On Waiting for a House

 How I wish that that parched sands of waiting
Were elsewhere than the path pulling at my feet
If it could only rain, that I could slog through the mud of blessings
Or be swept away in landslides
A chance to rest my feet
To catch my breathe
And remain uncaught by step
After heart-heavy step
Into the unknown

They say faith is a leap
Then what is gravity
But crushing inevitability
That once you leave earth
The only way back is down

If I had four walls I'd wrap me in them like a cloak
And huddle
Anything but this endless middle
This endless muddle
In between myself
And the story my heart longs to say

And yet
Sometimes wilderness calls us
Because only in the gentle crunch
Endlessly eating at the future
Can fill your belly with need
With expectation

They say faith is a leap
But faith is really a pregnant belly
That you carry through heavy months
And when you put it down
You find in your arms 
More than you'd ever have words to hold anyway.

Same thing.

I would reinvent
My

Self

A thousand thousand times
In as many moments
As I can't

Stand

I would shake
My

Self

Biting with the teeth
Of my dilemma
And just shake this rat

Understanding

Violence yielding
Soft redemption
Tearing out new wholeness

Or
I would just reinvent
The

Wheel

God.

God is not a solution to your problems
He does not dissolve
He clings to the sides of each cup that he fills
And overflows onto your clean hands


God is not a gas
To fill every last space
God will contain himself
And won't push your walls without permission

God is not a liquid
He takes his own shape
Inside of every vessel
And invites you to join him
In the pool

God is not a solid
But his sharpness is unchanging
And his corners slice deeply
When you hold him with a violent heart

God does not fold you
Cleanly, crisply
Like an origami swan
Or crumple you for the wastebin
He turns you against yourself
Along unexpected lines
Without pinching the creases
He contains your uncontainedness
Your filled-but-empty space
Your drowning overflow
Your hardened resistance
And gives them grace to grow.

Take your breath
But do not keep it
Give it back
To Beyond
Where home
Belongs

You won't find happiness
Buried like bones in the deep earth
Of your pain
But perhaps in some idle
Unlooked-for corner
A bud unfurls
And finds your eyes instead.

Musings on Upheaved Markets and Downheaved Monies

When I watch the numbers fall
In my own wallet
And taste poorer air I'd sworn I put behind me
With each regular paycheck push

When I realised that savings
Are more noun than verb
And I dangle fretfully

A spider on a single silky thread

I see that in the balance

The world I hold is my own fragile creation

Dangling in the fickle breeze of entropy
Until at last my slippered grip falters
I fall upon gravity's sword
Only to find it a ploughshare

It isn't so much the distance
That divides us
But the distance
Within us
That holds on with trembling fingers
To the tiger
We daren't dismount

I am curled around,
Spun into myself
Engaged in unmaking
Of being unmade
I unfurl my hands
Against the universe
As if to halt the slipping sands
Or turn back the whole
Upon my axis
Only to be bitten by the gears
And curled against
The solid stuff
Which will hold no ears for argument

That which you seek

You will find

Has found its shape in you

I try
But I keep coming
In through corners
Or perhaps God
Disguised as my most
Unaccepted Self
Unwashed
Me
Of trying.

Sunfowers
Hang
Beneath the open sky
Breathing in the
Sun
Reaching through the invisible

Surprise

Go into your shining dark
Into painful transparency
Overwhelming insufficiency
Witness the without within

Be sufficiently inadequate
To gaze beyond the edges of yourself
To grasp beyond your reach
Only then to be
Held completely beyond your capacity
To behold

The danger of writing a sermon:
If you are to wield it uncallously
You must grasp it by the blade
Till blood names you hypocrite
In the eyes of all

I wasn't broken
I wasn't injecting anything into my body
But myself
Wasn't some addict curled up down in the composting vomit like some ghastly pale fern frond.
No I was curled like a fist around a smashed beer bottle, about to turn a brawl into something primal. A tightrope act stretching between action and reaction.
Action: the jagged arc of glass that holds only the fizz of falling anger
Reaction: the drops of blood that fall, and fall, and fall and fall until the thin line line hits the floor. And those watching shake their heads, and blame the law... The police man for not stopping it before... And leave themselves comfortably discomfited at the door. Ignored.

