Seen: 2.16pm ….. Seen: 2.16pm ….. Seen: 2.16pm 5.47pm. You have the advantage. What’s happening over there? Did you miss the shot? are you chasing the ball in the bushes? … are you lost? did you get caught in the net? are you talking to a spectator? have you retired to the bar? Did I use the wrong ball? Seen: 2.16pm ….. Break point. Final score: Love, all.
Game, set
Unlocked
The last tendrils of sun slide off the sand into the sea
We pull in when the road gets rocky
and watch the cold smudges of mountains fade in the distance
The front doors rattle with the southerly
Your hands rest on the wheel
I fold up my legs in the passenger seat
We rock gently with every gust
You turn the key enough so we can listen to the radio
It’s stuck on the concert station, has been for months
I don’t know why you don’t get it fixed
we don’t like opera.
Should probably go for a walk, I guess, get some fresh air
Well, you should, at least. I don’t, anymore.
It’s dark now, but you’re going anyway
I remind you that the handle is broken, so
when you leave
please leave the door unlocked.
Conversations with wolves
Talking to you
is like forcing myself
through a very small hole in a barbed wire fence
with the small brained certainty
that the field on the other side is sweeter
Halfway through and no way back
A final tearing heave is the only way
And then to realise I’ve left behind
strings of soft fleece hooked there in the wind,
and there are
corresponding scars
on my naked belly.
Evening
You out there
sitting in the chill black grass
just beyond the yellow fall of light from the kitchen window
You know I’m watching
wondering if the evening dew has soaked through
your jeans yet, and if I should
call you in
But your eyes are fixed upwards, watching the last pale blue light fade
single stars winking back at you
When you were small, so small
you asked if you could collect them, and keep them
for when you needed them in the night
You’re still small, to me
But no longer afraid of the darkness
that creeps in around you
The arch of your throat gleams white
I think about mosquitos
I think about your bare feet
I put a washed dish into the rack
and notice the skin on my hands is wrinkled
from too much time in the water.
Stretching Days
Sometimes I go for a walk
in the afternoons, when the rain is still
dripping from branches and letterboxes
and the clouds on the hills look empty
While I wander, I imagine
the friends I don’t know anymore
walking on parallel streets
in the same direction
Chins up,
feet light,
sure steps
unused umbrellas swinging
Maybe we’re all
looking forward, maybe they
don’t know
That I’m watching the trees
bend over the path with the weight of the water
and pocketing the leaves
If they turn the right corner
and so do I
We might spot each other
At the moment of meeting
I will stand and wait
to see if they cross the street.
The Wreck of the Tek Sing
It was treasure.
That dive, that day
May 12 1999
The True Star looming, listing on its side
Barely recognisable,
covered
in the growing houses of fish
The porcelain on the wreck was incidental
The real earner would have been the tea
If she had ever made it home
But there inside, the picked bones lay
We saw the skulls first, then
the glow of porcelain in the dark
The second ‘unsinkable’
Commemorated with a single floating elephant tusk
We hovered above her, quiet, quiet
the quiet of the suicided lady
laid to rest on the sand,
weighed down by her jewels
And so we brought up the white gold
piece by piece, and
we thought about bringing the bodies too
But it was their place
And not our place to take them
—-
About the Tek Sing, from Wikipedia:
The Tek Sing (Chinese, “True Star”)[1] was a large three-masted Chinese ocean-going junk which sank on February 6, 1822[2] in an area of the South China Sea known as the Belvidere Shoals. The vessel was 50 meters in length, 10 meters wide and weighed about a thousand tons. Its tallest mast was estimated to be 90 feet in height. The ship was manned by a crew of 200 and had approx. 1600 passengers. The great loss of life associated with the sinking has led to the Tek Sing being referred to in modern times as the “Titanic of the East”.[3]
On May 12, 1999, British marine salvor Michael Hatcher discovered the wreck of the Tek Sing in an area of the South China Sea north of Java, east of Sumatra and south of Singapore. His crew raised about 350,000 pieces of the ship’s cargo in what is described as the largest sunken cache of Chinese porcelain ever recovered.[4] Human remains were also found, but they were not disturbed as most of Hatcher’s crew, being Indonesian and Chinese, believed that bad luck would befall any who disturbed the dead.
