Hey buddy,
didn’t you just hear me speak?
I schwa my vowels in “fish and chips”
and end the abc song with zed’s rhymeless finality.
I sang with you in primary school
Ma is white, whero is red, kakariki green
Because everyday, we learn and we play, school is number one
Underneath the huge pohutukawa tree, Christmas on the beach!
and when you say “E tu,” I will
but not for you.
I stand ankle-deep in estuaries
I feel the turgid sand suck me in,
skim the flat Michael Smither stones at the sandflies
my skin peels whiter than yours
I too bake in February.
My family took pictures of the toitoi in San Francisco
we marvelled at it.
And when we flew there the plane rose over Wellington
and I saw the hillsides patched verdant
a quilt, bundling the land, keeping her cosy and warm.

E noho. I’ll answer your question.

Do you want to meet my mother?
She thuds when she walks as if every task is urgent
her mousebrown hair will not grow where the tumour used to be
and she sang me Over The Rainbow every night when I was a baby.
How about my grandma?
She once smoked a cigarette down by the riverbank
and was banned from the school social
and now she waits to die in a little room.
My great-grandmother
could kill a chicken with one twist before you counted to ten
and hit the grandkids with a wooden spoon if they dared waste food.
Do you know who your great-great-grandmother was?
Mine was a bold Irish lass
who dared defy her tutting aunts and frail old mother
by marrying a Chinaman.
His name was back to front, from some immigration laziness
and was called Yew, supple as young bamboo
a white man’s tree, as foreign in this land as you are.

Yes, you are a foreigner.
But with a face blank like unsent envelopes, absent of colour or design
you compel me to trace, to search my heritage
to make excuses for my chink eyes, my yellow skin,
to explain myself,
like a black man caught without identity papers.
Your legitimacy is painted on your plump pink cheeks
but from me you demand a story.
A story you do not deserve.

“Wellington,” I answer.

Imagine my little body
tossed over the wine dark sea
storm-churned and tide-whirled
flailing for a raft
when you paddle past ex deo
serenely buoyant.
Teach me to swim one day,
like you promised you would?

For now,
your white frame is my mattress,
your heartbeat bobs my head steady,
swelling rhythmic with the surge.
We drift, aimless.
The Pleiades conspire with us
winking through night crystalline
higher than illegal fireworks sputtering
in insufficient colour.

But coiled around you
serpentine and sleepy
I could drift forever,
forgetting the horizon,
forgetting the sea,
everything but your pulse, and the stars.

You’re a furnace and I

seem unable to retain heat

it flees, guilty under your palms.

Lucky I can curl into your flames

fingers knitted tight

as sand curves under a wave.

Blue corona, flashing hottest

purpling my soul and my legs.

The self I am right now is right

for this. I’ll exchange it later

when it’s worn and faded,

commit it then to the fire

we blazed, in our wake.

This too, is terminal

ironic fictional reality

from art swims the truth

and leaves me on the shore again.

Coursing rivers feel like stone

fixed beneath bare feet

and I will walk on water for you.

Neither of us read Kafka.

I’m so afraid we never will.

We ate a mango

luscious and sweet, dripping ripe

over your bedsheets.

Dusk beckons brighter

cacophonous pavements

adrenalin go-lights pacing and sour

snatching music brick from russet brick

flickers chattering

believers push sweet, change jangling, dischord

chords straggly earthed

spider-line trees sketched

he just wants to go home

fists clenched

walk on by.

Flotsam and jetsam

tattered and dejected on the

scrapheap of living,

you restore them.

The archaeology of

past weeks

grand in glass cases

placarded and precious

and never audited, not judged and condemned

not categorised.

Aristotle hated women and loved order.

But I exude chaos and

you showcase a lifetime

on your mantelpiece

and mark it Memories.

Remember?

Yesterday we fucked
three times. But best was dreaming
cradled in your arms.

