That Jiggy prestige

 The pub disco has been going for fifty years.
When the uniforms were brown and yellow.
The food had no taste, the whills were wild with animals and dense forest.
I pulled the photo of the school principal from that time.
A bald headed middle aged man that matched the man standing infront of me.
Still jigging to the seventies music.
Still trying to inspire the shy teenagers, pushing them to get up and dance.

Using his stupid incentives and everything was done to get them on the dance floor.
Everyday liquid from the same spiked punch bowl.
Prom lab fix attempts at that maximum prestige.
Nothing changes and the clock resets to a sunny six pm as they all arrive.
The music didn't change, the silly vehicles toing and froing.
Nothing existed outside of the obligation to dance.
The bar in this reality is now a real estate brokers.

But in the dimension it sits in, it is the senior graduates nonstop Prom dive.

Holiday at altitude

 Afternoon in Cunha 19 of April.
Sunny picturesque cloud surrounds the far hills.
Eyes always seek somewhere else to be.
But just be here in this grass.
In this hobby rolling holiday headspace.

But there it is again a far off forest.
A house on the side of the hill.
Distracting the immediate blue.
Westerly comes in conspiring with autumn shade.
I would like to know myself after a thousand years of existence.

I see these hours and days floating away...
I see the way the sun mocks me in the sky like that.
He knows he'll stay active and potent for eons.
The westerly bites again I put my jacket on.
There's some magical place for each nostalgic notion. 

Door handle mountain Curupira

 Run down Door handle mountain.
What am I but a climber.
All the way back down Curupira style.
Backward legs gloating.
Showing off and heavy breathing growing.
Moving inward and outward.
Further down the door handle.

Mountain saved no views for me. 
So I skipped down the beast alternatively,
Door handle shaking in the knee.
As other hikers look on in horror.
Slipping curupira backwards.
What a monster inside me screaming to get out.
All backward and nasty from the mist freeze. 

Mist flowing up and down mountain round,
breeze amused inside and out of altitude trees.
I jog backward in that groove,
Rhythm, shadow, speed.
Beats the wind,
beats the looming rocks.
The root of the mountain can feel the abnromal foot falls.

Ankles and knees tighten on the concrete pavers.
Clapping smile of a mist dancing Curupira.

Newspaper boy in courtenay place

I was walking down Courtney Place 1983.
Part of me was a child on the coast.
The other part worked selling newspapers in Wellington.
Everyone was talking about David Bowie visiting.
The majestic Michael Fowler center was being finished.

Cranes were working and it looked like something would actually grow.
Uneven steps and crowding hills awkward buildings align.
Mirrors everywhere so New Zealanders could look at themselves.
But who were they anyway, lost Colonists and Maori at the foot of the world.
Some vestige of imperial greatness the got smoothed out by salt water?

It grew slowly and collapsed a few times.
In march of 83 the Royals came to visit. Bringing their children.
With space and privacy to bask in the sun on their picnics.
Muldoon was fighting to get the reigns inside the beehive.
Things were on the whole unstable, but appeared stable.

Geraldo Dining

 The first thing he does when he gets to the restaurant is go to the bathroom.
It's Geraldo people say it's his age but we know he's been doing it for years.

He doesn't sit at the table, adjust his cutlery and napkin.
He doesn't look at the menu, he just loiters in the bathrooms.

Medicines and liquids unpacked near the basin he looks up to the mirror.
He won't order his food, he won't come to the table.

He just remains in the bathroom there, anxious and unwilling to exit.

His face was the road

 Fading head of hair.
Shocked to still be alive.
Sat down to play breakfast.
Folk wisdom spat out.

Blurting everything out.
anything floating behind the eyes.
His girlfriend 20 years his junior,
remained hushed.

His clear eyes searched the external for sanity,
focused the eyes became beady.
He sat there vacuum cleaner exhausted.
Telling his life story. 

He was a car slowly running out of gas in a rough dirt road.
Abrupt and inapropriate at every bump to the wheel.

The mother ignored

 I heard her story 
Full of frustrating details
Her face said something about being ignored.

She sought kindness but also intimacy
She was to give herself to another man to recieve that energy.
Unsure of where it would take her and if it would satisfy.

For her life as it stood was work and children, both she loved.
And her life was full of love, good enough for gratitude.
But without affection life has no reward.

The weekly slog was dread married on paper but a functioning widow.
She didn't look for a way out or let herself fall.
All she could do was force herself to focus on the shame.