The problem with your neck

Dick Van Dyke was saved by dolphins. I mean of course he was, a man who would never make a movie his children couldn’t watch, bopping along with dolphins in Mary Poppins when dolphins can’t dance on land. Or save anyone. The truth is Dick, some dolphins are rapists and get cracked out playing underwater volleyball with a pufferfish.

The truth is my taniwha would never hurt anyone. Well...

After my grandfather died and turned into a dolphin, my hoa –  the he in this – sent me Real Life’s ‘Send Me an Angel’. He knew my grandfather was a dolphin now.

Right now
Right now
Right now

This is how you talk to a taniwha:

You say the right prayers, you hold on to the fin
You kill an octopus because it has arms and you don’t
You laugh at nothing

The thing is he could always make me laugh. Even the way he said potato and Nana made me laugh. The terrible things he knew about me made me laugh. I even laughed at the terrible things he said about women.

My taniwha has no sex.
It was birthed by a dream.
My taniwha listens to Grace Jones
and grinds pearls into dust.

Who cares more about revenge? Reptiles or mammals? I was the mad woman expecting my taniwha to do my bidding but it is not shaped like vengeance. My taniwha is shaped like fun.

I dream about him. Because we were like season one of Remington Steele. Because he was charming as Pierce Brosnan. Hair is very important here. In this dream of the sea.
Our hair
Our kurī
Our cry
The tuatara crawling out my mouth needs a leash.

And still our taniwha. And princesses with hair made for riding them, don’t snort, you wish.

I wish I had been more curious. I wish I had known when it wasn’t funny. I wish we hadn’t stayed up longer than our hair trying to understand the wrong of you. But it was too late.
I know there is another place.
And I know my taniwha
And its heart is the kererū
Diving into the dust
In my dreams it’s softer and sweeter than it ever was between us in real life.
You were disappointed when I became broken, when I talked about myself too much and didn’t ask about your business. A Virgo to the end.
But the end of what exactly?
Me and you
There is none of that
There is Hinepoupou carving up the water like a roast
It is the dogs she turns to stone
It is the dolphins who laugh
And point true south
Away from the truth
It is Grace Jones
Shucking oysters
Saying fuck u motherfucker fuck u
I thought you were my friend
Because after I posted the Farnsworth House on Facebook
The white plane of its pavilion
You sent me a message saying
Hangi if we end up alone
Let’s be together in that whare
Like Mies van der Rohe could gloss over the monochromatic
Void in you. How you knew
My life was falling apart and paid me too much to clean your house

And the clothes horse
And your black running pants
Strung over the thin skeleton
Of its aluminium
Like a clue for the man
Seen in the bush
The banal beauty of Ted Bundy’s sentences
Running through the Utah of my mind
I still dream that you are my brother and we share a bed
Innocent as rain
Where the dolphin is laughing
And no one is touching
Because all our fingers have eyes