do dogs dream and if they do am I still the one to walk them?

Does my wandering hand still find its way down to the small of your back?

I just want to watch your sun come over my hill one more time,

slower this time.

That time you told me I was hard, harsh I think you called it

the first time I’d ever been called that.

What is this heavy heart you speak of?

I can’t find it anywhere.

Not stuffed down the back of the bed,

not hidden behind the pickled radish on my shelf,

it’s not in my head,

my back pocket,

I’ve checked my room 3 times over for it.

Yet this heavy heart is hard to find when all I’m looking for is a hand to hold.

A knowing glance to share, across a room like Greta Gerwig described that time in Frances Ha.

You still wouldn’t watch it even if I asked,

politely refusing.

Too many may I’s and please’s and thank you’s

for a soft heart I found in mine.

I found it in the back of an uber pool, eating pizza with strangers

laughing at nothing in particular.

I found it in a mother and daughter shopping day,

wrapped in crepe, tied with a bow

in the white bag with pink ribbon handles.

I found it at 5:30 in the morning.

In frozen fingers,

in a shell at the bottom of the ocean.

This soft heart can survive in the harshest of conditions

not because it’s built for it

but because it must

at all costs.

It simply must.

I will never lose my soft, tender little heart

and if I do

I’ll know exactly where to look for it.

Part 2: After waking, before sleep.

The sound of the waves

feel like a second home,

away from it.

Looking at it backwards.

Only ours to know & yours to own.

Take it into your arms,

call it a name you find beautiful

or reminds you of your mother, or your mothers mother.

You can’t seem to run fast enough can you?

Talking at it,

around it

& to it.

Pouring sauce on it,

adding a little more vinegar to it.

Dancing around strangers living rooms

yet it feels like a second home,

away from it.

Closer than you thought,

just take the second exit on the left

it’ll take you right there

in no time.

To lose your sense of direction in an unfamiliar face,

caught on the bus to too far away.

Walking backwards towards where I thought I’d be.

I’m exactly between wherever that is and where I wanted to be.

It could be worse.

It could be home

or far from it,

it could be mine after all.

This time will be different.

I’ll take longer walks,

talk longer,

sit & ponder,

wonder,

wander,

find myself lost,

in my own internal little paradox.

No right answers left.

But you’d find a way

home,

or closer to it.

A song for Winter

A life at the end of a tether.

Seconds away from turning the heater off.

Cautious with care.

Open to it,

on a good day.

Catch it if you can.

I caught glances of you in a passing memory peeking in my cup,

drinking in every moment of passing sunlight.

Winters around the corners of those backroads in the town you grew up in

and shes mean.

Meaner than mean.

Deliciously viscious,

her icy steers me slightly to the left,

around the bend.

There comes a point in ones life where the last time you ever get truly lost & dont know your way home again is in death.

I always thought I looked better in blue jeans.

My blue collar showing.

Shining against clear skies that could stretch

on & on & on & on

in careless abandon.

Leaving me behind here on Earth.

A witness to it all.

Be not afraid my child,

your 30’s aren’t that scary.

It’s just 4 seasons in quick succession,

one foot in front of the grave

the other in it.

I was always more comfortable 6 foot 1,

I’m getting too big for my boots.

Elbowing my way through adulthood

I just wanted to see the Mona Lisa too.

Smile back at her.

Tell her a story with just my eyes.

Probably that the guy standing next to me has his hand on my ass.

She’ll understand.

I carry God with me everywhere I go.

Except home.

A book of hymns and prayers next to my bed.

Read to me before I go to sleep,

one last time before you go

back to the sound of your own voice.

I couldn’t catch you if I tried,

that feeling you can never put your finger on.

The days too hot to touch,

the conversation steaming

screaming over the top of half empty beers

and you would say,

“why not half full?“

and I would remember all over again why I fell in love with you the first time,

my seasonal affection disorder.

Metal expands with heat.

I fell in love with you in the winter

my exception to the rule.

Unsent Love Poem

A poem that never got sent.

---

For so long,

too long some may say.

There was a tree that would bear no fruit

its limbs bare & twisted,

it reached out to the sky

fighting for its embrace.

Then along came a Finch

all flighty and free,

it chose to make home

in the crooks of this tree.

Its song was so clear

& brightly unbroken

that the breeze would blow softer

to show as a token

of mutual respect

for nature’s beauties unspoken.

