The bloated creek runs pewter today
ducks slide down its length
webbed feet scrabbling for purchase.
An aeroplane grips the sky
sunlight on its belly as
it turns like a lolling cat.
The words on the email dance
in front of my blurred eyes,
kicking their heels, waving
their curled feathertops.
I rest my scarred hands on
the table, count the freckles
sunspotted like mud splatters;
one of them may turn on me.
Across the old wooden bridge
cows wait for milking, unwilling,
the water rushes through the broken slats.
The first step is the hardest,
they say, but the cows roll their eyes
and shift their hooves in the mud.

What does compassion feel like?
the leader asks. I can see across
the equator into her London
lockdown room. Imagine sunlight.

I think of rain, its soft fingers
on my hot shoulder … of drawing
the river close, of sitting among
boulders and paperbarks, silent,

watching the patterns emanate
from currents, breezes, kayaks,
fish, more and more complex
the longer I look, and dropping

my eyelids to hear it all as
one thing: the rainbow serpent
twisting and undulating, making
little splashes that kiss
the shore, there …
there … there

NB: The rainbow serpent or Waugal is the spirit of Derbarl Yerrigan (the Swan River) in Western Australia

The autumn afternoon feels borrowed
as if you were living on someone else’s time
even though you sit on your own couch
and tilt the phone away from the light
for a closer look at a smile that looks like yours.

He sits like a soft goose under flax
blows you a featherlight future
hands cupped with the promise of flowers
as his eyes hold you to account.

Tell him again how you spent his life.

a flash of red
stop, butterfly
I’ll frame you for my shutter

                        but shy

she flitted to a higher plane

disconsolate I searched in vain
’til leaning on a lonely tree

                        I wept 

would you return to me?

Not all things can be beautiful

The frog song grates in the ears and your face scars with acne and age

And besides, beauty is mostly incidental, evolutionary
bright butterfly wings announce poison
striped fish camouflage in seaweed

Flowers grow more beautiful with each generation of gardener
splicing genes and selecting mutations
saying to each small genetic variation
I choose you, I choose you, I choose you

In the dark I run my fingers over new ridges of stretch marks
My hips are taking unfamiliar shapes
my body is forming itself of its own volition

It too is a product of evolution
of the best child-bearing hips and load-bearing shoulders

This body is the product of those not left behind—
a baby wedged behind too small hips
the fish eaten, the birds unchosen, the butterflies attacked
a gardener telling the rest of the plants every year
not you, not you, not you

Even if incidental, there is beauty
candy floss sunrises and bird song
women who live to be old and wear enough wrinkles for all who don’t
a gentle touch in the night
someone finding you in the dark, the light, the mirror
and saying I choose you, I choose you, I choose you

God is a talented anatomist
and has laid bare the thoughts of our hearts—

my chambers and ventricles pinned and stretched like lepidoptery
sins scratched square-nibbed on my skin-wet vellum
	like a neolithic tattoo:

SELFISH / INTERRUPTS / READS YAOI / DOESN’T TEXT BACK

God is the tipsy aunt at the family gathering who says
hm sounds like your career has really stagnated this year
	(but she also buys you a corvette.)

After the party she takes you for a test drive.
Roof down; grin glittering; her whole universe
	prickling around you.

You feel your heart burning.
You look in your wing mirror and see
	SELFISH
	sizzling in the dual fires of her tyre tracks
	like roadkill.

You and I sat with red wine—
Matahiwi pinot noir—
the afternoon sun at our backs.

Light reflects off the wine glass,
casting a reddish hue
that blushes the black tablecloth.

We feel the lull of
romantic whimsy
seducing our internal dialogue.

I remark on the divinity
of light and the auras that glowed
above saint’s heads in stained glass windows.

You counter my thoughts
reciting William Carlos Williams’
‘Autumn.’—“A stand of people by an open grave…”

I add “…underneath the heavy leaves,”
to which you slink
further into the sofa in a lavish shape.

Outside the distant hiss
of traffic reminds me
that it is five and the washing needs to be brought in.

You mention, “We could leave it for tomorrow,”
and I nearly agree,
only who knows what the weather will bring?

Summer is ending.
I slip outside to pull at pegs and tug at clothes, while inside
you wait for autumn to arrive.

welcome me home, Bird,
to where the worms eclipse
the bones of earlier,
your carmine-ugly hills that
curl hedgehog-closed before my
slow finger,

my Return
frozen in the callus
of a solitary cap.

Belonging
is the clasp
of a powd’rous knuckle.

in the Green,
thought surrounds me,
as wagons circling before dark,
and the dim voices of
a spectral chorus
cleanse the valleys of
the sidelong bodies,
singing,
“Welcome Home, Welcome Home.”

roots, shoots, fruits and flowers
pound, ground, cut, spread
oil on skin, begin the dance, flowing trance
together we meet, greet night, drink moonlight
in the flames, all the same, no longer tame
oppression weathered, come together, we will severe
all their ties

roots, shoots, fruits and flowers
gathered and pounded and soak in oil
skin slicked, fragrant, flavoured in earth sense
we gather to dance, to commune, to plan riots
eyes and teeth and fingernails shine
in silvered-orange glow
we grow strong

roots, shoots, fruits and flowers
carefully chosen for their power
overlooked by mayor, merchant, king
we know the sting and we will bring
them to the foundations of our prisons
sow the ground
with our anger

roots, shoots, fruits and flowers
change will come
with moon and sun
everything finds its end
the truth we’ve known
since the moonlight dances began
sisters rise

Hurt is the stone I carry in my pocket,
solid and cold to the core,
well-worn,
smoothed with time,
a heaviness that sits deep within.

It is a weapon to throw at my enemies,
a means of defence
or attack.
But sometimes my aim is off—
such a small thing can leave a big mark.

I want to throw it away,
skim it lightly across the surface of a clear blue lake.
Watch it bounce impossibly—
weightlessly!
Creating barely a ripple in my life…

Instead, I grip it tightly,
like a child with his beach discoveries,
afraid to show the world,
but clinging to it all the same.

I meet you there,
crouched on the sand—
your clenched fist
housing a reflection,
not identical but a similar grey.

Together we build cairns—
layering let downs,
broken promises,
your grief and mine.

The past layered on the future,
each stone a memory—a thought—a feeling—
precariously balanced.

This could all be beautiful.
This could all come crashing down.

I know a bank where the wild thyme blows
(A Midsummer Night’s Dream, 2.1.249)

At eye level, at hip height, above the schist
outcrops and below the sheer, fenced drop, the
wild thyme blooms purple. No-one would mistake
these hills for a wood near Athens. Titania has

sturdy boots for the trail and a hood for the wind
and snow that’s driving up the gully. Too pretty to
be mongrel and too hardy for ornamental, she can
follow it k on k, till toes blister and watch batteries

run flat. Better by far than a trafficked boy and
bloody Robin Goodfellow. Better than bad juice
served in snakeskin by a mean husband.
Titania reads the signs. Plenty to be taught and

to teach by, the podocarp burning and the moa
running out, the sick man riding rapids in the belly of
the mōkihi. Men who believed they had nothing to
lose slept in crevices and sluiced the guts out of the

valleys not yet named, till then for passing through.
Quieter men with pickaxes kept their counsel, took
earnings out in time for the storied subdivision of
pastoral leases. Convictions and catastrophes

smoothed out into a tale in which a feted, hated
man came marching up the valley for a dam, in
spite of local knowledge. In spite of Titania,
who is following the cold, cold lake. Wild thyme

at her ears, at wrists and ankles, Titania rests prone
out of the wind, a queenly body curved to fit the bare
spaces between. The warming, savoury scent persists,
even on the wind straight off the mountain, the one

that brings the snow. Below the bolts and tunnels to
secure the hills, under the modern hydrolake the
riverbed exists, a route for courage to season all
the failures. The sick man in the mōkihi let go of

fear of death, let go of everything except the care
of the two rangatira, who navigated silent,
looking neither at him nor rapids as they steered
toward the shore, looking only at the ridgeline

and the hidden, bright horizon.

