Violate you know how it feels – when i’m a child still & my mum’s gone & my dad. Let us figure. as you hammer concrete & the nail bends, we need drill, discipline. i’m torn & i can’t stand it when you slip my hand like magic Grief…
X
The bottom line. To which we all descend. Come, sign your life away. We are only small print anyway. (Some time before 12 May 1992)
under the shoe
under the shoe to Frank Le Baige moments i find myself sitting looking down at the floor feeling i’m on such a height staring down at something there recall it was you, brother, and your madness stamped with a diagnosis of ‘paranoid schizophrenia’ by a man with watery eyes i couldn’t tell apart from the…
About My Mother
When I was young my mother taught Out of the only books she bought, And from her soul, for she was old, When seen next to a child as I. I would go outside and play, After lessons, mum would stay In her big room and read a bit, While I would mark the trees…
crack
I see everything, now that I’m passed it, touch the ruff bark in the cool garden when there’s no-one to tell it but the owl, clouds ruffled by wind, & I’m far from desolate. I want this, exquisite lonesomeness. 2 I stood by the lake, knowing that it’s deeper than I’m tall….
Cortado Order, Saturday
Breakfast Burritto Waffles, banana and bacon OJ, Coke Zero Kids fish and chips Caesar salad with salmon Corn and haloumi fritter Fries, and I grab extra sauce Handle of Pilsner Apple juice, Sprite Anchovies too? Please. Of course.
Up The Boo Aye
The bush mechanic pushes declares he has no talent. He pushes a greasy hand through his hair. It is nothing, he says, to built an engine from fashioned parts; nothing to make seized parts whirr and sing. It is what he does when a wheel locks, an engine creates and eats its own filings. He…
Christmas
Sun screen, pine needles, chlorine. The best of a festive perfume. Mint on potatoes, basil on tomatoes. Christmas lillies filling the room. The rattling scatter of Lego. spilling out of its box. Kersplosh in the pool. Well practised bombs. Kids laughing. Dad snoring. Cork pops. The sweet crunch of sun-soft scorched almonds. A pungent Marlborough…
A Bird’s Christmas
She said she had been to Wanaka for Christmas, and that was a bloody lie. It was Hawea. She always went there. It’s funny, how Christmas’s mercantile madness flows into conversation; how people like to big-note to prove to you, at a time of compassion, that they are doing nicely. Thank you. Everyone wants to…
atrocity in the garden
On the last day she made it electric, torched the flowers in Her image. Cut the petals. The sun-flashed blade. What terror of self, what emptiness, made you? Collect the spill of reds, yellow. Dissect the cool antediluvian shade. What kingdom is this. Chronic density of. To be. All & alternately…
Knot About Myself
1 Obviously building to it the months ran out, then days remained like guests too drunk to leave are lessened being half the life they were… Then only hours remained, and they dissolved as quick as methylated spirits on the concrete in summer. This was running from your past so thick & quickly you were…
Boxing Day
Leaning in the corner, disheveled Her jewelry no longer shining Languid in the afternoon light Awkward in her finery Still legs, exposed and bare No longer dancing among treasures Once the centre of attention Now we’re enjoying other pleasures As baubles weigh down her fingers And her head bows under her tiara Her resinous perfume…