. Things will be perfect.

Then, finally, that lingering emptiness. When we have purged ourselves of all fluids. All gorishly scoffed fast-food gluttons. All unheard hate. All breath and tears and uneatings. All thoughts. All minds. All sense. Then, finally, we sit in the voide of This Morning After. But this morning is this late hour of early evening; this day then begins at five o'clock, post meridiem. We find ourselves thrust into the future, into tomorrow. Robbed of a day as punishment for our unthinking deeds. We have been made to sit quietly and hear our own vices ricocheting around and around and around our hollow stomach-lining heads. There is no rewind or option B. There's not even a make-do-with. There is just a huge, big hiatus that for you and you alone has fallen into the abyss of "did-not-exist".

You will try to fill this huge-big gaping hole with your tears, but they are so small and insignificant in comparison that they will only fill the small holes of your face. The holes of your face infected with black-streaked tiny face-waters. Carving rivers into your cheekbones and philtrum.

So that - once more, and not for the last time - your knowledge is cemented. That you are indeed and truly one self. One person. A part.

post-mentalist

We are Lost. We are supposedly following road signs but they aren’t right. We are driving down a foreign road that leaves the city. There’s no street lights anymore. The road is ominously and dangersouly – warningly – dark.

We’re still climbing the hill. Labouring in third gear automatic. Coming round a corner. I don’t feel good about this. I feel a physical fright in my body. A surge of energy creeping up into the centre of my ribs. It asphixiates my back muscles, they grip my body forward into itself. Shoulders shielding. Lock the doors, lock the doors.

I’m doing a U-turn in the worst place possible. This U-turn is deadly. There’s something sickening in this place. There sharp shards of energy in the air pricking the edges of us. It’s dangerously out of kilter. The unevenness throws me off; I don’t even check I just swing the car around. Catch the gears. Fly blindly forward onto the road. Get out, get out, go. Am I thinking that or is it being told to me? I think it is being commanded of me.

I have been affected. I have been slaughtered by some warped presence that I stumbled into by accident. It found me, like it almost hunted me out. Still the tightness in my sternum.

I think I must be in a horror movie. I shift my eyes franticly over the rear view mirror, searching out a large engraved sign. It reads: Ashburton Clinic. We are all over the place.