i’m writing to say everything is well (almost).
writing to say that purgatory is a sonnet if you find a way out of it.
i’m writing to say i miss the pōneke skies of that 2015 in all
their hues of blue and grey, that i miss seeing your face
in the hospital corridors, that i miss seeing your face.
that i’m glad you saved your own life, so at least we had
eight more years. that i went back to pōneke but it turns out
what makes a place is not the place at all. i swear that sometimes
i hear you say my old name, and it sobers me. no one else could
make it tender, but you. no one else could get me out of purgatory
with only the ghost of them. and i’m writing to say everything is well,
(almost).

i’m writing to say i think i’ve finally found it.
what we were looking for when they put electrode stickers
on my brain and shocking it, what they put you on cocktails
of medicine because you could not find.
i’m writing looking back. pain is almost beautiful
once you’ve killed it. look at what’s become of it.
everything. look at this version where icarus is bathed in light
but not burned by it. see my hands, they do not wage war on me,
but they do miss you. see they’re reaching and writing.
see losing you when your life was beginning, really,
made me want to die / made me want to live.

see the pōneke skies were a mirror to these of tāmaki,
see somehow your ghost is still teaching me to crawl out into life,
see the guilt is a hat trick that ends with tenderness.
if you let it. a rabbit’s ear. a memory.
the prey becomes the prayer. the sobering becomes the sombre.
i’m writing to say purgatory spat me out and i’ve been on my knees
without you. but what once was a stance of repentance
is now a reminder to let the soft animal of my body love.
i’m writing to say the animal of it remembers, could never forget.
looks at the baby blue skies of summer and loves you.

looks at the place and searches for the people who will make me miss it.
looks at purgatory as a sonnet of grief that turned me tender as the flesh.
i’m writing to say the sun is beautiful but i promise not to burn.
to say i’ll live for the both of us because you taught me how.
to say, i hope that when i wake to the thick honey light, made
new again into the womb of summer, that it is a mirror to the otherside.
i’m writing to say i’m wondering about the view, is it beautiful,
over there?

is it as still and soft as we had hoped? is death a hat-trick?
does it reveal something tender?
you showed me how to love and then you taught me how to live.
i’m writing to say everything is well, so very beautiful,
light all through me, but i confess, i am still hoping for one final trick.
a sleight of hand. a joker that says after all this, it isn’t true.
you’re not dead. we could laugh out a whole evening over this
just like we used to.

Even late school nights, Epona would call
from the last box in town to still take coins
to ask me to meet her at the old greyhound track
by the abandoned chicken cart.
A filament of green light from god knows what
hung in the sky beside dull oxen clouds
and pale moths made an orrery around
the solitary yellow globe above the street crossing.

I’d cross the empty streets to sit beside her on the wall
by the side entrance car park. As she told me
of adventures with her posse in the forest,
or of her long run to the outer hills, or how she lost
her turquoise ring braiding the river of Pele’s hair,
I’d remember the unopened worksheet on tangential velocity
waiting for me in my backpack.

Last night I opened my arms to the rays
of our shared red star and unfastened the suitcase
at the back of my trailer to read for the first time
in decades my enthusiastic predictions for these future years
scribbled in biro at the back of a B5 notebook
with the charm and accuracy of an astrological chart
drawn at a market fair stall. I would be the successor
to the wealth and fame of my father’s vacuum appliance
emporium and Epona would lead her wagon train troupe
of performers and musicians across distant plains and plateaux
each stop an embroidered, embellished story to be danced and told.

Note: for proper formatting of this shape poem, please see the corresponding PDF. She tells the silver in her bathroom one chill Sunday night my life must be a hallucination, she says nothing in me is good enough or bad enough, or original enough nothing, not even the nothingness in me is enough nothing. Perhaps i am really a tree with a shadow self living me her beneath the earth the only thing i ever was excellent at was sadness my own and other’s gloom i can see it taste it i am an expert vessel, it fills me and dutiful i repeat its welling, i excel at summoning glimmer in the liquid dark i leak —Look at me, i take up too much room for how not enough i am, i am not enough specificity to be real and she kneels to sit on cool tiles willing a small sleep that might end in waking up to a full colour vision of hill tussocks and leaves tossing passive in measurable motions lashed by the tough love of the Easterly, and unfiltered Sun.

Camp out in foreign landscapes, inside of yourself.

Shake loose the withheld keening until your crow’s feet
bleed dry, for this night choir will palpate the stars
in coloured incarnations.

Reject the ornithologist’s bible; you already know
the flocks gathering on hilltops — on land
that will remain long after you’ve gone.

Swathes of birds will always retreat, towards trees
that hold your heart strings.

Autumnal leaves hail on forest floors in warm
nor’ westerly winds; coalesce in this elemental
release, because nature has no purposeful duality.

Face outward to go in — return to a body
that craves sunshine in its bones,
when death has recharted the map of you.

Fears are frost-tender fragments; remember
to place your hands gently in the soil.

Sit in a corner tight, comforted by the triangulation;
then widen yourself — sway your danse macabre,
to confront this ever-present mortality.

Collapse in fields devoid of people, where blackberries
will stain your fingers; for this absence
is a nebula of enormous proportions.

Hear these tender confessions, and yield yourself to grief.

From within earth’s dripping maw I emerge
Crystalised with youth
The pungent smell of innocence a beckon
To the predators that shadow the cruel dredges of society
In a blackened haze

Arms bruised green from the dendrites of earthen hold
Dress stained but divine
A persephonic hell siren rabid on revenge
Mouth, nail and cheek crusted with grime from below

I am femme unleashed, nauseous from an all-consuming mania
Blue cuffs and chiffon flowing
Cross weeping dirt onto my jutting collarbones
Discarded ragdoll come to life
The bloody heart of man exposed
Come and fight the lace monster.

Greywacke cobbles
plucked from outer stream bends by raindrops
gathered to a torrent by natures folds
carried east by gravity and flow
to where this stream
at its final destination spent
gave them up.

Red-billed gull cries a protest
flying head first into the biting southerly that scours the firth
whipping phytoplankton and detritus into a frenzy of sea foam
piled by waves into billowing drifts on the shore
glistening and golden in late afternoon light.

A snapper carcass
eye sockets empty
vertebrae laid bare by A Crab Last Supper
aimlessly wandering the strand line postmortem
at the mercy of the ebb and flow of the sea
its remnant flesh feeding sandhoppers
till the next tide
undertaker
arrives
shuffles it on.

Someone
back to the wind
rosy cheeked
squinting north to the mussel farms
dull throb of the barge riding low under the weight of the harvest
the skipper returning to Kaiaua and the pub.

The sun slips down behind Kohukohunui
and the peaks of the ranges cast long leaden fingers
down over the pastureland and forest valleys.

Blue greens vanish
here are the muted dusky greys
the earth too slipping on its jacket.
Dusk is falling
Soon it will be night.

For MDS

I te wā i tīmata ai te ora
Ki ōku whakaaro nei, kua kite angeau i a koe
me ngā momo āhua o to āhua
ahakoa kihai angeau i mahara i te pono koe
engari i mahara angeau kei waho ki a koe
e kanapa ana puta noa i te wai
me te ātaahua o tēnēi mounga
ka rite tonu ki te kapua iti
huri noa i Te Papakura o Taranaki
ka rite tonu ki te kōhuru o te ua
ki runga o Eltham i roto
i te tomo makariri o te takurua

From Kāpuni Falls*

When life was beginning
I now think saw you
or the spectral possibilities of your form
though I did not perceive you as a reality
rather I sensed you were out there
glimmering across the water
as magnificent as this mounga
as common as the low cloud
circling around Te Papakura o Taranaki
as dismal as the murder of rain
over Eltham in the cold abyss of winter.

