'dusty shutters'

revolt
for those
who have fire

and a home away
from endless lights

somewhere in the coromandel
where a lonesome dinghy
provides that perfect shot.

that rickety red car we owned
struggled up those gravel slopes:
wayward grip, loose laughter

at the sixty foot drop
beneath.

i often spread my arms
to call the lighthouse back
into my sternum: cape reinga,
dreaming sands,
feisty currents shaking hands
and rubbing noses.

wish for anywhere
but my room
filled with chocolate fudge
and last night's couscous.

this house is old. my mood
is tropical and skulking amongst the ferns.
the cat next door deserves a spanking
for ripping through our weekly rubbish.

and i
another piece of bric-a-brac
in this shining mix
of migrant
and historic flux,
of phonecalls and forgotten runs,
believing this rain will stop
through huddled books and strangers' smiles,
but it's warmth all the same.

pohutukawa, they'll bloom this christmas, as always.
gashed amongst the rocks, roots of weaving castles
tempting me away from here

from faces which barely say hello. i could walk this street
in my underwear screaming "release me to this wilderness"
and not one would rush to tackle me.

revolt
for those
who care enough
to jot each ocean down,
each waterfall
a silent train
smiling over bridges,
each a sentinel for that divide,
that gap between
each finger
saluting the smoggy sky.

i want fire. i want my skin to feel alive.
i'll wash each vein and dream of flight.

'a night of conflict'

and i know that's what i seem to
desire as a pyramid to tutankhamen's
eyes lined with kohl and coal covered
fingers cupping flame to ceiling asking
asking what all those symbols mean
when everything can be taken
out of context and eventualities
which never quite eventuate
how you will it
to be

and i sold my palms
to the closest fortune-teller
willing me empresses and rivers
and rabbit-holes into my wonderland
where conversation is a silent motionless
enterprise of saffron and silk and
rustling curvatures implying
bodies dancing and living and laughing
and searching for the next
little thing

and i on the mezzanine and i
in a hallway circumventing solutions
mapped out by cartesian thinkers
by encyclopaedic memories and notes
and notes and more endless misconceptions
given salt and pepper
to taste

i want all of this to crumble
for hieroglyphics to bathe in
green currents green melodies
in silver solutions
inseeming and insoluble
inscrutable and enchanting
you

'placation is for the weary already'

you

speak of balms, of roses,
of lady fortuna holding

your cards. you're a
wishful one, flute in hand,

an apple

in the other. i'm not
the anti-christ, however

low i may become. i
shine and grieve and

joke

and seize the eternal,
converse with abstract art.

paint, splash, a whirl
of fingers swimming

for the sun.