The bird’s nest would grow fuller

with each passing day

& the tree would sway slower as if, though to say

“I know I’m not much, but I’d like you to stay.

My limbs are not strong but I offer protection

for a tree and a bird have a fated connection.”

In a fit of devotion,

the Finch flit to the sky

& the Tree on the ground

waved its arms, a goodbye.

“To think.” The Tree thought,

“That an old weed like me

could ever hold on to a bird that’s so free.”

And so without tears

the Tree took its bough

& broke it in 2,

for it wouldn’t allow

such a glorious creature to stay stuck to the ground.

But the Finch did return

in a flurry of feather

& saw what was broken

what they once had together,

a home for each other

no matter the weather.

The Tree out of fear

did tremble and shake

“I have taken from you what was not mine to take,

my roots are not deep but they stretch far and wide.“

& the Tree in its grief

sat down and it cried.

The Finch did but sing

a song simple & plain

& began its attempts to build its home

once again,

with each twig and each feather

in the tree all the same.

The Tree in confusion did ask carefully

“Are you not afraid of my uncertainty?”

The Finch with a feather

betwixt its small beak,

dropped it & looked & did finally

speak,

“My dearest, oh dear

the Tree

I don’t fear.

For each nest that is lost

I build another with care.

A thousand times over

may this nest find its place

in the crook of your arm

whatever the case,

as you are my Tree

in all imperfection

For a Bird and a Tree have a fated connection”

Freedom is not free

I write because thats all I know how. My words are my armour, my heart, my soul, my voice, my fire, my rage, my hope and my weapon. From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.

---

Easy freedom is a fallacy.

We must grasp and snatch onto it with taloned claws

Hold tightly to the desperate thing.

We must fight, tooth and nail for it

We the so-called free.

Bound and crushed under the tyranny of the insatiable machine

Churning and chewing us up

Spitting us out in bland, pallid imitations of life.

I’m afraid for us

We march aimlessly towards our demise

Complicit in our mutually assured destruction

Calling out for more and more and more and more

We are chasing our own tails and screaming when we bite them.

Spitting blood,

“curse you!”

“curse you!”

We scream in almost unison

We would once cry for each other

Long ago now

Those tears have dried and we use it’s salt to rub in our wounds.

We are manged and hostile beasts

Espousing a lie we ourselves don’t believe anymore

Bed time stories

Scaring us straight

Until we wake to a world more horrifying than any nightmare we once had.

Nightmare walking.

Save for a lost child

Bearing an unpolished face to a weary sun

Who would only dream one day, to see the sea

For freedom, my friend, it is not free

Not for you and not for me.

It’s cost is greater than its cause,

Freedom for one is freedom for all.

Fight. 

And fight, and fight again

Till legs are weak and arms are lame.

Take your head and turn it straight,

Take leaps of faith and steps towards

A future that can hold us all.

My words don’t come as they once would

They slip from the corners of my eyes

And between baited breaths

How is this okay?

How is this possible?

How, how, how?

Questions to no end, with none in sight

But that fire burns

It sparks

It bubbles

It turns my stomach inside out, eating away at parts of myself

Turns my head towards the sun and screams out for you to look

And look again

We can’t afford to not,

For that’s our burden

To look, to witness, to bare it all in its naked excess

And how lucky we are that that is all.

Carry it with you wherever you may go

And soon the dawn shall break the levy

And the damned shall breach

And we the people

Shall heed the call

Freedom for one, is freedom for all.

I think I would like it…

I think I would like it if someone were to take an eyelash on my cheek with their ring finger and hold it to my lips and let me make the wish.

I think I would like it if someone were to feel the small of my back, their pinky slipping delicately beneath my waistband, as if prying apart pages from manuscripts buried millennia ago.

I think I would like it if someone were to take their hand up my spine, reading each vertebrae like braille spelling out their name.

I think I would like it if someone was delicate with me again.

I think I would like it if someone were to lock their fingers with mine and have it feel inevitable, fated.

I think I would like it if someone were to take my wholeness in their gaze and be blinded by me.

I think I would like it if someone were to kiss at the nape of neck, taking centuries there to tell each electrical impulse where to go.

I think I would like it if someone were to brush their knees against mine under the table and exchange all our histories in secret.