*Formerly known as Dawson Falls before the 2023 Mounga Taranaki Treaty Settlement.

the blade curved like a metal rib
the edge honed again and again
	whining along the steel
the black handle stippled
	for a stronger grip
as the hand slices down
splitting skin and flesh
opening the heart to
	unfamiliar air
the blade sent back to the steel
	where the hone takes
minute shreds until
the curve is a sliver of moon
	promising darkness
the flesh that mounds
	on the slab
	rimmed with white curls of fat
	red with blooded rage
the hand that deals
with death’s remains
and cleans the blade
	the animal we never saw
	past the knife’s gleaming smile.

before the downing,
there was popping kelp and bubble wrap
firing granny’s bonnets and broom pods
knowing that the chalkiest, finest mud
that left the least grit in your teeth
was the kind that had dried post-worm
wonder at how adults sit and talk talk talk

the tick of woodlice in walls
rattle of grinning cat, molten on your ankles
book pictures that bundled you in

cheek against the space below
your mother’s neck
like still-warm playdough

stencils, pencils
kid limbs, tree limbs, stone skims
slaters uncurling feathery undercarriage

small dairy bag trade negotiations
your milk bottles for their gum drops
a chocolate fish for two or three jelly beans
depending on the flavour

smells:
tea-coloured pages in serif fonts
wet chalk
dull metal knucklebones

dexterity:
one-by-one daisy petals
splitting a mallow seed into segments
stick layers, bark in strips
or cuffs or flakes
down through the wood to
spongy tube core;
brick clicks, sticker peels
board tricks, cotton reels
bug flicks, shaker feels
bead picks, card deals

now
we see poreless mushroom faces
lit, captivated, by
slick rectangles

these screens do their own trades:
mind’s eye for DPI
preschool pixelated for our convenience
primary colours now RGB

but their eyes follow ours

stooped, device-entranced
shiny tablet we’ve swallowed whole

Right now you have an oncologist, a cardiologist and a nephrologist;
you do not need a poet. Still, I know you will accept from me whatever gifts I bring.

They are doing their work and I am setting to remember your face before your
mother and father were born.

We are talking the routes of great-grandfather and his runaway sons at Waianakarua,
of Unck Skunk hard drinking in the Ōtautau pub at noon.

You have no intention to leave us and yet I am imagining the temblor,
the cathedral falling down again and the bells once more buried.

I am remembering the months when you said “I’m an orphan”
and it was real, and every day a surprise.

I bring your grandchildren to you and apply them like a salve.
Your description of your father-in-law’s face became his death mask,

how his silver hair was combed. You were the one who gave him leave,
to take his leave and go, love, go.

It’s uncanny.
Sometimes
I feel
Like I’m walking
In your shoes.

Staring out at the world
Through the same eyes
Breathing in air
To fill the same set of lungs.
Our ageing faces
Both etched
In familiar and similar places
By three thousand hours of labour
Under the same sun.

Our cracked skin
Both stained
By the gravelly ochre earth
Of this Mother Land
At the head of the Hapuawai.

You are made
Of grit and gumption.
That much and more I got from you
When the random lottery of meiosis
Sealed my fate.

Must be a dominant trait.

When I stopped my period I started having vivid daydreams of blood extraction

I would lie on my back, arm out, and feel the blood being pulled out of me
The thin pale crook of my arm pulsing

My body acting out its routine blood loss

I never was good at change

I once watched someone take a thirty-minute-long exposure photo of the night sky
Camera fixed on a tripod, looking up
The developed photograph showed arcing streaks of starlight

And I thought—I could do that
Stand still while the sky turns
Making an art of staying fixed in place

i hooked up with a paramedic at a house party last night
crazy how we all have real person jobs now.

you could have made a richard scarry book out of the attendants
of this function.

an EMT and a lawyer and a military officer and a business
analyst all walk into a bar,

and i suppose i’m there too—
what do you do, they ask, only slavering a little—
it isn’t their fault, they’re just really desperate to find out which page i belong on.

i tell them i work in soft furnishings, and
i dream about supermarket aisles overflowing with a tsunami of oranges and
i grieve the shirts i left at peoples houses when i was a kid, and
i wonder about my baby teeth.

i’m very busy.

i write about things that happen to me like i’m not afraid,
i’ve actually been super brave about it all, considering.

you know where to find me.
i haven’t moved in the last year or so

can’t say the same for you; tho’ that might be for the better
my shoes are tracking foreign mud along this familiar path, and like,
i’m directly contributing to kauri dieback

i’ll apologise big so you can tell i mean it more.

a woman in a facebook group i’m in put her dog down.
she wrote a post saying that the sun didn’t shine that day.
how fitting. how fitting.

she wrote it twice, like that.

how fitting, how fitting.

was with the
friend I met at
Anxiety Club.
It wasn’t really called that.
The name is perhaps not immaterial
but forgotten.

Something less confronting
no doubt, focussed more on the
wellness than the illness.

Some of the songs were almost
unrecognisable but I didn’t hold that
against him.

George Harrison had been dead for 17 years,
Roy Orbison for 30, a lifetime for me
at that point. But Dylan was still going.

A relic, a recluse,
a window into my parent’s youth.
A chance to be in the same room
with somebody not of my time.

Like one of those odd historical titbits.
Marilyn Monroe was born
in the same year as Queen Elizabeth II.
Only 66 years separated the first
airplane flight and the moon landing.

The second time I saw Bob Dylan in concert
Donald Trump was in the Oval Office,
and Anxiety Club had disbanded due to a lack of funding,
which seemed about as bad as things could get.

Of course, a year later a gunman would
shoot up a mosque,
an island would erupt,
and the concert venue would close
as all concert venues would close.

I was not long born when Dylan began his
schedule of shows dubbed the Never Ending Tour.
A Swedish researcher calculated
he passed 3,000 shows
before the world locked down,
then picked up right where he left off.
A precedented presence
in unprecedented times.

Our every conversation is a bloodbath:
I wrench words from my mouth

like I’m pulling teeth,
violent in my attempt to form

the ever-elusive perfect sentence, to illustrate
both my ambiguous brilliance and my appetite

for deconstruction. Each syllable
brings forth a scarlet cascade

that sullies us both: I apologise for ruining
your spotless white shirt. Covered in my blood you look

unbecoming; it seems duller,
weaker than it does on the nights

I make blood pacts with myself,
the slices in my fingertips a reminder

of what it hurts to repeat. Soon
I will clean the porcelain and adopt

a prudent smile. Soon
you will be able to wear

a white shirt again.

Massing humanity
Pockmarks the beach,
A warm wind strafes
The arc-shaped bay,
Linear stories being told
In the reviving water, on towels
As bodies are being burned,
A friendship being dissolved,
					Lovers learning to lie,

A child, a dog, a grandparent
Go for a swim, nobody sees
How close they are, the
Immensity of their sustaining love,
The triangulation of their bond
Placed perfectly, geometrically,
Unbridle the joy and let it sweep around them,
How can this go unnoticed alongside
The tension on the road raging by,
What a beautiful event on a
Summer Sunday
			Unlike any other.

My friend, in a café talking
as my legs walk away from me

one leg at a time
escaping our table

sucking at the knees
of a couple

looking at me suspiciously
from a table paused

the staff ask, am I ok
just a touch of Parkinson’s

oh, they say
as I collect my legs

my friend taps my shoulder
comfortingly

who cares what they think
don’t worry

my friend keeps talking
I enjoy her every word

but my own words cannot be
while I must tether my leg animals

I can no longer
multitask

the staff would like to pat my leg animals
I think

they form an observation group
I’m about to ask if they have questions

when they set up a heater
below my knees
bring a blanket
do I need anything else

as we leave
my words bloat and bob

at my surface
burping rudely

I don’t get to say thank you
my friend smiles and my leg animals wave

the staff say
see you next time

your blanket will be here
for you

After C. P. Cavafy, Waiting for the Barbarians
and Iliad XXI, 200-380

What is happening, and why is no one assembled in the marae?

