Conversations with friends (while the world burns, while BL start to matter)

i feel like i want to set fire to everything that ever came before now and stand on the side of the road watching it burning until all we have in front of us is a new way of being alive.

/

i’m so afraid of acting out
incase i do it wrong
because
turns out
i’ve been doing it wrong
my entire life.

/

i meet my friend
in a gay bar on k road
he’s an oracle, sees the dead.
i feel so lost, i say.
he
throws his hands in the air and says
’the whole world is in pain! the pain is good!’
it hurts
i know
but that’s good.
that’s how you know
that’s happening is worth it.
the pain - it’s a message.
follow it.

/

i feel fear like i’m
never going to be enough -
like
we’re all just
boats on an impossible
wave.
it’s as though
we’ve made a thick heat that
won’t ever
stop.

/

people
we are so good
when we go
together.

Jamie Oliver

What a hunk
The first man women were able to ask to get naked
in public
So approachable
He just gets it
you know
How busy this life can be and ergh
the kids
Zoom zooming around on his
scooter
Must be part Italian on that moped thing
Shame about the failure of
all those pop-up kitchens -
the weight of it all.
All that fresh produce
we never knew we had.

What the body says

Listen now to
what the body is saying;

this is what I want;
this is what I’m worth -

the elastic digs sharp when
you tug at it like that.

Fold over in the light and you’ll see
how the body is talking;

this is too much;
this is not enough -

when you look at me like that I know
what I have is no longer ‘it’.

In the negative spaces, you’ll understand
how the body is speaking;

this is filling me up;
this is tipping me out.

I’ve done all I can to make shapes
you hoped I could fit.

Horizontal and still, you’ll sense
what the body is meaning;

this is not talking;
this is feeling.

Nectar

You’re having a baby because the planets are in a line, the fruits are ripe, and you have always been a woman carrying everyone’s hearts in your hands. I saw you playing with one this summer and that’s when I knew it was coming for you; the luck and the nectar and the following of the bee. You call me, so soft and excited and I wait to hear how you’re breathing in the honey of it. Will we fit together? Is my life big enough yet? Will I be good? you ask and I say yes, there’s no doubt about it, and wait for more questions to come. But how is your heart? you ask in between earl grey sips: you are deeply invested, you say. So I tell you about falling in love like I’ve seen friends do, the same way it felt holding the yellow flowers at your wedding and you say go - follow it - you must - and I say I’m going, I’m going. Good, you say and I can feel you sink back a little on the couch. Your hand is on your belly as you speak and I can feel it kick.

Economy

The economy is failing and all the cars are selling cheap and hot,
sitting in yards behind rollers with their doors bolted down.

Soon after things will start really tanking and we’ll have to drive
them off cliffs like fat schools of slow lemmings falling.

The man lifts the hood and brushes the leaves off the motor like
I can’t see for myself. Cars are like women, he says. Plenty

of them around but not all of them are good. Ha ha ha. This one
here’s a good pick for you: small and not too powerful.

Travelling

This is what happens
when you leave -

you go out to the world
and abandon all hope

of who you once were.
She who came before

is not enough. It must all
be shaped again.

You step out into it and
the breath leaves the body:

the city it has no roof,
the days they have no end,

‘beginning’ takes on a new
form entirely.

And you begin and you begin
and you begin again. You

go out until you can reach no
further. Finally, it stops. You

come home and want to wrap
yourself around everything.

Unravelling

Hear now - how
everything becomes undone.

The police’ve come they’ve found the car,
his body’s intact but the bones, they’ve gone and broke.

The school’s just phoned and he’s shaved his head in
a boarding house fight from a dope-fuelled dare.

Saturday night and he’s in a river now,
skin burning, waiting for the helicopter to come.

Further away, Australia, and the phoneline’s crunching -
tractor wheels turning as everything goes under.

Slow motions, fast ones too. In an instant,
it was together. And in another,

it’s all come undone.

It’s not worth drawing it up, keeping track;
the flights you take, the bills you pay. The secrets

you keep. The credit running into red. You let it
run. You call him back. You say

come home and sleep,
we can unravel safely here.

People ask you how you’ve done it -
all those years of pulling threads back together again.

You are strong. Resolute. Sip your tea and say,
it’s good to break early, you say. It makes you real.

It makes you deep. You know what kinds of ghosts
can come for you if you think no one’s watching.