I think I would like it if someone were to tuck my hair behind my ear.

I think I would like it if someone were to blow on me like a cup of hot peppermint tea, then sip loudly for everyone in the room to hear.

I think I would like it if someone were to draw my smile with the very tips of their fingers, feeling the edges & corners of my happiness.

I think I would like it if someone were to pull my hand to stop me from walking into oncoming traffic.

I think I would like it if someone were to take their sweet time with me.

I think I would like it if someone were to write poems for me.

I think I would like it if someone were to pick at the ingrown hairs, pimples on my back, and blackheads on my nose; finding beauty in my rotting flesh.

I think I would like it if someone were to take a long, deep breath from the top of my head and wish they could bottle my scent and wear it to work everyday.

I think I would like it if someone were to help me carry my groceries home.

I think I would like it if someone were to call when the sleep won’t come.

I think I would like it if someone were to make me feel home when there is none.

I think I would like it if someone were to help me get my chores done.

I think I would like it if someone were to have a touch that goes deeper than the bone, a marrow kind of love.

I think I would like it.

I think I really would.

Auckland Poetry

21/06/22 – 11.57am – Artspace Aotearoa

I cover myself in honey,

I ask you to lick me clean.

I lay quietly on dirty stone-clad streets

Waiting for you to pick

me up

slow,

with ease.

I open myself up to

the broken

earth

beneath me.

Blowing the breeze

carefully between open doors & man-made holes

on the very surface of my skin.

Im cooking myself

under your gaze,

watching my soul

float upwards with the steam. I could love you

if you let me.

23/06/22 – 2.42pm – Cornwall Park

Within these sunlit moments between

gnarled branches

we play catch-up together

throwing stories around.

25/06/22 – 2.07pm – Off Queen St.

My head is alight,

my heart laboured

& the city moves on

around me.

I have to sit

to take it all in

as it slips away through

my bitten, torn fingers.

I dont know where I am

I’m looking for coffee

& some fresh air

hoping I’ll find myself at the bottom.

25/06/22 – 2.37pm – Auckland Art Gallery

Stand up so you can see,

the glistening openness that I afford to

this lazy vista before me

taken up in small gasps of air.

You are here.

You are here.

In wholeness & completeness

I let the tears

find their way

onto the page,

using blank paper

as my way inside to you.

Navigating open wounds,

left bleeding in the sun

for each other.

I want to be left alone,

taken far away from these darkened hills.

Open me outwards

towards the sky & sun.

26/06/22 – 12.30pm – Fort Green Bakery

Looping & winding, up & around

sorely missed

memories.

I slap & scream in hopes of

holding onto marred & makeshift

half-moments.

Craterous & swollen love bites.

You’re my sweetened maelstrom

swirling and sweeping me up

in bursts both out & in.

Could you hold me just that one moment longer

in your silent gaze.

Im frozen. Fractured & woven

solemnly into an infinitely disappearing loop inside you.

It’s like we’re cosmically bound

in a fated shipwreck

caught somewhere between

the dawnbreak & first light.

We are caught inextricably in bunches of wildflowers

left to dry

on the kitchen sill.

Still life.

I catch small glimpses at it,

broken & beautiful.

It gets burned up in unruly

wildfires.

But as I sit with my back to the sun

watching our past

cover the beaches of time

in its white, foamy noise.

I let it rush outwards

along with the Western breeze.

All these things known & remembered

back into the soil & sea.

Still life, plein air.

Suppose

Suppose you woke up to the full moons light

& spoke to it in broken vowels and constants.

Suppose you knew your way home but took the wrong turn anyway.

Suppose you could see into your future

& releived yourself of your hopes and dreams to the statues and pillars

adorning your gallant refuge.

Suppose you took all the words you ever spoke

& wound them into a tight ball of yarn.

Weaving it together into an itchy pair of socks.

Walking on your poetry.

Suppose you slip in the tub

& make yourself wet again with grief.

A hot bath is the best cure for a fever?

Suppose we took this all for granted

& wasted away into sloppy half-made beds.

Halfway between here and over there.

Suppose you have never seen the light of day,

tucked away,

bought out for special occasions.

You are my favourite sweater collecting dust.

Suppose you must.

For absolutes arent made for us.

I love in spite of it all

then you spit it in my face.

