pillar of giants
roots tāne mahuta, we could talk all day and night about
anchorage, erosion and moderating ground temperatures
but the melodic lungs of the early birds alarm me to arouse
my car boot heaves with foliage – deciduous, now I must
drive, drive, drive down this kauri coast line and away from
your waipoua, mataraua and waimā forests
your evergreen arms tāne mahuta swish the woody
breath of giants to propel my wheels and tempt speed,
oxygenating silk sliced skin so admired by morphology
deliver me home dendrolatry, my gas tank filled with
your fruit and bark, flowers and tree ferns, their biology
& fuel pumped from the core of axis mundi and its roots
taxonomy
the orchid bloomed white today adding
an unexpected trope to my
expectations. the bulbs had laden but
not hidden the brown soil acting
as a haven for science. the analogy
of a pseudobulb - an organ moist
fractionally swollen, historiography
of skin tender at 3am. a metahistory
of esteem and flowers -
Playing Records/ My record’s needle
A day in the life my life can turn shaved
wood splinters consoling soles into a pair of
Swarovski high heels like having a coke with
you is like hearing Amen in the morning and
Rongo I don’t believe she never met Athena because
that smell is in the air like brave or bold similar
to the sound of washing your back bathing in fragility
washing pain away washed all over the body letting
our defences down in Alexandria’s library completely
defenceless with the most helpful saints in heaven and
don’t let me forget I love to turn you on because for two
to lie together no need for invite there’s
technique to send and received feeling completely
completed and skin soft licked and moistened played
like piano keys over and over again like I wanna make
it with chu and here comes your man is exactly what the
best band in the world says rescued at last with perfume
to bathe away the fear to soak in femininity and now
I can hear Robert’s words whispering something about the
world and its light the sun coming in for another morning.
Lament for Mrs Webber
Today I almost picked up the telephone
to call you. I wanted to hear the smile in
your voice when I told you about Tāmaki-makau-rau.
I was going to tell you that I’d been
thinking of you and Grandpa and Ōtaki
and the whistling bridge. Gammie
today I met a man from Raukawa and
he reminded me of us.
haeata
shores passed by light beams ignoring metaphysics
to empty their eyelids of surf and philosophy for
island shores that hold back tides of under
currents fundamental to alchemy when rocks
of stone and tears turn to bright the dawn
whakatautau
washed out to sea, I am the drift
wood dancing,
danced a dance
arching spinal & column & slice
through wind, branches
bow to knees and thrust islands
their pūpū song
suck sea maps,
that spray and sway away
breathing me the
ebb of tides
