strange-r

 1.

and I wonder -
when it's time to fold into you,
will I open?
will the tears of my old wounds allow you in?
will we entangle ourselves in one another with ease?
will I still be able
to be gentle and gently led?
or will I demand you rough me around,
wilding out the nostalgia
of a hundred million lovers' hearts
and a sweet sigh of satisfactory silence?

on paper we're all a dream
but in the flesh, we're something
beyond this world entirely

my heart aches with the sun that never shone
and the warmth at the centre of me
burns with the fire
of every woman who's ever
melted her ribs into this earth

the sand is a thousand trillion tiny glittering pieces,
and so am I. 


2.

I know
I'm impatient
to know you

and I have no idea who you are

I'm wondering about our capacity to melt into one another 
when the sun comes up again
- will the forest breathe her spirit into our lungs
and teach us how to sing together ?
or will she sharply dig her branches into our sides
reprimanding our impatience

it's the apocalypse, tomorrow
and I can't wait to drown in the ecstasy of it all
do you wanna come with me to the end of the earth?
it lives between my legs
I've seen it all die so many times

and yet I'm still blinder than the bat
that fed the soup of this whole damn mess

yes, we're on the ark
it's time to drown. 

3.

go in there at night
and flesh out the skeletons
sing the bones back on 
and don't be afraid of the creature your skin conjures.

lavender and sage smoke

I feel my sexual energy come back to me -
winding her way through the grungy labyrinth alleyways
of some depths of my mind -
with a sharp, burnt orange melting
that gorgeous, wild woman
slides back into the bowl of my pelvis
with her silky skin and shining teeth,
stretching her beautiful ankles.

I'm in his neck,
my back body the crescent moon
against his swallowing sun. We're moving
deeper and deeper into the shadows.
There's gentle warmth,
a lot of it.

We're smiling.
Easily.

I'm back in the possibility of creation,
words flow again from my fingertips;
one and one make three.

I'm back with the artists and the makers,
the dreamers and the doers -
the ones who've learned to transmute
their love and share it with the world...

I've always sought out these spaces and knowing faces,
warmed my feet by the fires
of cosy beaches and backyards,
drank the sweet smokey scent out of my clothes the next day,
passed the Garden around from right to left.

He leaves and I return,
we all Come Home.
He moves to go home; I become it.
I beckon her back to me, that fiery Wildess,
a crooked little finger waggling underneath the dinner table.
We eat a feast, and she eats me.
She devours me from the red up -
and when she's finished, there's just light
shining top down, brilliant and blinding.
The particles of me scatter themselves wider
and traverse different realms, drinking from every ocean
until she's tasted them all.

here I go,
biting off pieces
      of my own salty flesh
      one by one
I'm severing
      my atrophied limbs
I'm draining my own blood,
      wallowing in a bath of
      milk and tears.
I'm stoic
      but I'm fractured.
I'm a house without foundations.
I'm a mountain that can't be summited, for I have
      no base
      and no peake --
   I'm the rocky ground in between;
      a few stray trees
           leaning into the wind.

I'm a heart on ice,
      waiting to be transplanted
      and even when I arrive,

I still won't belong,
      mis-matched to some body
the doctors deemed me suitable for.

I'm a map
     with no directions
I'm a compass
     unable to point north --
     the arm comes close, but ticks over
I'm a head without a body
I'm a face without a name
I'm a fire without fuel
I'm a sleepwalker
      caught in the middle of the night,
      pants down,
      climbing over the fence,
           feet covered in mud and
daisies.

I'm a receptionist's desk
      without a bell for help
      and everyone who arrives at me
      must wait
      for service
      -- including myself,
          I am the end
                  of the queue.

