Secretive semblance
in a dress down shirt

informs the norms
there's no harm

to sensibilities,
nothing to see —

a voicebox covered,
when the sleeves are long.

I apologize for not having posted anything lately, but I had been otherwise engaged in work and physical rehab, and writing had not been available to me.

I hope that everyone will have a good Christmas, if you celebrate it, and a good holiday, regardless.

Aroha nui,
Tash

The path to the heart
is through the subservient
entrance

'Round the side, obliquely,
past the carrion tree
with its blossom bloom

and its ribbons, hanging loose,
like unattached reminders
of familial whispers.

There is a keystone
to the arch —
the lock, too tight
and gritted

like teenage teeth
before the knocks,

tap, one,
(hello)
tap, tap, two,
(hello)
Is anyone still in there?

What can be bought
can be swallowed

like any belief in goodness —
that tasty thing;
the remembered tang
that precedes
every new beginning.

Hey now, I can be sweet,
and my craziness is just
a craving to dissolve —
just another rock candy for
the clench of your jaw.

Bear down and crush,
or roll and gently tumble,
fast or slow,

I will always be sugared
rot without thought,
tongue-lashed and tasted;

a satiety to gainly alter
all the wrong neurons
in your mind.
#TashPoetry #poetry

This is a kitbag,
a worn bugout —
a hold-all of old thoughts.

A thief’s haversack, red
with guilt and kismet,
filled with pennies for every fault.

Cool as a calm,
rigid as a dream,
reposed in a stainless drawer.

Weighed and twice counted,
unzipped and examined,
by fine curettes and blue bone saws.

I was once a kitbag,
a worn bugout,
the hold-all for your thoughts.

24 hours,
dressed in diaphanous delight;
melodious movements,
revealing.

A flimsy deception,
with the world, still tilted;
the sun, too bright for

a paramour's instruction,
the curtains closed to preserve
an illusion

for its pupils
to receive, and to dilate,
the trompe l'oeil too tempting
for one to see anything
but a faded yearning.

There’s a place where I’d be,
and sometimes, you.

For conversation, and a gentle outing,
a closely-examined undressing

in somatic language,

intimacy
with a twining of limbs,

fingers, knees
and words

in cadence, with the usual strangeness,
the urgent inflections;

oh, so,
said with the tongue of a dream,

when we had not discussed the weather,
and the regrets we’d shed under it.

The rain sleets and the view
is a masterpiece of pummeling;

the pedestrians, incautious
with umbrella-black thought bubbles
waving, as though calling
for the light touch of God.

Here, now the music
has altered my attention
from being another

reflection, a like a ripple
in a sedimentatious mind —
a change, vague and mid-stride

wondering, why here,
why now,
while playing idly
with the volume to fill the void.

A veil can shroud the lights,
the night’s exotica.

Oddities, on the boulevards,
decadently disordered.

A libertine, with the grace of angels,
seeks solace from strangers.

A relinquishment of sorts,
from ego and dress.

A brief reprieve from the unmoving gaze
of the remembered dead.

Acquainted, am I,
with captivation —
the shadow and sounds
of the evening’s darkening,

the sometime vulnerability
of the moon, and my own
habitual act of everything.

The pavements are packed, and
I am carried, back into guardedness,
re-centred back into my diffidence
that quietens the colours
of my thoughts to a simpler grey.

Part 1/2
#poetry #TashPoetry

Coin a conversation
and the day may seem brighter,
the evening warmer still,
bare-shouldered to the wit
and press

of another, a hope evolving —
acceptance, perhaps,
a spark of a joy, a kernel of being,
but most probably, not…
Just another attempt lost.

The world quiets
when it is not shouting,
moot and muted, to wait out
its further temptation —
a demo animation
of endless reciprocity.

An empty engagement
for a singular endgame,
as far as I can see.

Procrastinate, and a fugue
will decay into a carrion.

Time killing, with the bodies,
arrayed and avulsed —
secreting stories, unremembered,
stacked against their kin.

To feed, with a spread of wings,
and an eye of volition,
if only to shake the ticks
and daydream dander.

Trapped with time, engorged;
a carrion bird, grounded
once more,
herself, vultured.

A thought remakes itself —
churns with joie de vivre,
and I am glad

for the ostinato variance
that retains the rhythm.

A shape of an idea,
and a triangulation…

For intensity,
and briefly, happiness.

Unbruise my past, honey,
while I'm smoking cigarettes 'cause
it don't matter
what the future is,
or when the music plays

verse and chorus,
verse and chorus,
on repeat,
while I'm deaf to the bridge,
blind to its fire.

A palm reader
ain't nothing without her
flashing neon
signs of the end...
'Don't need the glamour,
I already know.

A motel room,
unaccompanied;
motel room, alone,
familiar,

until I'm deaf to the music,
blind as the snow.
#poetry #TashPoetry

A concrete cave, with the smell
of barflies, half-cocked for something;

trying to turn indigo into slate,
a bleaching with another drink,
another reverie,

while waiting
for a prodigal Jane Doe to swing by,
gaily affirmative,

with the dance lights circling
slowly like fireflies,
never quite extinguishing.

There is the cigarette ash,
and the intake of breath,
ingrained and harsh,
a habit

that swirls around, blue,
like the walls, and the few
cool people left to hang around;
suckers for winter’s punishment.

Critique iniquity,
like a passing fascination.
The fashionista flamingos,
like Barbie doll s, unable to bend
to touch the floor.

Extinguish a cruel thought.

Breathe in, then sigh.
Better out, than in.

We fear what we create
when we bicker,
then we create again

like this odd thing,
we tried to call love

with all its da, da, da, da, da choruses
and porno horn solos:

Yes, you know you shot first,
you dumb prick;
did it for the thrill
then tried to hide it.

Roll my world like a marble,
then discard it, shattered,
that's fine.

Bye, bye, birdie.

I had only been looking for a heart
in all the wrong places.

Why would I stop,
when I am untouchable,
though my cartilage and skin
seems good enough,
to rub against
for most.

Disregard the triggers,
the songs that void my head
like a shot,

lead
footed, 360 cubic inches
of displacement;
tearing through my tires
and other supports.

Speeding through the gorge,
grip lessening, eyes watering,
bruises blooming,
past the Pohutukawa trees,
redly flowering.

Why would I ever stop?

I try to outpace my thoughts,
the zombie fears that straggle
but follow, ad nauseam,
in my head.

Almost home free, & yet
five steps from a heart attack;
strange anxieties and déjà vu
like the toxins in my veins,
like misspent moments
now lost.

The house is a sometime haven,
though a misnomer,
from which to jettison the litter
of regrets from my head.

There is no home,
just this loneliness, and
a slow turning of the night's
magic in a bottle
into a rainbow in the sink.