& tell the abyss the darkness is
temporary.
The moonlight is warming &
the breeze which sweeps
transposes the seeds and growth is in
the underbrush. Tell the abyss it’s
nearly dawn—that time runs parallel
to furrowed brows and intersects
Ribbed and scurrying, a bus passes me;
the sweat in airy beads drips to my
bicycle knees. I am going everywhere,
today. The ride is smooth, my mind is loose,
the breeze is flesh and sweeps me—
snatches of light-petaled afternoons.
Pedalling backpacks to Point Chevalier,
to the holy lips of Auckland harbours. Eager gusts
helping me over wire-knit fences. The trees,
bent and ardent, committing in droves and I, flocking
them all with my library copies, with my hands full of
apples, with my eyes to the sea.
I give you these poems
at the tail-end of the trade winds
at the cost of an espresso & my reasoning soul.
I would sit in the midst of Kalakaua traffic
simply to relieve this hounded mind with a pen.
Here, enfolding the slender tipped shepherd,
facing such fragrance of relief, I am rendered
Thunder resigns the dimpled sky to fatigue
and stirs my Delphian soul—
Around my brow clocks circle, clocks in heat
in twenty directions the ticks tock—
When the lights flicker, I come to.
Lucid puddles seep into shoe beds
I’m a Fiat roof rack I’m the
bicycle lacquered in red lights I’m the
afterthought after the period drops.
I’m dizzy with it all and too sleepy to wait
til Christmas. Let days just be days—
they’ve been overlooking my permission for ages.
There are 7.8 billion poems about the moon;
having read none of them,
I wonder:
If all her glowworms cast their eyes to her size
and whimper amongst themselves: why she so low—
then what does she do?
Diddly.
Continue reading “Moon Dance”
Borrow the car
Borrow the flour
Borrow the book
Borrow the shears
Borrow the money
Borrow the tuxedo
Borrow the pencils
Borrow the clothes
Borrow the tampon
Borrow the vacuum
Borrow the ice pack
Borrow the envelope
Do not borrow
the soul. The soul is yours.
The words house themselves within me,
I am not the words.
If they come
I remain whole. If they do not come
I remain
whole.
I want to be an art critic.
I want to have such a glorious
eye piece, that the thinnest strokes of oils and acrylics
could shine off my lens into your face
when you address me as “madam”
and I grace you with my gaze.
Hold hands with me.
My feet won’t point in the direction
I will them to, they’re on a loop
and my mind is getting dizzy.
Hold hands with me.
I’ve been watching your stride.
Your clean-limbed foot swing
mesmerizes me. How can you keep
so steady?
Please hold hands with me.
Slow down.
Whoa,
slow down.
There is a way to do this.
A way to do it all
without feeling pieces of shrapnel
carving cave lines into the ear bones.
A way to do it all
and feel electricity in the veins,
singular purpose so singular, elephants in the foothills.
That crash could’ve been
an ancient computer tossed from the twentieth floor,
the Hewlett-Packard bricks in vintage disarray,
the collection of hipster hues in the hallway closet.
It was that loud!
The raised voices which follow make sense,
as if a strong-armed woman in her own right rose up to her man
and chucked his grandfather clutter out
that living room window, smashing glass after glass
rainbow-droplets squalling like the cats and dogs
that stalk the dumpsters.
Someone is shouting something and you can almost hear
the foot-stomping, I swear it’s that loud;
don’t they know I live in the apartment building
next to the one
that’s catty-corner from that hullabaloo?
