Paradise
A lonely place
Inhabited by few

As much as is a perfect space
A location with a view
Paradise is found within yourself
Or even in another
Paradise is more than most,
A moment found with few.

Paradise is here
Paradise is there
Paradise is me when all the lights are
Faded glare
Paradise is the shaking in your limbs
When you've found your own release
Paradise is the tightening of pupils
When they rest upon their love
Paradise is the feeling inside
The impenetrable barrier
Between you and the rest
Paradise is all I have inside me
Paradise is my best.

All that was left after you'd gone
Was a little bottle of scent
I'm not even sure that you were wearing it that night
It had been kicked under the bed that you gave me and my friend to sleep in
When another friend had forgotten.
But somehow
This little bottle made its way into my makeup bag
And I found it a week later
Took the cap off gently
- scared of stirring it
And raised it to my nose.
It smelled deeply of you
Warm and musky
Like your hair that night when my fingers were tangled in it,
Like your clothes in the morning when I turned to face you.
I don't know why but each night when I began to miss you
I'd roll some on my wrists like silk
And lie in my bed
And wait for you to come back to me.
I inhaled at my wrists as you had done at my neck
Remembered how you'd whispered
That you loved the way I smell.
I'd rub my wrists together
To get that warmth that I'd felt when I woke in your arms
Locked so tightly round me that I almost struggled for breath
And even though I haven't seen you in weeks
months
And even though I barely knew you
- just a few days
I still fall asleep every night with your scent on my arms
and the feeling of your love etched into my body.

My willingness for you
Knows no bounds
They say love is knowing flaws but loving nonetheless
And it's true
Because you are certainly not flawless
But my willingness for you
To touch and taste and love
Is endless and beyond anything that I have ever known before.

Much greater it is
to live and love as I do
than to have my whole life dictated
by an unknown creator
who already plans my fate
and leaves me no choice
to seek it for myself.



If this God is omniscient and benevolent,
why did he leave us live in painful ignorance for so long?
I guess I'm having troubles with my tethered Gods,
the one that lingers just far from view
that see's not fit to glance upon my face
or even breathe upon my mirrored soul
forgive me Father
for I know not what I do to hurt you
when you still have yet to reach out the hand
to feed my withered soul
a hand which I have yet to bite
to taste the suckled-fruit
of our heavenly father.

Her anxiety
              An ocean
                           A wave of emotion
                                                     Rips through her
                                                                          All too often.

It trickles through her everyday
seeping into cracks in her core
small springs turn to gushing floods
in a split second.

She crashes down on me
and I stand
the force of her tide
drowning in her doubt.

Holes eroded by the constant drip;
rapids ricochet through her body
her mind awash;
thoughts tumbling in the whirlpool.

She crashes down on me
and I stand
drenched in her
a lighthouse in the storm.

Softness  
Trickles gently down bone
Deep ache of touch on quivering leg
His hand shivers down my spine
Softly landing like a bluebird
On my twisted hip.
Warm palm stretches
From navel to rib
Pulls me out from inside.
Nose pressed into my shoulder-neck
Taste of breath on collarbone
Fingertips linger
Sweetly feeling the softness of knees
Eyes drizzle honey-love on me
I wallow in his sunshine-warmth.

Make love to me in the half light of the early morning
Make love to me like you said you would
Make love to me like I'm the only thing your body needs
Make love to me like losing yourself in me is the only way to keep yourself sane
Make love to me as a prayer and a thanks and a love letter
Make love to me like my skin is healing and you're broken
Make love to me like in the last log in the water and you're drowning
Make love to me like I'm the last oxygen left
Make love to me like I make you smile because I do
And I love you
Make love to me like you love me the way I do you.

Constellations;
Racked through brain
Like waves on the sand
Pin-pricked entities;
Cloves on an orange.
The constellations of my heart
Are nothing but veins
Valves pushing and chugging
Squirting sickly sap
Through the eroded chambers
Of a worn out heart.

I'll sleep between your legs like its nothing.
mine part like waves
blood orange at the close
tangled roots of our desire
twisting vines, skin to skin
you taste
like warmth that i've been missing
like me when you kiss my neck
then me
sleeping in your eyes
your affected music soundtrack to my awakening
to life
to love
and heat.
You will forever have an imprint on this body.

