Crawling down the tunnel,
with mickey ears.
Never a fun time.
I was four years old and claustrophic/
I made my way in and the other toddlers too
Until there was no way out all exits were blocked
So I screamed just about as loud as any creature could have screamed
And the kids poured out just as traumatized as they had left me
That gave me a great deal of satisfaction
And when they pulled me out
The adults comforted me
And the terrible game was over
Andrew had called all the kids who were now adults
From teens till middle age a dozen thousand parties later
First signs of wrinkles, belly fat, balding
Popular friends now are the ones earning over a hundred and fifty g a year
Popular friends made consumer decisions designer brands shoes and threads
And those decisions were the biggest talking points in the endless bore
Well timed laughter and bragging, inspiring gesticulation
The fear of missing out aimed and tainted all of them
Envy wasn't just green it was every color
The ones they put on for sport and the ones they wear for fun
deep down they feel the pinch as they compare among themselves
looking up and down and feeling that sense of inequity
They themselves gave themselves up to it
Liek young women to mansions owned by known abusers
They return and feel that push until their self esteem can finally fit
Into the the tiny cubby hole that Andrew has decided they belong inside of
Indoors warm outside crisp and cold
The stream that passes through aint clean
The flax whispers and mocks as it's leaves whack and slip
A dead fish lies down there on the beach
Sewage pipe runs parallel
The building on my left wafts chlorine off it
The grass is short and durable
Fatter blades like those of the tropics
Bryan Ferry's song moves through the dreary dream of the place
Here is somewhere familiar
Lo somewhere completely foreign
maybe there's hope for you yet grandfather's portrait echoes
The waves with their lips all foamy jumping out from the brushstrokes
Like saliva from his mouth when he cant get the words out
All the way back between the channel toward Kapiti island
I observe the wooden supports to the polluted stream
I marvel at how well it's all put together
yet the stench of the unprocessed waste water
Matching it to the public pool's incredible chlorine stink
The senses awoke and it became a strange dimension
The overpowering sun shone ont those eastern facing steps
It's there i'd take my small lunchbox out of my bag
Open it and compare the contents with the other little ones
Often disappointed until the first mouthfull
Then I was mostly just grateful
And little did I know the life ahead was all about hunger
Hunger for more, hunger for different
The sun in my eyes
Finish my apple some bland biscuits
My allergies kick in
Not because of the food
But the pollen
The first sneeze shakes me
I move away from the others
Blow my nose and wait for the irritation to leave me
The bigger kids move on through always doing something important
And out little insignificant sandpit remains empty
Even in the sunniest days of the year
An orb weaver’s deal in the frame.
A picture frame jutted out of the tangled mass of hoses, mechanical parts, pieces of a leather sofa.
Within its chiseled wooden square an orbweaver dropped down toward the middle of the frame and thus started to weave its web. Dancing between the uprights hooking its next line.
Some hours later when the design took form and there was that enigmatic pattern, the mist fell.
Clouds broke.
The morning sunlight beam lit it all up.
No one saw the spider curse as autumn flies spotted the lines and avoided them.
The beautiful symmetry was obvious in the light.
It stood out like an omen, like a vertical crop circle.
And flying things avoided it, yet come dusk and with it the accumulated warmth of an early autumn day, the air around the landfill would be humming with the wings of desperate insects commuting between the unfamiliar expanse of refuse and the nearby coastal marshes.
And so it was and thus the first mosquito darted directly into the web as soon as the afternoon light dwindled. The orb weaver so sensitive with its tactile feedback and skilled with its pounce and the inevitable follow through of its horrid bite.
Before it could tie the hapless blood sucker to the overhanging bridge of the frame a flying termite came in clumsily.
The spider liked neither the after taste nor the careless flight of the creature and ate it more out of spite than enjoyment.
At least the thing was easily wrapped up and would keep longer than some insects.
A pair of mosquitos came through in their mating flight, getting wrapped up inside the strands. They didn’t seem to notice the monster bearing down on them. And before they were through they were sewn up with the other two hapless ones.
After that it was mostly moths and a few beatles, but their thick wings allowed them to make tactical escapes. The moths were the orbs least favorite. Dusty crabby wings, and a tiny body with barely any sustenance on it whatsoever.
