Beach shell varnished, kerosene,
A crack in coastal stain glass window, like a hair across the face
Disrupting the vast porcelain
“you’ve got a hair on your face, let me just”
and then it takes the lipstick with it,
a line printed like a paper cut,
“where’s the razor? Where did you put it?”
I put it in the bin and try and not seem too desperate.
We bundle into a car
Like some odd kind of sleepover.
A plaque on the wall saying the current prime minister opened it back in the day.
The old building is cracking like sedimentary rock in reverse.
The lemon lime and bitters clink in the bag and
I can almost convince myself it’s a summers day packing to go
Off to the beach, running down
With a picnic blanket
Sand in shoes
Tinkling down like an egg timer.
Seals, odd floppy babies about to bark,
The tussock a balding old man, spattered across the dunes
“let’s get icecream”
“let’s get fish and chips”
“let’s get out and stop take a photo”
the wind whipping your hair at your face
flicking icream off the cone onto your face,
why is it all so messy?
Let’s got to kākanui, let’s go to moeraki
Let’s stop to get a coffee.
You sure it’s safe to drive, this tired?
Let’s stop and have a nap.

You good to go?
Yeah
You sure?
Yup

Where footprints in the sand once stayed,
                      one is now washed away..
And we look around hoping one day ours
                       will be joined by another's.

Different from before,
                       But for now we walk on the beach
  looking at each sunrise,
                     because there is always another day..

My melodious fire
Waves and weaves
Making a ****** of wood
Delivering a birth of smoke
Those swirling cinders choking
Everything in sight

Breathing in one of death’s contagions
One by one they fall
Until there’s no call to order
Until there’s none left to perform for

The mob grew angry.

My wrists, my ankles
Chained now with briars
This an execution by my own desire
For I required an exit light here
Unclear liar lost in his lies here
Fear-shaken, no stakes in truth,
Fear-faking, I have no stake in you
So I pull up stakes
See you.

I have no clue what I’m going to do
I get lost in myself
But in myself I have yet to choose
These paradoxes and riddles
That plague and peeve my mind
Deceive me as I deceive them
Till we’re all left deceiving in kind
Till the other becomes the self
And the self melts away from being the better
Cluttered with curses from the past
This incompatible software overheats
Crashes fast
And now we’re back—
Fire.

I was once blind to such simple facts
Broken, silly tracks of thought off-track
Lines left carved up in the sand
The next day wiped away
By nature’s erasure or another’s hand

It is sand after all...

But I gave up a pair
Received my true third eye
It's blind to these facts
The grains look all turned up and twisted
Spilling from my clenched fist
Like they’re seconds in my hourglass
So, my fellow pair-holders, I ask
Why take a second to grasp
So that a second in turn is given?
I see no bargain driven
Just a reality
In which
If you're livin’ happily, serenely
You must be trippin’

Holes are dug:
a rite of passage
for the young
and beaming
as parents delight
in viewing themselves
from long ago.
The fickleness of thought:
the world has changed --
the world is not so different...
a trench without purpose:
made meaningful
with ethereal sentiment.

There will always be
this life on the sand
where little can be
enhanced or altered.
Grit will always
find its way into
the unseen grooves of
bags and toes;
the sand of timelessness,
of now and yesterday.
Castles are built and
fall and are built again.
And the sand will remain,
and little, so little,
will change.

You covered your lies
I covered my scars
We washed​ up on the shore
Of the land where fools
And cowards go
I know it's not home
But we're royalty here
I dig my feet in the sand
Everything hurts less now

You are like a grain of sand,
that sparkles in morning sun
in the middle of my palm.
You grow through the day
in a geometrical progression
1 to 2, 2 to 4, 4 to 16........
and when the sun sets beyond the horizon
you unleash the desert upon me
fold upon fold dune upon dune
stifling, suffocating me till dawn.