I'm a vast garden
      without
      any flowers
      or vegetables
I'm a groom
      waiting at the altar
      for a bride who never said yes
I'm a planet spinning infinitely
      into a black hole
      -- or worse,
          the sun

I'm a single perfect note
      followed by
      a deafening silence

illuminated

here's walking on water:
          two rugged cliff faces,
          white crests in between

here's walking on water
                              on water
                                    on water

my head floods green
         with a generous gift
          from the man with / out his pounamu
          (his green talisman shifted itself
          while he shifted green energy with green plastic...)

... and I think about touching
           your quiet ribs,
           your hair gently at the edges
                   of my smiling face

and I feel green,
         not with envy, but grounded
         green in the earth

         my head is misty, like
         a morning in the tomo,
drinking elixirs and inhaling smoke
in the portal.

new salt

There's salt in my hair and she says I smell like Weleda. I've come straight from the beach and the ions are clinging to me. I feel my pelvis shifting and I feel my muscles stretching. The room is white. She turns off the lights. 

There's barres all around us but we don't hold back. There's something inside me I hold it back. I don't hold it back. I spill it all out. Everything comes out. My boyfriend pretends to be my counsellor he is my counsellor. He's practically a professional he's my professional. He gets on a plane, I go to the beach. I feel weird being around old friends. My new friends aren't dancers but they make me feel more creative.

I touch my ankle it feels like I might cry. I go to class it feels like I might cry. Because I'm so happy because I've lost so much because it hurts to grow a life. My body remembers breaking. It was five years ago but my body hasn't forgotten. My spine hasn't forgotten trying to hold itself up on a shakey foundation. 

I wonder half-heartedly if the surgeon molested me while I was under anaesthetic he could have done anything. I wonder if there were female doctors in the room I wonder if it's too late to find out. My rational brain tells me it's unlikely he molested me but my heart tells me - he cut me open without my emotional permission while I was vulnerable while I was broken he's the patriarchy a good guy who surfs and is goood looking has a medical degree - and they're practically the same thing. I touch the scar tissue. My boyfriend touches the scar tissue and I want him to keep touching it forever and never take his hands off because he's magic because he's my counsellor it feels so gentle and loving when he touches it the only way I can heal is by letting someone else serve me. 

He gives me a rush. I take it I let him do it. I wonder why sex and my ankle and my shadow side keep coming up in everything I do think feel especially when I'm high I'm high all the time and if I'm not high I'm ecstatic and if I'm not ecstatic I'm melting a slow death into myself into a puddle of fucked up thoughts. I smell like salt there's salt crystals on my face where the ocean evaporated the sun after I swam at the beach. I smell like salt there's salt in my hair I decide to make a show about it. 

summit / maunga

no one can hear
each other
in this place

that is the question

this isn't face
to face --
this is
no way for one human being
to talk
with another

this isn't personal...
or intimate, or creative 
I'm not talking in clichè.
I'm not orchestrating a revolution --
this is the reality I perceive :
of a fear-filled framework that seeks
to other
in order to protect itself
(and yet, most dangerously,
claims to do
the exact opposite)

I saw how it holds our tangata whenua in their place
suited and afraid to sing
lest they lose their pride
to the vast white ocean that stole their waiata,
or their own dark clouded ego
found in the debris
left by the hurricane of colonisation

this is no way to talk about well-being,
sitting in a sun-deprived chamber
for eight hours of the day -- that's
talking
without breathing, 
so we're all headaches and notifications

we're not in congregation
we're neatly ordered
in order of ranking
we're all
facing forward,
forgetting
to see
each other
in our periphery,
forgetting where we came from

(the little girl who wanted to tap dance
doesn't belong here, no --
she's up on Arthur's mountain
eating wild blackberries in her zebra costume,
lanyard around her neck --
a puzzlingly incongruous puzzle)

we artists give everything
we empty ourselves
of every inch of our atoms
every molecule of our meta
and in return we receive ourselves --
that conspicuously elusive treasure
which the privileged pay thousands
for someone else to unearth on their behalf
at the end of their lives