Their flapping also bothered the Orb. He left more than one of the moths in the web, for which he swore to rebuild after the bulldozers came.
Leaving his very own trash behind, a web with the unwanted victims of the night before, still attempting to flap out of their spider web cocoons.
Yes that indeed entertained the Orb.
After he had digested the mosquitos and the silly termite, he kneel on all eight and pray the the frame stay in it’s position.
Jutting out from the debris, allowing him to spin his home, his sigil, his sacred trap and dining table once again.
Electric antenna HR's deity at play
Rocking arms and wheels company segway
Inspiration hyped and professional frustrate
Chain and web and logistic wednesdays
Kpis and aims and goals quarter fitting
demands and constraints and deadline metal
expedient charisma wildly formal yet sassy
Dreams are born then severed into sashimi
The gears and pistons and Pneumatic tubes
Keep the C levels in lux and the noobs in lube
How I trickle
fumble and tickle
the hair turning red
The man of me mad
Embark onto the pavement
Broken city all okay
My masculinity snake like
slithering up the cracks in the pavement
Know me by another name
lost and hopeless
Found and godlike
Peeling back the clouds
Just to find their lightning
Extract the strom
From their inevitable storm
Embark on the wayside
Hairy and sasquatch like
Hostile and warlock like
Eyes as these
See what you hide
Eyes like these, now lo
get to know you inside
I couldn't guess what they were trying to do
It's a life, a machine
get a grip
fidgeting with some small object
anxiety such a gift
tapping in and out of
Hey drone agitation
I can see your new hobby
On a thread on a screen in some pent up implication
That reads under the title
I can see the shape of the attempt
Life is a rush you want to disprove something
Sit with yourself restless and unable to just to be
Influenced by the live wires and pre tweeking teens
coming up and splashing their half truths and dreads
All across the little reality they hope you'll check
The feathers have grown
The bird is magnificient
The baby cries through the wall
The beak extends over years
The plummage is majestic
The grace of the bird
The pain in the infant
Soon flight will be expected
Night is dry morning humid
Eyes imitate
The bird spreads it's wings
Falling off the rail
Taking the upwind into the sky
Golden feathers
Gone into the sunrise
Gone from our observation
Outside the fence
Poking pines
stinking eucalypts
Trees and undergrowth conceal me
Pull a cigarette from pack
Time has no authority
The bell will go
but we will stay
Duties have no authority
Strict voices calling people
Angry at broken boundaries
Poorly maintained fences
Need dark shade
Or direct light
Just not the greys
Just not twilight
A place where rules massage obedience
Into believing structure is safety
Yet even the air itself disobeys
Fast-growing exotic trees pushing through boundaries
I light the cigarette
Smoke flows and fluffs across the fence
Voice fades behind me giving up
The man connected to it is gone
Undesirable pariahs emerge from the undergrowth
Wary and troublesome souls
Slipped beyond the limits and structure
I draw smoke into my lungs and exhale
For a moment the fence shrinks
Branches scrape against its wire
The stragglers disappear between the trees
And the voice has no volume to warn us
My coffee tasted like shit this morning
Age had been yelling at me
From the moment I woke
To this current sentence I'm struggling to throw on the eye
Tasteless boring coffee and no expression to the back garden morning light
My dog looked up with pity in his eyes or atleast thats what I chose to see
My energy plateaus bleakness slowly manifests like a big colorless veil
It tells me about my past like it can read into my mind and it's memories
It doesn't jeer or taunt, it just matter of factly reiterates the disappointment
It lays down the situation and the acidic aftertaste of the coffee stings the mouth
I do not try to diminish or deny the elaborations of the colorless veil
Infact I have to strain my brow to be bothered at all
Despite the growing apathy and sense of stinking staleness a sense a slight optimism
For if all those years contained the most daunting and abject desolation
Then surely tomorrow was going to shine super brightly in comparison
That is if I was seeking the difference and not the familiarity
A terra da fazenda terminava
Pernas pesadas nos levaram para o bairro
Ruelas estreitas onde viviam aposentados
Cuidando das barracas de suas camas
Uma longa fileira de casas geminadas
Conduzia para dentro da vila
Ao longe, um velho atravessou a rua
Passo de caracol sobre o asfalto
Onde meus pais moram, ouvi uma voz dizer
Com quem ele estava falando?
