A true Aucklander always has a backup plan

Text to an Auckland friend:
Just went to poetry group with that writer.
He’s nice,
but this awful guy who looked like an oompa loompa kept smoking
and saying fuck during readings!
Written on the back of a bus timetable while pissed at the Backbencher with
the writer and Matthew:
1. Jot down the line,
it’s less than fine.
2. The awful Friday night routine,
I’m just a fly in Vaseline.
3. I, MP, agree never to see G “Courtney Love” R ever again.
4. Next to you I’m not much,
so please excuse me for faking disease to please
on a nearly winter Wellington night.
5. I write your name in embarrassingly large letters in the Backbencher.
Texted romantic advice the following night from aunt RA (via Mum):
RA says find out if he dances.
If not don’t waste time on him.
Check he doesn’t take drugs.
RA asks does he tango.
RA says tramping club.
Hunks there if poet doesn’t dance.

Dream life

I dreamed of moving a couch with Heather and Jamie,
and Jamie kept laughing,
saying 'I thought it was the head of the bed'
and then my Mum came out to thank everyone for helping move stuff,
and I tried to hide Heather,
because in real life my Mum hates her for vomitting on our carpet.
Then I woke up and that sucked in comparison to dream life.

If you can't say no I feel your pain

This time it’s having a flatmate who knocks on my bedroom door at 4am,
waking me up,
then pulls back the duvet,
jumps into bed with me,
hugs me tight,
and doesn’t leave until I’ve asked him to do so seven times.
The time before it was inviting a 20-year-old guy
(who’d come to look at my room in my old flat)
to a New Year party out of obligation,
getting drunk,
him whacking golf balls off the deck and into our neighbours’ houses,
and setting off a firework in the kitchen,
then kissing me and biting my cheeks
and accidentally ripping out my earring with his teeth.
The time before that it was drunkenly kissing a reasonably unattractive guy in a bar,
him inviting me to his place for a party and no one being there when we arrived,
him telling me that he liked to listen to his sister having sex,
and that she had lots of sex with different partners in order to get over her depression,
me calling up a friend, who came to bail me out,
the guy somehow wangling his way into coming along with us,
and me ending up locked in my friend’s bathroom all night until we finally got rid of the guy in the morning.
There has to be a link between those situations and the fact that if there’s:
A monk selling books about Buddhism,
someone collecting for Amnesty International;
or someone signing people up to make monthly payments to Greenpeace,
I’ll end up owning a book,
my wallet will be emptied,
my bank account will get debited.
I guarantee it.

No accounting for taste

The walls of your living rooms and bedroom are bare.
You’re happy with it this way.
You’re very slim and you smell good and classy all the time,
even when you come home after work.
Everything on your kitchen shelves is high in fibre, herbal or organic.
In all my sweaty, blistered heeled, cappuccino addicted, depressed chaos,
I have no idea where you’ve found an attraction.

A rubbish truck prayer

Take from us this day our daily waste and wasted days.
Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who didn't even both to trespass against us.
Good God, at least lead us into something.
The power to start a new story if we ever endeavour.
Amen.

Just friends now (for Mike)

'You have to come back to Auckland so you can use your ticket for Rangitoto,'
Mike said.
I asked him,
'do you still have yours?'
'Yeah, I might go over in a couple of weeks to take some photos.'
'Oh.'
I think my ticket will stay in my wallet for some time yet.

This is your tragedy

This is your tragedy,
being a man who has never been a man,
a wet drunk,
a serial user with almost no roads left,
except one,
which is paved with:
a managed who is 25 years younger than you
and who wants to boot you out;
bad posture;
evenings spent reading books about murder
and watching the racing channel that you illegally get for free;
and your no good intentions.
This is my tragedy too.
You live with yours
and I’ll live with mine.

The pretty ladies

There’s one wearing a peppermint green dress in the stack of paper behind the rubbish bin,
two sprawled nude on the lounge floor,
and a lot more in the two dairies, three bookshops and three supermarkets in Browns Bay.
Their plush lips and white satin stomachs are the same whether they’re waiting to be bought,
lying on someone’s glass and cane coffee table,
or having nasty ballpoint moustaches and teeth gaps drawn on.
‘Frail Ange’ might get tipped over if she knew she was amongst Warehouse and Farmers brochures,
soon to be tied up in a plastic bag and put out with everyone else’s recycling and rubbish.

brightly coloured, sticky

The next day is pretty much definitely going to happen,
even if it seems unbelievable at the time.
And when it does you’ll still need to eat and use the toilet
and you won’t necessarily feel bad but then,
you might feel guilty for not feeling guilty.
Thinking at the end of the next day what’s unbelievable is not that it happened
but that the smashed up soul can be soothed by things like
looking at the pukeko, geese, swans, ducks, pigeons, sparrows
and even a single rooster at Western Springs,
drinking ginger beer and eating a pie,
and then brightly coloured, sticky sorbet in a cone,
quietly listening to the Chili Peppers
and just letting it go in the afternoon.

