I cut that snare three weeks past but never felt the wire twang.
I've still got those scars, you see -
Those scares -
Too callous(ed) to notice, you'd suppose.
Christ, I miss those days
When we swung around each other,
The thread between us taut & twisted
Hooked into our hearts
You cut that snare ten years past but never felt the wire twang.
No, it snapped back on me, you see.
I bled the Waikato red,
Then Wakatipu,
Then Whakaraupo
I bled & begged & bargained til
- exhale -
At last, o god, at last,
That scar stitched over.
7 years it took, to grow
To fit the hollow you left behind
& three weeks past I lived up to your legacy
&
I wonde
Fear sits, stone behind my sternum,
until it splits
& slender sapling
grows up my throat -
Filling my throat with branches,
my mouth with leaves & bird nests
Each thought breaks through egg shell
weighing down my tongue
'til there's no hope left
to speak a single one
What if this is how it will be?
& I am left waiting
for you to touch your fingertips,
your lips,
to the skin of my neck
To feel the tree beneath my jugular
Pulsing as wind shakes the boughs
What if this is how it will be?
Breathe in:
Roots reach my belly, waiting
for you to rest your skull,
heavy on my stomach,
listening to the earth inside me shift
What if this is ho
He says he has always been good with dogs.
He is soft words and gentle hands,
promises and prayers:
speaking low & slow in the dark
as he tells me he knows
not to fall in love
with poets.
He is here at my door, in my bed,
stepping careful, weighing cautious,
watchful eyes & waiting when I freeze:
He tells me his name, translated to this tongue,
& it snaps like a whip:
“Behold, a son.”
See, mama wolf is hurting -
she is restless,
sleepless,
chewing on her own throat
dissolving at every soft edge.
Mama wolf is grieving - still silent,
(as quiet
as the day
she fell in love)
her lungs are full to breaking.
Teeth kep
I am staring at Batman's fist.
He inhales once and I am made of stone.
Exhale. I would like to believe
I am pounamu,
translucent, silken, but -
he inhales twice and I am made of stone.
Exhale. I think it is best
to admit
I am only slate -
he inhales thrice and I am suddenly aware
it is me:
I exhale heavy,
feel chest collapse
under all my weight
and he reaches out.
I am only slate -
where he touches me, I crumble.
His hand on my cheek and it gives
beneath his weight:
it is stone, I am still stone,
but it gives so easily
beneath his weight
but it still burns,
my skin and my eyes
I will turn to dust.
I am only my lungs and my heart
in
I'd apologise,
but dirt
does not know
it is soiled:
it
only grows
, grows,
grows
as I grow.
You
are slow
to understand.
I cannot
say
sorry
when I am not
sorry.
I am not
here to meet
expectations.
I am here
for
nobody
& nothing.
I am here
to grow.
That Mad God is watchin',
whispering through cyber-space
weary, wary, waits
knows I still swing by,
he still watches for me,
knows I'm still searching
& he still won't say it:
I am silver dollar
kept palmed, coin-
trick, parlour-girl,
spit-shone shiny
in the crease of grip -
That Mad God is patient,
tore himself, flagellation,
so I was left to tend
pulling flesh together,
holding him together,
my hands sticky-red,
tongue coated rust -
& he still won't say it:
but I still swing by,
he still watches for me,
whispering through cyber-space,
enough to keep my orbit,
I am silver moon
kept in place, pause-
pressed, lady of night,
but
-38.821,174.585
I would kiss your eyelids close,
cradle skull in cupped palms.
I would sing soft & slow
wordless to guide you
from river to Tasman
from castles & discarded scales,
I would sing you home to
this, to
here, to
me -- to where
the sea first swallowed me.
O, god, my love:
know me on these shores,
know me best for them
as the heat of Western dunes
but your skin is burning,
we are burning,
we are blazing -
-37.821, 174.824
I let myself be(come) consumed.
The closest inlet, nearest safe harbour:
here I return,
return,
returned,
here I wept.
Do not disappear:
your flesh is fuel,
I starve, tremb
Chain around chest I am
captive,
soft skin-on-skin
snared
do not move – He
is not accustomed
to not having his way
& he is gentle /
calm / careful / certain
you do not exist
but to breathe
for him to hear -
Sit & stay & wait,
good girl,
you're a good girl,
Chain around throat I am
caught,
light touch to quell
to tame (.)
Cover teeth & limbs
& indignance
you are not yours,
not your own,
curled in corner
subdued I am
slaving
quietening the
thrill
of furied pulse
do not move – He
is coming,
is expectant
anticipates adoration
Good girl. Good girl,
come here, then,
atta girl,
be there when he wakes,
be docile,
be his
& he
In fifteen hours I will be strung, pelvis
to sternum, ready to be struck
stomach aching to sing -
There was once when I was whole,
full and stretched to breaking,
I have been a giant in my own skin &
yet
I was not enough to be loved.