The barbarians arrived today.

But why is the sky so thick and black beneath the shining sun?
and why is the air so full and crass with screeching thunder?

Because the barbarians came today.
The Waikato burns, and the birds and the insects
are crowded in panicked flight from the flames.

But why does the river bubble and hiss so loud?
and why are its banks crowded with such rows of rubber and scales?

Because the barbarians came today.
The Waikato boils, and the eels and the fish
are desperate to escape its scalding waters.

But why do the trees shake and rattle so hard?
and why does the earth rumble and groan so deep
as if the world itself teeters on the brink of utter despair?

Because the barbarians came today.
The Waikato burns, and behind them they drag great
thundering machines of war, wrought iron and bronze
and they crush and tear apart the ground beneath them.

Yes,
but what is this sickness that has descended upon us,
which feels as if the very order of things rots and crumbles?
Surely that cannot be by the hands of the barbarians?

The barbarians came today and now
the Waikato burns beneath the destructive wrath
of the Great Warlord, and he is sick with greed and conquest.

Then why does no one do anything—the men and the women?
Why instead do they shout and weep and flee in droves
to distant corners of the country?

They tried to stay, but the barbarians came today
and burned and boiled the Waikato from out beneath their feet
until they could stay no longer.

Ah, so how are we to live with those people then,
if this is their solution?

Frozen
in your deathly contortions
on the tarmac
In the half-light thrown by streetlights
and a gentling pre-dawn sky
you look like a victim of Vesuvius
though their last howls of pain
were plastered over; yours is right there

What put you there?
Did the night rain’s lashing
drive you from that tree
into the path of a motorised enemy?

Will someone lift you from that road?
or is this the final indignity
for a designated enemy
of the conservation estate?

Who put you there?
Who thought it made sense
to bring you to this country
from their land of plenty
to be an outcast?

Switch the phones to 100-year mode and
call the children in. The sun sets behind the
pylons and we crack the sparks at large in
our sinuses, in the crannies of our joints.
What if all the ruru flew here, all at once?
100 hunters, each a solo traveller, but for
this night, a flock. Two bone-sets, light and
heavy, hum together. The children overlook
our failings, our slack hands that have never
taken flight. One night-bird moment in which
to dream a new centenary for this power.

His house always smells
of cooked eggs and fish,
except once a fortnight when the cleaner’s been
His wineglass has made a permanent pink ring
on the table by the sofa where he sits
and a purple vein stain on his nose

In the pub every evening and on the box
the accents and colours bewilder him
He grew up in a hamlet in Northern England
with a twin brother and a dialect and not even electricity but now
he has Sky News, Hot Seat, footy, cricket

He sits in the ruins of his life
The jumbled CDs, Slim Whitman,
Mario Lanza, Mozart, Doris Day,
Vera Lynn’s ‘White Cliffs of Dover’

The pile of Dick Francis paperbacks
The twentieth-century library smell
of the Works of Rupert Brooke
and the Definitive Edition of Kipling’s Verse

The paintings of long-gone cats
The photos of the artist: my mother
The sweaters she knitted him,
the handsewn cushions, her side
of the bed

The shot of his son, proud
with a big dead salmon
a few years before
the car crash

His grandchildren in primary school,
one in short hair and a collared shirt,
another in a dress, face unpierced,
their pronouns still he and she
The wedding photos of me and their dad,
a gentle man from a well-off family,
his erstwhile son-in-law

When I was little I rode on my father’s shoulders
He spread out his raincoat to shelter me
Now I’m his power of attorney
and I call him twice a week

Today I saw an umbrella stand
with no umbrellas, despite the rain

I wrote a letter to my dead brother and read it out
to his lost spirit over a hole freshly dug for the
seven-year-old oak tree I’d bought for him, for me
it took three men to drag the tree off the truck
and prop in the earth—a root skirt preparing to take hold.

I waited until they left before I read aloud my handwritten pages
hands shaking and tongue dry despite my audience
two infant daughters—your nieces—and the family dog
I can’t remember much of what I wrote now except apologising
for giving you undies for Christmas for the previous three years
they were boxed sets—Calvin Kleins fixed fly front
but they were still undies underpants pants
you were as celebrity twenty-seven as Kurt Cobain and
Jeff Buckley whose tortured Hallelujah we played at your funeral
they offered some sort of cool but also not
a young man’s life cut short
is a young man’s life cut short
the tree is now twenty-four years in the ground and counting
well rooted
majestic
the opposite of evergreen
a perfect origami of memories never entered
each year witness to absence
each year a cycle of
Spring new
Summer green
Autumn red
Winter fall
filigree leaves
bone branches
leaf carpet
on and on
without your footsteps
only those of the young cop walking down the drive
Mum still dreams on repeat.

Fingertips of membrane
reflects lace arteries
desiccating and lovely

Sentient as the elderly
wrinkles, knuckles, muscles
snowy, silver, wizened
pillars of lightning cirrus illuminate
the yellowed blanket of remember

Freckles hold in child-like love
empty rivers of laugh a spark back then
candles evaporated
the sunset forever unconscious
dead beams of memory

To play untuned
a few minutes a day,
to shift a key, to pedal,
scales, some daily dirge,
each out-of-kilter note,
the next and next,
to drone out electric hiss,
chord of tinnitus,
the harping. To tamp
a stringed scalp, to hear
the somehow the
somehow of next

i.m. Banjo (2007-2025)

Perched
on the brink
Just where the lawn dives abruptly downhill
he sits
close to where the ascending sun
casts the shadow of the magnolia tree
onto the dew-glistened grass
Winter is winding down
Spring is coiled
and his beige fur shines
as he surveys the sun-washed valley
turning now and then to our voices
his old man bark held back
as the sun warms his brittle bones
Bliss

tear off the perforation on the front of the box

I lie so still
I must be waiting
for something

cut a 5cm x 5cm ‘X’ in the bag

I listen to the voices above me
feel the movements around the room

wipe the front face and a razor blade or sharp knife with alcohol-based hand sanitiser

It all hurts too much
The sunlight, the sound, the air against my skin

remove any bacteria which can grow on the substrate

I lie for so long I think I can feel the fibres of the couch grow around me
The little blue threads clinging and crawling up the sides of my body

opening the entire block to the atmosphere will cause far too much growth and waste the energy in the block

I think I’m supposed to rouse now
but I have forgotten how to move

When the fresh air and humidity hit the exposed substrate under the cut, primordia should form

This lying in wait is actually a coiling
tighter and tighter, getting ready
for the moment I spring forth,
and it seems as if I was always there
effortless, fully formed.

This is the part you have been waiting for.

* Source note: All italicised lines are taken from the box of the “Italian Oyster Mushroom Grow Kit” from Oak & Spore.

For more information go to:
https://www.oakandspore.co.nz/blogs/mushroom-grow-information/mushroom-grow-kit.

Have you seen the broken chairs
abandoned to the corner office
the door sits always cracked open for
another meeting of the broken chairs club
it no longer appears on official floorplans

I once heard there was a whole floor
with abandoned machinery still
ticking sparking grinding seen only in glimpses
through the wrong elevator button

The people here are fragmented
distorted two inches to the left ignoring
whole sections of the government beige walls sitting empty
push pin outlines of missing pages in A4
it’s a strange number of blank spaces
filed here in politic tall cabinetry—redacted before we arrived

The Minister continues to be mildly confused
at the unclassified briefcase of
policy advice, artwork and transport notes from a suburb in a large town
that appear each Friday
on occasion he frames and displays the policy advice.

He visited once and handshook his way through the second floor. Spent three days floating a few feet above the boardroom—his head enclosed in a ceiling duct—before leaving his sincere compliments with the Head of Facilities for excellent service to the economy.

