the white wave like you
deep in the next room
breathing, flaxen hair
dreaming;
midnight,
frond leaves fan the sky;
at dawn, ravens.
the hall:
a foot fall, a shoe
unknown to you
in this light
from Sandy Rooms #3
I was woken on the book-wide bench
in the less-used changing rooms
nearby the zoo
by the light of a recording instrument
three teenage boys and a girl.
I knew
the scenario safe and stayed
still, pretending
to be asleep
so they could film, and
upload, for proof, the artist’s
backstory, the bearded hobo
with his head on some anthology.
I lay waiting as their snuffled
giggles quietened…then moved
suddenly, tiger swift, roared,
hands concocting volcano
as the blanket leapt up, to
flutter featherful to the sandy
floor
and my laughter was
probably not captured
because their screams
above the phone
muffled my mirth.
2
gloves with tip cut off
half a centimetre
the valuable Icebreaker
merino scarf found in
the sanitation bin
of the paraplegic toilet
I’m guessing spoiled
on, in the bowl,
de-excreted now, washed
and worn to dry, the faint
perfume of the previous
wearer changing
bearing.
I think the story
slows in winter
the light taking time
aside, comparing…
the cold and hard
brightness of the White
in winter. black lines
black edge black bright
white centre…
I’m in love with my health
the happiness
of nowhere else to be
my flat stomach
eraser-hard
in cold shower
and the freedom
nowhere aching
bright ceramic tiles
shine on stainless
clothing hangers
in love with who they
think they filmed
on their phone,
and all day, breathing
compiling a list
of the World’s woes,
where what is wrong
is offered, in repose,
and calm. Lego building
in a toddler’s daycare.
perhaps
you’ve wondered
why, under
City winter skies
I research the menstrual
buckets
of a private
public toilet
to the finding of
the item
now around my neck?
very well.
abstract body art
The face is an abstract noun
but her eyes, for instance,
rose in the half-
light, describe
& the lips
O, & tongue; roll:
my girl, vowels
are the curves, except
I, which is mine. verbs
spur the hands &
consonants, the prick
post-coitous:
tenderness, remorse;
your face lit with
concrete particulars;
shadow/
light
How Was Your Day?
Caution: contains erotic content
I didn’t know if she could
see me, the woman, in her 50’s,
a sport shape in the shoulders, squash
or tennis I’d guess, but now with
the belly fat of feasting; blond
-assisted, cut nicely short; her breasts
were not much bigger than softballs
and sat up separated by the seatbelt,
and her hem had ridden high
to her groin and she had no underwear
on and pubic stubble like four day growth.
We were stopped at a red light
and two fingers on her right hand
were lightly applying for employment.
I’d erected fully in the few seconds
it took to adjust myself in my pants
she turned left and I changed lanes
and I followed her small modern vehicle
into the shopping centre
where she drove to the far corner
by the pet store. Taking a map book
from under the seat of the van I walked
towards her and asked if she could help
me. I was at the window —the moment
the addict is satisfied: I could be shot
with venom or hit in the face with failure,
or welcomed silently in
the neutral trust of strangers
aligned; and as I rested the free arm
on the door I said I wonder if you
could…open …your legs …a little
wider? And I put my hand on her right
knee and her legs parted and her heart
was like a foot drum as I followed the soft
warm thigh under the now or never moment
of her complacent, compliant skirt and I touched
her between her short places…She lowered
and moved back the seat and raised the
left foot onto the centre column,
by the gear stick, and rested her head back
and groaned lowly out of her jaw
as she moved her buttocks
to the edge of the seat
and lit a cigarette.
That girl, From The Party After The play, Watson’s Friend
Caution: contains erotic content
someone I didn’t know slept
on next to me,
I didn’t wake her, when I rose,
sickened, to medicate
from the cool frigates
moored in the harbours of the mind
and any apprehension
left me as I lit the first enrolment form
and moved the blanket covering
a long spine, cellulite, a few pimples
to who I had to slowly piece together
as I sat beside the heavy old compewta
and watched her
and smelt her and couldn’t
remember what
we’d been doing.
I smelt myself. I bubbled
a cone and drained the bladder
for a pint of the last merlot,
I lifted the insects out and felt Forever
on the exhalation
as a place I wouldn’t want to leave,
smoky partial rays of summer, light
fragrance of the night, beeswax
blobs of a forgotten candle. I opened the book
cover of her buttocks, her two pages.
I read low, obsessed for her
story…hmmm she said, dhaa.
and I was blind, like a radar
but I didn’t have the narrative
and soon she asked, throwing back
the lighter, if I’d like to fight her,
beat the panels dented in the landing,
and the hot city magnified the heat,
and light lit the curtains like the perspex
box at the studio by the telephone
/fax I used to view the Hasselblad
transparencies on. I was in my Dream,
no mistake, I wasn’t just looking
at the negatives. go one further
she said, grab my throat, don’t leave a
mark though, and cracks began
appearing in her breathing, and I took
it to her roughly, to the hanger, I said,
to the reaches of our large human minds.
