Peeing over the clothes and luggage
Here come the elders
Cleanliness and outward appearances
The place is soaked in urine
Bedsheets and materials
Washed in urine
We can hear the elderly approaching
Their voices excited like parrots
The old faces close in on the door's window
Trying to get a look inside
Beating against the door
Their smiles and brows confused
A round genius
His twin calm
Math is flavor
Sarcasm is milk
Lives nextdoor to school
Academic mind
Witty comebacks
Laughing takes practice
Banking and science
Well spoken
Jokes and intellect
exclusive entrance
The right to pot belly
The right to feast on fruit
Optimistic sister
Waikanae whizz kid
The brick claw fruit from the massive tree.
Tastes like dates and marmelade
It looks strange brown and speckled
But it is one of the best fruits
The open broad t.v screen.
Eighties talk show controversial monotony.
Clown mouths and pseudo intellectual spectacles.
The channel doesn't change it's pushed in.
It got stuck in the panel desperate to escape.
A child had pressed it in one too many times.
Out the window where the eyes could get relief,
are distant pines partially submerged in hilltop mist...
all below a cloudy day.
Among those hills somewhere is an abandoned quarry.
The sky and the narrow valley repeat through the window daily.
The overcast days continue until they actually stain the mind.
The eyes wander back to the old box t.v, eighties talk show.
Civilized adjectives,
abandoned quarry.
Legendary gravestone skies.
That is a piece of me, mercy. That is a piece of my heart, mercy.
Have mercy on me please. Because it hurts and feels like it's all dying.
I beg to live, I beg to love. Let me live on.
Trust me this part of your life will be altered.
Uneasy conversations.
Obvious "correct" answers expected.
navigate love, loyalty, attraction, purpose.
identity as you live all at once.
One thing you'll remember from today.
Grateful for what I have,
happy with where I am going.
A strong place to stand.
Don't pretend to know the future,
Don't become paralyzed by uncertainty.
I am a feeling
only a feeling
This season will influence thoughts for years.
Partially because of love.
You're learning to see,
from a place of vulnerability.
Without losing your senses.
A difficult balance.
Many people spend decades trying to find it.
Observe your own heart
with the same curiosity
you observe the world with
Future brings change,
let it come because you've thought
You've acted out your values
Sick of being swept along by a passing emotion.
I'll walk alongside you
On this path
In this forest of your life
in these conversations
This morning I saw you stacking weights.
My sleepy eyes still opening.
I moved hesitantly toward you.
So much fear in me.
Noone has your face or your gestures.
Or whatever that is that I cannot pinpoint, radiating off you.
Certainly noone can bounce the way you do.
This morning my fear served me well.
For when your face turned and met mine,
I didn't see one smile.
I saw three.
Each one magnificent.
The first featured intimidating dimples and brow.
The second exposed your teeth and inner joy.
The third curled the lip and the vermilion border.
I felt pulled inward, as though every instinct leaned toward a kiss.
Your good-looking boyfriend was only metres away.
Even with him there, the pull remained.
I'd never seen three smiles in one sensual mouth.
This girl you are, blessing the morning with your three smiles in one.
I got the camera out
And I aimed it, what a way to get famous
Get my name out
but there was just brambles
The celebrity was so patient with me
As I fumbled my phone camera
Inverting the selfie
taking a photo of sticks
Of a dead tree
propped up against a mirror
The hardened fossil tongue of a dragon
And I never did get that photo
He had other stuff to do
Just what the identity needs
An excessively full agenda
A calender that fills the mansion wall
Celebrities like that are passing scenery
If you don't click, they just pass
The image as clear as it is
Catches dead sticks and old trees
Abandoned highways
fossilized dragon tongues
burnt out cars
Mirrors and defective cameras
screens hanging from lamposts
lopsidedly exposing parts we'd rather hide
disqualifying us from privilege
