CONVERSATION

Sorry
I haven't been myself.

But
who has,
who has?

The world is too big
and so much happens
to so many of us
that I feel like
I'm slipping,
slipping away.

MYOPIA

I'm a little blind
without my glasses.

I cannot read
the writing on the wall

or judge vehicles 
on the road
on a rainy day

ORIGINS

(For Sunila Tai. I dreamt we were having this conversation.)

What came first, Tai—
the word or the story?

The story, you said.
Words were only
a medium.

GALPA

‘Password, please.’

‘So, I was lost in this big, big banana grove.
I’d no idea how I’d gotten there
or how I would get out.
And then it hit me that
I must eat all the bananas —
the green ones, the yellow ones, the red ones ­—
and I would find the answer in one of them.’

CRACK

You make your way out
of the egg
every morning:

your uncertain limbs
kicking the shell,

your beak
sniffing through 
the crack,

Smokin'

No, I don't do cigarettes
but every once in a while
I hold a bit of dark chocolate
between my tremulous fingers
and sniff the darkness—
the bittersweet, geosminic darkness—
right into my expectant lungs,

NAÍVE

I love the word ‘naíve’
she says.

'Naíve' sounds so much
like someone's name
she says.

'Naíve' sounds like a lady
holding a nice cuppa coffee
she says.