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The sun isn’t always going to shine.
Rain is going to fall, like teardrops from the sky.

The pain her words felt left scars on my heart.
Alone in silent agony.

Cigarette lit, pills popped, blood drips, tears fall.
I close my eyes, but not to wake up at all.

I stand in stillness
A neighbor whistles a song
Joy rides on the wind

I can’t remember when we met,
but I’m glad that we did. I do remember
making mud pies together in the garden;
playing kiss and tell and writing
the answers with dirt on one another’s
backs.

Puberty is a cat
sneaking up on its prey, and
my breasts fluttered into being
in a blink. I know
I was jealous of your boobs first.
How they sat like soft-serve ice creams,
waiting, speaking to me in tongues.

In college I kissed a girl
but it didn’t feel like I thought it would.
I thought from then on
that maybe my body was only
meant for men seeking an ocean.

I can tell you friendship
is a strange moving thing,
a buoyant shapeshifter and I’m still,
it seems, a curious maker of mud pies.
The first and last time I tasted her
we were adults, bodies both
a seashore and seabed.

And yet, somehow
she was also tart peonies in summer,
taking me back to the garden,
to the way we so carelessly
touched and laughed. It was so
easy.

Realisation was like
rubbing grains of sand off your hands,
stepping into the dairy to buy ice-creams
and being happy to know
you’ll love any flavour.

I heard your voice
like thunder through the air.
Before I could think,
before there was a flinch
you appeared.

The storm doesn’t scare me,
especially when it sounds like you.

Regardless of what things look like,
you soak through my skin.
I don’t care how heavy my clothes get.
I don’t care how hard the wind blows.

It doesn’t push me back.
Whichever direction I walk
they all point towards you.

Like I belong in the middle,
somewhere closer to you.

I walk in you
until I am the only thing you see.

Before the thought of flinching
at the sound of your voice,
I remember
you are what and where
lightning kisses.

Before every storm,
there is a breath
that caresses my face
sweet and warm.

Soon after,
you appear.

I eagerly wait
for the sound
of your voice.

My blood
Contains my past
A voice for my forebears
If only I learn to listen
Guide me

Money
We all want it
Meant to free us at first
But instead enslaved us to greed
Worth it?

Maunga
Tarawera
Beautiful, terrible
Night sky burns, our world ends
Help us!

Stormlight
Smell of ozone
The taste of iron on my tongue
Hairs raise on the back of my neck
Goose bumps

My Dad
Strong hands and heart
Still near at hand you feel
Love you until the stars burn out
Miss you

Half caste
Impure? Unclean?
Between two opposed worlds
I define myself from now on
I’m ME

Tossed upon an angry sea
Waves an avalanche
Neptune above hears no plea
For mercy or lenience

Turmoil and fear
Further darken the void of night
No rage like nature’s so severe
Or so justified

Huddled below, dread his lone companion
Despondency thick in the air
Fervent prayers not withstanding,
Teetering on the edge of despair

An indifferent ocean’s decimation
Belies singular resolve in the din
A ship hand’s furiously scribbled narration
Of the catastrophe herein

How this calamity has come to be
The sum of his life’s amount
A hurried witness to history
A single eyewitness account

As the lone forsaken beholder
Of this night’s dire tragedy
Testimony lies heavy on his shoulders
As he hastily records for posterity

Details unknowable to all except one
This now amounts to his purpose
For when his writing is done
At least his life will have purchase

The responsibility, the exigency
Of finding meaning in the madness
He will not die alone at sea
If he can find the exactness

To describe this chain of horrible events
The world will know his pain
He will survive through these contents
He will live a’gain

Closure will come with the written account
Of a ship wrecked at sea
So he writes and he recounts
So as not to be lost in history

His entire being condensed down
Into this singular goal
Of marking the details of this night
So he dies not in vain or alone

The bow creaks, a feared shift
As wood splinters like glass
Solid matter breaks apart
Weightlessness a moment before the crash

The finality sets in as hope flees like a dream
Life holds no greater meaning
Or hides some sweeping scheme
Of a benevolent God poised to intervene

These words will not survive
And none shall know the truth
The last moments of life deprived
Of a legacy left to soothe

All is overtaken
By the churning tumult
Water heavy as lead
Bears down without fault

Words so recently written
In haste and urgency
Now slowly and silently sink
Below the surface of the sea

The creator took grief and smudged it across the sky,
With one mighty fingertip,
He caused the clouds to cry.

The creator took love and painted it on the buds,
With every leaf opened,
It swallowed up the floods.

The creator took hope and twisted it in an arc,
With seven vibrant colours,
He promised no more dark.

The creator took peace and tossed it into the sun,
With gentle healing light,
Its feathered force be done.

The creator took time and swirled it into the air,
With each granule of sand,
He vowed to remain fair.

And so the creator, created, a world so fresh and new,
With another person born,
Its frequency lifted and grew.

My father died alone
in a bed
in a room
no pictures hanging
the nurse on break
the filtered air
too cool to warm
the thin sheet
that covered him.
Miles of empty space
separated him
from a tie to me
As the snow blocks the view
of my car
stuck in place
he left.