Cortinas escondiam o conteúdo de cada casa
Por trás de coloridas cortinas de artesanato local
A nuvem se estendia diante do dia
Observávamos formas que se moviam lentamente
Dentro das casas cujas portas estavam abertas
Velhice e resignação
Planejei minha saída daquele lugar
Mas agora meu corpo estava cansado
Minhas ambições mortas, eu seguia mancando com a perna boa
Para preparar uma xícara de chá dentro de um casabre vazia
The farm land ended
Heavy legs carried us into the borough
Narrow lanes where reitred people lived
Attending stalls from their beds
A long length of connected cottages
Leading into the village
In the distance an old man crossed the street
Snail pace across the tar
Where do my parents live I heard a voice say
Who was he talking to?
Curtains hid every cottages contents
Over colorful local handicraft curtains
The cloud stretched out before the day
We observed slow moving shapes
Inside the homes whose doors were open
Age and resignation
I planned my exit from this place
But now my body is tired
My ambitions dead I amble on my good leg
To make a cup of tea inside the vacant shack
Left for me
The bear necessities
When you become absence
The way the sea longs for
The earth is swallowed whole
I grow awakened, but on you there's a price
A flooding dreadful coastal bog!
Your eyes see only shadows of waves
Fading embers of life's fresh beginnings
Feeling begins to diminish
Dread cannot be escaped
Freezing water frightens your chest
Uncertain underneath creatures twist
You kick and struggle reason falls apart
Depths of the blackness
Not only to survive
To resist this watery ending
To feel warmth again
Deep self deception
Even in the battle
In your private life collapse and discomfort
Discover new kinds of hollowness
Each one a temperature, freezing
The muted light beneath towering clouds
Crowd the surface of lifeless ocean
Icy water holds you
All life's reminders and everything endangered
Terrible alarm that ordering you awake
The horizon is blinding midnight
See disguises people wear and their quiet attacks
The sun is still there, behind the darkness
Trying its hardest to reach out and restore
But cheap costumes continue to bewilder
Waking the warmth gone
Rain is falling in
The roof is gone
I draped a blanket to stop the drops
But they kept on
I turned over
The color of my existence
Color of my dreams
Getting leached out
The dye of the purple sheets fading
My face looks up at imposing mornign cloud
Tears camouflage
Waking the on the damp concrete
The inner sanctum
No slumber
No relief and soon there will be aspergillus
So I walked out of what was my abode
Pavement looking up at me
mocking me urine colored brown
Also fading
The rain spares none
I looked up as each drop ran down
beachfront grin as I realized
It wouldn't change me
Beavan came speeding in happy napkin
Sparkling disposition
Team player apron sewn together with slogans
He arrived cheerful fully buzzed up
A ton of witty remarks up the sleeve
Or under the apron
Pen and pad and saliva for the consonants
A motor of a man giggle
Back with over sugared dessert
Full of creme and m and m's
Insuline spike and elf beaven left the room
Speeding around like a humming bird on crack
life is a feast
Eating is hell
Bread is from yeast
Chicken eggshells
Life is a rump
A romp and a flop
Stools made from stumps
Ornate table table tops
Thus crowd over food
Excrete and bleed
Hunger renewed
Once again feed
Savour ingest
Extract digest
Hunger a pest
Linger a chef
Pining miles from the town
She thinks of the moon, needs it close
Exposed scrub brushy like a death fringe
She remembers watching moonlight split and splatter
Grinding grey drooping dry
She wonders whether the moon misses the earth when daylight arrives
A stubby round structure stands clay and fiber
She imagines the grace of the moon
Erected like a wooden cross in the breeze
She imagines the moon caught between its arms
Empty form hanging on underneath peeling the dust off
She wishes she could hang her dreams there
A human woman stands there hot northerly scorching crops
She thinks about the moon touching the hills of her being
Naked in the shape village men's dream
She imagines being painted silver as an extension of the moon
The house is oval and needy like the faces in the village
She looks at the moon and predicts it's own desires
Drying clothes outside touching her arms night wheezes
She imagines sleeping under the cross as the moon peaks and tickles her
Awaiting a maid who left the village a decade past
For a man who got lost in distant mountain ranges seasons passed.
She waits for both and even the moon refuses to return.
