KARANGAHAPE

The maggotty white
potato chip that the small
Goth survived on

KARANGAHAPE
Anything that has a heart will leave a ghost
And anything that had a heart has left one
Only squint your eyes at the Good Morning Dairy to see the after-image of Hunters and Collectors
Sheets of bright yellow heat cook th content of K's oven
Morning spreads out like a newspaper
There are twists in K like minor plot devices
Its ribbon stretches out just long enough to be an event
Its path is sometimes an arm, sometimes a neck
We travel in its jetsream - this is the favoured way of travelling K
Saying "hi" to our other selves, our dwarves, our clustered schoolkids, trannies wandering op-shops in search of today, and later, whores stationed like pegs on their own invisible X-marks-the-spot, "hello" tired orange-faced drinkers sitting in the Navel and Family, "hello"
Conversations are birds flying out of our mouths
Some are monuments between friends, others slightly moisture and drivel evapourating in the sun
The weather changes at a moment's notice
Strokes of reckless diagonal rain are set free, angles alternating like a court of law
There are those that walk out of its effect just as there are those who walk into it
K people are our flatmates, sometimes vital, sometimes wallpapered
Perhaps K itself is just one wafting dialogue
K itself is a spoken word risen out of chatty and squeaky polystyrene exchange
It contrasts coldly with the implacable beachhead of Grafton Cemetary where the ghosts are not recent and the conversation is dead
St Kevins is the castle built on the precipice of Myers Park opening out like a green book
Its bowels are pine-bristled and we can pass up or down them (up to the Steps of Challenge, down to the playground)

After the rain, everything changes like a charade
There are shrieking Polynesian voices breaking mirror people
The sounds of old men learning new alcoholic talk
Margaret the Sentinel giving away every third cigarette like her astrology had rolled over and reconfigured
People still cut through the streets
She is thinking: "Don't rain on me. I wouldn't rain on you."
He is thinking of slicing his boyfriend's ear off and chewing it
K is a cringing zoo in a silver coating
Its smells become highlights
If a stale sitcom can be said to hum, there it is as thick as laughter between walls
Beer, glue, gum, foundation, wrappers, sunken dream with the maybe-texture of kebab
The eyes of some flatties are granite now and even the budhists know the fingerprint of crazy
K isn't a man or a woman because it's a thing in a gender-serating dress,
Or do you just believe that because a poem told you on authority?
K is like the Abyss, or leftover 80's mirrorglass
K is what you make of K
And as you travel in its jetstream
As you know
You are K