No Goodnight
I can feel her love painting my face again,
Joy inviting me to dance.
I can hear her song again.
Burning newspapers
And a glass full of wine.
I said all I have to say.
That was yesterday.
News burns from another time.
The varnished floors
Are cracking,
Making love with the light.
Sparrows on the long train home.
Don’t kiss me goodnight.
I said all I have to say.
Don’t make me say it again.
An Unsent Letter
Where have you gone?
Edited in this line of text.
An unsent love letter to
Things as they should have been.
I’d prefer you here my friend.
I may not hold you like I used to,
May not lose myself in your thrusts.
But I’d rather you were here.
I don’t hold the thorns you said
In my side anymore.
Paint my face in your lies,
Fill my lungs with smoke,
Or walk the soft green grass
In stiff leather shoes.
Bare foot the green has become my soul.
A song to Papatuanuku,
A gentle caress
Of all that is true.
The truth that has no words.
Where Thinking Ends
I have seen where thinking ends.
The unbridled love that
That holds us all.
The criminal.
The police.
The children at school.
Parents.
Lovers and fools.
All scapegoats.
One and all.
Cursed by a view of black and white,
On screens painted at night
By the mind
In primitive flight.
Yet all held by our mother
Dear Papatuanuku.
Held in her forest of love.
I have seen where thinking ends –
In my heart of love.
I have learned
There’s nowhere to go,
No path to walk
Through forests dark.
Nothing to learn.
No stone to turn.
Only here.
Only this.
If I Could Take This Summer Back
If I could take this summer back.
I would sit inside and not go out.
Watch the grass growing.
Crystal glasses filled with wine.
A book of philosophy
Written in another time.
But, I’ve been out.
A dead moa on a concrete lawn,
Thinking the long way home.
I’m over myself and
Wondering whether there is a self
To get over,
To get through,
To forgive
For breaking the window
And sitting on the front porch
All night long.
To forgive
For pretending that my stuffed panda bear
Was truly alive.
A friend to confide in.
A friend to forgive.
But now the laughing voices in my head
Are nothing more
Than moas on a concrete lawn.
Nothing more than anger left
By other men.
If only
I could take this summer back.
After Fairy Dust
A sideways glance from the fairy.
Tick tock.
An answer by rote.
Taking a note to remember.
And then the words so elegantly said,
Forgotten by the door’s close.
Left beside Tinker Bell’s bed.
Only three seconds before the next minute.
And then it’s something more interesting,
More fun,
Time for lunch,
Time to go home.
These random thoughts, this play
Is no longer my own.
And now I’m waiting for
The beginning of time.
The time after fairy dust.
Banished
A thousand giant waves
Came pounding that day,
Came breaking through the walls
And my life.
The tide has turned now,
Washing my life out to sea,
Taking the beautiful garden,
That I tended so carefully,
Taking my home, my life.
I pray before I die,
Let me hear her
In the pounding waves.
Let me hear her
Through the wind in the trees,
And the cold that plays
Upon my fragile bones.
Let me hear her,
As I walk upon the stones
Towards my death,
Calling my name.
Yes, it’s her that I hear
Calling me home.