My beloved Great Aunt Ruth
Fed her children good gray truth.
Great Aunt Lisa, whom I prize,
Raised her brood on bright red lies.

Filthy cupboards, cockeyed doors,
Spotted carpets, sticky floors,
Rancid odors, saggy plaster. . .
Lisa’s house – what a disaster!

Aunt Ruth’s dwelling – narrow, smaller,
Repudiated Lisa’s squalor.
Here, a thorough search, I trust
Would not have found one speck of dust.

At Aunt Lisa’s splayed old manse,
I learned to sing and learned to dance
And shamble after rare perfumes
Through littered, smoky, dusky rooms.
Lisa, sprawling, shouted, “Sport.
I hope you’re not the god-damned sort
Who simply can’t abide a lie.”
To which I said, “No, Aunt, not I.”

At Aunt Ruth’s my name was Lad.
Aunt Ruth talked with Mom and Dad
While her children (she had two)
Did the things they liked to do.
The older, Brick, thin as a taper,
Worked the crosswords from the paper.
Sue, his sister, did her nails
Or practiced, at the keyboard, scales.

And while the grown-up talk droned on
I would stretch or scratch or yawn,
Or sit beside my cousin Brick
And listen to the hall clock tick.

Lisa’s family, on vacation,
Traveled to some foreign nation.
Lisa’s oldest, Crazy Harris,
Told me they had been to Paris.
“Not true,” said one sister, Nina.
“We went down to Argentina.”

Another, Mabel, yelled, “Peru!”
I’ve no idea which one was true,
But Harris lumbered to his feet,
Waved his hands and shook his seat,
And with a sort of filthy glance
Did a comic Can-Can dance.
While I, in league with cousin Mabel,
Tangoed ‘round the kitchen table.

Brick and Susan both attended
Camps their pastor recommended.
In later years, Ruth still displayed
The braided bracelets they had made,
A sampling, also, or assortment,
Of their prizes for deportment,
Telling me, as great aunts do,
I could win such prizes, too.
“Work hard,” she said, “and never lie.”
And I said, “Yes, Aunt Ruth. I’ll try.”

After I was graduated
Time, for me, accelerated.

This job. That job. Wife. New schooling.
Babies bawling. Babies drooling.
Busy me, I lost the trick
Of keeping up with Sue and Brick.
Bikes and braces. Little League.
By the time my kids were big,
Except for Christmas cards and such
Lisa’s three and I’d lost touch.

So I was shocked when from the blue
Who shows up but Lisa’s crew,
And after pleasantries had passed
(“God knows,” they said, “when we met last”),
Harris, with his whiskey breath,
Told me of their mother’s death.

I attended calling hours.
Great Aunt Lisa, banked by flowers,
Looked like some cherubic sleeper
Who had cheated the Grim Reaper.
At the house, the food and liquor
Sparked to life a little flicker
Of that fierceness without measure

I had early learned to treasure.
Falsehoods, lies, inventions, fable
Flew from Harris; flew from Mabel.
Great Aunt Lisa, in their telling,
Still resided in that dwelling.
Laughter, stories, jokes and din
Wouldn’t let the truth sink in.
Then, down to beer, the whiskey gone,
They shouted, “Put more music on!”
And punching out our cigarettes
We danced a dance with castanets.

The hearse that bore Aunt Ruth away
I followed on another day.
“Thank God. . . Thank God her death was quick.”
So said Susan. So said Brick.
They’d come to town to give to others
Things that once had been their mother’s.
Not her carpets. Not her jewels.
The kitchen gadgets. Garden tools.
The stuff you’d call the bagatelle.
Things they figured wouldn’t sell.

Susan’s lately written me
To say she’s on the faculty
Of Harvard, or perhaps it’s Yale.
Harris, I’m afraid’s, in jail.
Nina’s found a brand-new diet.
She’s doubtful but she plans to try it.
Brick’s a genius CEO.
On and on and on things go.

In honor of the good gray truth,
I named my first-born daughter Ruth.
In my old age, she cares for me.
Blankets. Broth. And steaming tea.
And when the days are warm and dry,
When evening’s colored up the sky,
When a slant of mellow light
Suggests the coming of the night,
She calls for me, and she and I,
On our rambles, we’ll stop by
The narrow house of Great Aunt Ruth
And listen for the hymns of truth.

Good Ruth. My Ruth. – Well, just the same,

Lisa is her sister’s name.
And Lisa’s visits – random, hectic,
Come with battle. Come electric.
Brief. That’s as they ought to be,
Or else they’d be the death of me.
And yet I beg, before she goes,
She dress me in my finest clothes
And, neverminding rain or sleet,
Drive me to Aunt Lisa’s street
Where, unbeknownst to daughter Ruth,
I shuffle off my clothes of truth
And, naked under vicious skies,
Dance in praise of pretty lies.

I didn’t recognize the feeling,
Of wanting without hurting,
Of desire without dread,
Of peace without the screaming,
That waits around the corner.
Like punishment for lust.
I knew me and him felt wrong,
Didn’t know me and her could equal “us”.
I thought that the calm meant,
There was a lack of butterflies,
But they’re pink and waiting patiently,
For me to look into her eyes.