I wasn't broken.
I wasn't breaking anyone's rules
But myself.
I wasn't.
I was not.

But I could have been.
I could have been wide and long and deep as an ancient wood. Implacable. Immovable. Sucking up the waters of life be they ever so deep, be the heavens dry, come what may, and what may come... Is this - a crowd to the one Man not hanging back, who came through the door, became the door, hanging forward like a lean in time. A gravity the pulls and pulls my confessions out... and onto him. And into him like a spear in the side. Till he could bear it no more.

 Because there was no more. No more to bear. But to bear him down into the earth like an ancient seed buried in my shallow soil. And deep dreams for could have beens  and should have beens, and the green I know would grow if only I wasn't broken.

I wasn't broken
But he was.
And now the doors i locked are thrown open

Five

A planet can sustain life
Only if it centers its gravity on
Something greater
Burning with invitation
Stretching out the great across
Separating "I" from "other"
Bowing an axis
That leans
Like a gentle wind
Into the breath of life
Declaring "us".

Real beauty
Can only be chiseled
From the jagged stone
Of 'is'.

How much of prayer

"God change things so I don't
have
 to choose
Rearrange things to a
 simpler
 kind of truth
Move the icebergs from my way
Till there's no more sink
Or swim
Please don't let the bad choice 
in

Four

I'm not very good at this,
I'm so far behind
Crumpled on my tiny bed
Like last summer's green
How can I find rest and peace
By surrendering the search?
I just want to do it right
So I'm not very good at this.

I remember
when God was so big
He could blot out the clouds
And stand
With His back to everything
And not be afraid

I was smaller
Less compressed
Had not yet forgotten
Which way tears fall
And my yearnings gazed forwards
Instead of the mess behind

Three

Stacking up
Horizontally
I try to find the being unfound
As minutes condense
Weighting
The thinness stretched
Over my tiresome limbs
Tracing circles
On the sheets beneath
Stacking up
Seconds
Until I am found by unfinding
In accidental surrender
Of gently closing eyes.

Sadness

Sadness is not a puzzle
To be solved
By slotting each jagged piece
In just the right place
Grabbing all the edge bits
And leaving the vague till last

It is a broken thing
Waiting
For the making new
A mosaic of jagged pieces
painstakingly placed
By trial and error
Into a picture that
Breathes and stretches
as it gets made

Always resisting the urge
To rebuild what once was broken
These razor edges resist
The anesthesia
Of forgetting their birth


It is standing at the tomb of an old friend
And calling the unknown to rise.

Two

She hides her rage well
Down deep
It leaks into the water
Strains into the aquifers
Creeps into the buckets
To spill with heavy wetness
When her moments start to shake

She hides her rage well
Behind questions too big for asking
"Where?! Where!? Why!?"
Snapping in the wind of her mind
Like a tattered flag
Lost on a battle field
Where is the king now?
Why has he been gone so long?

Some things I found in my diary

Sometimes I forget
How to go places with my feet.
Or without them.
Or within them.

..

To be Samson
And push
On the pillars of injustice.

..

One

Blessed

Like the bleating ram

Fluffed and fattened

Finding its way to an unknown altar

I went to count them

But they

Had slipped away

When I lay down

Doubt
Lets the colours
                          run
Lets the ink unglued
                          become undone

Acceptance

Acceptance is not for the acceptable

What need have they for it?

Where would they keep such a thing?

There is no room in the inn.

No, acceptance is for the unlovely

The tattered and diseased

A gift to those whose pockets have room enough

Because they are so full of empty

The Vague

Every time it gets me

Folds me up inside

Creases up my spaces

Until everything tears

We who burn to shine and yearn to climb
Bright towers where dragons do not lie in wait
No
Do not wait do not pause
To take in the sights.
To turn out the lights.
Take out the trash.
Preplan the flights.
What's the rush? Everything!
Stacked like dominoes in a Jenga Box
Poised for tumbling when the music stops

Burn to shine to forget the time
Forget ourselves
For one bright moment
Where we flow like stars
In our own galaxy

When you were different
On the day you were made
Ideas pressed together
Into soft papered flesh
There you breathed
Though you had no lungs
Or air to do the breathing
And no exhale marked an end
Or marred the wholeness
Of perpetual inhalation
Gulping in raw connection
Like a black hole
Like a sponge
Like the first unblink of a newborn
When you were different
On that day, before you made
Your first exhalation.