You look amazing
where did you find that
sense of purpose
I have been looking for something
in a similar style

The cut of that jacket
is so flattering to the curve
of your elbow
I can see the work you’ve put in

Have you had a trim recently
your self-imposed limits are so much lighter
you must have cut some shit loose
they are so light on your shoulders

that lipstick is on point today
that shade of backing yourself
is so good on you

You brought yourself flowers
I knew you’d been smelling roses
I can see it glowing
in the corners of your lips

You are but one;
a solitary shell
professing sanctuary upon the shore.

Fleeing the undertow
that provides no absolution.
Yearning for a stable embrace
frozen in its evolution.
You lack adaptation,
are moored in false assumptions.

The waves gift unending shifts
that the coast eagerly receives,
relentless in its progression.
Your affection ashore
is a brief reprieve.

The tides return to carry you adrift,
and the shore does not hold on.
You cannot ask the sands to cease changing.

You cannot ask that of me.

You say it’s a whisper of garden
compared to the old one you loved

an angle of juiced lawn frowning
as you announce it too small

mere echo of what was
like your body these days, you say

eyes deep
in the shallows and hedges

I climb into your landscapes
catch zinnia whirring planets

red asteroids of peony lifting heads
delicate moons dripping leaves golden

grass a soft whisper, hold on
to hills and valleys

watch, as they fill again
as sunshine follows rain

I watch everyone getting older, but you.

How many mothers’ bodies are buried outside
churchyards, for choosing to lie down with
their children? They knew how quickly skies
could morph from blue to black;
in liquid despair, the power of their pain
sucked the air from the cosmos.

My mother dreams of a house covered in vines,
while I feel its bones; leached and breaking.

I understand the desire to follow, when infinity
pools of tears flood my hollowed hands,
and each time unprovoked, breath is excised
from my chest. Watching, as other people
control grief in public places;
when they rarely do that with laughter.

Misunderstanding this profound absence at the table;
we look to one another for answers.

Whenever the tide drags out, I sift through the mudflats,
searching for fragments of you;
in spectral compensation.

trans. Leo Shtutin

Keyholes—
windows on the world entire:

Van Gogh landscape of Provence,
bare bulb swinging on its futile cord in the draught
that moves through
the blistering mansard hallway
where Van Gogh, ear despatched to the nearest brothel,
gazes into the iron sky.

To lean flush,
Gawk-eyed…

(a love letter)

Two tireless trunks.
A feast! A pair of new drums.
One modern sonnet.
Five white haiku, or
A bone china place setting.
My hardworking love.
—
You are the two walls
That support my secret house—
My deep fire pit, the
Warm place on my hearth
That knows how to swaddle
And nurture: to give.
—
Your taut ink, your porcelain,
Keeping me from caving in.

The station circles above the sky
way up high past the blue ozone fizz
at night the station crosses half-remembered constellations
the curled warrior by the chest of mahogany drawers
with the giant’s hair in her mouth
the one-eared dog asleep by the shepherd’s sword.
In the galley they’ll be singing the names of capitals
Accra, Addis Ababa, Amsterdam, Apia.
Loose spoons turn cartwheels above my head.
To sleep they harness themselves to walls
and dream of sprinkled lawns and tom-tom drums.
On the station they’ll be singing
She’ll be coming round the mountain when she comes
She’ll be coming round the mountain when she comes.

You look like if Bear Grylls were swaddled in 1000+ pounds
	of clingfilm and ham.
Below the blood blisters of your eyes, your tusks
	seem to wobble like a baby tooth
revealing a network of nerves and muscle.

A triumphant, sweeping drone shot: you on a cliff top,
	your unwieldy mass perched
like an elephant pirouetting on a powerline.

But David Attenborough has a point to make.

The first shot of you falling is your eyes as you slip to the edge
	twin red blisters widening as you slide
your impossible gravity tipping you away from the lip tusk-first.

For a brief second, frozen in Netflix pause, you
	are a rounded angel
	a shining oval poised in perfect balance
your little frayed flippers spread as though to fly.

The first rock you hit on the way down is angled like a canine.
	The next is jagged.

Then you are in the air again / then you are back on the ground.
	The air / the ground.

On the beach again you seem to be as solid as before
but inside, your bones are shattered and sharp

your red eyes blink and your flippers move a little at your sides
	recalling flight.

Now David Attenborough shows us some tree frogs
	in the Congo Basin
funny birds of paradise doing complex mating dances!

We have left you on the beach but we have not left you alone.
From the corners of the screen, polar bears approach.
	They are so hungry
	and they will appreciate you.

They all left, one
by one. The smile,
the handshake, the afternoon light
draped across
the aged turquoise carpet.
I slumped over
in a black leather sofa,
counting food crumbs
littered
on the floor—a galaxy of pie crust.
Transient and changing
from one form to another.
How quiet it is when even the birds
leave their nests,
a mess of sticks and grass
exposed in the ceiling.
They had all left me
alone, with silent radios
where voices exploded through static,
now absent and no longer filling
this room that years ago
used to be a chapel.
No pews, no pulpit, the lectern
sold for scrap wood, just an agnostic
unsure of divinity, or if
the universe will ever reveal itself
in true form.
I look toward an open door
with renewed hope,
I know North, and
can fly from the southern winds—
turning away from bitter cold.

Balance, as in a sense of.
As in keeping one’s. Not

wanting to fall over, to fall
flat on the face, in front of

other people. Or even alone
when the pain is sharper

& you do not need to keep
it back. In check, as in

checks & balances. Not
wanting to go too far too

fast, not wanting to go
until the last stone is set

in stone. Not wanting to,
& all the time losing track

of what it is you’re trying
to do, to keep a few light

words alive & spinning freely
inside the air. In balance.

My dad dug a maze at Glastonbury; he was twenty two.
I’m feeling kind of blue, like the Miles Davis poster in his bathroom
—not that I knew who that was.

There was a towel on the rail just like one we had at home:
maroon with white flowers, or white with maroon
—it depended which side you looked from.
I was thirteen. We’d never met. But we had matching towels.
So. It must be true.

I think this is the centre.
It’s hard to know—I can’t see that far ahead.
But next week we’ll make a plan,
and then we’ll have to stick to it.

When the girls start going back and forth,
I bet they’d like to see
some familiar towels.

dead straight road
north out of Kaitaia
past soggy paddocks
duck mother on the white line
(the grass is greener on the other side)
trailing tiny ducklings in front of
an unseeing driver

Flap! She’s winged
tinies scattered in the draught
no chance to stop
no way to rescue them
trucks thunder through
spattering mud
across the dark bitumen

Corner of Princes and Rattray streets
rain a black slick on the concrete
silver rain-doilies all over the air

and among them, like a soggy prophet,
a businessman—shirt transparent on fish-white skin
head bent to phone like a neon Gospel.

The scooter is his orange stallion
tamed beneath his Three Wise Men heels
the leather coruscating like two shining miracles.

He is like a Western filmed in Atlantis
briefcase a dashing saddlebag on his hip.
He kicks off like a hydro-cowboy.

His Hallensteins jodhpurs cling to his flanks
he is Charlton Heston in Postie+ socks
Viggo Mortensen wrangled into an LLB.

He rides into the grey midday sun
a black-and-white Western
with a flash of orange as the credits roll.

Suburban dogs howl…
a loneliness, a longing
for the river’s thunderous
sonata…the timbre of
a tumbling creek where
the mountains loom,
majestic… noble, pompous

A nor’west wind moans
like a pack of wolves, necks
careening to the sky over
tarns and gullies

Under a January moon,
the city dogs take another breath…
a breath as deep as their longing.

Please see Tarot #10 page 10 to see this shape poem typeset properly.