Smile begins before she knows
a tiny movement at one corner a clean pond this mouth of hers
Pouring into another then another
until her whole face seems to have agreed
Her dimples arrive late enchanting our hearts
as though they have travelled some distance to get there
When she laughs it keeps changing
opening, narrowing, breaking into smaller smiles
One appears when she understands
another when she is amused
another when she catches somebody watching
and suddenly the first one seems like an experiment
Something unfair about it
carefully displayed
Mouth repeatedly discovering happiness
Two dimples perform on her face
Everyone nearby waits
for her grace
I never told him why
I pulled a baby boy out of the landfill today, what a miracle.
It started to cry as I pulled him out. As If he preferred to be in there.
There were pieces of sticky wrapper and dead bugs clinging to his blanket.
I wrapped him in clean towels. Yes it was alive and healthy.
I looked around, there was no one there.
I could just guess the fate of such a lovely little creature had he been left there.
I stomped across broken chipboard which sunk my legs into the trash heap.
I found myself peeling off chicken wire and adhesive plastic sheets off myself as I navigated back to my truck.
I never had a son. I looked at the baby. It’s fat face and questioning eyes held mine.
I maneuvered both opening the cab door and holding onto the baby at the same time. It was pretty simple. I cleared my gear out and placed him on the seat draping and clicking the seatbelt into place.
Not far from the entrance stood a tall cardboard box with a water stain on it. Intuition told me to go over and open it up before I left.
I took a box cutter and went and opened up the large cardboard box. It was full of toilet paper and diapers. Well hallelujah. I took out the first layer of toilet paper which had been spoiled by some form of leak probably from where it had been shipped from.
Threw the box on the back. Rousing the baby.
I got into the other side of the cab, turned the old hunk a junk over. Looked down at the baby who now had his face all scrunched up as if he was going to burst into tears.
As we left the landfill,l he did burst into tears.
The worst of it was, his face was almost going normal again as a beam of sunshine came in and lit up the internal cab quite amazingly.
But then it came, and whatever I did to slow down or cut down a gear, it didn’t seem to matter.
The speed bump threw the front up chassis and slammed it down. Disturbing the baby.
For the twenty minute ride home it was the shrillest cry session I had observed in my life.
But it didn’t put me off. I would take this baby home and figure out what was what.
I got in the door and investigated him. looked him over completely.
There was a little nametag on his baby suit, it said Harold.
His name was Harold. I started cleaning him up and changing his first diaper.
I decided he’d be my son.
Didn’t tell the police, didn’t try to go after the real parents. Just took him out, cleaned him up, bought a crib and started mixing milk formula.
Years later this boy my son helped me dump landscaping and garden waste into the landfill. He always loved the place. I never told him why.
Before I could leave I spotted Butch and a handful of his disciple like friends dismantling a styer AUG rifle on the lawn.
I went over and pretended I knew what I was on about.
The guys seemed very affable. A lot of cleaning going on.
The genuine conversation like "why the hell do you need a machine gun?" never came up.
One of the guys was in the military I didn't fish for details.
I recounted a day when Butch had turned up to school dressed as Rambo.
We were almost ten years old. It was one of those months where the kids were synchronized in their lunchtime games. There was so much running and screaming to be done, going back to class felt more natural.
Butch had brought a plastic toy machine gun to school. and was running around with a trail of kids following him. Not to disarm him but almost in a strange form of imitating him. As if they didn't read the other groups of kids who merely thought them to be Butch's sidekicks nothing more. The grunting dregs of his personality along for the ride.
That thought left me questioning my own purpose there. Was I catching up with a long lost friend, or was I some container for charisma of Butch.
Thankfully I never hung out with that group enough. and his mannerisms as a middle aged man were nothing like they were in his youth.
But the guys that were helping him with the rifle certainly seemed like poorer minds or somehow dependent on Old Butch for some kind of direction.
Butch remembered the day and regarded me.
But he looked me in the eye and he said it direct. Now this was probably the real purpose for why I had gone along to this event. For someone like Simon Bernard Elliott would never go to such an event.
"You were scared and you still scared to live your life. You mock the world from the safety of your office. You cling to the familiar. Why don't just confront life. Wake up to it. Shake it. You don't need to understand it. I will give you that plastic toy rifle, not as a joke. But as a token to remind you one of your goals as a man is to chase challenge and passion. And don't be investing in every kind of insurance or protection."