I’m paraphrasing, can you tell?, amalgamating
mornings, it was both of us filming
by creating, these were the fantasies assembled
in our childhood, every party, every bender,
every carbon-copy send-off,
every contact sheet from the Nikon
I was getting older— into place, but further
from the resolute original. I pinned her
arms to the floor, forcing my origin all
between her hips, her knees, expertly
parted I thought, on top of the first thought,
running the stoned tip of my hard looks
around her lips, waiting for a numbness
to truly penetrate, before the right to celebrate
her ended, nearly every morning
was cork to the bottle of the previous
day, ideas were being quickly reimagined
in the do-nothing smoke, fungal
hallucinations, abysmal diet, socks,
a hefner robe, a guccione scrambling
in the failure to repack
for online content. I photographed the
yellow green light of tennis balls, in the
curtains, then left them
open for some neighbours in the flats above
are things done just done to try it. and my balls
she said I
love it they were stroking her
low hole hanging in the Tuesday
humidity.
come dusk
come dusk
to Franz Kafka at Plana nad Luznici*
come dusk come dusk come dusk
you’d step out with the landlady’s dog
for a long walk first to the luznice river
then across to the woods beyond the fine villas
the shrubs on empty lawns like a waltz
around them paused in mid-step
the quiet of the evening now the best
of what could be had in the darkling
through your bitter lungs, on that bench
at the edge of the trees gazing to the river
that dragged its cold deeper on
through the lowering dusk the river
leaving with its slim freight of gleam.
times you’d go further downstream seeing
the farmers trudging back from the fields the air
thick with country joke as though shot through
with swallows headed for their evening table
of rough sacramental bread,
poking your head into the damp
rondel of a waterwheel at the mill
walking on to find that spot where
one slow turn on the heel could take it all in
the evening now holding deep in the undertow
far off Tabor the town and castle* you wrote
endlessly around and never into. you’d head
back thinking how good it would be
to live this side of sorrow
this side of the river
where evening would fall harmlessly upon you
come dusk come dusk come dusk
and what mattered most would be the stars
the zodiac of farmers’ weathers
february – march 2014
nelson st, howick
*The setting of this piece comes directly from Reiner Stach’s biography of Franz Kafka, ‘The Years of Awakening’, specifically pages 464 – 465, on which the course of Kafka’s evening walk is described while staying near the Luzince River at Plana.
*allusion to Kafka’s unfinished novel, ‘The Castle’.
Love is…
Love is…
sensing
the soul
of another
Meeting in the eye
of THE STORM
Love is…
closing
your eyes
Simply giving
into
the senses
Blending
into THE FORM
()
it is the pulse between..
2 strokes, a man dying or closing his eyes.
to dream –
his death, the gap between spasms:
yes, yes. it is, i guess,
the absence which makes
what it is
distinct. or this
(the metaphysic is sick
but isn’t): an infinitive
(i mean infinite)
void in the midst of
contradictory postulates.
i’m stretching this a bit so I leave you with this.
i can ‘t say what it’s about but it is, I think,
significant:
White noise
The event
had to happen.
Anything
might happen.
These meditations
produce nothing substantive –
two images
barely,
birds in flight
some wild
afternoon;
birds nesting
after dark.
Black and Blue
Black and blue
Black and blue
Is my heart
Like the bruises
you left behind…
Scarlet red
Scarlet red
Is my head
Like the blood
you took from me
in kind…
Do you ever
think of me?
And wonder
why I left you?
As you burn there
in the hell
you have created
for yourself…
I hold my head high
I feel no shame
I know longer
take the blame
for the many hues
of black and blue
that ultimately
became you…
What is Red?
What is Red?
I am
red…
I am
dangerous…
I am
a risk…
Are you willing
to take it?
I am
red…
I am
delicious…
I am
rich and juicy
Are you willing
to taste it?
I am
red
I am
fragrant…
I am
permeating
your senses…
Are you willing
to allow it?
I am
red
I am
flowing…
I am
pulsing and pumping
your heart
Are you willing
to feel it?
What
is Red?
In her heart a maiden
what does it matter come the day
it’s only chatter what they say
she’s had her life, she’s old and grey
mad as a hatter anyway
she turns her head with with muted cry
to hear these words as they pass by
she knows how fast the years can fly
how all lifes plans can go awry
her winter feet now feel the chill
all steps become an act of will
but she can bear life’s bitter pill
while in her heart a maiden
History
You exist in the poor length
of my second toe, our lip and Irish eye
that pinks upon the island air.
I’m bored cleaning corpse from
empirical floor. I pack jaws
that don’t speak, at doors to centuries.
Sing – give us wars that ring
in your elbow, sting of injury,
and porous nuance.
I heard a man tore you once
and told your whanau in desperation.
They stood, and taught him to carve.
It matters, in the new-bled day
that pours out of sun or piddles in the rain,
I learned a wing healed upon the plane.
8/05/17
Note- plane as in planing wood.