Tender is your smile
when I write you in my mind.
You radiate warmth.

I wonder

if the arms encircling you

the lips clinging to you

the tears trailing and

hands waving farewell to

the plane when you fly

on some adventure

away from here

will be mine.


Opportunity is yours.

Small cities stifle

and youth loves

experience.

You glow of youth.

And some lucky unlucky girl

will carry on without you.

I hope, my dear

that I will bear the burden.

Understand me now?

I wonder.

There stirs within me

a Sunday morning

where the east window

spills honey on our embrace.

I crush creases

careless beneath my heels;

you muse guitar

stretched long in socks.

Domesticity, idly resplendent in idyll,

I type.

I need more synonyms for beautiful.

I roll my sleeves

up and

down. And you say

life is

without instrumental breaks or

interludes. But I get on

the bus and off,

and I walk home in the night air

watching the tarmac glisten

and I ponder poems

and politics while

I wait.

Look for the beauty in the inbetween.

It’s there, I promise.

There is an explosion
when the water boils
and ignites.
A cold, seething calm
that plumes
roll-your-own in the crisp black,
gasping doubled
over pealing hysteria,
floating.
Silence resounds.
A roar, a shudder of rain.

I like that part
the denouement.
We cling.
The bridge of your nose,
pleased relief and mischief.
Eyes that study,
that search. One breath.
Eyes that know.

I traverse a living landscape

the canyons and plateaus

of my country,

claimed by a missionary

explored, thoroughly.

Nestle gentle into every crevice

prise apart these calloused peninsula

wander through warmth while

curled like a child.

Tender fingertips carve music

and secrets in evanescent sand.

Two vivid pools well too full-

I drink distant storms

and laugh louder than I intended.

Sweet morning of youth!

Glorious prison

burrowed embrace

singing of water and skin.

Oh, impermanent art!

it’s been half a season

a lifetime for the ‘blank and stopped’.

but you are around every corner.

cropped, clutching, curvaceous

‘not quite, but almost entirely unlike’

akin as second and third.

and yet from my blurred periphery

andante becomes allegro

in the staid rhythm of my heart.



and when the other you departs

a tempo, i long…

This one time

I concentrated

and pooled my resources

but bet on the wrong horse

and walked away a poor man

(a little like Chinaski).

I suppose

we all have days when luck fails us.

Chances are

I’m betting on you (dear reader).



Now, I fall a little

and dilute my love

on smiles and shirts

or photographs

just as beautiful in watercolour.

Sometimes mirror-people

look like truth. And

it isn’t a window

but a living breathing soul

to lean on.

Sometimes it doesn’t matter

because raindrop trails

and the soft shunting buffet

of a blind corner

are home. For a while.

Wouldn’t you like a life

in poprocket red

in eternal summer?

New pages

uneaten

adorn my casual carpet

and a fine film

powders the bookcase.

Illinois links me

to 1995.

I sing along.



Wouldn’t you like

Arabica beans

and gratis gateways?

My skin is mottled

because I’m eighteen

and don’t listen to my mother anymore.



Wouldn’t you like

cicadas

and Sharapova leading in the lounge?

Show some teeth

for last I heard your lungs still worked.

I dreamt of you

and your wintry eyes

reflected cerulean

shiny like the lyric



my languid left limb lay

miles over the atlantic

I felt your skin

plumped lined smooth

as a criminal



clothed in mourning clouds

and buttons swept

on a pensive pensieve hill

a plastic pavilion



I dreamt of your spark.

the odds are stacked against us;

they creak in the breeze

loll, stagger and sway

and like in new york or babylon

majesty is rubble

we will drown in debris

.

I will not be dissuaded

come, let us kill time

before time kills us

I am the pillow

for your embroidery.

and I’ll osculate those lids

like a drunken hourglass-

content

with my content.

at peace

with your peace.



I am your gateway

to Elysium

where he greets you

heady oblivion

abandon.