Below Myself

What lives below myself is feeling.

What rind I find myself needs peeling.

I want to knife myself while kneeling.

Unwind the surface self til reeling.

My heart in treasure chest is heaving.

What is this life I live achieving?

But what’s this angry face so seething?

Where comes this cloven hoof now cleaving?

Who cuts the lock on casket hidden,

Who foists the force upon unbidden?

Who diving drops to depths so leaden,

To slice the tangled roots that deaden?

If I, who am ‘I’ when freedom comes?

So I am the feeling that was numbed.

What lives above this Self can be summed

As two entwined in doubt and not the

One.

Wanting Words That Touch

Wanting words that touch

That sound hollow when knocked

With your eyes on the page

Wanting to hear emptiness

Like the rush of spider’s web on the face

Crave the internal space

Open up like underwater

Knowing you are there on the mountain

Can’t see, can’t feel, can’t almost breathe

Wanting the heat to pass through

The pain believed relieved aglow

Incandescent even the sunset hue

No you, no me, laugh life let go

No words just touch

But open space an aftershock

A sky below above but touch

Wanting the unmistakeable truth

Arrived like insects homed after dark

Surrendered like light like a symphony played

Discovered like a cat asleep in the shade

But yes, not that, not anything made

For Who Might See

You – did you know me when

I fell into the ageless well within?

And you – did you watch me while

I lingered before the flame

Of my Beloved’s smile?

Perhaps you – you saw me dance.

Did you taste the kiss of who

I touched in trance?

Maybe you – in your eyes I recall

A fleeting light:

A moon between clouds

On a stillborn night.

1997

I, Fish, Wall, Parents, Snap! (1980)

They dart like shadow upon shadow

Content in their regulated, placid world.

Enclosed from above by fluorescent light,

Behind them a wall that’s more that wood and plaster,

A mile wide yet paper-thick, which is strength enough.

The wallpaper endures no tricks from the light

That is diffused through the veil that is a curtain

Which will never seek audience.

Morning, and behind the wall, a world of voices hurting

Without precaution, while I am forced to listen

For fears, of detection, or of curiosity?

I won’t go, where were you, I was depressed, two days?

The echoes hang and then absorbed through the wall

For my benefit.

The wall, that separates the tranquillity, ignorance, bliss,

From the harsh oppressive reality of marital mistrust.

All’s quiet of the home front: the smile falls with the face.

1980

My World (1980)

I fought on the wind that began before time

In the beginning it wasn’t this way.

But now the risks I take are all mine

And I alone reap the pay

The cry of the wild, the effortless climb

The speed relative to none.

These are the qualities I want to find,

The careless risk of waking up blind

If only to look at the sun.

The relationships too difficult to grasp,

Of self-seeking people among

Whom I’m left in a world of my own with the task

Of having to reach their one.

If only so I have this paper to show

That I think like all the others.

Well, you won’t find me there, I’m enjoying the air

Of my world, their ideals, it smothers.

1980

Awakening to Memory (1980)

(Note: refers to a time when, awaking from chaotic dreams of medieval chaos and ruin, I recalled a happy memory to calm me. I remembered a time at the lights in Newmarket with my lover, when she asked for her ‘drug’, and I kissed her, thinking impulsively she meant ‘me’. Two guys in a van behind us clapped – such romantic spirit? My lover explained after that it was a cigarette she meant. In the poem this memory is translated into medieval garb from the dream traces).

Carrouselled past Shavian

Flowersellers, to days of when

Medieval knights and damsels

Fled from evil sights to castles,

And past bombardment of quaking towers

The last enchantment, for waking now,

My dreams have gone, and I’ve lost the battle,

And streams of consciousness now grapple

With thoughts of sleep and safety’s shore

For fraught with deep pangs greatly more

Of love and loneliness, my mind

A dove on a lonely quest to find

A memory

Of when we

Were carefree

And laughing

Reminisced when, on trusty steed,

The damsel was kissed, when just such a deed

Was requested of the prince, who confused the words

In the message rather, since it amused the bards

In the minstrel troupe behind, who clapped for more

And the damsel looked blind to what the kiss was for.

Not a kiss was the request for the task, nor a hug,

But for Turkish cigarettes when she asked for her ‘drug’.

And awakening to memory, I welcome reality.

In taking you with me in my dreams, you are in me.

1980.

A Dream About Counselling Work

My brother, Steve, and I, talking to a guy.
There's some work he wants to offer us.
(Steve's been struggling around work issues too).
The guy's a brilliant young biologist.

