new zealand poems: shifting seasons

Unlearned habits speak for themselves in our bodies

As we work, as we fuck, as we eat.

Come learn a universal language, come speak it

With me so we might hear your voice in the eternal song—

It becomes so much more.

This is a dream of the mind body plunge, first of its kind

Kind politicians pleading a case for spirituality

Against nothing, but within within within.

Are you the religious kind? Are you seeking comfort?

My father told me a 20 year old is firing him

On his birthday.  His body never looked so much like mine

As climbing out of the freezing water. We were mourning something

And celebrating it too. I am searching for the door--

A way in, ancient language counting points

Of light, only to find myself in a room of runes

Carved by one hand, or holding out my hands

To the walls and finding a way in—

Is it cultish the demand for new central living?

Is it cathedral reclusiveness?

How does one live a life devoted to that which is most holy?

The droids are bending their knees to the trees now,

And our Marxist eye is robed in light, is singing

“the necessities of life will come to you.”

The hearkeners, the beckoners, they are here

In the long ripples, they are not forever

Nor do they know it in their supine positions

With heads shaved. But that which has not been is coming.

Where will I catch it, in the pine barrens

Or by the barren Baltimore coast? In the unseasonal

Heat of los angeles or in the brass reflections of new Orleans?

Or will I make the novel? Or will it come to the rituals of my forefathers?

My grandmother’s tallit covers my shoulders with silver images of Jerusalem.

The kipa fills my limbs with stiffness. I am a white bird in the migration

with ice caps melting and poles shifting

And I do not know where my body knows where to go.

This is the unveiling. This is the snow turning into spring.

This is the covering. This is the light filling leaves with death.

I am fiddling with the keys to her apartment, with my car doubleparked

In front. Always the goal was to be like a stone, like a tree,

Like a river. But has it gotten closer? Jake is dead and the dead

Do not play any music. Here are some goodbyes. They renew

Themselves like vows. Perhaps it grows like that,

In furrows that change the earth. In drunken texts and decisions

Which hold one part in particular up to the light,

At least for a little while. I am keeping the plants alive,

But I have too much stuff to move and stay the same.

I think I’ll trust my hands even if I cannot know the mask

That turns away from me. In the twilight of summer here,

Asking the one I love to change, I know

I am leaving this world perhaps forever, and noone

Is making me go. But what,

What are we going to do?

new zealand poems: on taking a shower in the glass box by lake wakatipu

everyone wants their picture taken

while looking at something magnificent.

My mother cries out in startlement

And we all jump: “oh, look at the birds,”

Albatross on their silent wings against

A grey cliff. Everything lives on top of

Everything—like children clamoring

for a front seat at the sun, like dads

on a wine tour, like anyone scrambling

to make sense of this life. It is uncomfortable

not knowing where the top of the mountain is,

snowcapped and glassy above the clouds,

or is it another hill, stubbled with growing things,

surmountable. This strong current carves itself

down, leaving impressions, I am

struggling not to say depression,

the way these trees struggle

quietly and constantly within the vines

swelling with sun. i do not need much.

A place to take off my jeans

And a light to read by.

I long for the naked gesture of the toki.

From her. From myself. Back home.

But surviving is a simple thing.

It continues in pain,  like a duck

With a split beak, like a sheep

Limping up a hill, like a day

Hour by hour.

And so what if I am angry that everyone

Wants to be seen as contemplating

Vastness? Hera Lindsay Bird slaps me

Says, so what if it is ugly to hate?

It is yours and I say it is beautiful,

Like our patience laying itself down

Behind the mountains in a bed of gold and blue.

I do not need much, I think.

I spend little and often go

Without food if I cannot get it free.

Id rather walk 5 miles lost

In a city than grab a taxi.

Id rather love than be indignant

About what I deserve.

But I want so much.

I want the world

In a distance I can walk in my lifetime.

I want sun breaking through clouds

When necessary, and wind ringing

Everything around, and rain on my face

And across the fields, purple and moving.

I want to always remember

The wonder of waking up

And my heart strangely beating,

The cold outside of dawn’s mist

Clinging to the lake, and the world beyond that

Bustling about, but making itself huge and beautiful

Like the love of your life in streetclothes belting her favorite song on the highway on her way to the love chapel in vegas with you.