Poetry

A GLASS HALF FULL

I am a glass half full of
everything
I feel seems to swallow me
instead of I
it
is not a smooth rush
down my open
mouth
the words that hurt me again
in ways you will never
understand
what you say before
you open your lips to
speak
through your eyes like I am
trying to do in my
silence
comes in thin spaces
between what you say and what I
don’t
know why it needs to be so complicated
when all I feel is
emptiness
fills me like a glass half full of
impotency
rides you easier than I ever could.

ASTEROID

I expect too much of time
in the little I have left.
I am a dinosaur,
and it,
the pummeling to come.

I wait for its whoosh to confound me;
the bending skyward of my neck;
the brevity of my innocence;
my un-vocal surrender.

A wounded animal,
contorted by such clarity,
confronted
by my lack of ease
as I awkwardly live to expire.

TREASURERS, WE

There we were
for a moment
awash with candy’d rainbows that shed
spun-sugar silk
to dress this call for change

It’s a pity
this entree tasted like a sundae of fever and fable

Treasurers, we, to nought, now
but wingless poetry;
of letters, silent
and honest
we’d declined to share

SHOW UP

Show up
with pieces of my name at your chest
and I will promise you
that all its letters
in any order
will write you through this fire
melting both our hearts

METAMORPHOSIS

punishment
in the language of hope
scorching its way with splintered paddles
down to the roughs of my hungry feet
and teaching me
equally
of steadfastness and self-love
through the blanketing challenges of escape

NO EXIT

I fight rough
– healing you –
to turn truth
into your new home

Sharp edges
for the smoky silence
of a rear-view mirror

TASTE

I breathe you in
— surrender —
and my lungs fill with
flavours unknown
but for the soft sounds
I make of them
as they arrive

RELINQUISH

By and by,
the past, it passes –
date–raping purpose
through peering glasses:
pregnant pauses never lasting

Every vanished thrill
restarting futures
on a windowed sill,
shadows casting mimes
in stills
as long will live the passion
– hungry –
fuelling moments full to brim

Just as quick, another morning
dawning – time to pass
and kill; murder
just another constant,
one more loss on
sudden whim as
whereupon man solders on
to play the night another song
for day by day we carry on
to pass another past
along.

SMALL

I am the starved sanctuary for unformed words and
by I pass the feverish wind that recipes its way
beyond my teeth to mix another spoon of
awkward with a sifted pound of nervous laughter,
folding and kneading a cavernous desire
that piecemeals its softened voice
into any semblance of oral freedom
my selfishly shy lips will dare untangle.

THIS POETRY LAY

My poetry lay hungry,
over-indulged on missing vocals
and absent sound,
under-fed from swallowed emotion
and buried tears –
throat-lumping in the name of opinion
better kept to shadowy under-jaws
and burbling stomach acid;
cocooning noisily with butterflies
of rage whose lead-heavy wings
and straight jacket veins
pin themselves to freedom
with only my dry throat
a means to escape.

My poetry lay hungry
while I feed on its promise
to blanket my attempt
at making it known.

FUTILE

I tire of love and terrorism;
the way my broken heart
lay claim to territory unknown before;
the way the softness of these blankets
fall like bombs in your wake;
the way the hunger for calm strikes and
starves and
feeds in rations;
the way the post trauma stands guard at closed eyes
and charges ahead when I wake;
the way it loops itself about my mushroom cloud
and belts its breath on my cheek.
I tire of scratching at hope like
hope will reward me for lasting the week.
I grow weary of this kamikaze daze:
my eyes, the reflection of every wound I bare.

I tire of love and terrorism:
the way my broken heart ignites from within,
limp and lost,
from so much exploding without.

ORIGAMI

Your lies are like origami –
they all start from the same shape
but take many forms

SIGHTED

should you
perhaps blindly
show an interest

this
errantly battering storm within
may cease its embryonic dance

and betroth itself
finally
in your capture

WHAT REMAINS

What remains of our more recent differences, those
saturated words fallen from the lacy cuffs of our noble tongues, the
sound-filled garments and raspy lingerie custom fit
for implication and blame – what remains

but the pungency of battered verdicts, the jesters
of white noise and spicy hung detachment, the
midnight winds of halitosis fouling casted spells:
an alphabetic bouquet of gambled persecution,
the weight of which we transport as we fade away

RISK

the only danger with
falling in love
is
being thrown
selfishly
out of it

AFTER LOSS

There comes a time when
moving forward is a monumental act
of self-preservation;
walking away,
a feat of rediscovery;
and letting go,
the key to finding true purpose.

WHIP

You are my story
and I escape within these pages
of your unmapped strength
through pauses
and the violence
that collects each letter:
another lash I want
and need
but don’t deserve

DIVERSION

sometimes
I lose myself in you
whilst wondering
how I ever survived
without your distraction

CONFUSING GREY

It is unlikely as you reminisce,
that I,
white as your black is dark,
appear largely unobstructed
in your mind
– stark, as my naked is bare –
a ripening contrast of shadows
raining over my image;
and from where I stand I feel
the wetness
as it pours upon my hair.

Muddied storms rise between us
– a collage of painted quicksand
from my toes to my lungs –
my attention taken from ‘escape’
to ‘survive another night’
for another day;
running at a loss from your black
with my concrete feet
to my canvas of white
from the pain of this confusing grey.

REPOSE

I am glad these butterflies my
silent stomach houses feel more
at home knowing you will
never return than when they
were hoping you might.

NO AIR

you
are the vastness of space
and i
the lungs
that are empty without you

HOSTILE

Your heart is a no-man’s land, and
you have fornicated, battle-ready,
with countless minds, The Art of War
alive in your apathetic stare;
a ghostly Sun Tzu in your shadow, and
its pages falling in chapters from your face

Yet, like a Viking, you roar,
axe in hand to slaughter dreams and cut ties;
no art, no honour, and just half the warrior
you claim to be – the septic engraver of
bloody runes and headstone eulogies

Norse winds carrying the poetry I write of you,
it’s pages never to reach your crimson eyes

TE WAIRUA FREE (‘The Free Spirit’)

my spirit needs mending
but I have no coloured thread
to darn these fraying burdens

the eye of this needle lay gaping and empty
and I am standing on its edge ready to fall through

a knot to my ankle, and my fast surrender,
and I’ll fly deeply in to weave new dreams

a fresher self with perfect stitching
– an un-perished disaster –
still surviving in spite of her erupted soul

PURPLE HEART

My posthumous heart
declares no life without you
yet
the holding of my breath
to mark your absence beats it louder

and as I listen to every bloody word
it whispers in my ears
I wrap the sound around me
like your missing arms
and
count
each
pulse
until my vitals fade

wondering
if you will ever rush
like this intimate moment
to tend to my starving needs again

AS TO THIS HARVEST

As to this harvest,
your name tills my fertile field
plummeting deep into the earthen core of my heart
turning this silence of organic surrender
into the proud and patient
seedling of enduring
love
.

ELK HORN

My second sight
is now accustomed
to washing the stains
of misshapen understanding
from the elk horn
of your bound leather axe
plunged deeply into
the heart that continues
to love you: mine

LEVY

i forgive you
for not wanting
to spoil the darkness
that consumes you
with the love i bring

but surely

the toll for dishevelment
is worth the expense
to climb out
of its jaws

NOT IMMUNE

i am
tormented
by your need
for distance
but not immune
to this burden
of recapture

SILENCE LIKE WINE

it is not okay
to spill silence like wine
into my emptied heart
for it is already filling with emotion
and the hungry spaces in between
are not for getting drunk