He's been working with trout, growing them large,
He says, up to eighty kilos.
Wow, that's one heavy lifting job, I joke,
Imagining giving them the heave-ho.

The guy knows my joke, but knows me better,
The cap-tipping banter of one anxious about work.
Of course, I'm working with them when they're lighter,
He says, and I, in a sudden realization, know my quirk
Of finding in images the heart of the matter.
I look inside again to what my soul calls me to.

And sunlight flashes on scales of silver,
As I lift heavy fishes and pour them on through,
To slip into streams from their large holding tanks,
And I know this is the work I will do.

Sounds

Cicadas buzzed as he wrote,
Listening to the music of Donovan.
The traffic up the hill sounded heavy.

And then the tape stopped playing the song,
Hissing with the cicadas and vrooming,
And clicking off, he could hear his baby breathing.

The traffic came down to the sound of waves,
Lapping and crashing on the coast.
And between the birds, he could hear these words
Creating.

Listening With Two Ears

If I can listen
With one ear and then the other,
Listen to where I listen from,

Then my head is like a darkened cave,
My self caught in the light of the entrance.
Seeing me there.
Listening from back here,
As I feel along the ridged interior
Of myself echoing.

Balls

I remember the day,
Down at the site of the sweatlodge,
When squatting naked, I had the realization
That I don't sit down in my balls.

It was after the fire was out.
Around the rim of the firepit, it was wet.
And going deep inside, I felt my cock relaxing,
But I still wasn't down in my balls.

I was moved to spread my thighs wider open,
And really sit down on my haunches.
My knees pushed the muscles of my biceps wide
As I tried to feel down into my balls.

I felt like some long-limbed frog,
My feet feeling the suction of the mud,
As I leaned slightly back and nearly sat down,
And my balls touched the cold of the ground!

Electric eels could do no more!
But soon the cool mud pressed around,
And relaxing further, I discovered I was able,
Heels against the bones of my arse, to sit stable.

And the frog became an ancient toad.
I sat there for nearly an hour,
And pondered life on the edge of the pond,
Sitting down in my balls and my power.

Jasmine

Already the jasmine has taken me
To sunny Sunday mornings as a boy
Cold concrete and wet washing on the line
Linen from the laundry basket left to dry
Steaming into a high day of far-off clouds.
The narrow path down the side of the house
Stroked with long reaches of light
Where the cat curls on the earth by the weatherboards.
Chug-chug of the washing machine working further
Warm metal flashing by the drain where the water spills out.
Odd places beckoning one to sit down with eyes closed
Crisp still fresh full day-dreaming days gone by.


9-6-04

Memories

Whose are the caring hands,
That gently fold the worthwhile moments
Of the open days that fall behind me like calendar pages?
In what linen cupboard are they layered,
Placed in what arrangement?

And are some left untouched, hardly noticed in a corner,
Special things with scalloped edges,
Made for times when company comes calling?
Are the creases still able to be ironed?
Do they resist being laid out in the open?
If lovingly kept do they yet grow old?

Unfold the treasures there.
I seem to have forgotten.
Brush away the dust of years, and
Lift the corners into the air, and
Place them on the bed and table, and someone
Light a candle for night and day, I’m afraid
I have forgotten.


9-6-04

Prayer

tether it here, in the cool midnight air of light
waving warm rippled streams, enter into my dreams
loosen my lean swathes of flesh.
encolour my chest, inrush an infusion of beams
fill the crater inside, warm its tide of new life
overwhelm all the sides, make a nest.

awaken fractal tendrils of power.
give the breath girth and width
carry clear heart forthwith from the window
of my tenanted tower.

may sourcewaters flow free from this well
in this uncharted realm, let my lungs be the helm
and my ribcage cut waters in half.
end the occupation of lies and constriction
call my spirit return from its enclosure of fiction
and fiercely guard this new craft.

call the corners of walls to new dominion
seal all corridors, redraw lines of permission
sound inside a long note that now lets down the diaphragm.
ancient ancestral fathers of yore
expand me to be as I am once more.


14 – 2 – 05

Wound

A sword thrust downward, glancing the right of face.
Piercing the sternum, and slicing lungs and diaphragm.
The eardrums burst, the pop! the shell cracked open.
Head wracked leftwards turns, the wraith in ruins escapes.

The severed vertebrae, splintered off like icebergs.
The heart collapsing, ruptured blood-lined rubber.
The lungs lift shattered, crystalline cavities of silver.
The skin is flayed aside, layers of clothing in skin merge.

