lover of the long skinny    you can’t move for fear of losing luck      hand over heart this is    the best place you have known     have always known you would leave

when did we change    Hackney squatters all our wordlies    strewn beside the mattress    walls painted an artist’s wild vision    the day beginning and ending     wondrous uncertainty

I am undone anew    by your beauty braid    of dark hair come loose from   Nepalese wool     you balance on ice beside    a ropetow anticipating the sharp    bite of contact

coal train    from the coast rumbling    by the edge of town    southern light butter-yellow    the mountains repairing above    Waimakariri’s many braids

is it any wonder    broken river tipping back    our heads to glorious heights    till the mountain a silver trick    pulls evening over    our goggled eyes

the sky lands for a moment burning    to white a farm roof     rises again humming     this belongs to me

today you will not talk    not share a sound    your mother raised birds   and your father played the organ     you leave by degrees dragging    each piece of furniture   from heart to heart

the mountains name infinity    in a hundred unknown dialects    valleys fill with afternoon shadow    your lover  like a captain adjusting    to the lurch  of telephone poles

we live by the sea read    the clouds as newsprint gathering    reports of blood-feud and wedding    sniff the salt air    when our fingers lose    their page

the past invents itself in each of us    we lie together spring rain    nostalgia  as a never-ending loop    only your eyes reveal     a perpetual present

in a Far East town perched    on stilts over permafrost   we photograph we video    horsemeat on the menu     ash flakes in the air    we cannot save each other

what divine chance set us down here       no language shared   bastard children of earth   crouching  below a wild bloodied sky     throwing spears at the  wings of shadow

drawn to the warmth of her    these personae in parallel   some things we’re good at others   we fumble and fuckup   the improvisation more    an idea than a habitation

anchor point for memory    an outhouse tardis against the white sky    we were drinking green    ginger wine in the snow

the town has gone    the cement works closed     the beach is a rotting polystyrene whale     memory shifts rocks in the quarry    breaks the back of belonging     belonging to the multiple dead

in narrow alleys the air    thick with voices portent fragments     many-coloured fire tongues    amid the sighing wind towers   at the time it seemed we were   waiting on the end of this world

the dredges have all but gone    the valley hangs a lone star    above winter’s door we follow   the headlights slalom climb    giving up our hearts to the mountain

gazing from  the window a milling    universe of dots  her icon’d face    passes from eye to mouth forty days    of mourning as the dormant fire     flares

sometimes it rubs you raw     scoria across the face    the creaking sadness in    your throat there is a leak    above your head  falling each    night on the pillow    between us

temporary communities    the breath of an idea    conversation stalled across   the pitch of a tent  dripping hedgerows shelter us    from Finistère’s  squall

this a footnote to    what we read by torchlight    each has their own version    ambiguous prose     one mortal collision heaped    on top of another

stashing my coin under her skirt     she spits twice on the ground grins     as I open my mouth  to speak      a hand covers it roughly from behind

turning grey from driftwood smoke    and incidental love     a mountain lesson in itself    left early    made good time

take me there to Popjusa     the festival of lanterns     black feet bare     worship    and small hope

on the neck two fingers of spring    collar to hair    a line at the edge of the eye

her breathing replicates    the wash of a lake   southerly rippling the edges   reminds of snow    a cadence  rising     Tarawera’s flanks

fortune is favouring the brave    not a day to be wasted    in a cast of a thousand extremities    your curled hair dances electric

in our divisible selves    we forget so that we can forgive    your heart emptied of desire    the city filling with daily reasons

we make up such memories   trust them with our lives    the children lean past our heads   through the windscreen they    want to see what we are seeing

the lamps of the city fall    on night as a band of thieves    a history of saints in the    mirrored walls emerald sky    the infinite relections of   heaven spinning a-wild

for someone else such things may be  complete    for you it lays with  first light    molten morning    for you a thousand times over