Why do you think
That you're so much better
Why do you think
That you can speak of your own worth

Words ooze from your mouth
a poisonous drip
You bring out the worst in me
Yet I only your best

You speak of how you accomplish
succeed
Then tell me you're falling
Can't cope
Can't breathe

How am I supposed to live with one
as hate-filled and so ignorant
We sleep in the same room
I see you in the night
My thoughts darker than our shutters

I don't claim to be
the best of souls
Yet you do.

You turn over in your sleep
I watch your face squashed into the pillows
Look across the room and see
Hate in my eyes

You tell me how you're depressed
A rough day
Going to **** yourself soon
Do you ever stop to think
how you make me feel
Your lifeline in the dark
You're not interested in me
Your self-obsessions taking over
I can't help but think
You're bad
You're really really bad
You weep into my shoulder
"Why do bad things always happen to good people?"

Well, recently I've been thinking the same thing.

And if I could go back
I'd never tear my lips off your neck
Never unlock my fingers from your hair
Keep my nails etched into your back
And my eyes locked
Straight on yours.
If I could go back
I'd take your earlobe in my mouth
And whisper
Until the words were burned into your dreams
Don't let me go
Don't let me go
Don't let me go
Don't let me go.

The reservations
Between my heart and the next
Are wide enough for long tables
Lengthy rows of empty seats.
The reservations
Between my heart and the next
Are plain for all to see.

The lingering of distance
The shielded minds
With guarded words
Litter all my past relations
And doom the next before they start.
The reservations
Between my heart and the next
Are plain for you to see.

I shut my city walls
My drawbridge, gated up
I let no friend nor enemy in,
No peace can slip between these bricks.
The lingering of distance
The shielded minds
with guarded words
Litter all my past relations
and doom the next before they start.

Tick
Tick
Tock
the endless trash of shallow minds
the proceeding clack of dullest desire
long since past;
the need for life.
I lie awake
I count my strife

Dark gas erupts from unnamed faces
they aim for views;
they live for you.
regurgitating facts and lies and worse
tricolons of power in echoing verse
Oh fill my cavernous space with smiles!
empty your dam of "alive" on me
make me wish on wishful schemes
Just stop this monotonous trash
this meaningless hash
of forgotten aims
what we work for; who to blame

Just give me something to admire.

I drank the sea
No one was watching but me
The salt crystallised my bones
But the water made me free
Shells covered my lips and eyes
Seaweed lay as hair
And slid down throat
Sand layered like skin
Pages of a diary
Formed by waves on waves
I smelt of fish
And open air
I raged all over
Threw my spitting hands to the sun
Let it evaporate away my sins
I tossed my hair to the wind
And danced pebbles as my feet
I rolled with the tide
Tossed here and there
Fishermen tried to ****** parts of me
But I eluded them
Flowed ever faster to the shores
Picked men from rocks and threw them back
Sank deep and long
swam out again, to the deep
I rolled with whales
sifted krill through my teeth
tumbling currents rinsed my skin
Quick-silver flashing in my belly
coast to coast I roamed and rushed
and as the darkened tide turned,
I slipped out again to the deep
not content to walk when I could *swim

This was the year that I learnt how to be silent.
Sometimes to allow others to speak.
Once because I was afraid.
Twice because my eyes were too full of the love in front of me to allow my lips to move.
Often because silence is solitude and I am lonely.
Every now and again because I was wary of what my voice would say.
Rarely because I was in awe but mostly because I am weary and to speak is to engage.

Silence passes east between us
long flights and rough rides have taken it out of us.
We both gaze outward
legs just touching
both needing contact to stop from getting
lost in the green newness of it all
Arrival.
The heat dark and thick
bellies full of water like puppies we climb
onto beds and between sheets
fitting together like we always have done.

Thoughts glanced off me,
lying like stones in the sand
I ran
quick mind over quickened feet
hands ripped open by bushes;
rich thickets that sprung
from the very land
that my own soles scorched.

I chased skies
chased words away from mind
and wept imprisonment from inside,
howling at the chains that kept me bolted to the ground

I threw both time and space at my feet,
like the clothes of a slave.
As my legs lurched for length,
I swept eerie visions of my past away
like wind across my skin.

My toes pounded land;
my eyes searching the horizon
bleeding ears catching the groans
of the earth that my hands clawed at.

A ravenous beast;
my feet sought still to devour the world
as it lay sleeping like a lamb
woken only by the lush rip of my teeth
stopping its temperate pulse.