Metallic technology, morning bite of cold hard steel.
Turned in space with the glove, but forced facewards into flesh.
It drove a demon downwards, in roots of mine enmeshed.
This wound I here unwind, where words and image heal.

One Sentence (2005 poem for my mother)

For my mum, my mother, a grand (young) lady,
Is her son, no other, her grown-up baby,
Come, to discover, in this grove so shady,
With a poem, how I love her, and with writing maybe...

Uncover, with the necessity, of rhyme and rhythm,
A lover's propensity, to undermine in him,
Everything other, than underlying givens,
Nothing to cover the undenying fool's whim...

To declare, forthright, the plain and simple truth,
That whether, for nights, I was staying under her roof,
Or otherwise, in flight (having left the nest as a youth),
I have never, despite the dress of appearing aloof...

Ever, though ways seem to part,
Severed her from my heart.


2005

Prayer for the Healing of the Liver

Your liver is alive! It calls on you
(And in pain can be quite urgent)
To help it now enthuse with yellow light!
In the rainbow light spectrum of your body,
Your liver lives at the level of the swathe
Of living yellow light that forms a band above the waist.
Look at that liver! A large wedge of living tissue
That takes the living nature of god’s creation
From the food absorbed by the bounteous bloodstream
And catalyses it into the lifeforms that fuel your being.
What a wonderful aspect of being –
Receiving from the world all its bounty
And supporting the heart to love fully in the world!
Vigilant in its power –
Filtering out all the poisons and dangers that beset the world.
What thanks we give to the liver!
The liver, the lover of life.
We honour it now with washes of yellow light.
Repel the invader, support the wonderful warrior liver!
No mention of meat and decay in the body –
Cancerous notions of the growth of substance without consciousness –
will ever deny the liver its largesse, its lifting power,
The laughter and license of life itself!
The liver, the wedge of lemon suffused with the juice
Of the the ‘zing’ that sings in life-well-lived.
Praise and love to the liver!
Let sunshine lighten its burden now!
Golden honey, lambent candle flame,
Lemons and melons and the glowing memories
Found in autumn’s radiant leaves of yellow.
We heed to the calling of the liver
And love it now for its courageous and loyal service.
Amen.


January ‘07

One Regret

Mum, my one regret
Is that I didn’t get
To know you better

Other than that

I am happy you’ve found your life fulfillment
Now knowing you are moving on
I can never forget the reason of life
Is to know of life enough to know
The ones we’re here to share it with
The ones who mean the most to us

The mother who loved us so much when young
The father who did his best for us
The brothers who have lost the one
They loved the most, their only mum
I’m sad to see you moving on
But in your wake you leave your son

Who still loves you as much as he has ever done.

Happy Mother’s Day Mum.


13 – 5 – 07

16 Favourite Moments of the 1998 Summer Gathering

Leading three sweatlodges then being part of one by Danyo.
His spiritual name in English is White Mountain which I saw he is.
He’s a pipe carrier for his people. He’s been a sundancer for twelve years.
They pierce their chests with hooks and dance hung from the world tree.
He says it takes some of the suffering away from the women who give birth.
In the lodge he called the women the life-givers, men the protectors.

Rochelle doing Huna Bodywork Healing on me on her table in the tipi.
The grief and wounding that surfaced stimulated a visionary experience.
Releasing Catholicism, Jesus / martyrdom mythology, I was in the dream.
On a cross so lonely so realistically yet aware of her on the ‘outside’.
Sensing how I was trapped and moving warm energy against my skin.
Taking me by quiet storm til I was so warm and safe within.

Jason coming out in his wheelchair all the way in the mobility taxi.
Being carried by four people in his chair up to the chicken shed longdrop.
The longdrop was the highest point of the Gathering land.
Lots of joking and cheering about carrying the king to his throne.
Later in the big tipi with the drummers and dancers around the fire.
Jason’s request: Cody and I took turns holding him up so he could dance.

Down at the stream at dusk, some people standing ankle deep in the water.
My torch joins theirs as we hold them like cups upright shining from below.
In watery shadows slides an eel lazily tracing a line sideways.
Embarrassed at my ignorance of such matters, I turn caution into bravery.
With an ‘O’ of finger and thumb, I let the eel slide forwards like a condom.
Sometimes I held it forward of halfway, and we both backed up in fright.

Lying in a field of enjoyment under the duvet in my tent, gladly exhausted.
In such a high state of consciousness I ‘dreamed myself’ into visions.
Impossible four-dimensional landscapes like continuous fruiting on trees.
And at the bamboo kitchen, some favourite women are singing so juicy.
Impossible to visualize, rolling raunchy with the ‘Funky Chicken’.
The desire of wanting to witness what I am already intimately influencing.

