Upgrowing

He bore His roots from the sky

and strongstood.

absorbing the warmth of vehicles

as they rushed by at hundredspeeds

at friction with the clouds,

rubbing out oxymorons,

pockets and echelons,

in the airwaves.

proposing, talking with His hands

even to Himself,

wanting to wash them

without water.

collecting from the smoke on the freeways,

mistakes.

mistakes in permanent marker,

journeys lived in parentheses.

leaving knots of conversation

to signal the places where someone

had considered Him.

Lounging,

the hills canter together,
an accordeon squeezes out the tears
over a pint of beer.

I am an infant in understanding,
shedding the unnecessary
filigrees and fragments,
political and social foibles, 
desperately ruptured by murmurs.

My first home, which I shared with
my brother, the modern Icarus, was our mother's womb.
She, our greatest hero - dying endlessly and
endlessly reborn,
so old that I did not think that she
could die, ruptured in God's fingers 
like a Chinese cookie.

The way your glasses stick fast to your face,
tai chi on the top of rusted metal rods,
you are done falling forward and catching yourself.
Better to sit still and push shit uphill,
a little ship cut loose, one lot, two tusks,
beating hard against history.

Lines of linoleum
hanging like fishy leaves,
augmented reality, 
subliminal lullaby,
how it mars the surface of the present.

The universe is insatiable, it has a thirst for you.
Planets are moths circling around a flame,
cigarettes are substitute phalluses,
this is a work in progress and we are projectiles,
we make everything into glass
buildings plunged into shadows.

My name is Thimble and
I am a god of protecting little significant things.
Please don't squeeze me until I'm yours.

Pour out a piano in your hands as soon as silence
moves into the neither here nor there;
dismantle humanity's intricate pathways.
Wave goodbye to question marks, trolleyed wings,
floorless, wished-for moments of existence.
Love yourself; you are the one you're with.

Rubbish and dust fly in the sky,
encounter the line drawn under night time.
If the parking lot is not wet, 
embrace the specific lamp post,
flashing, before rounding the corners.

You have rehearsed this moment.

(This is a pastiche made from lines collected from poets performing at Lounge #23, at the Old Government House Lounge at the University of Auckland on the 19th of October 2011)

Aujourd'hui

The why question,
I believe I pose many times
about the puzzle pieces fitting a certain way,
about the sunmoon binaries in world-weighing ways opposing.

I tried to cage feathers in flight
but time blew out through the bars
as I printed its nocopy centerfold,
its penchant for successful sound travesty,
its hope that it means
to say what it means
is to say that it feels
in some way near the wingbeat of birds.

I yearn to be a lonely girl at this world's
stag sitting by the corn fields of the daily time's penchant, on le juor,
where you touch me like I were a letter to be sent;
you lick the top of what I am yet you pass it around like the menu
I am reading, de jour,
French things and porcupines and other worldly
things becoming grabbable when synchronized with
the cupping of my hands.
What you pour, then,
I catch and heap for that certain impointed time
when you ask to have your cup refilled with wine
and I'll give you whatever I've got
in measured spoons and leveled amounts.
Tell me it's not enough,
I'll ask you why,
you'll ask me about my day
and I'll say it went okay,
because I wouldn't quite be listening to the nuances
reverberating between the corridor walls
where I'm expected to walk and talk,
learn and yearn for answers,
yet finding none.


Keep that a secret, will you?
The why question, has no answer,
because it ultimately asks the same
of what has been given as the same.
What carrot can you make from a carrot?
What layer can you spread from a couche?
What day can you seize from un jour?
Aujourd'hui.
 

Somewhat Man

One breath, it carries me
where wavelengths scatter -
water recedes and shores
meet matter, worlds are pieced
together
in the creviced afterthought of
exhalation,


I see,
no me


borders crossed and bridged gaps
and a thousand creeks flowing
in between folding wings
beautiful, beautiful things
of weightlessness

find me on the couch,
brushing shoulders with the giant
whose doves fly towards
the other half of the continent
another half hour downriver
amidst the chorus of pressed piano keys
and telling birds, voices heard
in valleys, they echo,


here I am,
keeping what I can weep for
swimming underneath the strain
that gravitates,
telling lines, watered down edges
weaning edges,
colour-changing shadows
bouncing hollow breezes
in the scattersun,
I am one
somewhat man

fading in the light of burning brighter
reminding and reminded
I don't know what I'm doing
while I flow,
I don't need to know.