Tusiata Avia
Wairua Rd
The Spirits love me so much they sent all the people
in Aranui to be my friends or my parents.
We all walk the Big Path from Cashmere to the sea.
We run like lawnmowers on each others feet.
The Spirits rise up out of the footpath outside the Hampshire St pub.
The space that a bomb took out of the ground walks about
on a pair of legs with a ghost looking out.
The Spirits love me so much they turn me into a plastic bag.
I will live in a whale or a shrimp and kill it.
My mother rises up out of the lino wringing
and wringing the blood from her hands.
The Spirits love me so much we all sit round to watch the sparklers in my brain, the beautiful sunset
the campfire burning, the jerking of my body.
My father rises up out of the carpet and down I go
like knees, like beetroot juice in the whitest of frigidaires.
The Spirits of the Big Path love me so much they have driven me back up to this house.
If the Spirits didn’t love me, I could live in a dog
in a wife, in a house, in a merivale
Or on some other shining path, far away from the hungry road.
