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.