Poems from Here and There Grey Lynn town of old fat men in the bright autumn morning standing on corners after drinking too much on a Wednesday night, twelve-day white fuzz on their faces punched in like old suitcases. It'll take years for me to get to their stature: gallons and gallons of bitter; and think of their wives! what are they doing this morning in their cheap Grey Lynn shacks? I'm cutting through this bright sharp morning not yet stayed by my own gut in fact I have a strange reserve of vigor I don't think I'm s'posed to got. But where there's a way there's half a will and it just needs a bit of encouragement one way or the other, and right now I'm on the Great North via marvelling at its inhabitants and their strange uniformity. A Penny to Remember when you're young or rather, when you're older, all the bright and shiny nickels and pennies you found perforate the haze towards the edges of your memory you ran fast to show it to your mother or talked fast to tell the story to your best friend and then, it was the best thing to do, you put it in your pocket the day went on filled with adventures likely the more forgotten and other memories: of mom and dad trying to fix the washing machine, loud voices as you did your word puzzle happy smudged pencil in the other room nor ever would you reconcile the two Back at Home I've plugged in my clock radio but not to set the time and the station's already set And I've poured a glass of wine though each sip makes me sleepy and I had plenty to be tired about in the first place I finished my Bukowski book hadn't realized how little I'd read though I'd had it a year All these things make me happy but tired but happy and you binary atrophy reason is nothing but certain ways I could touch you multiply by nary a trophy for your kindness failing busy advancing friendly mild Sailors of old world slipping beneath them racecar driver a similar phenomenon I've never felt. He can't escape his body it's scary you are the propulsion its all in our hands whoever fucks it up is I. This isn't a top-scroller. No continues. No extra change. No bonus round. The road won't come at you if you don't push on. The next frame is not necessarily unlike this one. The next frame may not even arrive. This could be it. A book with fourty-two end pages only way to achieve film ending effect. Who checks their watch in a movie but can't guage novel remainder by thickness? and yet I tell you this and my plan is thwarted, by whose hand but my own. “Oh, him!” hand flop at wrist, “He wrote that one? “With the faux gone conclusion? “Tried to trick the reader more to come? “Ha! I just cut the last pages off of _my_ copy— “—that'll show him!” Yes, she has a huge pair of scissors in sillhouette scaring me into looking at her and away from the shadow showing her for what she is or was or will be, showing me— no no no the light from that angle, that is all; Elongates the chin here, Splays those fingernails out for yards there. Look around you, All these here, They've got their eyes where yours ought to be. They don't see that —is it there? no no no it's all youth still: look at those breasts, plenty of perk left; those lips aren't cracked like their shadow; that nose is shapely, look at the beauty! How young she seems for an age you ought to be wondering at but no not like the others see what she will be or has been and, definitely definitely, is. bah, Look around you, all these here, They've got their eyes on their dirty old selves, in prison with her eyes and fine figure. In prison with their eyes and fine figure. busy, advancing, friendly, mild. A resemblance in which burn the young. A resemblance in which burn the young. Code Distance Imagine you were in a world where not every audible sound could be found on recording not every visible shade of light captured on video every act in the combination of both and time —I'd relish every moment more for not being able to rewind, demand every drop since the drops are not ondemand but ought to command my attention at every moment and further, further, if were not words to approximate thoughts, notation to approach music I'd listen the more reverently to the least so sounds, my keenness to your being would be heightened to the sensitive, the animal because it would have to be and backwards: rue the day tone suffers the fate of pitch, innuendo the jail of punctuation, poetry the cage of form and prose the god-damned more so. Encounter in Dunedin —hey, do you live 'round here? 'cause like, is it a public holiday or something? trio giggling at her shoulder —n'it's just monday —what? —no, no holiday. just monday. it's just monday night that's all —oh —wha'd he say? “it’s just monday” giggling a trio again goodbye Finish Your Sentence! can't you tell it's just the leaves? come on, finish your sentence. fuck! a plague this this waiting fretting shudder to end with life monumentum in memoriam A friend of mine once came to me worried that someone might forget him and told me he didn't mind if he were buried or cremated but, that someone would remember him, he'd like a small plaque of darkest hardest granite set in the sands of the desert with a few small things about him etched in. Well, I forget what I said to him at the time. But now it seems abundantly clear to me as I sit here thinking of him far away and changed and, I'll confess, marvelling that I have lighted upon this memory of him at all, that it is still there somewhere in my mind —it is clear that anything which can be engraved upon cannot last forever and the desert is the worst place to put it. o penumbra open um bra can't 'ide no stay sis shift in to ward sand away from death pepsi purple wash not lushness but what falls into the cracks out of good times teeth grey against these purple lips: these aren't words they're forming but a need suckle for the pepsi it's all too much 18 year day fuck Poetry Poetry: a product of the times. well fuck these products and fuck these times. I'm not going to put up with the crap flowing out of their journals and their sorry-for-themselves traps. I'm dying on the outside, not on the in. My patience and arteries are both wearing thin. My heart and my breath both keep me up: the labour of living is physical and won't let me sleep. If you can't even fit in with the misfits, if you can't help but laugh at the farce, what else can you do but bitch and complain in silence in a room with your heart? The Opposite of Time a stool-poet's smoking in the corner loading his words up with time in the hope all the time will turn into weight: a palpable weight for his flambouyant audience straddled about him to suck on like candy for the soul and it's working, I suppose, tugging at their frills and their eyelashes— _sed quis tedium cupit_? _tedium_ is weight _est_ tedium isn't it dull? well yes, others in groups ignore and chatter: are _levis_ and _gravis_ such complementary opposites? give me the poet who infuses his words with not time but its opposite who's in too much a hurry to ubermensch maybe i have no willpower maybe i just don't care maybe i'm just sick and tired of sleeping in my underwear perhaps i should feel ashamed to fail where most others have or perhaps i should just lean back and smile, chillax, pour a drink, and laugh i'm returning the watch that i bought for a dime a very nice piece but with too weak a chime i'm settling down into a job and t.v. a big case of beer and i need to sleep. Victory strangest thing just happened: police car drove by and had a strong urge to grab a rock and hurl it at it as it went, moments later I am walking behind someone and read on the back of their shirt: please refrain from throwing missiles and then a nike swoosh While I Wait while I wait I'll busy myself with something trivial like life like the woman files her nails on the train or a girl walking by poi poi poi poi twirling unashamed— —the difference between my killing time but fuck it. I've started a pyramid of Mountain Dew cans ros monti -> mons roris I started the pile on top of my copy of Naked Lunch. I'll be fucked if anything else controls me addiction.