My lungs gasped the air that my sweat left humid,
no more was I condemned to life
my empty chains
cracked off
by pulsating limbs.
My insatiable teeth
gnawing at the very land itself
no longer was I able to sit amongst the trees;
or gaze up at the stars
I was not content to watch the world,
but eat it;
taste the bitter earth
and force it down dried gullet
drinking in the seas
to quench my geographical thirst.

And still
my wide eyes searched for their next slaughter
the next nation
to ****** the life from.

There's something about an empty tube carriage
Not even so late at night
That makes me think of stars
And lovers
And mostly loneliness
And the endless possibilities of humanity
It quietly fills as you sit and write this
And life continues;
The city breathes again
And so you just smile
Because you tasted a little of the infinite.

I am what I am and I am ugly
But that is ok
My life is meant for something other than to be looked at
And craved after by many
Although this too is noble in itself.
No, I am different, am other,
too loud and proud and caring.
I am meant for different things where
I sketch skyscapes with my words
And turn minds with my musings
And I don't need appreciation for the body that does it.
I have lumps and marks and redness
But my arms are strong for lifting
And my brain quick to change the things that I see fitting.
So, do not cry that you are ugly,
Be happy that you are, for you are made for different things
And different people too.

A dialect
so different
that gargles from our gulping mouths
was formed in the teenage years
the gap between child and adult.
It was formed in between the steaming windows
of our first shared room
was wrought by the sticky fingers of our midnight-feasting.
It developed over time,
your African ancestors licking at the chocolate in your teeth
sharing mingled moments of warmth and sadness
with the carefree twang of my pacific past.
We lay together
your dark skin melting into mine
and over time
our throats sculpted their own language
as Babylonian linguists rejoiced
at the Genesis of us.

But over time
the grammar stumbled
and diplomacy broke between us,
and the shared bed of our childhood
was cracked open by the semantics of our youth.
My tongue clung to the dancing prose,
as if to return to the moment of our first embrace,
my sheets ached for the scent of your skin;
Arched back missing your equatorial warmth.
I gushed out words for you
Choking on damp notions of our shared past.
I tried to force in the commas
that married your phrase to mine;
straining to utter those sounds that were so sacredly ours .
But my verses had no meaning,
when the apostle lost all faith.

And then
one day
like breath returning to a body,
our dialect once again filled you
head to toe, heavy with the wet weight of love.
And just as before
you spilled into my arms
Our tongues mingled in a garbled kiss
Of language, more physical than my owns hands
clinging to your butter-skin.
I felt you breathing against my heart
heard whispered extracts of your internal litanies
drifting out through parted lips.
And I felt again
the mangled words
the beautiful drawl
This dialect, so definitely ours.

Fat waves roll across my painted toes
You hand holds my waist
Staring into the deep sea
I cling to you
My beauty,
My savior,
Your breath mingles with mine
Salty air ***** between parted lips
You warm touch lingers on my winded-beaten cheeks
Sweet-smell of hair pressed against my neck

All these moments
These longing for the times
Feel new soft cotton against my skin
Old cashmere jumper warm against your  chest
All these things I desire yet never have experienced
I just wish for a love that I can hold close
On these summer Ohope nights
With pohutukawa petals drifting across our bed
And the Maunganui mountains cupping us dear
And your warmth holding me
Until bright New Zealand morning.

All in good time,
Cupid says
All in good time.

words splash
from open lips
filling dry mouths
with moist whisperings
of fluid dragged down gullet
gurgling into empty stomach

full with language
like a plugged bath
I gargle your poetry
let it slip into my bloodstream
lessening the unquenchable thirst.

The year passed by in a blur
Of stress
And crying
And joy and laughing
And all the moments that signify teenage years
Are coming to an end and adulthood approaches.
That the safe cocoon of youth
Is no longer big enough for us
And even starts to reject us a little.
There are key moments picked out in my mind
Nights of sleeping next you in that high room
Cold mornings of your smile as we opened the front door to the frost
Days with tea and toast and hot chocolate
As we sat, sweaty from the afternoon
And laughing at silly things that only we knew.
Endless mornings draw together where we all sat in that hall
Me just apart from you all
And listened to inspiration
Or not,
Depending on the day,
But still we sat together.
And that last night
So uneventful as we all went our separate ways to bed
And the next day as we all got drunk together
In the walls that before had encased our childhood
We laughed and smiled and cried
And thanked god
And each other
For all those spectacular sights
Those days that made us giddy with hope and friendship
Those nights that made us weep and ache
With the pain of one another
Oh it was so glorious and so strange and so perfect,
That no words can really cover how grateful I am
To all of you,
the shepherds of my youthfulness.