Back washed and scrubbed of all marks that could suggest a touch

You’re spilling outwards-in

A hairline fracture human being that is so delicately made I wish only for you to know how it feel to fall without shattering

I think nuance is overrated anyway.

Just humour me will you

Let me laugh alongside you, I’m almost adjacent to it

this feeling I can smell in the air, it caught in peoples hair

perpendicular

these horizons keep stretching their tired muscles just out of reach

I know they weren’t meant for me

or anyone really

but wouldn’t it be nice to taste it just once

how do you solve a problem like that

finding X’s and O’s at the end of rural roads

tracing lines through paper made fields

you’re my topography

my points of reference

out by .4 of a centimetre

I think punctuation is over-rated anyway

I imagine Allen Ginsburg reading my poems and laughing

and it keeps me going

turning in my sleep

rolling in the 6 foot deep.

Please for the love of god don’t take yourself so seriously.

It doesn’t go with your outfit.

Take Maria for example.

She’s a charcuterie board woman

made for grazing and picking.

Eat her jellies and her jam,

leave only a handful of almonds to appease some god we can’t remember the name of but can feel in the breeze.

Cheese.

Jeez,

Calm down.

Perk up.

Smile

Say “please”

Sir may I have some.

No more.

No less.

Unless?

You know how it goes

all the way to the end

If we can find it that is.

I trust in things that are founded in iron & bronze

We are gilded in this moment

Galvanised in a grotesque miscarriage of too many feelings yet it feels like its not enough.

Tough titties, you would say

in a tone that would only make me angrier.

I’m losing touch with this side of myself that I could so easily name

and I’m mourning the dead parts of myself I thought would stay

Wailing their names onto parchments of mercury gold

lying to myself through gritted teeth

saying that its all going to be okay.

Is that okay?

over

I’m so over hoping for a love story that lasts longer than an evening.

Over wishing for a hand to feed me as I bite it in 2.

Over limp attempts at romance made for rose-tinted glasses.

Over crying into pillowcases, bite marks pooling in my centre.

Over hopeless romanticism found rotting in the fridge.

Over boyish charm & half finished sentences.

Over coming home to luke-warm tea & frozen vegetables.

Over looking over the shoulders of gracious men as they make earnest efforts towards convenience.

Over scratching the same itch twice.

Over sweat stained singlets.

Over being in over my head over heels.

Over spread thighs.

Over your telling eyes screaming out for someone to meet them somewhere in the middle.

Over digging through the junk drawer for a watch stuck at

12:34pm.

Over sunshine.

Over rainbows.

Over being sick.

Over being cold.

Over your boring name.

Over the same shit over & over again.

Over pretending I enjoy being alone.

Over taking time to work on myself.

Over swimming in cold oceans & drying in the sun.

Over your voice,

whispering itself

between my sheets.

Over music made for dance less victims.

Over empty pages called home.

Over these words that don’t work anymore.

Over coldsores.

Over polar opposites.

Over the nape of your neck.

Over the lines of your figure.

Over the glint in your skylight.

Over hills & mountains.

Over brunch.

Over birthday surprises.

Over those cavernous spaces between people.

Over those glances on the bus that you thought were something.

Over damp hair.

Over longing and yearning as things become out of touch.

Over not touching each other at all.

Over holding on for dear life.

Over looking out for myself.

Over taking one for the team.

Over never meeting their parents.

Over coffee, getting to know each others brick laid facade.

Over beer with no end in sight.

Over your brown hair.

Over there,

Somewhere.

Inspiration

A poem I found in an old notebook that stirred something.

When I’m asked what inspires me,

I am never lost for words.

They come forth in a forceful deluge of dialogue about the influences of artists, family, friend on my

artistic psyche.

How their delicate touch morphed and moulded

my brown clay brain.

There are many forces at work within the confines of my cranium,

sparking fits of creativity &

shining light moments that stay hidden in the dark.

I am inspired by the sky,

the way it lounges on the horizon on a summers evening.

When it blankets the day with its dull sea of grey

as if knowing we’re all doing the same in our own special way.

When it sing, it shouts

over rooftops & hills

letting us in on its not so secret joy.

The Sea,

if only you knew.

I hear you speak to me,

like a siren calling towards deep understanding.

I sit

& I stare

at the sea

and the sky in synchronised simplicity.

I sit

& I smile.

You’re mine.

You can be anyway,

for as long as I look.