PRESENTING CONRAD
lizard skin bag
everything i own is contained in a lizard skin bag
i have a weakness for skin
in early autumn the flesh began to fall away as if a deciduous tree slowly revealing its underlying structure the mound winterly furred sank as if seeking bone pits attracting shafts of light closed between soul and darkness skin kept company with bones body sinking |
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father
father you came too late a mound of anger had grown over heart’s divided chamber
father i waited for you bound in the skin shroud of life – death
father i called your name when I was laid on a backstreet abortionist’s table
father i called your name when they tore out my ovary
father i called your name when I fell through a glasshouse
father i called your name when I slashed my wrists
father i called your name when my blood shot into the sky in a black fountain
father you came too late a mound of anger had grown over heart’s divided chamber
glass mountain (for my mother & father)
when i was 33 i met a man he said the lines on your hand are a map there is a secret surrounding your birth the man who you think is your father is not your father
i crept away
the boat slid between huge sleeping hills seagulls screamed their eyes cruel
i came to my mothers house i said to her who is my father she said nothing for a long time nothing then she said your father is a jewish painter
i sent him a photograph of myself i was afraid he would not want me i wore a white feather in my hair i told him about my broken marriages my abortions my lovers my children my self imprisonment i said life is a glass mountain
i keep climbing up
falling down i live in a dream i turn everything i love into a fetish
my father wrote to me he wanted me he had no children only me he asked me to come and stay with him in london
i was afraid of the world i did not wear clothes i did not eat meat i lived high up in a hidden valley within a circle of hills a great river rushed down the valley met another river the land was full of stones and foxgloves
i did not show my paintings to anyone from the age of 26 i hid them in cupboards instead of food
i stood at the airport my plaits dying silkworms my father bound in the still egg of a dream hovered in his long gabardine coat curls straggling on his collar smooth olive face blurry & secretive mouth opulent gentle eyes bespectacled
he was frightened when he saw me
cleaving to the wall as if wanting to escape he had run from me all these years we drove away in a black limousine
the tall dark house was full of his paintings i showed him my paintings in a head on collision we recognized each others queerly mapped territory wanting each other yet rejecting each other violently each one aghast at the others likeness each one turning away from love offered
you park your car outside my bedroom window you shut my bedroom window you nail paint rags across the glass
my bedroom is plunged in darkness outside you rattle your spray gun the smell of turpentine pierces memory i grope in darkness
i remember how i first saw you your tail of gold hair your coat of corduroy i was on heat with a proclivity for crushes you led me on hastening away at crucial point
a friend, startled by my obsession with you informed my mother
my mother said to me you always get crushes on men you live in a dream world this time you shall face reality
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mother
mother this man you so mercilessly offer is not my father at an early age i tested the unpalatable qualities of his suit
forced by a striking repulsion to withdraw i hid on a narrow windowsill nibbling dry biscuits plucking at the dead cloth of an insidious curtain
mother this man you so mercilessly offer is not my father at an early age i grasped the naked pole of a revolving clothesline ran round and round dizzy with disbelief
imitation giraffe
during my slow death i became part of the broken part of the cracks part of the holes part of the eternal gasp
nearer nearer than a lover the broken the vanquished the hungry
nearer nearer than a lover nailed to the flaming arc of life
i became an imitation giraffe set in concrete staring in glass eyes whilst the real giraffe huddled in a shed
nearer nearer than a lover
thesaurus (for miro)
when i was 9 months pregnant i got stuck in the lavatory with a red & black thesaurus
after 5 hours of enforced study i was let out
not long after this you were born
at an early age your vocabulary was extensive mine was strangely applied in dark places
my fear of being locked away grew
broken souls
when will you be ready to go to the market you ask in a tight black coat
not yet I say ive got to suck dust up the long stick of my vacuum cleaner
ive never owned a vacuum cleaner before
ive always used a straw broom to chase the dust of broken souls
ghosts of lovers - pukerua bay 2008 flung far from Kapiti Island your shadow and mine
veiled in steam
blinded by the sun she traverses rooms leaning on her black stick her twisted feet hover above the floor her great fallen head her eagles nose her flaring nostrils still seek the unattainable
reaching the bathroom she crouches veiled in steam on her precarious throne
posing as her daughter i shower her with sudden ejaculations of hot & cold water rolling a slippery cake of rose soap over her nakedness into the open graves of her armpits over the gentle egg of her belly she holds out her hands cupping the water I slide the soap over her burial mound directing a warm stream towards that sacred place where I sheltered 68 years ago
how can I tell her I revere her I am lost in the open grave of her arm pit the soap slithers out of my hands
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