From charcoal bedrock, for length am asked but can’t
tell the dim to lit in me, ill/well won’t line up don’t conform in parallel,
lost ability limps along complex axes always when, how much not who or what; Who—
never simple enough for the ticking of a box; What too slick for isolated, categorical
seductions, lover beware of monochromatics: Black and white convention oversimplifies
duplicitous deceives you, bereaves me, in tropes of light
as knowledge, virtue, and hope, compared to torture
lies and despair, but there is kindness in dark it invites
embraces, calms, curtains fears, the light can be
stark, cold, unforgiving, one long stare at the sun
retinas meld with a shimmer of aura, tears,
a flotilla of floaters, sight undone in glare
while night holds its own truths, is
ancient, wise, when the light can not
save us, we flee, we hide.
Black and white are ours
space and time absolutes unseen,
we relate to avatars of summer’s shadow
dreams, moments of perfection on a spectrum,
reaching greyed arms out to each other in both
directions encircle worlds in shade my life is an arch
seen from a certain angle sheens in density of mist is a
miracle, ether real and colour full, all in the hold of the
imperfect places between two-foldedness nothing/every
thing, in their crease shines strength in wholesomeness.
Calves in sun, wake near smiling see no midday stars, scars shine milk cool, whatever well
meant has been erased, rewritten, losses and gains are ink pink moon subtle salty
licks, well isn’t remitting signs, but some whole thing finds, begins to loose combine, lets
entwine, whatever well means in me is in motion, defying lines,
calls close comes dimensional, to silver water runs.

Perfectly round, an anti pupil
roving slowly across the sky—
I can feel you rising
if I stare long enough.

Your gravity is attractive.
Loose. Only a whisper from this
distance, a potential lover
making secret eye contact

across the room.
You think I am not aware
of you—oh but darling,
darling! how wrong you are.

You are all I can think of
here at this dark party.
A quarter century is how long
I have been looking at you.

And all that time, while
I have been dancing, dancing
for you, from afar, from within—
you have been watching me too.

“…and, thus bereft of his love,
he turned & delved so deep as to emerge
in unknown airs, on another side…”
From “Elegy for Eurydike”
by Ornotakritos,
3rd Chresmologue to Pediculopubis the Puritic,
c. 475-469 BC.

Through an orphic dark,
a bird drives its
wedge of screams.

Does it grasp me,
as the old one says?

Or, does it,
from his second mouth,
move me,
rush & shift & slide,
on iron, glass, &
further factious growths?

On this ground,
barely made &
“once created,”
–am I flux,
—am I fixed,
by the cry we children
try overhard
to make our own?

sparrows with wings beating
sing outside and above

they do not know the words

how much I would miss them
how I resent interruptions
they do not know

I had an alarm once
which mimicked their aubade

now I will never sleep through an authentic performance

they do not know that once I found
a bird-corpse, their comrade,
disfigured by rain

on a concrete path
they do not know I buried it

crouched on the nearby sod, clawing
the loose earth breathing its fragrant nectar

I scooped it up with a young oak leaf
fallen nearby or perhaps rain-pelted

I shrouded the corpse
tucked it into the earth-cavity
with a tenderness
(useless in its breathing days)
cold hands impressing the mud
smoothing the mound over

I do know more
than the sparrows

I still couldn’t tell you why

On hot days the hens
take to the shadow of the oak
spread their useless pinions
and doze.

Enter my mother
who places last night’s dinner on the ground
then takes a sip from her glass of chardonnay
while the chickens wake from their sleep
and squabble over roast carrot.

One hen, Annabel, is my grandmother
resurrected.

She, by chance,
was a poet too and now
as a bird
scratches psalms into the dirt.

Loneliness has fled;
it is no match for the poetry of hens
who turn their heads to look at my mother
as if asking
for a drop of her wine.

after Mary Oliver

I want to be good. To crawl on my knees
and erase every terrible thing I’ve done.

My despair is so deep it has triggered volcanoes—
can you help me? Let’s survey the carnage,
the newly formed terrain. The waterfalls burst forth,
the sun glancing off the sea.

If every inch of me is covered in scars,
That means you can’t see any one, yes?

Like the weed clings to the side of the mountain,
I have found my place, right here.
We’ll carve it out and polish it smooth.

Tell me I’m good.

For centuries, wheat wasn’t suspicious, a criminal
to be watched from the corner of your eye

in case it reached for the gun.

It was goddess-touched, gold-scented,
a wild grass descended from neolithic plateaus,

where horses, who never knew what it was
to be broken, followed the sun.

Today, I’m eating toast for breakfast, chewing softly,
urging my body not to be afraid,

wishing I hadn’t wasted years measuring goodness
by everything I denied myself,

my hungers collected and hung around my neck
like bone charms to keep evil away.

I wish I had spent more time with dough in my
fingernails, and flour in my hair.

I wish every gluten-free, sugar-free, dairy-free, vegan
protein bar had been a cookie,

and that I hadn’t made myself sick with worry,
when no food could ever be dirty.

I wish I’d remembered the taste of mom’s brownies,
and how when I got to lick the chocolate spoon,

nothing hurt.

Take off your shoes
Let your socks get soaked through
	with condensation
Take off your socks
Let soft, slippery blades
	slide between your toes
Take off your hat
Replace it with a crown of daisies
Take off your glasses
Find faces in the clouds
Take off your shirt
Rolly polly down a hill
Take off your pants
Use leaves as a loincloth

Take off your skin
Sprout cellophane wings
Follow a bee home to its hive
Sneak in through the back
Dance to show the workers
	where you’ve been
Live a full life in a matter of weeks
Make love to flowers
Produce life giving goo
Start the cycle all over again

1.

Gendre is French for son-in-law,
your daughter’s husband. One Tuesday night
I make cheese souffle because you said
your dad made it when you were small.
I’m sweating, fretting, setting multiple timers
for its final fart-blown emergence.
I did not realise I wanted to be
in direct competition with your father
but the feeling now is that I am
the opposite of a possessive dad with a gun:
I am an egg-beating son-in-law.


2.

My gender is a paper fortuneteller, grubby at the edges
and I’ve already read all the fortunes, so pick
your colour with care and I’ll recite it like a mantra:
G R E Y
	(which incidentally might be the most common non-binary name)
A S H	L E A F	C R E E K,
bodies that turn to the earth. I’m your dog-eared darling,
your schoolyard talisman. My gender is as much for you
as anyone else, as much for me as nobody.
Someone wise once said that everyone ought
to be forced to touch expansiveness,
and these things roll unaligned
like my tyres—which of course
are wearing on one side. As is customary with gender,
we all run a little uneven and none of us
can handle the terrain. I hate
writing about my gender.

Rain status
uterine status
flowering status
actually remembering status
finally align.
On my knees
knife in hand
head in harakeke.
Karakia
Tahi, rua, toru
45 degrees
A year on from moving in
I have almost erased
the convenience scars
of the previous owners’ management
decapitated children and parents laid to rest
blunt-truncated grandparents relieved of
their rain-catching frayed disgrace.
Our ignorance will always encompass
most of the knowledge in existence.
If no-one had told me
or I hadn’t thought to ask
I’d be trigger hacky too.
Snail, clueless
is in the way
like me
like the harakeke
(or the driveway).
I tip my hat
skip ahead
step around
circle back later
no more dishonour in these leaves.
Harakeke tikanga is slow
patient
courteous
the cosmetic submitting to wellbeing
tidy deferring to remembrance
closure yielding to honour
and I know
I don’t yet know
the half of it.

Not really the rain
Tapping it aloud
Like sparrows’ beaks
But all the stars
From the outer space
Splashing down
Into a Bai Juyi’s
Plate for the dancing
Pearls that I am
Trying hard to catch
And embed within
This foreign stanza

It took you decades to enjoy wine
and crawl on all fours.

Picasso’s paintings still hang on the wall,
as do those blue skies.

One terrible summer funeral
cannot undo the beauty of a leafless winter.

There are no typhoons, storm surges,
or floods this far north.

It’s up to you to take pictures of gulls
and that crumbling harbour.