Grandad's will

Outside East Coast Bays library on a seat in the shade you told me
‘Wade has bought me out.’
I was stunned and my cheeks got hot as I realised what Caine and I had lost.
I stood up and you stood up too, unsure of what to do.
I said ‘I have to go, I have to do some things in Browns Bay’
and I hugged you briefly.
‘Don’t go’
you said.
But I was already walking away,
difficult to do in platform sandals with woven wicker soles.
I got round the corner, near the little fruit shop,
and started running and sobbing loudly, heaving up tears and coughs.
I ran and ran,
past Farmers,
past the Penguino ice cream shop,
past jewellery and hat stalls.
Running crazy in my stupid shoes and pale pink sun hat.
I sat on the grassy foreshore, behind a tree so you wouldn’t find me.
I called Mike and he might’ve thought I was laughing at first.
I told him about you and said
‘I don’t know how he could’ve done this and not told us. I don’t think my father has a conscience.’
It was the worst thing I’ve ever said.
Later I walked back to my car.
You were still parked behind me.
You looked scared of me,
hunched and scared and smoking a cigarette
and I’d never seen you look like that before.
You said
‘It was the right thing to do at the time.’
‘I don’t want the last time I see you in quite a while to be like this.’
‘I love you very much.’
‘I know the timing is terrible, with how you’ve been.’
‘I’m sorry I didn’t ask you about that. How’s everything been?’
I said
‘Fine.’
‘I love you too.’
We hugged and I noticed your wrinkled neck and the thin silver chain around it.
You got into your car, stuck your head out the window and asked me the time.
‘Two forty.’
You nodded, waved and drove away.
I crumpled in my car
and then rather stupidly indicated and pulled out,
hysterical,
nearly getting side swiped by a bus.
Up ahead near the roundabout I thought I saw your car pulled over
like you were going to wave goodbye as I went past.
But it wasn’t you.
You were gone.

19 months

Looking at the small spread of food I think
so, this is what I’m worth.
19 months for some bread,
hummus,
sliced melon,
mixed nuts,
and orange juice.
19 months of my life.
19 months.
What a great goodbye.
They didn’t even get me a cake.
I leave,
meet a client for a farewell coffee in Browns Bay,
he gives me a card in which he’s written
‘I hope you find happiness in whatever you do,’
we hug,
he goes,
it is over.

Last day at work

With a head full of thick, damp brain and tears hiding behind my eyes
I have to say…
Today’s my last day at work and it’s lesser than I thought it’d be.
My farewell lunch was a few plates of bread and fruit and not many staff,
most noticeably, not the manager.
And people still:
Answer phones,
do dishes,
bitch about clients,
complain about the database that always cuts out halfway through entering notes,
get irritated by things particular to this job,
things that have been parts of my life,
things that I’ve been entitled to be annoyed by.
Not anymore though.
I have to say...
Leaving’s all I want to do,
all I can do.

Burning a book on Tuesday afternoon

Today I put my copy of ‘American Psycho’ in the fireplace and tried to burn it.
It wouldn’t burn properly.
The pages would blaze for a few seconds, then smoulder, then go out completely.
I used eight matches before the book caught fire and stayed alight.
It smelled funny and the blackened pages were like the charred breasts and stomachs of Patrick’s hardbodies.
As I’m writing this two ugly insects are flying round the living room.
The poison from the extermination I had done weeks ago is still active
and soon the insects will start weakening and slipping off the curtains
and they’ll shake and kick then die on the floor.
What an exit.
So maybe you can see why I burned the book.

Worry your life away

I spend so much time trying to deal with keeping my eyebrows in check and minimising hair on my upper lip
and especially being worried about THAT area,
wondering
why do I get thrush so much?
Or, is it eczema like my GP said when I thought I had haemorrhoids.
Actually, do I have haemorrhoids?
I eat All Bran every day, so that would be very unjust.
Could this AREA (not THAT one, THIS one…depending on what you’re in to) possibly look or taste good to males?
What’s worse?
Too much pubic hair or a stubbly pubic area?
I’m too scared to wax but with shaving you miss parts and the hair grows back so fast,
leaving you with these plump, prickly AREAS.
I also worry about how my forehead really is huge,
and how sometimes I look unexpectedly terrible in photos.
Questions:
Why do most of my concerns relate to unwanted hair and/ or my genitals and surrounding areas?
Why do I waste so much time?
And, assuming everyone worries about similar things, would we all be better off dead?

Aropax

S.S.R.I
The problem is
I don’t want to stop
such an easy abbreviation of life.
The full words
are too tiring.
All you anti clinical,
anti meds
‘consumers,’
get fucked.
Go die,
while I go get a repeat.

Who's corrupting who?

Tonight, Saturday night, at nine o’clock I went to the supermarket with my mum to buy wine and chocolate biscuits
and also,
in a way that I hoped would seem unplanned,
to bump into my client Andrew who works there.
I wanted my mum to meet him,
cos he looks like a combination of Dr. Phil and one of my ex-boyfriends.
I searched the aisles while my mum chose a wine.
Suddenly, I saw Andrew coming out from the back of the store and cutting through the deli.
“Hey, gidday Andrew, how’s it going?”
“Hi Gemma.”
He smiled and gestured proudly at his uniform.
“You look so smart. How’d your shift go?”
“OK. What you up to?”
“Me and my mum are here on a late night hunt for wine and biscuits.”
Andrew pointed at a podgy woman with a butch haircut.
“Is that your mum?”
“No, there she is.”
My mum walked over to us.
“Andrew, this is Vivie, Vivie, Andrew.”
He shook her hand.
“Vivie, I like that. Vee vee.”
He looked at the bottle of red wine she was holding.
“Is that merlot?”
“Yes, it is.”
“My sister has a red boxer called merlot.”
My mum said
"How weird, that's so coincidental. Or what's that word? Serendipity?"
Andrew grinned, looking from the bottle to me then to my mum.
“The question is, who’s corrupting who?”
We all laughed and my mum went off to find some biscuits.
“Hey, did you get that stuff I sent you about study?”
“Yeah, but it wasn’t really what I wanted. I think I’d more like to get into software programming or something.”
“OK, well, I’ll start looking for some stuff on the net on Monday.”
He chuckled and gently swiped my arm.
“Geez girl, you’re all work.”
“Yeah, maybe so. Well, Andrew, I’ll leave you to get home.”
“OK, see ya.”
I don’t remember how Andrew looked as he walked away
and since I’m leaving my job soon it probably was the last time I’ll see him.
In the car I asked my mum
“So, did you think he looks like James?”
“Yes, and Dr. Phil, and Vladimir Putin, and that guy from ‘the Gilmore Girls.’ It’s the eyes.”
I drove us along Centreway Road and thought
this world is actually stark and unequal in lots of ways,
and even if my hope isn’t worth much,
I hope Andrew makes it.