... but if you just moved a little,
stretched your insides just a little,
heard the music rumbling
through your own skin-kissing veins,
at a decibel almost hidden from the canals of your ears --

you'd have a life
when you came to the end of your life;
you'd know how to give life
to those
who are trusting you
to provide one for them

and we wouldn't need to talk 
about well-being
or being well
we wouldn't need to make policy for it
because we'd all have access to
that shrouded privilege
of ancient buried knowledge --
the true bringer of equality :
my education my revolution --

we'd understand
the policy is already written :
it's in your skin, and in your land, and in your children

and to echo yesterday's words spoken
I'm not here to blame, or guilt, or reproach,
or claim that I'm more woke
-- because then I would be making myself an other --
I'm merely here to provoke a conversation
to make, and to offer my creation :
to allow art to do what art is supposed to do
to do what I am supposed to do
to do what people are quintessentially here to do :
to unearth and divulge the primal knowledge existing within us

to do what my country taught me -
you see
we're pioneers, where I come from
in 1893
my country taught its wāhine
to raise their voices into the ears of men --
so here I am, standing to reach their height

my country -- or at least its weather -- made me resilient --
our flightless birds taught me how to ruffle feathers,
even if I don't fly at the heights
of those privileged enough to have wings

my culture taught me to sit
my body within its land
my whenua taught me how to dance before any teacher did

and where I have only a small voice
where I must take my lunch on a different floor
lest I do what I was told I was invited here to do --
where I have only a few minutes
but also the proverbial power offered by an audience
(and we all know that with great power
comes great responsibility) --
with this voice and these few minutes
I will find the stage on which I may stand
and I will hold up my truth
and I will be heard ...
we will be heard

and I tell you :
the world is not fractured.
so stop telling us that we are broken !
we become what we believe.
so go back to your countries
and tell your people
there is goodness
and unearth that goodness in yourself
and send it out into the world
use your power to lift up, to reach out, to connect, to create

to translate your words into action
dance them outside of these walls
give them life
hear them breathe
make your language move
let it connect you in
to a new global culture
that chooses diversity over difference
and action over apathy

translate your words into action
so that together we may thrive
a new global culture
that sanctifies being alive

opening plenary

I was conquering
I was using my body as my voice
I was speaking with tongues
I was holding my flesh bare against the heads that wouldn't bear me
I was taking back in the night what was daily robbed from me
a post-feminist Robin Hood

they didn't even know it

they thought they were still on top
even whilst convulsing underneath me

To let yourself become totally absorbed in something
is the most beautiful thing.

wasted in 12 at 30,000

we're seeking out that elusive figure eight :
something yet to be revealed and something oh so present
merging through the crowd
I feel so scattered and put back together

and what's been tried and tired
is all so inspired
the waves are crashing down in the other hemisphere
(it feels like we're searching
for that needle in the hay)

and at the day's end there's no way, no way
to repurpose the notes
that have gone astray from our heads

except to convert them, to turn them into
some oceanic assertion
something folding back and forth
like doors opening and closing
knowing only that this portal
leads somehow to the next...

and if I see where I'm heading
then maybe I'll know where to go;
then time will somehow show me how
to traverse this giant space
to find the places I might call home -
because they don't exist on this land, they're
found only in people

and meantime I'm seeking, seeking out
an unopened time, a mind
that's wandering, wondering, undoing
and learning how to still be
amongst all the unravelling

it keeps the globe turning
it's in flight from dusk til dawn
-- the bright orange flash pierces its way through the tunnel
and washes over the rows of us all
like a fucking woke baptism
funnelling through our eyelids
until they droop onto cheeks

the only thing that brings us together, really:
overpriced snacks and a desire to be somewhere else






feelings repurposed from Doprah's 'Will I Be A Figure Eight'

shamebelles ramble

if I indulge, I have taken away my indulgence
and if I die, then I have taken away my death
if I subscribe, then I've cancelled my subscription
if I put distance, then I've come closer
if I am awake, I must be sleeping
if I cry, then it is because I am happy
if I hurt, it's because I am hurting
if I suffer, it's because I is suffering
if I am

then I am channelling

Isy

I remember the holes in him when we first met -
recognising the beauty
but seeing it so distant,
like his body had left his heart behind
when it shifted hemispheres

knowing - feeling it - diluted
and now seeing
the completeness that comes
with one's own home, lover, vitality ...