He pulled it out of nowhere as if he was holding it the whole time. the same toy machine gun.
But the speech hadn't been rehearsed.
Waking to the sun shining in was a nice way to start the day
The two blond women sleeping in my vicinity also woke as I got out of bed.
The party had been something. I needed to get up and use the bathroom.
When I got back to the room to get properly dressed their eyes carefully monitored me.
I didn't know whether to expect a quip or an invitation just like highschool.
Which were mostly quips and nicely hurtful to a teenager with zero agency.
They went on looking at me. they themselves were absolutely gorgeous.
I packed my few pieces of gear and stood out the front at the top of the terrace.
I had called a taxi. Instead of a taxi, A family with two earnest and elegant dalmatians arrived walking up the driveway. I suddenly panicked when I thought about the resident english bullterrier.
I soon scolded myself under my breath. I was supposed to be one of these people.
They didn't get upset, they let reality happen like a spiritual practice.
You were supposed to choose what you remembered, bring it up in drunken self commendations and only poke the hornets nest with tirades when most of the party were strapped into whatever opiate or intoxicant had full control.
Deep down I wished most of the guests were dead. And I wouldn't have minded committing the act myself. Few of them held any real value as human beings except saying the right thing at the right time.
Why the hell did that matter. good timing but th erest of your life and actions make you a shitbag.
But it wasn't on them, it was on me, I was responsible for keeping better company.
One day I would end up using a few of these poor souls for my own lucrative messes.
As the dalmatians and english bullterrier smelled each other the taxi pulled. The dogs and the family with the dogs knew old Butch they just seemed overdressed for the occasion.
The english bull terrier was a popular feature of the party.
It hopped forward and back and barked.
Many tried to make it's acquaintance and failed.
The freckled dark haired girls jeered the new guys who walked into the party. The animal was curious about me. But I wasn't going to give it the opportunity to fase me infront of forty guests.
It was the hosts birthday I guessed, his house upon a terrace above the roadway below.
Motorcycle repair clients had come to pay and congratulate the guy for his birthday.
Many of the guests formed semicircles around Butch, as he gave speeches about motorcycles.
How he'd fixed them, adventures he'd had on them. Attempting to share new material. With limited vernacular old bits getting in the way. But the audience was getting there, smoke and empty bottles littered the open garage.
He had his die hard friends, the guys that wouldn't leave his side. and half a dozen women who represented their girlfriends, yet Butch was already familiar with all of them at one time or another.
And they were the fuel for Butch's speech, they knew when to "whoah" or "hoorah" strategically, more from practice than tact and wit.
After his "I am the best fucking shit you have ever seen" speech. He got to passing beers out and making jokes about the actions of some of his guests on those previous drunken nights of the current early spring.
It blew a bubble
It told me life was sacred
It opened the clouds and gave sunlight
It chooses it's preference
it negotiates its vulnerablilities
it ingests and excretes under supervision
It spells love and wonder
It points and glares
What did it see
It chooses its likes and dislikes
It doesn't recognize its own hand
It got born recently
Townsville, Australia, early afternoon. On wooden benches outside a nice cafe.
Both of us were seventeen
I went for her hand
instead of pulling back she left it there open
So my hand went into it
Told me about passions
we noted where they intersected and overlapped
It's quite a thing when the body vibrates with joy
But when the heart feels and the brain thinks it's just a...
Curse the hormones the forwardness fostering awkwardness
The sense that we can, when we must go slow
Coffee arrived and conversation was a day
With it's shades and it's beams
She reached for my hand and I left it open
Then a young man came to the table
I thought he was the server
He sat not angry, not happy just present
I looked back at her, her face neutral,
"Who is this?"
"It's my boyfriend." she said casually.
"Why did you call me here then, if you had a boyfriend?"
"Felt like it."