Them and us

We are the ones that didn’t go mad,
We are the ones with sturdy, organised files,
We are the ones with apple cores neatly wrapped up in baby wipes in our cars,
We are the ones that say ‘in regard to,’
We are the ones that have never lost ten years,
We are the ones with homemade bead bracelets,
We are the ones with empathetic nods,
We are the ones with warm offices,
We are the occupied ones,
We aren’t necessarily the lucky ones.

Late night conversation part two

After a few nights of terrible sleep caused by hormones and road rage
and fear of moving to a new city
I’d finally managed to get to sleep before midnight.
Then, my mobile rang.
Fuck.
I ignored it.
It rang again.
Ignored it again.
Of course, it rang again.
‘Hello.’
‘Hi GEMMA.’
Christ.
It was my soon to be flatmate.
‘I’m so DRUNK.’
‘OK.’
‘How are you?’
‘Tired.’
‘I’m eating jam and toast.’
‘Yeah, I can hear.’
He was making loud, glucky chewing sounds into the phone.
‘But I wish I was eating something else.'
'OK.'
'I wanna tell you but it's NAUGHTY.'
'Right.'
'PUSSY.’
Hell.
If that’s how he eats pussy, he’s in trouble.
‘How are YOU GEMMA?’
‘Tired.’
‘I’m dropping the phone, I’m dropping the phone.’
He dropped the phone.
Then, unfortunately, picked it up.
‘Oh, I can’t get back to my bed, I’ll just sleep on the floor.’
‘OK, you do that.’
I hung up.
The grace period of waking up and falling straight back to sleep was long gone.
Thank you, you drunk, horny maniac.
So much for breaking the insomnia spell.

UNIQUE

You changed your first name
then chose the name of a mountain for your new surname.
You sent us letters written in block capitals,
explaining how you liked your job
but that you were having repetitive, distracting thoughts.
ITS A PITY
AS THIS JOB IS UNIQUE.
As were you, but too much so.
Apparently you’ve been admitted.
You’re no longer delivering your pamphlets,
walking the streets
RAIN SHINE HOT SUN MOODY
with your orange satchel and your
DREAMY
eyes.
As you described them.
As I would too.

Late night conversation

‘Only two weeks till I come down,’
I said at nearly 11pm to my soon to be flatmate.
‘Yeah, it’s pretty soon. I’m gonna finish work early that day so I can meet you at home and let you in. How much stuff are you bringing?’
‘Four bags. Linen, clothes, books.’
‘You’re bringing books?’
Why is that weird? I thought.
I said
‘yeah. Is that OK?’
‘Yep.’
He paused.
He’d rung surprisingly late and I wanted to sleep,
but there was something in that pause.
‘I’ve got a question’ he said.
‘Yeah?’
‘Yeah, it’s not dodgy or anything.’
‘OK, you can ask.’
‘How much are you going to be earning?’
WHAT THE HELL? I thought.
I said
‘forty five thousand.’
‘OK. Cool.’
Another silence with something in it.
‘You can ask me what I earn.’
‘No, it’s OK, I don’t need to know.’
‘Seriously, you can ask me.’
‘No, I really don’t need to know. I’m not the sort of person who thinks I have to know something about someone just cos they know it about me.’
‘Well, I’ll tell you.’
‘You really don’t have to.’
‘No, I will.’
‘OK, if you want to.’
He couldn’t have wanted to more.
‘Sixty five thousand, and I might be getting a pay rise which’ll take me up to the seventies.’
‘OK.’
‘That’s a whole twenty thousand more than you.’
‘Yes.’
He then spent 45 minutes telling me about a girl he’d become obsessed with who turned out to be bisexual and emotionally unavailable.
Apparently she didn’t share enough with him.
He’d told her he loved her,
supposedly to scare her off.
Shit.
I bet she didn’t even get a word in edgewise.

Venting it

If your way of venting it is to jerk off over teen sex on the internet or shop at Sylvia Park or tailgate in your 4WD
good on you.
Today my way was to walk around the Browns Bay shops and check every single disabled car park
so I could smear sunscreen all over the windscreen of any car without a permit.
I hunted around,
looking like an angry old woman in my pink polka dot sunhat.
I didn’t find a single illegally parked car.
Maybe I should just give up and buy a 4WD.

Lost it

For a while I took belly-dancing lessons.
The women in the class were all pretty nice, but much better dancers than me.
Still, it was fun and I bought this velvet orange coin belt,
which I might wear if I go out dancing sometime.
There was this one woman in the class who had a thick black bob and a fringe.
Her nose was sharp and she ignored me totally.
She was a chef and edited the food section of this women’s magazine.
Today when I was waiting to see my GP I skimmed a copy of a women’s magazine and saw a photo of the woman from the dance class.
I didn’t read her recipes,
just thought of her talking with the other women in the dance class and not me.
I bet almost all even slightly famous people have something more before you meet them.

