The woman from the dairy’s gone.
I watched her from my window
each day at one
pull a milk crate out and
sit on its side, eyes
closed, face into the sun
while the rest of Dom Rd
tried to swallow her whole.
In all my emails and all my
days I have never seen
anyone so serene.
two beers in and
i’m already missing
our old escapism.
so white, isn’t it -
string bikini lines and
forcing strangers to fall in love
with us.
there we were
speeding down the coastal line from lisbon
thinking,
i could die any minute now,
yet here i am.
saturday night
alone and
i’m back there missing
drinking cava in my underwear
with you,
that bone friend
you dream of having
all your life.
smoking hash on a balcony somewhere
over a shimmery canal,
neighbours jealous
of our architecture
which was nothing really just
open windows
and bare feet
let in through the front door.
eighteen months since
i saw you last and it
sets in
heavy.
mostly when the sun hits my life
in a certain way and that
ephemeral fire
flies through.
that’s what it is though right -
that’s what
togetherness
is.
that shaft of light. despite
everything else.
there it goes again
that impossible rainbow
dripping in your hands.
In the nurse’s room for a blood test at 7.05.
I’m a fainter, I warn,
and she slides the needle in.
The blood leaves my body,
my body falls apart.
I can be brave about everything.
Everything except this.
The room sucks in and in a jewelled
fist she grabs my hand and says —
you are not a chicken.
You are a sword.
You make me feel like I could stand in line at Harvey Norman
on Boxing Day to buy a smart watch.
make a good life
find friends
talk to them often
take the calls and step out of the restaurant
look back through the window and see your life.
make secrets
keep as many of them as you can
throw the rest over the bridge
most of it doesn’t matter
if it does
it will make a good story to tell over chardonnay in the future.
write emails to people you wish you’d met
dm your ex
back and tell them to disappear
dm your crush
fall in love
fall out of things
give up on nothing
give up on everything
start again.
forget that everyone is talking about you
because
no one is talking about you
and when they are
the universe is not
rewarding you either way
as my father says before he hangs up the phone to me,
‘be good’
as prince charles would say
‘whatever that means’.
go back to the bridge you threw your secrets off and see
if anything else can be let out -
the bones rattling in the cage
the paper weights
from times you took too many leaps
believed in too many sunsets
and movie endings
and clean hair virtues.
believe in nothing except for
making your own luck because
everything is energy
after all.
it goes round in circles.
watch it come back to you.
don’t buy too many things but
make sure the ones you get
make you feel good
try to figure out the difference
between the two.
think about the environment
every day -
let it keep you up at night but
make sure you get enough sleep.
don’t forget the stupid courage of
tangible sentimentality
half-drunk moments when the truth
is let it out.
write it down
hold it in your hands
send it to where it needs to go.
in your lunch break
in line for sushi
it will come to you:
there’s a dream out there
you’re trying to chase
does it exist?
whatever you think -
you’re probably right.
It’s taken me a long time
to get me to this point.
Please don’t ruin it.
Please make it better.
- hairdresser
You can walk home at night knowing you’re not going to get murdered
Jacinda turns the Beehive into a creche for marginalised babies
Sanitarium changes ownership and is run by entrepreneurial homeless
Men have to pay higher tax for a week every month
Every time Briscoes has a sale you get a holiday
Everyone loses most of their money for a year in their life before getting it all back
Anyone who owns a porche has to ride a bike instead
Women get the right of way on the road
Rainbows must legislate straight marriage
Nurses get a bonus when they save a life
Bad marriages are forced to break up before they get worse
Millionaires can only tell the truth
Wolf whistling at girls from cars hasn’t been invented
‘Man-sized’ anything was never thought up
F45 was bought out by a community gardening initiative the second it was invented
You can lie about your rental history and no one can dispute it
Parties exist and you only get tired if you want to
If you really believe in manifesting it comes true
Ex-boyfriends have to stand trial for misbehaviour
All the elephants in the world still have their tusks
Social welfare is just called welfare
Housing estates are where you find the best restaurants in the world
You can’t get the wifi password if you’ve never lost someone
All I want
is for you to be
over
so I can get
to what lies on your
other side.
