Happiness

Walking around in my Thom Morisons,

I think I’ve turned out mean, owned

and worn by this city. I can’t even

look at the beautiful paintings by Nick

with my new friend Kade —

every time I see your name

or hear your face

I’d rather not, I’d rather be

on my own than citizen to some

deep fantasy of return.

These nights I dream

and wake orphaned, maimed, or otherwise

dead, still half-soaked in shock,

clutching at my heart like pearls. Honestly,

not a day passes, not an hour or even

a minute I don’t think about dying

or, for that matter, happiness, its far-off moving

target, my new foolish attempts

to shoot at it. Getting at something

and not getting anything seems largely

the point, just as how a few hours ago

I was raging Do you know who I am

at somebody somehow underwater

who couldn’t hear me. I don’t believe

dreams like these have anything to tell me.

I don’t believe that life is real, nor that

it necessarily is headed in the right direction.

And God, no! I don’t believe

somebody sat down in a boardroom

on a swivel chair and actually planned all this.

Take me out down the streets

of my mind and just look

at the people’s sudden faces.

Jackson McCarthy is a poet and musician based in Te-Whanganui-a-Tara | Wellington. He is of mixed Māori, Lebanese, and Pākeha descent. His poetry has been published widely in local literary journals, including Ōrongohau | Best New Zealand Poems, and he currently serves as an editor at Symposia Magazine. His debut poetry collection, Portrait, is forthcoming from Auckland University Press in 2026.