Mantra

It starts hurting
I lie down

I start fearing
I stand up

All the chaff blows into the wind

In summer I met up with a purple psychic in
her van near the park near where I grew up.

She took my hands and spoke of near misses
and close encounters around the lakes

and then she said -

when you have found the right place
your hand will slip into the glove and

it will just fit.

You’ll know what I mean.

Old self / new self

What’s it like, having made it this far? Do your legs hurt? Is your hair long? Does it feel like everything you hoped for? Did you ask for what you wanted? Command the answers to your questions? One night at a party you’ll go to the bathroom, look out the small window as it catches the sea in the waning light and remember this letter. You’ll remember youth and being so unsure and free and all those long feelings of waiting. You’ll smile, remember the sensation of your old skin. Touch your heart. Feel its spirit kick. Same breath. Same dreams. You’ll dry your hands quietly and return to the party where your friends sip from tall glasses on the deck in the warm air. On your lips, you’ll have the word ‘forever’. You are in this body forever.

/

I wish you knew how worthy you are of the things that are about to happen. Instead, I must bring you this advice in no particular order; beauty, in any state you feel it, is a privilege. Pain is a message. Listen to what it’s asking you to do. Let the wind in. Let it shuffle the papers of your life. Take time out of the surf for a while. Don’t underestimate the lessons that come from watching. Listening. Silence. We don’t always have to have something to show for ourselves. Come bare sometimes. Ask for help. You won’t always have your time in the sun – good – the universe needs its balance. In between the lights go back to quietly working, hoping, yearning. This is how the gods know you truly want it.

Write an Unromantic Sonnet

Excerpt as part of Inside Voices project

The worst thing about being asked to write about
something so clinical, so
unlovable
like

trying to find something at Bunnings Warehouse or
a 60% sale at Briscoes or
being abandoned in a foreign city as winter’s setting in
is that

the mind gravitates north
towards
hot places.
Bad memories.
Good feelings.
Stupid things
you’ve wished for,

all of which I’ve come to equate
with the feeling of
falling in love,
of diving back
into that wild surf
again and again.

Thank you.
Stop it.
More please.

Baby

Everyone’s always writing songs about
Californiaaaaa.

About Malibu and hotel lobbies and all the
girls that are from there.

When you get there something in you changes
and you can never go back:

you’re better than everyone else now.

You know what palm trees really look like. High heels at the gym. Weak drip coffee. Someone says yes m’am and you believe it. 

At 8 o’clock on a weeknight, you’ll find yourself in a vape shop on Abbott Kinney handing over your passport details like they don’t matter anymore.

They don’t. You’re here now. That’s all that matters. If you’ve been to

California then you’ll know

the feeling of abandoning who you are and chasing something else entirely.

You’ll own a linen suit and a rose gold pipe with lavender and CBD to suck on if you ever get in trouble.

Eventually

you’ll have to return home for business or a wedding or a funeral or worse - your visa will run out - and all you’ll have left is

ordering mezcal at a low-lit bar in Auckland. When the waiter sets down your drink you’ll take it in in your hand and say, ‘Thank you,

baby’.

Going round with the boys

Written as part of Inside Voices poetry project

in cars their parents bought them and pulling over to stand on the sidelines of their rugby games in our maroon netball uniforms wondering whether they’ll notice us and what we’ll wear to the party that night whether we’ll sit on couches or outside in the cold where more rugby will play and they’ll drink a box of Flame beer and we’ll have a four-pack of peach Archers and the private school girls will arrive in dresses better than we could even imagine and they’ll disappear into the dark and afterwards they’ll look through the window at us kissing a stranger and yell - she’s frigid as fuck bro – and then they’ll throw up on the lawn after getting a blowjob in the bush and tell everyone about it in maths class on Monday.

 /

older now and still going round with boys except they’re men which most of the time just means they have their own Head and Shoulders in the shower but there’s really only one I want to spend my time with and I hope it’s for a long time but how can we know anything for sure these days - despite this - he sends me flowers and even though the bouquet’s wrapped in two-tone yellow and purple paper I forgive him because some things can’t be controlled down the phone line plus the sentiment is one of the nicest things any man has ever done for me besides break my heart and introduce me as a lesbian at the jock party but the flowers eventually die and I throw them into the wheelie bin which is not a representation of how I feel these things just have to be done but it’s strange though isn’t - the ephemerality of physical things despite the depth of our feelings towards them – it’s good to remember how far you’ve come and how much that needs to mean.