I’m a cat lover so it may come as no surprise that in a past life
I have joyfully uttered the words—

	I’d like to be reincarnated as a cat.

The first time, I was fourteen, out from boarding school
for the day with a friend visiting her brother in his single
bed, single desk room at Massey Uni, Palmy North.

Why, he hissed, aren’t you happy with the pussy you’ve got?
Grey fur walls fell in on my quiet-girl innocence. My secret
feline desires. The cat got your tongue? Ha ha ha . . .

In my twenties I wrote bad poems about that sting;
nowadays, I cuddle my kitty, Cowboy, while watching cat reels
on IG of other cats and cat lovers. This brought me to the
conclusion—a lot of people want to come back as cats.

I might do too when I’m tired and all I feel like doing is laying
about in the sun stretched luxuriously on a velvet coverlet
or hidden from the world in a hut made of sheepskin cushions
and throws, assured a variety of textured foods will appear if I meow.

Until the other day when Cowboy came in from a rainstorm
and began the task of drying his thick fur coat lick by lick,
and I realised there is no way in hell
I could towel myself down post shower

	with my tongue.

Let me give you
this green heart
with seven main veins that fan out
from a starburst, supporting
an intricate web

This heart makes a lovely tea
Don’t be put off by the little round holes
letting the light through
They were made by workers, not thieves
They show it’s a good one,
with anti-inflammatory strength

Turn your hot human cheek a little,
brush this heart against it
Feel the subtle resistance,
the coolness that’s only
the usual mood of the air

What I want to give you
is peace

It smells like the forest where I found it—
tūī chatter, understory, sweet wet earth—
but if you want to know it,
use your own breath

My heart was never good with rhythms, it could
never master being a drum, a timesheet, or a clock.

It was too busy being a beehive: a record
of sun paths, the name of every flower

written in dances, a nuptial flight, the way
I crawled into your mouth hunting for pollen,

a burning drop of bee venom, a beeswax
castle, a queen telling herself

that she ate her infant sisters because
it was war, a thumb-lick of honey

from noxious weeds, the colour of mustard
and old coins and hot sand,

the bitter tang of sprayed blossoms,
irradiated fruits, genetically modified roses,

the old beekeeper opening me with smoke, and
sixty thousand bees shivering with prayer

for him to stop.

my eroded
converse soles
skid across algae concrete
dampening odd socks
giving me athlete’s foot

I fear the
Trident Hot and Spicy
noodles
have killed the butterflies
in my large intestine
leaving only a stubby swan plant
rested in unwatered soil
its roots wrapped around
and merging with
my nervous system

I can shift my atoms to teleport
through walls and under beds
someday I will make it
out of this atmosphere
and maybe then
I will finally understand why
we never really talked about it

which the priest tells us before evensong 
his cope glittering like a green diamond 
and the blue glow of Facebook frozen buttercup-light 
	under his chin. 
 
It’s like waking up in your house 
and doing watercolours and petting your cat 
while firemen shout at you from the cupboards 
	about a gas leak 
 
like you hear them and then the postman 
chucks a Molotov cocktail through your mailbox 
	and your house is engulfed in flames 
	and your watercolours and your cat, too. 
 
If I try to carry the weight of the world’s grief 
I will buckle like a three-legged table 
Risk boardgame sliding off me 
	and all the world leaders ending up 
	in a hyena dogpile. 
 
	A man hisses at me on the bus 
and my partner kisses me 
while the lights of Dunedin glitter  
like dissected Hannukah candles. 
 
God is a pinwheel 
spitting beautiful bright spikes over the ground 
while mountains melt like wax and ash 
	falls like snow. 
 

Lord, now lettest thou thy servant 
	depart in peace 
or strike down the postman 
	or at least
	save the cat.

As much as you love me and see me
you will never understand me fully
you are a fast pace, and I go slow
you are loud enough for us both
you always push
yourself
your body
your boundaries
you embrace discomfort
tighter than anything
tighter than me

I am soft, steady, and slow
I am gentle like your compassion
I am quiet like your resolve
I am emotional to my detriment
you are practical to a fault

you make me better
while I bring you peace
we balance each other
take only what we need

The hills are half covered in snow,
just enough to forget the stories
they told last week.

Winter is so long now
I’m not sure I’ll ever see roses grow again,
gorse won’t be burnt back and even if I run
to the top above the fog
the clear air will be so thin.

I might catch a glimpse of
the setting sun
as it dips
below the horizon.

With their most tender touches, snowflakes
Have painted the whole night white
Including the darkest corner in sight
	Even within a forgotten dream

Except the plum tree, standing alone there
	Under the eastern sky, whose
Flowers are blooming boldly against
The entire season, more vibrant than blood

Loving someone
is like playing the guitar.
At first, you make
lots of mistakes.
Then after a while,
you still make
lots of mistakes.

in the rain of dandelion seeds
drawing curtains in the wind

the lamp post was an eye
and i was the moon

because i could not catch
the tears and the orange

stood over her – like a headstone
and they were the shovelling:

how cruel are the lights?
that they pass you by

in winter’s sobs and midnight’s
zealous talons, but the winds

were your mother when she
covered your tears in her hands –

when it rained, you disappeared:
the lamp post was the eye

and i was the moon
because i did not catch

you when you flew onto
the floor without a father.

Staring at the sun as it rouges tundra,
you’re craning a head which laughter
has furnished with crags.

Songs erupt over you, gentle trills
from affection stored in reserve.
The result, oh yes, is nutritive fodder.

Lyrics assuage your forehead,
rimming the smiles you’ve gathered
for this night’s keep.

That’s how melodies lodge here;
as fuel to the warmth you’ve stashed.
Tunes ripen in a freezer, you canny thing.

The scars from tramping have run
to abysses of your mind at Ketetahi.
The moon’s rays lighten tussock,

lavishing scads of the heavens
from your thoughts all over a home
you like to call silence.

Fissures around you have deepened.
Gulls are trying to copy the strains
of taut nerves, a hell of a scream.

Down in the clearing

they shed their clothes & gender.
	Imperatives nest in the tree hollows
	anti-colonial transgressive bush-pagan post-logic open-air
		they somehow lost the suburbia that had trimmed
		& polished hard-worked suppressions.

Up on the ridgeline
the sun squats unknowable
beats down upon six naked humans there’s

stars bacteria leafloss
plunder nesting death.

Six small humans have their call
amongst all the calls
down in that clearing.

The fire is lit
forest thanked
as though those fallen branches now aflame
are a conscious offering.

The ridge was its own project
over eons.

Two lovers join
dark & holy as the loam
rut upon this bed
of autumn leaves & ink-stained paper.

Feral cats come gather
engrossed in those cries
upon which humans build a marriage.

They are plucked up by the witnesses
& thrown into the firepit.

Sacrifice. Ecology.

I popped into a pub in Covent Garden to watch Charles receive a crown
Then I left

I walked past the Carrick, through Chinatown, to the Toucan for a Guinness

I looked at photos on my phone and read snippets of 
	Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari and
decided
My dying wish is to be a skull in a museum

My frying wishes is to eat
another fish sandwich in Istanbul
Only 14 lira
Non fungible as fuck

I’ve made peace with your dog
am besties with your cat
and do battle with your buttercup stems
elbowing under the palings.

I might’ve queued behind you
at a liquor store; your Monday
morning yellow bin clink torrent
isn’t all organic apple cider vinegar
and toasted sesame oil empties.

Adjacent strangers, scored:

nil-1		Your washing is always out first.
nil-2		Our trees block your line, and your indoor light.
1-2		You decapitated every mature tree on your side when you moved in.
2-2		I hear your outdoor can crusher go and go and go.
2-3		Through the fence cracks I see a nice garden.
3-3		We never drift weekend weed wafts across your lawn.
3-4		You hear our kids argue, yell and whine on repeat.
4-4		Our teens never dry retch on Sunday afternoon grass.
4-5		Our 7am garage podcasts are louder than our treadmill.
5-5		You have a bandsaw.