Past the time of day ,
when modern things are put away,
when the forest of the night,
swallows whole the waking forests light
with an exulting mass of chorusing wishes
a delicate hush of silent kisses;
Plays gentle on the ears of sin,
and rejoices in the gentle din,
of mother natures flowing wings

If you could only hear
the wistful natter
the softly tread patter
of charming creations, their tiny beams,
that carefully waltz the verge of dreams

you would understand the peaceful throng
of dusky crawlers, their gentle song
their deafening cry, your soothing balm
as nature hold you in her palm

So stand, gentle brother
soft and calm
hold loving near the peace and charm
and wander now
the streets of dark
and let her dreams
engulf your heart.

world arches back
relaxes into new found worth
a painted dust
falling from hard-baked earth

specks of life
lie scattered round
like soft shells on the sand

waves lap at shore
to taste its past
and swallow hidden ecstasy

the beach lies rough
a dusky place
a heaven for the beaten
but lingering on
like sailors songs
are thoughts
of sweet deliriums.

Cut-shallow once
twice
pressing blade into taught flesh.
third
another,
gentle kisses from a blunted knife
barely etched into young skin;
undulating ridges of a bruised mind
left like the footprints of a lonely traveler.
soft compulsions
to bring blade to body
lead to eyelash scratches
scattered on palest wrist.
The innocent embrace of a weapon
on a jaded soul.

Closeness of wind
and loss of breath
freedom of mountain-top
lurching under liberated soles
the span of sky
lingering around;
one soul alone
set free
let go
prison left
and trap escaped.
Kiss of breeze
and earth
and wind
and life
and all that is held good
all that was has now broken
from enforced captivity,
lies here,
alone,
at the feet
of a want-less wanderer
lies here in the eyes
of a fear-less traveler.

Not lost for long
a calmer beat
cannot stop the thrum
of unending humanity
of immortal prosperity
yet still,
I gulp the alpine air,
and long for whats to come.

The death of a child
is not a solemn event
it's an event of crying
of shrieking
and weeping

Teenagers mourn for their lost friend
mothers stand and lay them to rest.
The unthinkable has happened
no words to describe
when a teenager dies
the world herself cries

Nothing to say
no words or prayer
nothing to hear this sad time around
her life will be celebrated
her death will be mourned
But still the hole lingers
where her bright life once shone

Among the living will her memories stay
her life of joy and inkblot in everyone's history.
She lived as one should
a child and a girl
carefree and loved
She roamed all the world.

And now she is dead.
And there are no words.
But teenagers crying,
And parents doing the worst.

Specks of life
Crawling as frightened flies
Around a sugar-spill
Opened mouths lead to empty souls
Internal clattering lead to outside murmurings
Sighs and mumbles of a life-still-lived
Legs dancing in uncontrolled hustle
Interlocking and swerving
Searching and swirling
Eye contact is made and broken in an instant
Lives to be lived that could have been
Friends to be loved that can't ever be
All move;
As if in some erratic dream
Rushing towards their next tomorrow.

I will not be silenced.
No matter how many times you tell me I'm too argumentative
No matter how many times you tell me it's "unladylike"
No matter how many times you scoff at my words because I tell them with force
No matter how many times you're contemptuous of my passion
I will not be silenced,
Not now, not ever.

Show me all your sides
Let me trace your angles with my tongue
And bite your edges with my enamelled teeth.
Show me all the ways in which you curve
And I'll demonstrate my own contorted corners.
Lay your blueprints on the table
Let me wonder at the architecture of you.
Trace your plans onto thin paper
And we can tessellate;
until you're happy at last .

Look at you
Loud girl
Yet quiet now
You're kneeling down,
on your knees
at the hands of a devil,
You wept and cried
But still you kept it to yourself.
Pray soft,
How could one so lovely as you,
fall down and be caught only by darkness?