Silent Retreat

God struck me
So that I rang like a bell
And all my joints ached with fatigue
Yet it was not God who struck
For God was not there

God stirred my dreams
Like some vast prophetic vat
Bubbling thickly against the surface
Yet it was not God who stirred
For God was not there.

God ran His hands through my pain
Till its eddies shimmered drowning rainbows
Till they too were lost
But it was not God's hands
For God was not there

God came to me in the silence
In the stillness between thoughts
And held me within eternity
But it was not God who held me
For God was not there

God stood still on a lonely hill
As the Wellington breeze tore at the weak winter-sun warmth
And watched unmoved as I died
Yet it was not God who watched
For God was there already

Until you speak to the silence in me
I shall never hear its voice

I chased my shadows
And became the sun

Hope is seeds of our selves sown in secret soils.

The Big Bad Wolf

.....
My what big eyes I have,
All the better to trick you with
My what pretty smile I have,
All the better to fool you with

Ahh little one with your hood so red
Just wait till you see me in bed
I'm gonna huff and puff
And fuck up your life instead.

Trust is for the desert
Putting down waiting roots
Straining through the cracks
That none but the mirror sees

Trust is for the desert
Where the stones are bread
And angels wait to catch me
And yet I must say no

Trust is for the desert
Where I can find no green within me.
Though I wander forty years
The seeds refuse to sprout.

Trust is for the desert
Where distance is measured
Against the landmarks of my shame
And always I must measure again.

Trust is for the desert
Search for a God
No longer found in fire or cloud
No longer heard in whispers.

Trust is for the desert
Against the grain
Against the rain
Yearning for the green again.

There is a strength in open doors
That cannot be found in walls

I wear these scars

Beneath my skin

Easier than believing

That it won't hurt

When the light gets in

Editing Photoes

I can't fix you
These calloused fingers
Don't reach deep enough
To unmake, unshape
And tear the holes right out

I don't want to fix you
And leave you less
Than the sum of your pains
To burn away your shadows
I'd kill your light.

I'm not fit to fix you
Because​ youve not been broken
Just rewoven, recoloured
To tell a richer tale by far
Than bland perfection.

Sadness
Like a cheeseburger
Hastily assembled
Gradually sinking
Into the grease stained paper plate
Less appetising
Even as hunger grows

Bring your heart like a wolf to the water

I could chase her like the thoughts
That whirl my head
Or catch her in a moment
Instagrammed and frozen
Open to the words of her
That wend a weary way
Between our distant worlds
But still the hope that lies between
The clutched and the let go
Needles up my chest
As it dies
As it does
Every single day.

How curious to breathe
While still being held in so many ways.

Afraid of Ice

Under pressure
You melt
Then run

This was going to be a piece
Where I expunged the flickering flame of sadness
That fickle prickle lurking
Whenever I take my shoes off
And show you my weird ankles
Or how that nail never quite grows right
But its OK sometimes
When pain slips through the callouses
And sticks between my toes
I may limp for a while
And keep my laces done up tight
But every wincing step reminds me
Barefoot freedom on the grass
Is worth this prickle price

When a sadness grips me
Asking what I'm letting go of
Is as good as any other tissue.

Thoughts on What I Need at This Juncture

I need these trees
Which reach down beneath the bones in the garden
And hold something steadier than the dip of twilight
I crave their rough and honest skin
Questioned by relentless Wellington weather
Answering in gentle unyielding bends

I need something
On which to pin my insides
Unfurled in all their flagging strength
To bravely wave when Northerlie rage
And rip at the ragged ends of me

I need a thought
Not my own crumpled creation
One whose breath reaches back to lost Gardens
And bids muck and dust to rise

In being
Fiercely wedded
To may never be's
I
Calculate the distances
Strip away the facts
Use the branches for signal fires