On flagpole arena were the gathering crowds
Their differences passing between them
Words rise as weapons once did
Arguments rubbed smooth by repetition
Swarms swallow every upchuck
The other person's idea into ear
Eyes move across the faces
searching for another interpretation
The words climb into cracks in convictions
out through the throat and into the voice
Straight into the waiting ears
of a multitude willing to listen
The leaves are september drowsy
the turn will come soon
The wald tamer come skipping
and in the small glade he is a believer
and his flute believes
his lungs believe
the trout believe
Even some of the humble villagers believe
and he didn't just get his inspiration from the buchen baumen
He got it from the roackfaces looming down from scowling alps
He got it from the sour turn to winter
and the sweetest blooms toward summer
Of the villages winter carvers
Who fashioned his flute from a choice piece of walnut
Yes he played in awe of their very creations
As the snow drifts and perpetual cloud put the valley in darkness
There were useful hands making things of worth
And thus the Wald taming flute man played in homage
And of children's games he played
And of village gossip he played
Even of the stillness between equinoxes
when it was either too hot or too cold for living things to move
In the dell a small village
Untouched from the outside
That went on with it's way of life
When the rest of the world
ran wars of attrition and holocausts
Nestled between the foot hills
leading up to the alps
Every resident had their jobs
So everything would get done
Through the village ran a small creek
The rock bed solid no loose stones
Black rock inside and outside of the water
Summers cool, winters less freezing
Hidden from the world
Or ignored by it
Flintsbach lay flat beside the Inn, but the mountains began almost immediately, rising behind the farms as though the valley had made space for the tiny village, sheltering it from the necessary Hells of the continent.
Certainty my uniform
Iron my flat hesitation
Buttons on every doubt
The ones you dare not press
You'll never see me calculating
Never read words before they leave my mouth
My tone and vocabulary measured
Every response you surface memorized
Laugh when the joke has died down
Shake hands with your sense of humour
You won't read the truth on my face
Which version of myself I've spilled out
I'll never let your conclusion catch me
Everything is left open even when the door closes
Practising the predictable that gets me through
Another evening of being guessed about
I will turn my aloofness into anecdotes
Make every failure sound like an accident
Tell you I randomly ended up where I am
A piece of me wants to claim credit
I'll never let you see the machinery
Grinding beneath the plain surface
You will call it fitting in or camouflaging
Go on with that assumption
The coffee maker au pâturage
Climbing up the flimsy structure
Loose frame, vines and rotten boards
Reach the top everything is unstable
Catch balance walk carefully
God cloudman the like
Said step by step son
Now you are here
just focus on those small movements
The human structrure is rotten boy
Stick to the vines and their aerial roots
So I listened to to God cloudman the like
Good advice from that Old fella
Maybe everything wouldn't fall through the way I thought
Cats and dogs and human pets clinging to the surface
looking for a sign that their fate would change
The motorcycle held a few hours of deliveries
A sleeping sun in the side car
Up into the hill side tenements
A few revs from stalling
A small mini mall
with cheap knick knacks
Local food that would test your stomach
And the kind of shopkeeper that would guilt trip you in
He stopped behind the stalls and offloaded some boxes
The owner licked then thumbed some bills
Gave him a little extra for something off the books
And for the little one who had just woken up
As if the motion of the vehicle kept him sleeping
Man checked rolling his own thumbs threw
mouth extended a centimeter
Brow lightened
He rubbed his son's forehead
Got back on the bike and sped off to the next job
This woman crosses the room to her wardrobe,
careful not to scratch the door with those long nails
The observer watched from inside the bedroom door.
Its blood tipped tooth stuck in the carpeted floor.
She thinks she's figured it out, but can't help but shirk,
somewhere in the shadows the answer lurks.
A shirt was pulled from the clean clothes.
Hands ruffled then smoothed the material like truth into lie.
A perfectionist's drive the elegant woman breaks and cries.
A formal dress she stepped into beside the bed.
As the mirror swallows the tears, the working hour nears,
drawing them upward in strange sliding smears.
Her man unconsciously opened the bedroom door.
She searched for care on his face, her eyes bore.
His eyes were routine his body language between.
One task and another with an anxiety felt but unseen.
That dried her eyes and the stairs down toward the business.
His footsteps continued behind her, for she couldn't convince,
climbing one step at a time toward the home office.
The mirror caught another tear all sorts of panic all sorts of fear.
Had she not pretended enough, how emotions impair... signs?
Another blood tipped tooth and unpaid fine.
She looked down to check the damage.
frown compounded patience ended fast.
then looked back to her feelings in the glass.
The bar started to fill up with rich local patrons.