Having done these things

Having grown up in a ‘bicultural environment’
(use that one at interviews when the Treaty question comes up – they’re being tokenistic so why shouldn’t you?)
having gone mental and medicated through working in mental health,
having travelled and found that control freaks
and toothy women on the make
and fauxcentric pains in the arse are cross-cultural,
having survived living with racist right-wingers for 11 months,
having caused and survived a six car nose-to-tail on the motorway,
having posed nude for art and money’s sake with pubic hair in various states of regrowth,
and once with a serious kidney infection,
having taken pleasure in being female amongst dog like men in the far north,
having happily lived alone,
having realised that airports,
and many other places where disparate people come together out of duty,
are loud and lonely,
having picked up the old, scared me and run with her,
having done these things,
yes, I do believe that thus far,
I’ve lived.

What you want

Is for them to say yeah, shit yeah, it's like that.
Fully.
And to laugh.
Because it's just so like that.
The best is
if you can get the ones who don't even like poetry saying
oh my fucking God yes,
that reminds me of when my boyfriend told me about a guy at work
who would make sucking noises after he ate cos he was trying to get food out from between his teeth.
And my boyfriend eventually had to wear earplugs or earmuffs
and look totally fucking strange sitting there like that just so he could get his work done.
Thank you.
I don't feel like such a nasty, judgemental bitch anymore.
No.
Thank YOU.
Because neither do I.

Phone call from Madrid

From Barajas Airport I call you,
on a payphone down a corridor near dirty toilets,
which prove that the Spanish leave shit stains and unflushed urine too.
You answer, sounding like I’ve woken you up,
even though it’s 6am in New Zealand and you’d usually be up for work.
Ah, fuck, that’s right, it’s Saturday for you.
I hope you don’t notice that I sound wrecked,
in crumpled clothes,
which I’ve worn for two days.
Yes, Spain is beautiful, I say.
I don’t tell you that I’ve got diarrhoea and I’m scared of messing the plane toilets.
Or that I’ll go and wash my face then armpits with baby wipes once I hang up.
You tell me no, you can’t speak to the guys, sorry.
They’re asleep.
You sound every second of the 30-hour flight away
from me and my airport world of Starbucks sandwiches and no rubbish bins.
I didn’t even ring to talk to you.
And once I get home
the distance between us won't have changed.

The whistler

I worked in this place that looked professional when I had an interview there
but was actually pretty shit and lacking in resources,
which I came to realise once I started.
The printer broke and wasn’t fixed for months,
the phones never worked properly,
the manager had no boundaries whatsoever,
and would talk about her sex life
and make suggestions to other staff about how they could improve theirs.
I left after all the people I had some affinity with had left too.
I was growing more and more hateful
as new people started,
many of them Christians who talked incessantly about parenting tips
and how they went kayaking in the weekend with their children.
But asides from all these things,
one of the most irritating parts of the job
was a colleague who would whistle a lot of the time.
He wouldn’t whistle actual songs,
but random notes breathed out of pursed lips.
I really think it was to suggest friendly toughness
in the face of trying, stressful times.
It was fucking annoying.
I would take broken printers and phones
and even sex chat with any manager
over having to hear those tuneless half whistles
ever again.

I told you so

My aunt
drove eight hours south
to do work on her house
did nothing for six weeks
drove back up to Auckland in one day
visited me
drove to a staff dinner she didn’t want to attend
accidentally locked herself in a toilet at the dinner
visited me again
fell asleep on a chair while visiting me
locked herself in another toilet the next day at a staff training course
did the same, but in a shower, the day after, at her son’s house
drove back to do work on her house
tried to get her other son and a plumber to fix the bath and toilet
watched as they broke the bath and dropped and smashed the toilet seat
was left with a hole in her bathroom floor
bought a bath that was too small for the hole
got an abscess due to a cracked tooth
got a sore throat and a migraine due to the abscess
didn’t learn
and will do some variation of all this again
next summer.

For Anna Nicole Smith

Finding out you’d died made me so sad, but I didn’t think about you when you were alive.
Admittedly, I was hungover when I heard.
But it wasn't just that.
You were a crazy woman, like a baby sister to your son who’s also dead.
And what about his real baby sister?
Motherless, brotherless, maybe now hopeless.
Then there's the lawyer who jumped into the sea with you last year for love but really, it was a jump he'd made years ago.
You were a big breasted fighting woman.
I suspect that the porn and reality TV and diet pills don’t sum you up.
At all.
From wherever you are now perhaps things here finally look beautiful

Leaving Auckland

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The last night of my life

Tonight in the supermarket,
between selecting a peach
and passing on the slimy precooked chickens,
I actually had to cough
to stop laughter flying from me
and slapping all those after work people across their faces.
I watched a lumpy bleached blonde put a bottle of diet Coke in her trolley
and young boys stacking shelves,
holes in their faces
where they’d dutifully removed piercings.
Somewhere in the store was someone who’d come from car with the words
‘sexy bitches drive red cars’
framing the numberplate.
The facts that can be learnt in parking buildings are possibly numerous.
However, there was no one sexy that I could see,
bitches or otherwise.
Everyone looked rather stupefied, like
‘how did every moment of my life lead to this?’
‘what if a humid night in Pak n Save is the last night of my life?’
Regardless, I presume they all still stayed, shopped and paid.
I did, at least.
The peach was delicious by the way.