In the morning animals will come
And simplify my sleep
Until then I'm trapped in my pillow
I guess

I wish I could tell you,
That wishes were the shape of things
But reality is sharp at the corners

An Onion's Reflection

If you peel all my layers back
I will cry

When
Flittering, skittering
Tentative, Hesitant
A single shoot stretching
Through so much old snow
A remembrance of things
At once too green to be of this place
And yet too vulnerable for elsewhere

Breaking
Ice beneath summer's slow touch
I feel the irregularities of each pulse
And find your echo
Still haunting these fragile vessels
Trembling
Unafraid of spiderwebs
Lest fear should snatch my balance
And I miss you
Before you've even gone.

Something stirs
Far below these burns

Words slip
Like a roof after rain
And I,  a moment between
Footing and falling
Hang
In the plausible deniability
Of your smile.

As easy as breathing
Or
Tough as a soul's dead roots
I hang
On the branches between
Saying nothings
And
Not saying anything
Just to see your voice
Or live upon silence

I wonder where the green shoots lie?

Sometimes when I miss you
I feel a sadness
And wonder if its yours?

Forgetting
Is the speed at which you find yourself

In my worst moments
I am filled with such tininess
So as to cage the breath of Infinity
Within barred pain
Forgetting
He who trampled prison's gates
Who snapped the shackles
To his own wounded wrists
And called me to take up my cell-bed
And rise.

These are the wounds that wear me.

Repentance:
Standing in the same boots
Wearing your heart backwards.

Stop
I will peel off my mind
A silent apology
For forgetting
My identity's skin

Humanity's primal ache
To be bulletproof.

Flatten myself against
The doors of chance
And hope against
A chin-catching sudden swing

When I am afraid
To even know my knowings
Or hold them up to shine
A terrored future
Wordless yet unsilent
Is only ever mine.

I pile myself in coils
Each found upon itself
Placing with-out within

Every day
A dream runs through
Like a river
Cold enough to steal my breath
And waken shivers

I hope
This windowed corner
In the room
I inhabit, holds space enough
For waiting soon.

Such a privilege
To hold anything
Long enough to dream

Every Man's Home

With enough bricks
Piled neatly around
Determined in place
Unshakeable
Unbreakable
Untameable
Holding up the sky
And back the tide
And away the night

If every moment
Is sterilised, border-checked
Quarantined
It's Fine
It's Under Control.
It's Handled

Every heavy second holding
Every brick in place
Only then there is space
For

Me

At times I confess

Your eternity
Stretches too far from me

... and dance upon the breath of the world

Growing old
Is watching the world you inhabit
Slowly be forgotten

To strive
And so to shake
The universe
Myself
Apart

It's no Biggie. Just Waking up.

Mine are the dinosaur dreams
Flush with impending skies
I pour myself into the mattress
To pop and crackle through the night.
Finally scooped, soft and unpalatable
When tomorrow finally opens the spoon drawer
The crispness of horizontal musings
Is mush in my stomach.
I place myself against the earth
And push

It wasn't in the eddies of the hour 

Or in the chair that shook the floor

Or through the heart that carries my insides around

But in the intentions of the moment

That I first caught your smile

Without crushing its wings.

I find that money carries you

Amongst the stones and stars

Forever 

In every direction

On Confrontations of Magnitude

Brief are the bridges

Fording our between

We tip-toe in and out of realising

Like the trolls beneath

Have ears for hearts

And fear never really carries you outside the door

Tall are the mountains

I've seen your good side

Where the rain keeps you evergreen

But what lies beneath

Have you heard?

I'm not myself anymore

Long are the hours

Between each setting sun

To pay the paper payment brings

Someday the bank will let me go

I'll find you just behind your eyes

Like old times

And I'll tell you things I didn't know

Different like it was before

Oh for the unknown feet
Fresh, unshoed callous-free
Soft to see
The puttied earth asqueeze
Between a hand of toes

Would then walking be
Full with feels and grass-roots sights
And run so feather-light
As to fly one leg at a time?

Would the virgin thorn
Or unwashed bottle chip
Cut so deep I'd forget to clot
Softly naked
But not fleeing from
The Man who walks the evening.

