Wellington
She smiles a smile so sweet, but the bleachedness of her teeth set her aside
The sparkle in her eyes so vivid, but shadowed by her frown
Her laugh a titter, it sounds
Bitterness impounds her words like a car clamp
As she clamps her lips to yours, as soft as plastic that has turned brittle
Her heart shatters when she doesn’t look
But he looks so happy without her
Her falseness continues
And she spews forth a titter tatter
Her heart a torn rag, paint splattered
Her words elegance lost
Conversational track creates commotion
And she’s precariously balanced between loneliness and insanity
But it’s all the same
Her verbal salinity is mixed with her fluid grace as she moves across the floor
Still he doesn’t look
Her eyes are hooks
And he’s hooked – by her charm
It’s a sham, she’s a broken woman
Her voice trembles and his is a treble
Still he never looks
But her cloth heart is tattered
And she’s still fishing
Her heart is metal, rain battered
Her eyes are hollow, her soul is itching
When he walks from the room
Her life gets a little darker
Roll the Dice
I’d sell my soul 9 times outta 10
But I already sold it,
And I aint getting that back again
So I give my pound of flesh
again, again and again.
People got a soul doin’ worse things than I am
Never had a hand so calloused
While the others couldn’t care less,
it’s callous.
And there’s jubilation in my illation,
for I
Couldn’t create a creation -
Without a soul.
And in drawin’ my conclusion we see…
I’d sell my soul 9 times outta 10
Be who I don’t wanna be.
Again, again and again.
Gisborne, New Zealand
He sits quietly in a near deserted airport
Echoes of wheels and squeaks of trainers punctuate his musings
The space age scene makes him see the ceiling like a floor and he fears he’ll fall from the roof he lays upon
But he’s stuck fast.
Children run through wide open spaces
Not in a joyous playlike way like in a park
In echoes so sinister he fears he’s in a horror movie.
Sleep won’t come easy, but soon it must.
As he sits like a cockroach in a corner
Collecting dust.
.
The tannoy breaks his rest, a piece of glass
Staring at him like a face
And the rows of regimented chairs like robot soldiers pen him in like a prisoner.
The oppressive heat makes him itch like he’s covered in insects sucking all sustenance from his body.
His mouth is dry.
Slowly but surely streams of people come through the doors of the terminal as if they are ill as it is
Pasty white, like a hospital.
His eyelids grow heavy as the lack of dust confuses him
Indecisive, lost in sleepy thoughts.
An environment so sterile, he feels like filth.
.
The hustle, the bustle is a scene from a disaster movie as he sits up
The rush, the sound, a different horror to the night before
Despite all the people the ceiling still looks like the floor.
He sits, lost but sore.
.
The back of the man opposite oppresses his view of the girl whose face he glimpsed and he thought he knew.
The insidious outsider stands out as still as stone, he doesn’t move like the rest of the crowds, but instead stock still
He expands –
And contracts.
His tight muscles not as tight as his shirt so tight his back threatening to burst through and cover him in blood and bone and the odd chunk of lung.
He sits still and sore
The noise a drone, a clamour, more.
His mouth is dry and makes a ‘tat tat’ as it opens and closes
Like that of a dying fish.
Hunger pangs.
.
Walking through the neon glare, his luggage an intravenous drip making movement difficult
Like walking through an apocalypse, the floor so bright and hot that his soles are melting into the tiles
The building needs a soul, it takes yours
Walking like an inmate, the smells and sounds a torture for his thin wallet
He sits, his eyes close on a future that costs too much for him to bare.
.
Echoes of wheels and squeaks of trainers punctuate his musings
The space age scene makes him see the ceiling like a floor
Another tortured sleep, another revolving door.
Omokoroa
The dark, the light
The endless yellow, the broken white
In transit again, the movement of constant pain
Thoughts darker than the alleys we pass
An electric sub-station heart
Memories of orange, warm dark
Reflections of light, refracting apart
With laughter light as an angel’s soul
Still rolling, on icy streets we stroll
Breath like trains of days gone by
and hands like ice, feet shattered rock and roll drum band
reverberating sound, no solace found
in the cold or the heat, winter snow, summer wheat, ocean or land
Reflection in a Puddle
Reflections of the sky so dark, eyes muddy puddles.
Hair not a waterfall, more a mudslide, a dirty avalanche.
Killing, asphyxiating, flicking off the tiled roofs.
Hands like a tributary set, setting my soul on fire
only to be dowsed by venom spat, drowning my desire.
Spinal columns like towers of Babel, scattering us.
So the disaster we are becomes obvious.
As we burn and poison and spread our bodies.
We move like an ocean, pushed away, always to return
to the shore, sure of our happiness. Together,
yet eroding and retreating an individual dying, the other feeding
the soul, emotions unnatural creating our own extinction
extinguishing fires, picking away at your features.
The sound of your heart, a soft rain’s pit-a-patter.
The view of my heart, the hurricane flooding the things that matter.
So, the tilled ground less fertile than before,
as dust settles in the West, the East drowns one more.
