dolls house

I was a little
drunk tonight, at work
and it was both
stupid and great

- like that time
Mike convinced me
to smoke a joint with him and his girlfriend
when I lived in
Grafton's shittest flat
(I only agreed
because he'd fucked me
four nights earlier

and I could still feel
his tall torso looming over me
and over
the blood-stained sheets -

and even as I write this poem
I see the habits
unravelling

my life's not really as badass
as it sometimes
sounds
on here

it's just that the badass bits
are sometimes the only bits
worth mentioning
sometimes they're the bits
that feel most alive
most raw and therefore
most honest

most like me.

reveling

beautiful things you said to me

that still reverberate in my head:

that I had a cute coming face

that I have nice areola

that I had cute tan lines

(still nice, despite "cute"

being

vaguely condescending)

and that time you said my name

which was strange, because

I'd forgotten we had 

names, we seemed too 

temporary for those

but still, nice

and no I won't 

apologize (to myself, mostly)

for writing about you, because -

as David and Lena have assured me -

that's just what happens 

when you fuck a writer. 

ganglion

There's a cyst in my wrist
that likes to balloon up every now
and then, it makes my
wrist look larger than
normal, in flexion

it feels likes it's shuffling
my little wrist bones
around
making space for itself
making itself comfortable
in me

it wakes up and sleeps
and sleep and sleeps, and then
wakes up to let me
know it's still here -
just when I thought it departed
on some permanent vacation

it wiggles up my forearm, my
shoulder, my neck
it sits behind my skull
then wanders down my left sacrum

it goes on adventures but leaves its
footprints everywhere
leaves a trail of knots and agitation and fury

someone once said, "your left side
is your feminine side."
when I remember this, I think of
the cysts also in my ovaries
that cause me significantly
less pain.
they are quiet
they are hidden
even I didn't know about them for ages

"If you don't know where you are going, any road will get you there."

- Lewis Carroll

"Life is either a daring adventure or nothing."

- seen on the way home.

to home

being drunk by 1pm feels
much like sober at the clock's opposite -
both some schizoid kind of absentness
both equally displaced
(from whatever, and who...)
both reminiscent of summer's length
and best accompanied
by walking,
abrasive music
or, preferably, both.

Sunday, again

Sometimes

I feel

so electrified by possibility

that I become restless enough to

render myself useless,

unable to take 

even 

the first step 

towards great things. 

departure

I have to confess,
I love this hypodermic walk home
with the moon spilling larger light than usual
- though a large chunk of it
has already been eaten

I miss being out of my mind
in that totally controlled way

I miss wasting whole days
in the
only town I ever allowed myself

I miss living
on three hours' sleep, some
self-destructive ritual

I don't miss the rain

but I miss the feeling it gives me
when it floods out at this midnight hour
(and so lucky I just missed it..)
though - there's something sensual
in arriving
home, dripping

St. Vincent, she put it neatly
when she said bring me
your loves - I wanna love them too

I want to know everyone
and I want to have felt everything
before I depart this earth
for the place that leaks into it
when I'm most me
when I'm treading my mid-brain

swim

Home Bay is no
Lake Taupo, but I still felt the
orange coursing through me
this time lashed with salt
and flanked by
three on-lookers

this time I was prepared, bikini bottoms on
(which was just as well, due to the un-company)
and black attire, so as to avoid the water
seeping through (or at least, the appearance of...)

the cars climbing up the bridge's slope
whispering to me still here, just changing
and I knew in this moment
there are things coming in the future
and they will be
great

I just knew.
(there is power in my adult-ish youth, I can
feel it)

and
this time, I ran:
all the way
home.

ritual/s

Tonight I washed
four days of stories from my hair:

Wednesday night's hurtling through One Tree Hill,
demanding some over-carbonated inebriation
from the hand of my instigating passenger
(afterwards I said, "that was naughty, I know, but...")
and lying under the pseudo-stars,
deciphering some thick German accent that wasn't father's
and then deciphering the ambiguous labels
on the condiments at the dumpling house

Thursday's venture back into the body
with a less than pretty abdomen and the
sweat of some stranger rolling over me, first on the Tarkett
and then in another's bed

Friday's collecting of summer's last salt
which clung to my pores like a child
coaxed from its parent
on it's first day at a strange kindergarten,
and the sand dunes that rolled somewhat like New Year's 2013
and the river-reminiscent towel-bedded grappling
which happened with the same

and finally, Saturday's
habits. Yog-esque sweat
and mud on the edges of me, a large step
above Karangahape's wo-men's ventures
and the gloating run over
Ponsonby's well-endowed diners.

Finally after four days of collecting
my head is heavy, so I give in.
it all slips down the drain, and for a brief moment
the palimpsest of myself is fainter
- but still, when squinted at 

- visible.

yo-ga

5.45pm Wednesday

smells like weed and looks like wheels 

in Albert Park

with the humans in their larger ears 

shirtless and tattooed

teaching what we pay twenty an hour for in Parnell

to girls they barely know, for free

and looking all the more 

knowledgeable for it

I've done that, on beaches

and archived it on friends' Polaroids

, transferred it to Facebook, set it as my

cover

and now I do it between vacuuming, dusting shelves and arranging props

and I've only had two 

goddamn joints

since December.