These days - it seems
all I’m able to think
about.
back in my hoodie you
beautiful beast
wrapping me up in the loose folds
of my misspent
youth.
those wishful waves they
roll back in like
no time has ever passed -
fifteen again
air plucking on my bedroom floor
to sufjan stevens yearning
after someone or
some
wished-up future where
i’m living beneath a blue-spaced
sky somewhere
new
owning no responsibilities
for my life
just
some lip smackered dreams of
an endless future and
being behind the wheel to
and drive and drive and drive -
what a fucking
relief.
what we know we can have
what’s within our reach
what’s just beyond that
what we yearn for
what’s impossible
what we’re told we can’t have
what’s taken away from us
what we read online
what we believe anyway
hard work, good luck, deep love,
soft fortune, safety, freedom,
relief, pleasure, pain
how quickly things can change
i just want to
binge watch harry potter on a white wine hangover
with you
drink tea in bed
spill it on your white duvet and not wash it for a week
pike on the party and
hang out instead
guzzle iced coffee from the dairy in the wind and
wipe your mouth with the back of my hand with the
romantic conviction of
rachel before she met ross
i want to
run into ex-boyfriends
buying dunhill blues at chaffers new world with you
go home and stay
up late talking about bad memories like
the ends of tv shows
with no episodes left to play
i want to
call in late
miss deadlines, skip birthdays, let friends down,
go out of town with my phone on silent,
slip beneath the blue waves of a surf beach and float away from reception
like a brochure selling rarotonga honeymoons
i want to
write dumb poems about head and shoulders shampoo
and hide them in your bathroom for you to find in the shower mist.
at night we’ll
walk up the steep hill to your house with our bare hands
in each other’s pockets
catching colds with wild abandon
like it was you who invented the flu injection
and a car of youths will drive past and laugh because
they’re lucky idiots
i want
all these things and i want them
with you
they’re promises i’ve been made
and no one’s been able to keep
it’s
cashing in cheques when the economy’s failing
and everyone’s getting married
and breaking up
or playing jack johnson at their wedding while beirut is burning
and you, there you are –
amongst the embers
and the bogans DMing me on instagram and the
IRD alerts
and the burnout gender reveals and the
wheat and the chaff
with your arms in that red jacket
calling my name.
My friends file through the front door one by one
each carrying their hearts in their hands,
eyes wide,
Munch mouths open.
Six heartbreaks, one week.
Love -
what a sham. Roll me in a raincoat
and throw me in the sea.
But the only way through is through,
so we open up a hotel for the night
to host the chalk-white abandonment that seems
so achingly familiar,
to drip green melon schnapps onto their
wounds and slice lemons for drinks to
slosh over making sense of
everyone’s mess. There’s such a
heavy poetry, don’t you think,
in the way we can be cut in half and how
we must piece ourselves back together again.
We leave things behind to find
the buried parts of ourselves.
We break things up
to see how good we really are at
mending. It’s all a test. A long one at that.
So we turn up the music, slip-dance on the
rug on our living room floor,
remind each other that soon, somewhere
in the impossible future, we’ll all be filled
up by something else. We keep
saying this and sipping til the sun’s
coming back up through the
winter mist. And then it’s time
for everyone go back to the mazes of
their own lives. The lights that are no
longer on. The elbows that are now empty.
My eyes, they’re heavy and I think of you
as I click the front door shut, slide into my yellow
sheets and open up a message to say –
everything’s on fire and yet, here you are.
Love. It it comes back.
Oh you thought this was a poem about
the clear sea and the
bright sky and the
road winding out to rejuvenation.
How escaping things just
’opens you up’ again.
No –
This is just a poem about going.
We can’t wait for clarity to come.
The world burns and rises again.
And time, well, it just keeps going.
All we can do is move with it.