view from the pa
quotes out of wedlock rumble
up the forlorn ocean beach road
stirring me,
encouraging me to write back to cousins
who have hair to the waist and take tats on the chin
scrambled-egg brain fits follow
murderous magpies
along the witchy woman coast
passing through Captain Cook towns
and cities made of elderly asphalt
you can see the village from the taniwha’s back
full of starving children
and melie-mouthed public servants
trying to save the PM’s buck
while killing off a confused generation
seeking that little something
he paints his thoughts with gnarled fingers
hoping to explain
something he can’t understand
something that retreats out the door
when he commands a hearing
this ‘something’ is to be feared
it has information only Rialto viewers can decipher
he needs it to stay in character
lest the world has a peek and sees his undersized personality
he will seek even as his last breath
blows odours against the nurse’s lived-in face
there will be no reward
he is okay with that
three parts elemental
murky, shifty sky pretends it cares
to get over the horizon
then it unleashes
a storm nothing could survive
***
after a thoroughly wonderful
burst of bravado
I slipped into reverse
and flew through the windscreen
***
the pinko sunrise greets me at the fence
full of tales about hurricanes and hoochy coochy
it seems the weather over the brough
is all bluster and boom
and it’s heading our way
the descent
stumbling through neck-twisting ropy innards
down
down
down into witch-scream rock taunts
cracking shins and knuckles on
callous, reckless devils
grasping, groping, giving up
you topple into a muddy oasis full of points of sun
and illustrious birdsong
a caring companion offering her soul
you stop but the rain flocks and pops
and you run
slippery
into the scramble from hell
all the time plummeting into
open-throated gales of misery
the rain comes through in globules
of ice-cold put-downs;
there’s a slithering at your bare feet
catapults you into nightmares of
bedtime admissions and cowardly rejections
you notice a levelling;
a halt in the torrent
your stagger becomes a steady walk
breaking through last-gasp strands
you enter
unrecognisable, unashamed