Thoughts on an Assignment

They say that God is full of huge places

That he stitched up this universe with a breath

But still stands in hallways

Waiting for the last doors to creak closed

I opened the fridge, to see

If the light still comes on when I’m hungry

Or if that too is swallowed up

By a stomach too empty to feed

He’s no Zeus’s lightning, but still

He is loudest in my distances

Shaking my desk awake

When words threaten to wash me clean

Away

I still stand at the universe’s edge

Peaking within the cumulus

For any hall-ward door

Seeking my own stitching sigh

These subterranean dreams
Help me keep my feet on the ground
And the ground over head.

The Comedian

I hear Robin Williams

Lost the fight against himself

Yesterday

They say lime-lights

Tug on every crack and crevice

Till you’re terrified of laughter.

Lightning wit to brighten lives
A thunder clap in silence

Everybody knew Robin

Made-up for the camera.

Some kind of super hero

Who prowled his unlit streets

And beat up bad guys in the mirror.

Mine is fated
To question Fate itself
And tell the time
That I am no man's fool

Perichoresis

How to be still

And yet to move

Feet and hands and voice

Not lost but found

Entwined with Anothers

How to give

And yet receive

To breathe mountains

And fill valleys.

Is the way straight and wide?

Or do I dangle in orbit

Hopelessly outmatched

Before the luminous Son?

How to feel with phantom limbs

Cut off since that first forbidden fruit,

To press God-sized fingers in the clay,

Feel the music carry me away

Only to find that I’ve been away this whole time

And these are the arms of the Prodigal Father.

We're not orphaned, lost inside the rain
We just forgot to wander back again
Heavy eyes and heavy sighs
Home is where you hang goodbyes

I shall find you
My brightest diamond
And rescue me
From the clay

Adrift

Every
Single
Moment
The fulcrum of eternity.
I find
Myself
Unhinged

We drank our own little corner of the sky
Each man an island
A drift
A ponder sea

The winter leaf
Was the last
Who's held breath
Hoped beyond autumn.

I walled myself
Against the cold
Careful not to crush him
With my winter boots

Take me away butterfly
Struggling feebly against the gentle breeze
Ever victor more than I
Trapped beneath these fraying sleeves

We were giants when the world was small

Cold and sweet like an arrow

Justice in the meadow grass

Flowed beneath the eaves

We sheltered for the storm to pass

Beneath that one dead tree

Unhinging the wet, sharp jaws

Of hypothermic leprosy 

You spoke as if to calm the wind

To bid farewell it's furious life

The storm, the tree, and you hung still

Heaven's soft son, to die.

They say it's cold in Neverland
That stretch between stars
Where time forgets its watch.
I'm glad you invited me inside.

I will end my search
And with one word
Begin it again

A Dream

I opened you up along your perforation
And polished all your edges with toothpaste
Turn back once more, if you'd care to wish
I am only soul and hands and this
A photo of you I stole. To cherish
When you weren't looking

I long to be in the light
Not because
I am shadow-child no more
Just simply
Because you are.

Clouds are Coming (These are Happy Words)

Melodies have shaken off their silence

Lost and beautiful no longer

Gone is the burn to swallow the sun

I feel at my warm, tattered fringes 

And curl like mist insides

I will not always be
But for now I am

To climb from the muck
On a ladder of grease

To challenge the insignificance
Of each and every day
Toy soldiers lined up smartly
Waiting for the bombs to fall

Footprints rough the road ahead
Each crater cut to my measure
Back from finding another nothing in the wilderness

Sadness' sleepless measured tread
Musts a run to stay ahead
Wandering feet on wearied legs
Heavy hearted hooded head
Only movement keeps me dead.

Live whatever you will say
Together we will pay
Being free is so expensive
If the time is running dry
And days are running by
I'll tell you all my wildest plans. If
Truth be told and lies be sung
And all is just begun
The ending's not a thing to not give.

Inchoate

So full of half-filled shapes
Fit to bursting with inchoate
Longing for a moon
That is no moon
Just a harbour-thin reflection
On a rippled dinner plate
I could
Sew these ragged dreams to riches
But such half-spun mists
Hang much too soft
To carry all my future-weight.