In The Poetry

Puriri

A puriri moth’s wing
lies light in my hand

my breath can lift it ―

light as this torn wing
we lie on love’s breath.

To reach Dante’s earthly paradise in the Garden of Eden, you must climb the nine circles of Mount Purgatory to the top. I’ve imagined the tor at Torbay, North Shore City, Auckland as representing Mount Purgatory. A local Maori myth has a young woman waiting for the return of her lover as she [...]

The fourth sequence in Dante’s Heaven is called ‘Love is a Babe’, a sequence of poems around Beatrice’s voice.

Someone kissed me

Someone kissed me ―
Is it blood or lipstick
on my cheek?

Was it a thought
brushed past me
or a moth’s wing

but there, those scarlet stains
on my skin, my white dress.
I walk the Lungarno

near the Ponte Sante Trinit

Dante’s ‘heaven’

We two fallen through earth’s core
beached here at Mt Purgatory
blink back antipodean light
days on end.

There’s sky enough to dive into
islands in green-blue water
to swim to.

Heaven to be earthly
looking up nightly
at the blackness
milky with stars.

Hong Kong sounds

Cityscape
skyscrape
Mercedes Benz bus goes
Mongkok sunrise
concrete
block
block
block

hard hat
sunlight
construction site
truck backing
truck backing
truck backing
black pyjama amah
marketing
wax duck
pot luck
tiger balm
dim sum

Star Felly
Day Star Night Star
caterpillar walk on water
Hung Hom
Hung Hom
ho hum
Carlsie Bergie
Susie Wongzie
Hang Seng up down

ding dong Deng (Xiao Ping)
dong
Maggie Thatcher in Beijing
stir-fry
iron dry
nineteen ninety
nineteen ninety
all the sevens
bingo
mah jong
Hong Kong
yum sing!

Swimming

Nothing reduces you to your skin like the sea – cold
plunge into reality, a tongue already salty & all that power
self-propelling you through our other element -

body loving every pummelling second as your mind slips
on the (no wonder) Madonna-blue beach wrap of the sky.
The straightest line imaginable just over the breakers,

visibly separating the two, doesn’t [...]

The ballad of Donna Quixote

I want to be
a Viennese lady
eating up Art in a cloche.

I want to walk
down the Champs-