4
the shock
of the
day
is my new auto
payment.
the poetic interest
is anthropological.
the personal need
is a difficult night
to overcome.
we are the ripples
on the surface
of Sleep, giving
very little
indication
of why the water rose
up.
40 some seasons
of rent paid
without a price increase
at a third of what Realtors
charge, and now,
in a new
dwelling, I pay the
Market prices,
upped with the earthquake,
and the crisis
in housing.
4.1
everything works
for something else:
the person whose
manifest covers several
thousand employee
works for Customer: and Trees,
designed solely
for the sound they make,
cast cool shadows.
we are feel-capsules
in search of compadres
to express the infinite
condensed.
this poem
is about the difficulty
of finding where it is
we emanate from,
and the task
of these words
is like air
to
the
birds,
like rungs
I trust
will
hold my wait,
paused between this
age, and habitat
changed,
as I climb from
a night
of sleep closed
like a fist within
my mind, white knuckled
in its grip
around a living star.
a source restricted
shine. the move,
performed alone,
with a trailer and a van,
went so damn smooth
it had to be right.
4.2
the dust
restrained had turned
to dirt behind the oldest
abstract paintings, while
the wall, its power
socket I hadn’t seen
for eight years, revealed
the dinosaur stickers
beside where our
pillowed heads
in the comfort
of kindness
kept lawful
by shared parameters
and Mingus first asked about gOd,
all wonder and freedom,
sat between my legs
in bedtime reading
before the closed-eye
mystery of Sleep.
4.3
it is I now
who wonder
who I am, in the memories
made in our children,
their phrases and progressions
carried in their finger paintings
& craftwork lionising us
on Father’s day, all moved, the
important toys
found as I evacuated
the old studio, peeling back
the layers of paintings
like archaeologists
revealing solar activity
the deeper the drill digs,
I’m finding work
I’d forgotten I’d painted, works
I don’t remember
painting—the slashed articulate
cravings leading into Rehab,
a fifth of what
has
accumulated
useful,
a
tenth of
that
necessary.
none of it required,
all trivial, but for every
mark on the life growth
chart, half in child’s writing,
as we dated his ascension
directly on the wall
panel, this, with the landlord’s
blessing, was removed;
the single prize possession
a potent memory board
moved to a new dwelling, shifting
more than I tell.
4.4
Wordsworth’s scholar-gypsy, turning
his back on, the wind in his face, on
the gracious blue of the lakes, returning
and knowing that everything goes;
Basho, in two robes, leaving his snow
-fall indentations
in the white beginnings
of another Winter; after all
the purple-orange leafage
twirlings, the dust left to settle
on the curtains
I was going to hitch to Auckland,
busk the ferry
ticket, return all Savings
to a locked, Interest-bearing account,
and live off the hat—
this was the plan, thought fully
through, originally,
when the bulldozers were ready
I was to going
to reduce and smooth back
into the van: instead —2
hundred & 80%
more rent.