One of which had an entourage his name was Reuben.
He towered almost seven feet looking down at everyone.
Not looking down just because he had the height advantage.
He looked down on each one of us on purpose.
His glare a lazer of nausea.
His friends jeering and goading gutless prospect thugs.
They were overbearing, hovering, badgering and bothering us all.
Blond ginger hair nand a grin that said the opposite
A redness to the skin like that of a man rubbed up the wrong way.
Sporting some sort of socially acceptable opinion.
He'd squeezed the best of himself out in boarding school.
What he couldn't achieve in intimidating the whole bar,
his friends finished easily.
On their second beers the volume went up.
How tall the man stood, the bravado the guy transmitted.
Their obtuseness became a sculpture piece under exhibtion light.
That night i checked behind the bar we had enough guns.
We just didn't have a coffin big enough for Reuben.
She heard his key clicking in the lock downstairs
swept the powder with slender hand from the glass
Wiping the counter clinging to new hype in her temples
hiding the rolled note inside her handbag
At dinner she watched his hands across the table
His wedding ring catching the apartment light
He asked whether she had followed the plan
Lifted her glass gave him the anticipated answer
He went to bed she locked the bathroom door
Opened the handbag beneath the sink pop the baggie
Small white line beside her paler reflection
In several seconds she curves and snorts
Chemical syrup slides down the nasal to the throat
Whatever she was before is not what she is now
Unraveling the hundred and licking the residue
Thoughts move, heart jumps a sharper brighter reality
twenty minutes later the world is a drain
vampire of her essence
dawn is rockbottom
flavorless
The Vip lounge was empty
Great seating elaborate cubicles
Large one story fire place
Huge wooden framed windows
The bar maid made polite conversation
Her hand placing a drink infront of me
A name a category a flavor
Encouragement to lose myself
New guests arrived inside the foyer from outside
Puns and grins from the barmaid
Funloving banter
not a sip
A group entered the VIP putting down jackets
Putting down their bags and umbrellas
Scanning the room and sighing before seating themselves
Barmaid coax me to drink just a taste
The cocktail sat untouched on the counter
The bill next to it
Half dampened by condensation
Thawing ice inside the glass
There is something intoxicating
about refusal.
It sat in the lowest area of the paddock
Always on always dripping
All I needed was a cup
In the paddock cows and competition
I found a plastic cup clean and perfect
Like a pearl inside a shell
Half under a partially burnt log
I picked it up with shaking hands
uncontained gratitude
As I took it in both hands
Positioned it under the tap
I got my coffee
And the pasture would continue growing
As I slowly sipped
As I pontificated over the fate of the world
those cows would eat forever
In their apartment above munich
Nala talked to her mother about her diet
About how she had been cheating
Eating those forbidden things
Munich was quiet listening to the call
The husband rich and distinct
Something she couldn't do without
her tears fell on the diet plan
Her mother's tone changed from accusatory
To something bordering on sympathetic
The silent contract that kept her figure
Her husband with those facial lines
She decided traced her trajectory
but soon enough her body would give her away
Read the books stack them on shelves
Pages turned by generations of obedient hands
Every conclusion has become a print, a stamp
Just fancy furniture nobody dares to rearrange
I watched the students repeat the language
placing famous names inside their sentences
Building little monuments from quotations
Repeating the bland content until it was their own mind
They forfeited their own wanting fingerprints
Their knowledge orbits around another person
Fear of their own skull breaking apart
And yet an original author is a rare tainted thing
So unique it conjures other worlds into being
While the chorus of the said and done heaves plaster
The old certainty enters and exits unaltered
Not yet aware of it's own over ripeness
Until the reader mistakes their nausea
For familiar intellectual residue
The woman crosses the hallway
Quarter moon peeking in from corner window
Hushed emotion wants out, the night cool echoed
caught inside iron of the room
She looks across the metal figures
Their bodies holding in last warmth
and night's remaining water
The tides of over exertion
The flame spreads over her body
only to be extinguished by sweat
Her body steadies
Her eyes avoid the flirt
Narrowing like closing gates
Passing between human sculptures
the half moon growing
Burning along their shoulders
The young woman raises her appeal
And her hand in a wave
daring to greet the outsider
and touches the cold metal
Her reflection breaks apart
across a dozen eyes that cut like lazers
speeding across human lines and human flesh
The hall fills with silver shapes
Arms reaching toward effort
Legs buried beneath braces
faces turned toward stars
The flame catches on her thigh
Crosses the full moon
between towers of welded steel
The young woman walks deeper
following tides of her inner intuition
Sparking arbitrarily inside human sculptures
Morning enters the hall
the metal begins to dry
Emptiness and a salty aroma
The young woman stands among them
But they are now part of the equipment
she uses to stay in shape
Her muscle taut her perspiration warm and saline
A cage for a baby bird
The shopping trolley was left in a ditch behind the supermarket entrance after closing. The slow dirty water filtering itself through. A local council worker found it full of debris blocking a large outlet drain. He threw it onto the dump truck, almost injuring his back.