For Ian (and Twist)

There are moments in days
when the total craziness
of being a mess of flesh,
bones, fat and shit,
bundled together
by skin,
makes you
hold your heavy
skull and brain
in your hands
and know nothing except
you want to stop
yourself,
the grimly determined machine.
Luckily,
or not,
these moments pass quickly
and you go back to
eating tuna and tomatoes
and drinking coffee from a bleak yellow mug
and pushing back insanity
as you wait for 5pm.

Before Waitangi day 2007

Exisiting in
the time before the news,
about how Maori can't fly their flag
on the Harbour Bridge tomorrow,
Waitangi day.
A red car stopping outside,
someone dumping rubbish,
hand half heartedly in pants,
stroking dry lips,
but no wettening,
nothing.
No wine to get happy on,
cars already cleaned,
bin emptied,
no cigarettes,
non smoker,
toenails cut,
texts sent,
baked beans, milk, and salad pooling together,
hand giving up after a good attempt.
The time before the news
is full of feeble, blunt pencils and grey wind
and rolled up Maori flags
and not much else.

On and on and on

I’m waiting in the foyer of the boys’ high school gym while upstairs my client is emptying rubbish bins.
Waiting, looking at framed photos of boys who’ve won sports awards and who have broad shoulders and shiny foreheads.
Also, there are photos of the PE teachers, all men.
Each man looks strong and weather burnt, with a dazed expression, like it’s suddenly occurred to him to think ‘how have I been here this long?’
The boys come and grow, grow, grow, then go.
They’re parasites on these drained men, who can’t or won’t leave.
There’s only one man who doesn’t look blindsided by his own endurance.
His face is very stern and golden and his eyes know that I have a photo in which my brother is shirtless, I’m eight and in a bright yellow T-shirt and jeans, and we look like crazy daisy hippies on a commune.
He knows about the white dresses I had when I was four.
And about the one time I literally couldn’t eat, as my parents fought over my father’s new woman.
It was toast I couldn’t eat.
He knows that too.
I might meet this tanned psychic someday but not today.
My client comes downstairs so I tell him I have to go and I’ll call him next week.
I get out quickly.
Being like he is, that PE teacher has a good chance of getting out of here quickly too.
Fortunately.

Moons

There are so many versions of the moon,
and you might get to see a strange northern hemisphere one from a village in the Spanish mountains,
one from the cool night sand at Tauranga Bay,
one rising and staring at you like a dumb baby in the eggshell Orewa sky.
So many kinder and more vicious moons won’t be seen.
Maybe just in a movie,
bright over the hills outside the barbwire fences of a mental institution,
in the eyes of any leading actress you can name.
These sad, substitute moons are nothing next to the real, bland thing.
Knowing this hurts most at night, predictably.

For my first car, a great Ford Laser Lynx

Goodbye Purpley.
You’ve been a very good car,
tolerated the crap I’ve put you through,
like crashing you twice,
and taking you out for pointless sunset drives to nowhere, in the name of self-indulgent rubbish that was small even at the time.
Also, you were very brave as I tried to reverse you up a friend’s driveway,
and ended up skinning you alive on the pittosporums.
You’ve wearily accepted that I’m still ignoring the knocking of your dying CV,
like I’d hide in the kitchen and ignore a Jehovah’s witness knocking on the front door.
The other night when I wanted a hug Mike joked
‘why don’t you hug Purpley?’
Actually, I did feel like sneaking a kiss on your driver’s door,
the vehicular version of a gentle kiss on the cheek.
I’m trying to sell you now,
giving you all sorts of fancy names for the ads:
Princess Purpley, Miss Purpley, the Gorgeous Purpley.
Soon someone else will drive you away,
and the car that took me through 18 months will be gone,
just like that year and a half is gone,
and now belongs somewhere else.

Actually, you can't win

These poets in the Internet e-zines have got me nervous and made me wonder if just saying stuff is OK.
They write about lonely, dying leaves on apple trees and old people wanking over porn.
Their relentless figurative language makes me scared and worried and like I want to meet them and say ‘fuck you’ then puke on them and their shitty poems and lives.
They’d say I’m boiling over with hate and jealousy, like a volcano belching lava over the flatlands of love.
These e-zine poets with their incestuous links list and closed shop brains are screwing with me like they wouldn’t believe.
Under the submission guidelines for one of these e-zines it says ‘this e-zine eschews self-indulgence.’
Great.
Bring on the pompous Big Topics.
Why not write about yourself?
It's the smallest topic you'll ever find.

Becoming a winner

My brother was born upside down.
Because of a gynaecologist who mistook ankles for shoulders my brother lost a lot of what he could’ve had.
So did I.
My prick of an uncle loved this.
Me, the poor cousin.
Though richer is any way you might imagine than him and his vague wife and their fat, precocious daughters.
My father bets a lot on the horses and mostly loses.
I lost something every time my uncle said things like ‘it’s near the T.A.B, you know, where you spent your childhood' and I said nothing, just let him grin like a satisfied shark.
What could I say when I can still quote my father’s T.A.B number by heart?
My granddad’s got Alzheimer’s so my uncle and his bitch of a wife have moved in to care for him.
And to shaft my brother and me out of our share of the property.
My father, always the losing gambler, will probably sell us out.
But this time they'll all get a surprise.
And a fight.
For all the losers, I say:
‘I’m never losing again.’