Better than me
Everybody wants to be
a better version of you and me
I just bleed
tears in my eyes/ scars on my thighs
I apologise, did I think I was right? Maybe this time
It’s just me in disguise/ hiding lies/turning up dry
I don’t know why/ I tried to reply
The words don’t come out right
the breath is stuck/ in my throat/ and now I choke/ I’m out of rope
the whole moon loves me but the stars gonna hate
it’s a sad kind of fate when you see that gate / and all you really wanted was to meet halfway
Flood lights ringing hearts still sinking/ they’re all watching/ I know what they’re thinking
I got naked, it was my choice/ I stood up and I raised my voice /
But skinny slim beautiful thin
spoken knives cut translucent skin
One day I’ll be better and these words won’t seem /
like they need to be written in a blood red dream/
Feel that heat now/ it’s so fleeting
so do it quick now/ stand up breathing
now speak.
peace.
Breathless
Just for a project, I decided to try writing a rap song.
—–
It’s not my brain it’s just chemical warfare /
it’s pouring acid rain running til it’s all clear /
step on the speeding train that never stops whenever you’re here
and fear/
growing crystal see through / it’s enough for me to / hold onto the need to / want to make nice / want to hold tight / want to stay another night /
alright /
run silver rings around the lifeline / cut close to the core / and underscore my byline / edge so fine/
she said / more /
I’m well –read / I know the answer to the choose-your-own-ending / it’s blending / and sending a letter that I’ll never write / pick a path and fight / it’s a game and everyone’s dead
wrong / Never forget /
these decisions that you make / violate / can’t escape / the real estate / why should I give you more / you threw it in my face before / lost before, now I’m sure /
time’s run out
this sun has gone down / I will not choose to drown / this is not a give way sign / this is not a rail way line / this is not a white lie / I’ll say
I’m fine /
Preface to a love song
I can’t take all the credit for this one. There was really a man, and he really did tell me this story.
Drunk on crimes of passion, and the particular thin pain of
saying only half the words we want to sing in peculiar songs with no form,
he told me a story about his guitar
“There are two things that are special about this guitar, its insides, and its outsides.
Over 21 years, the magnets inside the guitar that create the sound from the strings have become less sensitive. However it only makes the overall tone softer, and unique, and interesting.
On the outside, its body is worn. But the overall shape remains the same.
It has chips, and scratches, and dints from bad things that have happened to it along the way, and chips, and scratches, and dints from good things that have happened to it along the way.
But no-one ever comments on the dead magnets, or the chips in the paint from when it fell over, or the big deep scratch that happened at that great show in Wellington or the broken part of the string bridge, or the missing screw on one of the switches.
They only ever comment on how amazing it is.”
And as you tell this story, I wonder if maybe
you’ve seen that my insides and my outsides are scratched and broken and missing screws, and you know that no one else sees those things, they just use
hands made of sly eyes and weary compliments, which you don’t, because
it’s late and you’re not really here and you know I’ll only sigh
in a way you find soft, and unique, and interesting
but maybe, if you are gentle,
you’ll hold me, one day, like your guitar, and
we’ll prove that the magnets
aren’t dead
and we’ll write a love song
about how amazing it all is.
Pocket Watch
Suffering gently from
a poverty of ideas, the girl
swayed on the edge of Occam’s Razor and wondered about
being imprisoned for eighteen years for a crime you didn’t commit, and if
she’d been lead astray, or if she’d just
thought about it for too long.
She had thought there was a lot of time for thinking.
The wrinkles of misfortune in her brow and velvet dress were deep and
the gold pocket watch in her hand had no chain.
Feet hanging over the side of the Edge, she
finally began to realise that the watch was in fact lying to her,
and had been doing so all along
It had promised that there could be a beginning, and a middle,
and and that if she only stayed for long enough, the end would be just
But, on the edge and peering down into her palm she saw
that the whole round face of it had been a farce
There was only one thing the watch, and all other watches, should have ever told her
only one thing they could have said that could be true
The beginnings were lost. The middles were hesitant and deceptive and painful. The endings existed only as a concept for the captive and corrupt.
So the only thing the watch could have honestly spoken to her,
and to any of us, ever
was “now.”
——————-
This poem was inspired by a quote from Damien Echols, one of the “Memphis Three,” who were wrongfully imprisoned for murder. Damien served 18 years on death row before walking free.
One thing I’d dearly love to have is an hourglass. Or a whole collection of them- some that measure minutes, some that measure hours, some that measure the whole day. And grandfather clocks! And pocket watches. The thing I like most about time is that it’s not real. It’s all in the head. Sure, it’s a useful trick to use if you want to meet someone at a specific place in the universe and have tea or coffee- but that’s all it is- a trick. There is no such thing as the past. It exists only in the memory. There is no such thing as the future. It exists only in our imagination. If our watches were truly accurate, the only thing they would ever say is “Now”.
I pretend I'm a writer 