Translate

Friday 16 November 2012

peeling

I am peeling 
My arm, that I cooked with bio-oil,
(trying to remove scars)
Was tanned brown for a
Day
Now it is peeling: new pink skin
Under the flakes.

The same as the rest of me
Burnt
Trying to remove our scars
I am been walking around red
Hot and aching.

Now things have cooled
The burn has settled
And I am peeling

New pink growth coming out underneath.

Monday 5 November 2012

flame fingers (white hot in the hurtcentre)


Right now
I am an unfocused
Blowtorch

I turned myself up and up
So that you would feel me

You went farther and farther
Away

Until my flames couldn't
Even touch your fingertips
Couldn't even kiss the back
Of your neck as
You look away from me
To planets that
I can't see

(Whose names trip
My tongue because
They are not my clan
Name)

In your absence
I burned harder,
White hot in the hurtcentre,
Orange tendrils reaching
Out to find you and,
Finding not you, to
Hold anyone they touch.

But my tendrils are
Still flames;
The harder I grasp
The more they burn

People are, maybe,
Initially attracted to the heat,
They step closer wanting
To warm their cheeks.
When they see how ready
I am to engulf them

(To burn them up
Because they
Are not you)

They step quickly
Back opting for
Less intense
More predictable less
Deadly heat.

I will take myself up to
The top of a mountain
With oxygen to feed my flames
And space to spit my hurt
And stars to dance with
Stars to stretch my flame fingers out
To
To hold

Stars that will not run away

Thursday 1 November 2012

Up to the seaweed sky


Up to the seaweed sky
(Thank you to Ruthieheart
And the Heyns family for seaweed in the sky)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------


"Choose," he said, "Magic or safety?"
she smiled.
"I choose Sky" she said,
"and Strelitzias"

Sky fish (plum-coloured triggers, crimson-breasted clowns) and
sea birds (Picasso waxbills, teardrop-butterfly kites) in the starcloud
sea

 "Choose," he said, "Tomorrows or yesterdays?"
she twirled.
 "I choose Pink" she said,
"and circles"

Water trees (jacaranda necklace and fever kelp) and
 Cloud corals  (stag-horn cumulus and great-star cirrus) in the tidepulled
sky

"Choose," he said, "Hope or truth?"
She glowed.
"I choose Silence" she said,
"and openings"

Seabed flowers (pebble snowdrops and volcanic chrysanthemums) and
Precipitation molluscs (hail oysters and mist ammonites) in the moon-wrapped
sea

"Choose," he said "Forward or roots?"
She floated.
"I choose Up" She said
"And angels"

She floated Up
And

Up

Through the seaweed sky.

Monday 17 September 2012

love myself warm

i feel myred
in pasts

(this is my
work
too, to make sense
out of this
mess)

i want to scrape
myself clean
below naked

to scrape off
all these boys
their dreams
that i
nutured
their nightmares
that i soothed

their shape of
seeing the world
that i wrapped my head
around
and around
until
i got dizzy because it was not my shape

i want to spit their
saliva out of my mouth
and wipe their sexstains
off me
and not
hold all this as sacred history

i want to put it into a dance
that i can stamp into the soil
and restore some
rhythm
some balance
to my life

i want to trust my own weight
and gravity
to know that if i do this
i will not simply melt off
after the next one
land in his lap until
i make myself crazy again

i want to sit, sucked into the
soil,
to feel my heart and
hold myself down with my fingers
until my nakedness speaks for itself

and any smile i have is
genuine. until
i am no longer frozen under glacial layers
of pasts and pasts

and when (if) you come to me
my hands movement (to take
yours, to hold it)
 will be my own

and i can love myself warm
(not through the glaciers)

Friday 11 May 2012

Karoo stone

If I could remake myself
I would build myself
From 
karoo stone

Like the hills through
The 
karoo

Striped sandstone balanced
On each other
Left over from millionsyearsold silt

Everything that died and was reborn
In silt
In dirt
Has settled in that rock

I would choose pebbles for my toes and
Work up
Make sure there is greengrowth
Between them
And balance 
stone on stone

For legs I will choose ones with
Stripes like muscles
Slicked with rain
And stronger than I could be but with
Enough bend in them to smile
At my knockneed truths

I will work a round 
stone loose from
A round mountain head for
My belly
Where I will feel fishspirits and rain
Spirits mixing in the 
stone

I won't build arms.
I won't need them. The land
Will hold me and my holding will
Be felt through my stillness

My head will look precarious
Like one adventurous mountaingoat
One good storm
Could dislodge it
That precariousness will make people
Recognise me.
Will be a sign of unexpected strength
Of blessing
Of hope

And like this
Layered 
stone between
Crust and sky
I will sink into the land
Rewrite my rhythms into
Thousands
Each heartbeat governed by
Daynight swing

And I will spell my poems
Out through stars

Sunday 15 January 2012

Quaking

Why is everything
so earthquake-like?

(Ogre-like)

Flicking from dream to 
nightmare-like


just when I think I 
understand the quaking
and have learnt to ride it


you change the rhythm 
of your stamping

and I lose my 
Feet my head my sense
of gravity 

(again)

Friday 13 January 2012

In heartbreak

You barely exist right now
You are
Transparent.
Your words soft
And weightless, floating up 
Somewhere less painful as 
Soon as they escape your mouth

And every muscle on your 
Face says you wish you could
Join them.
Float and be nothing. Silent
and no longer attached, no longer
Flinching at every beat of some one
Else's heart.

I wish I could help you. Float you
With helium balloons (the ones we'll walk
Round the zoo for your sister's babyshower
Tomorrow)

Only lightly tied to the earth
In heavenspace, safe
For the light
And the healing