A thousand lollies

John tells me he’s writing a story about how when he was a kid he bought a thousand lollies from the Oriental Markets and sold them.
That sounds very interesting, I tell him.
John’s main concern is that a thousand lollies aren’t enough for a whole book.
He’s only got two paragraphs so far.
So, John thinks he’ll write about candyfloss too.
He explains that adults just want to be children and we’re all at a fair, having to control ourselves from burying our faces in the floss and rubbing it in each other’s hair.
I tell him that floss will definitely give him a few extra pages.
John says he just wants to be a child, but he’s old and he can’t so the best he can do is eat floss and remember.
You’re not old, I tell him.
You’re only 28.
How old are you?
23.
You’re quite a good-looking 23-year-old.
I laugh dismissively like women do when we’re actually thrilled.
These crazy people I meet.
I’m insanely blessed.
God, maybe he’s thinking the same thing about me.

Pinewoods Park

Pinewoods Park has one big pine tree to justify its name.
The tree’s strung with Christmas lights well into February
because it’s always festive at Pinewoods.
The Park used to be fairly relaxed
but now there’s an electronic gate and barbwire fences.
With a name like Pinewoods Park you might think of rest homes, mushy carrots and incontinence.
Really, it’s a pristine place,
popular with families fronted by proud dads who thrust their arms out the windows of their 4WDs to swipe their gate opening cards.
From the top of Jacob’s Ladder you can watch the waves incessantly rolling into Orewa beach,
much like the unstoppable mobs that would surely flood the Park if it weren’t for those big gates.
Mounted on the roof of a bach near Jacob’s Ladder is a wooden bird with a grimacing face.
The wind blows the bird’s legs round in a circle so when it’s gusty he looks like Wile E. Coyote madly chasing Roadrunner.
Or, like he wants to run right off the cliff into those rowdy waves.
Who can blame him?

Why reality shows aren't gospel

On reality TV shows compassion is
building a mansion for a family of disabled people.
The desired reaction is
all the family members crying and saying that they’re now set for life.
In my experience, compassion
soon becomes something you drag out at 9 and stuff away at 5,
or even earlier.
Finally you’ve had it.
You tell people you’ve supported for months that you’ve resigned.
The real reaction is
them saying ‘yep’ and skateboarding off,
or swallowing the last of their latte and walking out on you into the Helensville afternoon sun.
Then you realise that compassion is
accepting that gratitude can be stuffed away too.
It’s knowing that
you have very little idea of what it’s like to be left
and to only have empty skate ramps and the main street of Helensville to fill this afternoon
and many more to come.

Not on a holy night

As some car nutter’s Ford flag whips about and rain drums on the Novalite roof of the bach porch,
I’m lucky enough to discover that the truth of life is to not hold back from any good thing.
While I drink sparkling wine and the pittosporums drink the warm rain,
on the radio Paul Simon sings about the mother and child reunion and then a man on an ad raves about premature ejaculation.
Prematurely, on time but hopefully not too late I want everyone to reach my conclusion.
Glad tidings of great joy for us all, I think,
as the rain thrums on and my mother and I hope there's still wine left in the fridge

Privacy

Two women,
one middle aged and one older,
maybe the mother,
pause their walk through Browns Bay New World car park
to look at a dead bird
which has crashed into the headlight of a parked car and smashed the light.
The bird is tangled up.
One white feather flaps in the weak breeze.
The older woman squats on her bony haunches and says
‘poor thing.’
I walk off quickly.
The footpath glares up into my eyes.
Across the road the people at Starbucks shimmer in the heat,
an oasis of coffee drinking teenagers
and tiny dogs tied to wrought iron chairs.
That poor bird.
There’s no dignity in such exposure,
especially not in the Browns Bay New World car park
where heaps more clueless bitches won’t get that it just wants some privacy,
for fucks sake.

In the event of a disaster

Cockroaches kept appearing in the bach I was renting.
I trapped one under a glass, phoned my friend whose husband runs a pest control business, organised an extermination, and then got the hell out for three nights.
When I came back I swept up a few dead cockroaches.
Their legs were curled up and in death they looked tiny.
One wasn’t quite dead and its antennae weakly twitched.
I chucked it out the window to die in the bark and weeds.
Suddenly I remembered the cockroach I’d trapped the other night.
Under the glass it was very still but when I banged the floor with my fist it moved a little.
Looking at it I felt bad.
I should’ve let it go and die quickly from the poison but I was too scared not to leave it there.
On TV that guy who used to be on Shortland Street was promoting Civil Defence:
“In the event of a disaster the first thing we’d try to do is reach our loved ones.”
I looked at that trapped cockroach.
It was a lonely, starving creature and all its loved ones were dead and dying.
I felt really, really bad.
But I still left it there.

The three big names

I met David outside Countdown and he didn’t look like David.
He was wearing leather shoes, a black jacket, black dress pants, both a bit baggy on his thin frame, but he was so proud in his interview getup.
Some of the usual David was there.
The hoop earring through one tender lobe and the surprisingly soulful eyes that looked like chocolate buttons.
“You look great, very professional.”
“Thanks.”
David rubbed his big hands together and exhaled with a loud “whew.”
“Nervous?”
“Yeah, but it’ll be OK.”
It was.
After the interview, I shouted Countdown’s newest part time grocery assistant a coffee.
“Congratulations David. It’s such a good start for you.”
“Yeah.”
He beamed, and all I could see were pointy teeth and happy, melted chocolate eyes.
“I’ll be working and Paris Hilton’ll come in to ask me out and I’ll be like, nah, sorry Paris, I can't, I'm working.”
It had been a long time since David had talked joyful, pointless shit.
What these illnesses do to people, making grown men thrilled to accept jobs that teenagers only grudgingly take.
“I’ve always thought of being like whatshisname Hilton and Donald Trump. Hilton, Trump and Gillespie, the three big names.”
‘I don’t know David. Those guys seem pretty ruthless, but you’re a nice guy!”
He laughed and I did too and we finished our coffees.
I doubt if Hilton and Trump have ever been as proud as Gillespie was that day.
The biggest of the three big names.