I want her to tell me that she needs me.
That she loves me.
That she can't do without me.
That I've helped her so much and that she's ******* grateful for it.
Like I help her when nobody else can.
Like I understand her like nobody else can.
I want her to say that she enjoys spending time with me and loves me for me and has things to say to me and it's not just me being crazy and it's not just me obsessing over a girl who will never quite love me like I love her and who finds me so intensely annoying but ultimately harmless to the extent that she just keeps me around because it's easier but all the while is pretty disgusted at so many aspects of me including my mind my body my personality my beliefs my desires my achievements what I love and what I hate. What I look like and how I'm not cool and how it all just adds up to me not being good enough and me loving her so much that I just want to sew my skin to hers like a parasite or a conjoined twin or a clown beneath the mask of her. I want to be so close to her that her blood mixes with mine and our organs **** together like wet sand and we globulate and tessellate until there is nothing left of us apart, no white and black, no confused and certain, no happy and sad, just a huge, *****, grey mess of monotone colours mixed and mixed and oh it will be so beautiful and so sad and so unlike anything you have ever seen before.

My cousin looks more like my mother than I do.
The acid of this hits the back of my throat
makes me think of
family rooms with eyes that pierce and wonder
Years of explaining the Northern control of my accent
Why was I taken from the sun
that caused the freckles on my kins cheeks
like kisses
Raised alone like tall corn amongst the barley.

To hate a thing
That one holds dear
Not to love a thing
From afar.
No, nearest despising is what is queer.
Angel washes, love absolves.
You hate them as they feed your soul

It's love!
She shouts
Not you or I
I would not know what mysterious force
Binds us, two girls.
Yet I do know
I do love her
Yet her I loathe,
She needs me as I feed her soul.

Ancient dust and ruin leading
A trail long lost but not forgotten
A silent few hold memory of the glory in highest regard
Lost beauty of a morphed race
Covenant high from god still lingering in our world-view

If we cannot get by
Without the new age
Ushered in by ancient gold
Then how can we expect
To have faith in a world
Without such beauty as the Ark of God

I want to leave my hairs on your pillow case,
And my perfume in your wind.
I want my fingertips
To smudge the glasses in your cabinet,
And my feet
To ***** your white tile floors.

I want my indent
To remain in your bed
And my heart on your chest,
For all the night lingers
You'll be my rest.

as if you could shrink,
one so violent and so vibrant,
You exploded in my hand,
as soon as I held you.
You swept through my dreams,
before I even knew you.

He picks me up and dips me in cool water
And I sink
Unable to swim in his heady lagoon
Of love
And pleasure
And coming to my senses,
I drown in him
Before I even knew that I was wading.

You masquerade like you're shrinking
falling backwards
in the half formed light
yet I see your eyes
through the blackness
blinking fiercely
watching all the people go by,
a flicker crosses your tongue
a spark of recognition
thrown from the flames in your head
licking at your eye *****;
rolling backwards.

As if you could shrink,
one so violent and so vibrant,
You exploded in my hand,
as soon as I held you.
You swept through my dreams,
before I even knew you.

Call, Call
you halcyon beast
you maiden of dirt
come wrap me in
your black embrace
darkness
calls me
from the sunset abyss
I clasp the void
I taste its bliss
                  
                            Fall
       ­                            so soft
                                              cracks of nothing
                                              flush of peace
                                              rips through bones
                                              wash of calm
                                                      of numb.
                               Chocolate hatred through eyes of dust.

Rough sheets
Smell of lavender
I lift my
cheek
touch of wind
from open window
I feel
the comfort seep
through my whole

I am at peace
In my own berth.

Old scars
pulled apart by new onslaughts.

Going to sleep was a lot more fun when it was in your bed
A thousand possibilities and the only one I really wanted swam in your eyes when you looked at me.

In the optimistic light of the morning,
or when I’m travelling somewhere, fast,
perhaps on a plane or a train,
everything seems ok.
Caring so much seems silly, and I feel released.
Healing and carrying on with life seems not only possible but natural, inevitable.

I will never call you beautiful
Because beauty implies stillness
You are more than this
You are electric
Magnetic
Can't-take-my-eyes-off-yours kinetic
You pulsate with an aura of need
And poetic heat
That drags me in
And in
Until I'm melting in the flames of you.

And we thought we were philosophers, and poets, and lovers. And we were all of these things and none. We were wallowing in an infinite present of youth and naivety. And we lived it.