blackmail press 27
Paul Melville
New Zealand

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untitled sculpture - Shane Eggleton
Paul Melville is a previously unpublished poet who lives and works in Wellington.
A Day


At desk and machine the sunlight hours
With no sun, no photosynthesis
Making me the colour of an inmate
The prison pigment of florescent light on a white collar

I wet back my hair and dream of a homemade tattoo
I have ink and paper clips for a trail of tears
Or a punching love hate combination

The thought of blue ink against white collar calms my gut
Of showing people who I really am
No more pretending
No more lying

But these are just thoughts

I am my desk
In a room of desks
In a building of rooms
In a city of buildings
I am one in a million
In some Spock on Spock treadmill race

My vices keep me here
Pounding away
Here keep my vices
Every woman, every beer, every line to forget
Me bending over to pick up the soap
With the corporate bull queer
I know it
They know it
And I take it






Weekends


My weekends are famine breasts.
With the brain off the treadmill and out of gear it strains on the day
Driving neighbourhoods watching suburban inmates leaning into their mowers
Jealous of the routine
Distraction
At times, the captivity

Driving neighbourhoods
Crucified to the second hand of my watch
Trying to fill a hole I cannot find
One not connected to my meat or bone
A pit in my core hidden from view
Where dead love falls down one goodbye at a time

Jesus is there
The man who died for me
The woman I love that won’t meet me for lunch is there
My dead dog and three legged cat are there
All the dead love given and received

I expect to see them meeting in a park
Discussing my faults and mistakes
But there are only the living on the Frisbee and land marks that don’t recognise me