.. and wondering if the same sees itself in me,
 a recognition that I am
at once
whole and with holes in me
so complete and yet
missing my completeness

wandering for something close by
and also forgotten
holding it once in my own body
and in my head-mind,
on the edges of my limbs, or
at only my fingertips

we're all seeking, seeking,
lost and found

berlin 2.0 / 3.0

this whole city hold echoes of you, now
-- like those denim shorts did for five years, after Ohope
until they literally frayed apart -- and then I'd
gotten new atoms, anyhow...

falafel smells like the nostalgia of you
and anxiously holding my bag close seems
less inconvenient
but more achievable
than containing my unkempt heart

and the whole city feels
like the achingly-full emptiness
of knowing you briefly
and of knowing another for many past lives prior
and wondering
about the interchangeability of souls
across time and space
and the faint foreboding echo
of home-songs
whose authors have long departed,
cradling the surreality of it all,
reassuring me I won't spill red
all over the floor
(just water
and shame)

and I hold on,
though the arms of my womb ache ;
I breathe in the salt that sits in the corners of my eyes
I press myself into the frames of old lovers
and echo their names
until I pass out
with love

beer - bus - bled

quietly fucked up in public
the ultimate serenity
the most private of secrets
more intimate than stewing in love
the furtherest from Earth whilst still
/ anchored in the planet
the deepest adventure into my own
/ capabilities and composition
a subtle "fuck off" and "fuck yes" : to and for the world

sometimes I can see myself / easily an addict
festering furiously, wonderfully, in the corners of my mind
venturing with too much courage into the flight of my veins ---

but I also enjoy my coherency, my health and my innocence
--- so I stick mainly to coffee, and marijuana
(and sometimes adultery, though that's far too close to love)

I want my body to bounce around between higher spaces
I want to unravel in front of people
I want to remind us all that nothing's real

hEART

heart is dancing

heart doesn't know how but

it still / moves 

it's supposed to keep rhythm

but it's out of time

it's growing old so early

and refusing to grow up

it's stuck in the centre of the spine

green but not with envy

it's breaking its host body

refusing to mimic regularity

its swinging blood around this miniature world

but it doesn't work towards a life

it permits organs of sadness

and cells of confusion,

atoms of melancholy

to float around, meandering

it desperately needs coffee

it knows it's not good for it but

it wants to fuck itself up

it wants to lie on the floor

it wants to feel allowed to fail

it wants to stay at the bottom --

why must it climb 

to sit so high on the spine ?

it feels embarrassed about being a heart

it hurts to beat

it throws itself at others, not out of need

but out of a desire to touch, to connect, to feel..

that's different, it insists :

a heart needs a ribcage to sit within,

it needs a pulse to follow

it needs hands to hold it

mandala

There's this tiny ache in/side of me
         but it is no longer a Fraid
                 instead, it is
    a want :
it aches for all the things it cannot have
and in doing so, loses sight of the Is
     -- despite insisting on the present, it
drains the battery on my phone, gnawing at perused possibilities
it empties my bank account, hungry to taste every/thing
it throws itself at potential new foes, entities
showering them in giving, gifted, gone... 
                      so that I AM left smaller and also
larger
at the same time

it empties my body
of all its vital pulses
surging my blood down through the veins of my feet,
into the earth
singing my head up into the clouds
               floating on my heart rhythms...

it's like post-show depression
without the show

it's like saying goodbye to a lover
knowing when you next see them,
it'll be different

spotted in Christiania

Only freedom is holy --
nothing kills like religion.