An example of Courage (a Big Topic)

Love,
The War On Terror,
Death,
Writer’s Block,
and other Big Topics may be sources of inspiration.
You can feel obligated to be inspired by Big Topics.
But I find it:
On the motorway to Silverdale at 8pmish on a summer evening,
while pukeko families are wandering near the road, past lumps of dried feathers and guts that show the risks of such a home.
As I pass the BP station and see the remnants of sunlight emphasising the sternness of the road signs
and making the toi toi glow.
When I notice that on the hill brown calves are jumping and testing out life
and two horses are staring at everything,
maybe being warmed by the last of the honey sun
and by being part of this living poem,
which I guess is really so small
but in daring to be a small poem
is maybe very big.

Before the comet

Waiting for the comet that everyone is talking about.
The one six light years away with a 15,000 kilometre long tail.
The one that won’t be seen for another million years.
Filling in dead twilight time waiting.
Having eaten mussels for dinner, each of them with brown rubbery protrusions that looked like tiny snake heads.
Thinking of poem topics:
My Best Date Ever.
The Man Who Sits On A Mobility Scooter Waving At People.
When Friendship Ends.
Etc.
All what you'd find in the creative writing section of school English exams.
Trying to choose between a glass of wine, laundry or a walk on Red Beach.
Dull, dead twilight time and twilight choices that would smell like a musty room and taste of floury apples.
Failing to make decisions.
Killing time that has already passed away.
All of this before the comet, which will make this time and these deliberations seem even smaller.

Reflections on driving in the North Shore and Rodney districts

Good keen men with baseball caps and sneers clench their steering wheels,
desperate for passing lanes,
which are never long enough.
Young women tie their bleached hair into ponytails and hide their cold eyes behind sunglasses as they speed down the motorway.
Older women wearing sleeveless polar fleece vests and chook haircuts tailgate in their 4WDs,
smugly surveying the masses from their vehicular castles.
People wage war on their way to get their Brazilian waxes
and order their espressos
and visit graves.
The rage bubbles in the people as their pubic hair is torn out
and their drinks are drunk
and their flowers rest on stone.
Resentment is written on their personalised plates and rammed home by their bullbars.
They can’t escape their own fury,
no matter how far or fast they drive.

Try it, you might like it

Maybe I have found an uneasy paradise,
alone with R.E.M on the transistor radio
and strong coffee in an elephant shaped mug.
In no way is it an ideal heaven,
being alone and scared of this sometimes as summer people pass by outside
and all I can do is look at the framed print of peach coloured flowers on the wall.
But it is something good,
to dare to live alone, with no telephone
but with other luxuries, including blueberries and sweet apricots in the fridge, Mr. Bo Jangles now on the radio,
and the sea on either side of my little life.

Always a reason

He told me
“I like to wear all my clothes, yes, all at once and there’s nothing wrong with that, OK.”
He laughed at me because he thought I was too polite.
When I asked him about the art exhibition for people with mental illnesses he said
“it was OK but mine was the best by far, OK.”
He ended each sentence with “OK” and consequently always sounded confrontational.
When I offered to buy him a sunhat so he wouldn’t get burnt delivering his pamphlets he was worried:
“Don’t buy me an embarrassing hat, OK?”
Once, when one of my colleagues rang him he told her he couldn’t talk because his chicken was getting cold and he hung up on her.
He smoked.
A lot.
When he was a boy then an adolescent his mother was having sex with her father.
He knew it.
Face it, you’d be fucked up too.

Decency on Albert Street

I was sitting at the bus stop at 2am reading a book about Kurt Cobain and I was sad, not because he’d died but because no matter how much we’d like to we can’t force our life to overlap with someone else’s.
My feet hurt from an eight hour shift at the bar.
Out of the impersonal city night a woman appeared.
She was what people meant when they said raving lunatic.
Her hair was crazy and her eyes looked in two different directions.
She was in my face.
She gibbered about being beaten and how she needed to get to Grey Lynn.
I thought:
Schizophrenic?
Battered woman?
P addict?
All three?
She snarled and her teeth were a mess but I was drained not scared.
Because I’m stupid sometimes I opened my wallet and flagged down a passing taxi.
I offered the driver all my under the table pay to take the madwoman to Grey Lynn but he said no and drove off.
Fuck I was tired.
A yawn swelled in my throat.
Where was the decency?
In me?
In the people who weren’t at a scummy bus stop with a woman who smelled of vomit?
In Grey Lynn?
Or nowhere?
The city was so big and the taxi was speeding away and there was nothing I could do to help that woman.
She babbled at me and shouted “fuck you” and rushed off rounded a corner.
Then I was alone.
On the bus home to the Shore I reopened my book but was interrupted by a guy who kept looking at me and finally shifted from sitting with his friends to sitting next to me.
He asked was he making me nervous and I said no, which was true.
He told me his name was Manny and that we’d been in the same class when I was Form One and he was Form Two.
I remembered him and we small talked for a bit and then he moved back to his friends.
Kurt’s suicide note read “peace, love, and empathy.”
That night I managed edgy tolerance and ambivalence at best.
I quit that job soon after.
The hours were exhausting and I ended up with a bad kidney infection.
It just wasn’t worth it.

