Sometimes when working on something I get stuck profoundly on something that insists on being there, apparently the way it is, yet it is nonsensical, incomplete, unfinishable, unworkable. none of the words will allow to be changed and it feels like a profound wrong to delete them. for example, a poem of ten pages or so founders on the image of a couple in the courtyard of an abandoned house, embracing in suncream, in a day's intense heat. the image is glanced at in a few words which do not convey. I don't know who they are to the poem or why they are there; I have to assume they have a role but I can't see what it is, or why it is so insistent. if I expand upon them they become a kind of ur-couple who take over in a way I can't live with. If I delete them I feel lost, the poem loses its anchor and floats away from me.

the couple are indulging in an escape. they belong to a world which doesn't recognise the abandoned house; their presence is an indulgence and an intrusion - they have no permission.

And what am I doing here? with that couple that won't articulate itself. they had something to say:

caught in a crumbling courtyard, in love.

their telescope body, expanding its creamy bows

his standing is a gate, hers outlines a slipper. this is what they say to each other, but who are they? they are too mysterious

dreamed that a long critique of my work with others' work was published in the Auckland Society of Authors newsletter. Written by one of the NZIBX folks (JRJ? the former nun?). It was about 15 pages long and as I read my embarrassment/dread/anger turned into realisation that this was all about positioning, and who I was affiliated with, and my work hadn't been read at all. And then I started assembling an argument and was really looking forward to answering the critique (the dream was LONG and I was going through each part methodically) - and was disappointed to wake up. 

watch-glass nails

muppet & spoon

ornitorrinco

An apology for a family transgression - a layer towards the bottom is more settled, less fractious.

And eruptions at the top, plates shifting beyond me.

the next task is to order and read the ms. I may just stay home tomorrow to do that. I don't want to  do it without time.

and then, to ask PB about VB or not? hatred of a request for a favour, undeserved, in the pattern of rejection. 

So therefore, where have I been in this poem, in this book? as a record of a journey. The idea of a mihi, a formal welcoming, that each of these in as much as they deal with loss is also accepting that a new way of life is coming, unknown. working this into the body so it's known that it's not an error.