Andy’s in Auckland to do a 10-day Vipassana meditation retreat.
The centre is in Kaukapakapa not far from where the Gathering is held.
Being at the same time, I’m naturally disappointed he’s not here instead.
But my other two brothers bring him out on the Sunday before his starts.
I’m swimming at the time so I’m not tempted to play tourist guide.
Instead we four of us jump off the bank and feel like kids again.

The sweatlodge still wasn’t built after the first week of the Gathering.
The previous year, the site had been left in disrepair; the coverings rotted.
Musing again at its fate, I saw firewood stacked in the old rock pit.
Everyone had agreed the children could have a campfire here, Doug said.
The sacred site was cleansed by kid’s laughter and toasted marshmellows.
The next day a large lodge was built: in darkest night the people entered.

Older men aren’t blessing younger men much anymore, Bly had said.
Elsewhere I’d heard that younger men weren’t apprenticing themselves.
Max asked a circle of ‘good men’ to join he and his son Willow in the tipi.
We honoured Willow for the journey into manhood he was making.
Sharing what it meant to be a man, we spoke of what we recognised late:
The support of men, and how we wished we’d had Willow’s fate.

Finding the power place for the closing ceremony on Saturday.
On the other side of the stream, a clearing between the three largest trees.
Coming together again as a smaller circle: where were all the men?
Each person standing before the group framed by the two big trees.
Being told of their qualities, the growth some had noticed over this time.
The image was of taking the gathering inside to pour ‘out there’ again.

The wonderfully contentious process around drugs and alcohol.
Buttons getting pushed, flare-ups and walk-outs, my meditations on Yin and Yang.
Gerd’s offer at the morning circle after three days of drama and dramas.
He puts a beer bottle on the altar where everyone’s offerings were arranged.
More laughter when Simon opens it to pass round for the alcohol-lovers.
Half-way around Gerd in his turn pours it out on the ground “for the others”.

Getting a sweatlodge together a little belatedly, Skins and Ben agree to help.
They take on Firekeeping with lots of wood to gather, chop, and split.
Later Skins says he has to clear with me about something a few days ago.
We reach an impass so he says he and Ben are no longer available.
I make the fire, crossing a poster of five bikers that’s been placed there.
In the circle next day Skins says he appreciates how I “got it together”.

I do a half-day in silence, an note taped on my tee-shirt.
Later I’m wandering naked as such a joyful innocent, so safe.
Where ‘Steve’s Cafe’ opens out from the Totara grove there’s a tent.
In a dome cubicle of soft bedding sits Corinna who I haven’t met.
All smiles and elfin eyes she lets me come close like a silent pet softly.
She shows me photo albums of her bus parked in different places.

Finding myself an older man among teenagers doing a sweatlodge.
Often in their company I act the suave runaway from responsibility.
Here I tell them of tradition and honouring, people and process.
In the third round the young men are still braving it with their philosophy.
Warm sound and silence resounds when I invite the women to speak.
“We’re a swimming pool”. And another:”a soft penis in a warm vagina”.

The talking stick suffered a variety of applications in the circle.
Gerd and I raced for it once, no, twice I confess, once in the tipi.
In the marquee I handed it to him before he could finish explaining.
In the tipi I held both the male and female, and offered him the male.
He witnessed my love, but took the female, and we jolly-sailored like boys.
Moustache-twirlers, like the counterplay of complements/compliments.

“If I can’t hug you here, I couldn’t hug you anywhere”, I told Henry.
He was sitting at Gerd’s cafe, and I just knew that I must ju-jitsu him.
Sure enough, he was only at the Gathering for five minutes.
I pushed past to his chair while Agnes gave me a wry smile.
Henry and I haven’t had much to say to each other for a while.
Now he thanks me for minding Zowie but tells me to use tongs for the food.

Corrina’s eyes are every colour, but her nose stud’s turquoise-green.
It picks up the eye-green like fishes in two ponds of colourful lilies.
Going gaga enough to tell her something like this I mention iridology.
“An iridologist’s dream, your eyes”, and the bit about the guy down in Golden Bay.
He took close-ups of his eyes and put them on sticks in the garden.
Like seed-packet posts showing what he was growing and guarding.

Dear Dad

And what date is it now?
The 22nd of the 10th of the 2003rd?
And only three days since when?
The day that you died
When life decided
This particular life had come to an end.
Run that by me again.


22 – 10 – 2003