The liturgical calendar is marked in greens and yellows. Solemnity days and feast days alternate across the spread of the year on a piece of glossy parchment. When the offerings are ready, they are hauled to the edge of the procession, dressing gowns pulled taut around bulging torsos. The municipal implements of rebirth rumbling around the streets accepting our plastic penance. The gods are shrill with worn old brake pads. It is our call to prayer. ‘Reuse, reduce, recycle’ the holy mantra goes. Like all mantras the words are said so we can avoid the deeds. The offerings disappear off down the highway and our part in the ceremony is done. We go back to a simple life, on a waste land, in a waste sea, a tribe of tidy Kiwi.

fingers tingle, brush
taste, bristles arouse,

pain as resurrected fire. sole
next, rough heel pads, toes:

indiscreet blood rush, amoral
tsunami toppling colonnades

like salt pills, graveling
the edges of feeling.

rough hand work, chiselled
years of labour, microbial

chunks of flotsam. life. nothing
sure, accretions of stubbornness

signifying so like wooded rings,
passed years, tight. together time

remains: perceiving little
of the world. unknown.

i pretend that the
lashing strings of
that broken guitar is
rain. and that the
bloodletting is
the tablature. and i

am the song. i pluck
my tongue to catch
the storm and call it
singing. do you hear
my wet body whistling?

can you latch onto
the melody the hole
in my mouth is spilling?
my sonorous navel
echoes. inspiring my skin

to dance. can you feel
the rhythm? can you
catch the syncopation?
do you feel the dress
slipping off your shoulders?

in a moment the sky will
fall. let’s pretend that our
bodies are water when we
touch. that when we move
we are the earth rearranging
the islands into a continent.

in a moment the sky will
fall. let’s pretend that we are not
afraid of the sun. if the moon
could stand the day, why
can’t we?

you watched the buses snake
through the curly kelburn hillside
and accidentally ashed your cig
over the unmarked grave
of the mouse I found that morning
beneath the kitchen sink
while telling me how the pine smelt
like trees and not your father
burnt christmas candles
low-grade bleach.
you started shivering
should we have gone inside?

please, we have reason
to believe you are in danger. Have you noticed
you are being followed by a suspicious, persistent
sense of urgency?

Step out of your car and onto footpath or cycle lane
for that trip just down the road.
Some wish the special features of their
bodily, family, industry factors would allow it
but are bound for now to various chairs and chariots.

For those who are not:
When did you last breathe the outdoors
all the way in, feel the thud
of your purposeful powerful footsteps
jolting your brain back into your body
and out of the to do lists, replies, should’ves
that will truly never end?

Feel the rush of the breeze, thump of your woken-up chest
as you bike past bored lines of impatient cars.

Kowhai
cat
cut grass
kid drinking the wide windswept day
you were there all along and I
never noticed.

Get out of your groaning fuming deadweight
crashable stealable metal glass boxes
that we hurtle forwards
right next to oncoming traffic
while scroll-gram-tok-texting ourselves to death.
Get out of fuel-gauge peering
grindy gearing, belt-squeal-fearing
insurance arranging, oil changing, WOF fundraising
parking
and crumbs on the crumpled car mat
hand, nose, tongueprints on the window again.

What if you swapped white knuckles at 10 and 2
for cycling gloves and bus card
keys for wee stack of petrol money
dashboard for longboard
brake pedal for break.

Insular personal vehicles may get me
the most efficient transport flow
but they don’t get US that.
If I wait my turn at the bus stop
releasing on-demand instant convenience,

I might pick up
the actual up-close sights, smells, sounds
of real-life people
with different stories, ideas, shortages, abundances to mine
who are nonetheless going somewhere
just like me.

Relational, collaborative and human-powered transport
like it all used to be.

What if we slowed down
full-time, part-time, once a fortnight
marinated in the humanity of A to B?
On the way, checked in, zoned out, caught up
and, in tandem, shaped up
traffic, air, pockets, headspace
and Papatūānuku, in the process?
See you out there.

and as I’m driving through traffic I listen
to him explain about

the rise and fall of testosterone with the
shortening and lengthening of days

as the sun pulls our blood by
invisible threads

coaxing chemicals from glands, like
glass eels hunting the moon.

As I work and pay bills and drive home
and cook a dinner I can’t remember tasting,

my body still knows the sound of the sun,
and the feel of night fingers reaching

inside me.

Even here, buried by the world,
the stars find us.

cherries
stinging saltwater eyes
peachy skin thirsting for cold aloe vera
the feeling of paddle pops melting down sweaty wrists
evenings arriving without goose pimples
incense hanging in the air without a wind to whisk it away
flowering pōhutukawa trees
red stamens blanketing your windshield
sitting under the warm fiery glow
spilling G&T over your copy of Wuthering Heights
hanging it up to dry on the clothesline
beside our t-shirts wet only around the tits
your face in the three o’clock sun
chocolate hair melting—dripping down your neck
nose stained pink—tiny lipstick kisses
freckles left spilt across your cheeks
til autumn came to pick them back up

the ones with stencil flies
on the rim that enclose

my ankle, as it looks for love
in all the wrong places.

It is always night time
when I notice we are

still together. Maybe 3am.
We don’t need to talk,

I use your pace as soft
focus, while my thoughts

concrete themselves in
layers. No one is around

to draw a stick through
my brain cement,

to shape a heart encasing
the initials of two lovers,

just us. I have looked
at your soles slapping

the pavement a thousand
times as you skirt the icy grass.

Even though you are scuffed
and deal in chipped rubber,

even though you lace
wet jeans and are humbled

by cobblestones and
unreliable steps,

you keep coming
back for more of me.

we sit across from each other at that café-hotspot on Willis Street
I order granola, You, eggs on toast.
nice and simple, like the long black. I order a half strength of the same 
just to be different

but also because I don’t want to be difficult
						& ask if I can pretty please have a half
						strength oat milk flat white.
too many syllables, You see.

It is Friday morning, 8.06 am
I woke up in a bustle of thoughts
						not unusual for me, as You know.

I was starting to think about how I should ask for consent before I vent

						before I divulge all that’s going on
						in my inner monologue that’s all moving
						pictures & scattered letters that I trace 
						repetitively along that fleshy part of my 
						hand between my thumb and forefinger.
yeah. 

but then I thought, idly, amongst many other things
that You might not ask me what’s on my mind
because of my tendency to let all spill out anyway.

						would You even be used to
						my silence?
but then You ask me. 
You say					‘would you like to talk about it?’

and I smile to myself, expressing the very thought I’d had in the last fourteen lines.
we talk (I talk) & You listen
we talk (You talk) & I listen

It’s 8.30 am and I need to go to work
You, to the library.

the sun is out today 
the air, crisp.
we hold onto each other a few moments
I watch You walk away			& You turn your head
         									         & You smile.

ham raffle on a Saturday night:
rugby-stubbied lads in the roar
shedding horns and velvet childhoods
stand lowing ‘round the pool table

the air is thick with tobacco
and the clack clack of the jukebox
peddling choices like a careers counsellor

outside, the moon is a cracked windshield
and winter whines at the door

soon, the young men fledge
to the cities, other dank-valleyed towns
or high, star-ridden stations

and the cold pub air sits disused
smelling of rancid fat and urinal cake.
it gets so you can’t get a meal half the year
just a piss-weak draught

but still the slow old boys come in,
chewing through the days like a combine harvester
to lean back on scratchy square chairs

and affix you with their opinion:
the horses the rugby the rest of your life

until the final grind of rural siren
draws the street out to bear witness:
billow of smoke, structure buckle,
the wild-eyed windows filling orange
as the blaze roars low and final
the neighbourhood stands
with their hems dampening in the dew
and slowly the chat seeps into the night:
births deaths marriages,
the lamb prices, the drought

and like hoggets in a southerly
they turn as one
to warm their burry backs