& now, finger to thumb, you
swallow my spine in your palms
heart-drummed
play my bones,
play my bones,
play my bones //
I am rising to throb
& thud & thrum
of pulse and breath and music
of mantra spilt-spoken,
smeared sacred over wrists
written with sweat & sex,
Muscles tensed for every chord,
Herein is the hallelujah -
You alone, you alone, you,
alone.
Hollow my belly and carve me
until I am fluted, c
un.
On open palms I offered you these words:
I will give you everything
you need
to hurt me with.
On open palms I offer you now:
I have given you
everything
of me.
I have given you my breath,
just so I can keep you between my lungs -
deux.
My lungs,
My lungs,
Once I spoke, swore I kept the mountian between my lungs,
knowing not yet I was prophetic,
Because I now keep the Mountain between my lungs,
guarding him jealous,
fearful of what the future may bring,
fearful now I have become prophetic,
keeping the Mountain between my lungs,
pulling together these shattered spines
we will not kneel.
We will not kneel.
trois.
P
this is the love I remember:
it is balled in my throat,
ripping it to shreds
until the mucus I spit
is speckled with blood.
---
it has been five years to the day
I discovered my heart strung up in your wardrobe,
hidden between the racing leathers torn to shreds
and a suit jacket you never had reason to wear.
The sky of this city no longer weeps,
summer sun relinquishing to sickly stars
which trudge on well worn paths
waiting for what will never come:
you.
---
morning will come as a symphony,
a vigil broken,
the orchestra of the streets
eager to cover the story the dark was weaving:
we dreamed you would realise,
the stars and the sheet
I miss you in that sleepless way
which hooks behind ribs, pulling you up from your dreams
coughing and choking and gasping for air
reaching for a face which is gone,
stomach churning, no no no don't be gone,
be here, be beside me,
be the light in the tunnel
because the night is too dark, too long
and where the sea once offered to swallow me whole
I offer to you these words:
Come home.
Come home because I have failed,
because I am not brave. I am crying to the moon,
skin sun-kissed and shivering, out of place and alone,
come home, come home.
These days which have drifted,
taken me so far from the front bedroom sheets
where onc
the summer when you believed I still loved you,
I lied. Slung in the embrace of someone else,
sleepless for measured lungfuls and sullen breeze
I whispered an apology heard by neither of you.
The day which followed broke hot and listless,
driving the city to the waterfront in hope of wind.
Salt air sticking to throat,
it was here he kissed my wrists,
imploring me to promise to wait:
my tongue stumbling, tight-lipped he smiled
fingers grazing neck he asked forgiveness
but this sin was never his to hold and by noon I was alone.
I never took the time to warn you,
but as I clipped a lock into wharfside fence [
beside lovers' to
sometimes the sun sets two degrees further south than it should.
we were standing on the porch, drinking in the dregs of light
when you turned to me, nodded to the horizon, and smiled --
"it'll be a cold night, tonight."
I didn't make eye contact: your hair was glowing gold,
the stubble you kept forgetting to shave, fiery.
Apollo, I considered. No -- no, Icarus.
thumbnail idle, I picked at paint.
Waited to see where we could end, and
"-- have you ever wondered..."
I do not meet your eyes. they are full of the
sea and I have been swallowed whole one too many times,
instead looking to the sky: "Yes?"
"... what would it be like to f
the snow falls thickest on the shoreline.
Yes, this is my Sunday best,
leaking slowly into a Monday morn' --
mourn, these are the vowels I let die on my lips:
you, you, you.
Throw your heart on the rocks:
here, the sea comes in too fast.
You still thrum in my chest --
oh, love: you cannot escape.
your feathers brush
anxious, agitated, across
my ribs -- my ribcage
and here, I will keep you.
against your will,
I have you; safe, secure
starving for sunlight
I have you. My heart? well,
it slips, stumbles through breakwater,
lost to starfish cove
from the day I realised
summer will never be the same.
oh, I have tried:
god has seen my bloodied palms,
seen me on my knees,
swearing I will not bow.
Even he cannot turn me
as the path pulls me
somewhere, I know
I will wash ashore in a flume
of foam, of seaweed and sal
Summer ends in rain.
Four years on, it is suiting:
summer itself is in mourning.
Memories stretch,
tight against the passage
of time -- they stretch
to you, tendrils
brushing clear cobwebs.
I do not forget easily,
time has not healed: it is all
I can express when I weep,
tearless, silent, aching.
Loss is as difficult today,
this rare day, this terrible
day, as it is every day --
I am not strong by nature:
I am tempered. You have done this,
wrought me, folded each delicate
edge in, until I was fearless,
until death held nothing from me.
Sacred, beyond reproach, he
is near, today. He is in rain,
in summer's end, but heaviest
in my heart an