Stop telling the same damn stories

When some people’s names are mentioned only one story ever comes up.
My father told me about a man who would periodically walk through town naked and preach about Judgement Day,
near where DEKA used to be.
That man might've liked oranges and kept a diary.
Perhaps nude preaching wasn’t the highlight of his day.
He could've thought I’ll get this done and then go home and feed the cat.
But no one wants to talk about eating oranges and keeping diaries and feeding cats.
Which is funny,
because why is being able and willing to do things like those every day considered less bizarre than public nakedness?
I suggest you think about it.
Because when Judgement Day comes, God will.

Like Patrick Bateman I thought

After a visit to Browns Bay beach, during which I saw two sets of identical twin babies and an old man eating chips, I drove home along Rosedale Road.
From the top of the hill near a field of pine trees you can see the sign for BARBARELLAS SEXYLAND.
In addition to owning SUVs and expensive dogs us North Shore-ites want to buy better sex lives.
A man tailgated me along the flat.
Maybe he was in a hurry to get from this wasteland to SEXYLAND.
Like Patrick Bateman I thought this is not an exit.
You can drive and drive and drive but all you’re doing is making inroads into hell.
Further on I noticed that the personalised plate on the car in front was the same name as a famous American serial killer, just spelt differently.
The driver might’ve been a suave rapist, or perhaps the car was.
Everything has its own way of violating.
Are personalised plates name badges for cars or drivers?
It was such a long road and a thick, windless day.
My plate idea:
NOEXIT.

Anything can be outdone

Tim McVeigh might’ve been pissed to know that he missed 9/11 by just three months.
Or maybe he wouldn’t have liked to be overshadowed like that.
After all, nowadays, when someone says terrorism, do you think of New York or Oklahoma?

Not such a good couple of days

After a night of almost no sleep,
After quitting my job yesterday,
After enduring a kid kicking the back of my seat for the whole flight and saying things like "if we crash into the sea we'll drown,"
After leaking taps and weak water pressure in the shower,
After washing away sweat and feeling it creep back out,
After having to bear early morning backpackers with their cargo pants and corn for breakfast and bone carvings,
After dry muesli with bitter yogurt and watery tinned fruit which cost $6.50,
After no milk with my tea,
After blowing into the tea cup in the hope that the steam will moisten my dry eyes,
I remember I'm here for a job interview.
Good morning Wellington.

My hometown

On www.oldfriends.co.nz I keep reading that many of the girls I went to school with in Whangarei are “enjoying being a Mum.”
Whenever I’m up north I’m tempted to run down the street,
past the old library,
past where DEKA used to be,
screaming “a part of me will always be connected with this place.”
Since I’ve left Whangarei a lot of development has happened at the town basin.
A couple of months ago I walked along the waterfront with Grandad.
He kept asking me if he could pay for me to have a ride on one of the tourist boats.
I kept laughing, patting his old brown arm and saying no.
He’s got Alzheimer's so it’s not his fault.
He asked me “so, when are you going to do something amazing, like get engaged or have a kid?”
After that we had a coffee in the sun and watched the boats.
A perfect childhood summary
in one grown up afternoon.

ANZAC day in Whangarei, 2006

The predawn sky was thick with clouds and, unsurprisingly, it started raining heavily.
Neil and I searched for Grandad and my cousin and uncle in the crowd congregated outside the Whangarei public library.
Hundreds of people had turned out for the ANZAC dawn service.
The old soldiers, heavy with medals and age, slowly formed lines.
The old soldiers were very dignified in the rain.
Neil and I found Grandad and my cousin and my uncle.
Soon, the old soldiers started marching, in time at first, then more and more out of step.
My cousin and I looped our arms through Grandad’s old, sun spotted arms.
Neil and my uncle walked behind us.
The streetlights bounced off raindrops caught in everyone’s hair.
The old soldiers looked like shuffling angels.
Grandad and I got separated from the others at the cenotaph, so we stood together as people gave speeches and laid wreathes.
Some of the speakers messed up their words and the trumpeter who played the last post squeaked a few times.
It was embarrassing and I was annoyed: war is hard but speeches and a trumpet solo shouldn’t be.
A few times Grandad seemed unsteady and I asked him if he wanted to sit down but he said no.
He was very strong in the rain with his medals and memories.
An old man in the row behind us collapsed partway through the service but he got helped up and said he was OK.
The strength we have and lose, it’s beyond our control.
Afterwards we all went to my uncle’s place for coffee.
We only stayed for a bit, because everyone needed a rest, especially Grandad.
Neil and I drove back to his house.
The day was flat and the whole of Whangarei was grey.
We didn’t have a war to fight and would never have our own one to remember.

Broken

“I like seagulls but the thing is, their eyes don’t move” I told my friend at the beach.
“They also look stern all the time.”
My friend reckoned they were doing it for effect.
Seagulls puffing themselves up just like people do.
We walked along the foreshore in the soft rain.
I saw a seagull with a broken leg.
What happens to seagulls with broken legs?
There was a mural painted near the skate ramp.
Written at the bottom was “artists: Becky T., Liam H and Connor P. aged 7”
I will never be seven ever again, I thought.
Soon the rain eased and we walked back to the car and drove away.