The garden of Eden is filled
with green smoke
and brown grass
and a million different languages
each body undergoing an exorcism,
their hearts beating the ahrdest
of any living beings -- so hard
they fall through the ground
backwards
forever
until they reach the other hemisphere:
reborn
into a parallel future
that's insisting on repetition
birth-death-rebirth
for all eternity...

I stepped into Utopia
and sat there awhile
I didn't even breathre
-- no inhale,
just sight.

caspar

it's like your head
swallowed his face
after he sank down through the earth -
and came out the other side :
the underworld of the other hemisphere --
a fearsome fairytale
of the same old shit /
repeated self-helplessness
that cannot be counselled

that doesn't accept breath, or
silence
or self,
and wants only
the things that
kill him surely ...

...
the softness of tears
with the immoveable hardness of ego

suffering in suffering

copenhagen

There was a time when it all poured out of me,
            because there was nowhere else for it to go --

now,
   things are open
       and so my mouth
 speaks the words
my fingertips used to

my dreams go on
             and on
                 and on
                      and on ...

we'd both dreamed of each other
      and I saw you in him
we started talking like us
-- and there was the gentle touching of hearts,
that impossibly palpable organ
    churning through a body
          making sure we feel alive
so close and
    yet so far.








italicised words are lyrics from DUAL

somewhere just outside a small town, on a windy coastal road

The traffic flows past our picnic spot
in waves, crashing over us in the same rhythm
as the tides of the ocean.

Large campervans, stock trucks, cars with boat trailers,
all seem to have the same gravity as
the burgeoning moon,
collecting a long line of vehicular planets behind them,
their collective orbit
snaking along the windy põhutukawa-lined perimeter
of the Coromandel coast,
for kilometers
and kilometers...

Their patient celestial dance
interrupted by small-town adolescents
with a big-time exhaust, or
a born-again boomer
made agile by his motorbike,
thrust into the wild future
with the spontaneity of middle age...

We sleep with our heads
pressed against either
the ocean, or the traffic -- they
both sound the same, but
what matters is
knowing -- a feeling, 
a search for
present-nostalgia,
the thin veil of reality made
tangible
by daylight
glimpse.

The sun goes down
at eight one night, six the next,
and I'm sure
the slow summer sadly descends with it...

the traffic all goes back to Auckland,
that sprawling volcanic hot-house
where one third of our tiny population
insist on clambering over one another...

We go back to planning:
our next free meal, retrieved from the bins of Countdown;
our next work of art;
our great escape
to the summer
of another hemisphere.

in/spiral

and those of us who have so much
will profess that we have so little;
and those of us abundant
will always cry that we need more;
and those of us well-fed
seem always to be hungry,
while those of us hungry
know others still are starving.

Somehow, those of us sleeping
in the warmth of comfort
will still, in the morning, be tired and cold --
while those of us awake
will see the sunlight pouring in
and feel it coursing through our veins
and know the day is opportune, full, open, alive ...

and instead of shutting our ears,
or allowing the slow droop of our eyelids,
we'll take our fingertips out into the world and manifest magic,
conjuring the transparency
that open eyes seek

and we will know each other better
for having known ourselves,

for having touched some quiet, intimate sphere
that only solitude knows,
that only hunger knows,
that is only seen when life is stripped back
to today's moment; to shedding, to being bare,
to being comfortable with vulnerable --

but that tiny glimmer of goodness found in a stranger's eye,
when he recognises himself in your freckles and
sits beside you on the grass,

or when you submerge your body into the ice-cold ocean
so that even your organs go numb
with the quiet of being

-- that's where we should find ourselves
because that's where we will be fed,
that's where we'll find our energy, bursting from within
the molecules of the earth,
rich and abundant, residing
in the folds of the fabric of time itself--

That is where we actually live
and living anywhere else is discord.

When tomorrow wakes,
time will still move in spiral - and I will be
somewhere,
sitting subtly in the earth's body,
and I will have chosen to be happy.