By next morning the truck full of random objects taken from streets and parks.
The truck pulled into the landfill road changing gear diesel fumes up. And an exhausting vibrational sigh pushed out. The trolley rocked around in the back like a restless teenager. All sinew no fat.
The scrap pile ahead seemed the size of a city, rusted signs, damaged baskets and old refrigerators. The truck pulled into the area of the municipal landfill where they kept metal too mixed and damaged to recycle.
However trolley fell through the opening and landed on the a spilled pile from the landfill, beside mattresses and a mannequin head.
A bulldozer came down the slope pushing the cart further up the pile of regular trash.
The cart with its metal grades was turned upside down. It resembled a cage with something resembling a wig inside. As the bulldozer looked closer he realized it was a nest.
A small neck emerged from the nest. It was a baby vulture.
The driver cursed and made a mental note of it as he reversed to finish his morning's work.
By evening the landfill road was closed. The trolley remained above the old putrid layers, alongside the broken appliances, the spoiled food and the things people discarded in their attempt to fill their houses with newer material.
I drove home with the packets beside me
corners tucked in and cold with cold
Hot with hot
hard with hard and soft with soft
The bread pressed against the rice
Milk sweating into the plastic bag
Get everything through the front door out of breath
Each thing into its assigned place
The tins stood waiting behind the cupboard
The vegetables anticipating beneath their own skins
Sat down before eating
Television illuminates the room
Another family smiled beside a labelled product
Children running through a manufactured garden
Opened the bread and took one slice
Chewed while the advertisement continued
empty carbs and empty sales ads
a mind full of coupons and discounts
I came to the entrance of the supermarket
Notice boards full of posters of a family
Lost written in the middle in bold
I'd buy my food and call it therapy
I walked back out realizing I had no cart
Loud speaker breaking the cool quiet of the day
Blurting out a family is looking for their father
The shopping cart resembled a cage
Up the in ramp with a clatter
a man with bulldog cheek features was leaving
Came dangerously close
His dull eyes just said he was too tired to live
The vibrations of the full laden cart over the bitumen
hitting his face sneding tiny shockwaves
Through that lethargic anhedonia
I pushed past and back into that bright light
accumulating packs and tins and wraps
Of the brands narrowing and opeing eyes
Monitored by the central system
One asks themselves how long have I got?
when will I be culled off some plastic sleeved sofa
Slightly overweight and slobbering
Still attempting to convince the world
With slogans from my typical period
I pushed back out of the supermarket
My face vibrating like an astronaut moonward
Alas just the same as the last middle aged man
tiny nylon wheels jittering
Clanging when I fit it back into the train of them
Whoop crack as I open back door to put the food in
A simple consumer, living the hollow motions
between useful shifts
Only sugar makes noise
Lettuce doesn't scram
Sugar is a song and dance
lettuce don't play
Sugar is kick and crack
Lettuce is shaking and wet
Sugar is hollering uncontrolled
Lettuce is all crisp and clean
Sugar sticks to rot and decadence
Lettuce to the seasons
Sugar uses itself and its consumer
Lettuce is the fresh root
sugar the old flower
Dana and the mannequin she loved
Clerk girl Dana from a local dress shop decided to spend her sunday morning looking for a specific mannequin she had grown fond of beneath a pile of trash in the middle of the landfill.
She had come to love the mannequin for it was her favorite from the shop.
Everyday for years she had brushed up beside the mannequin. Looked at it, pretended it was a real person. Told all of her secrets to it. Interacted with it as if it was real.
Certain things had attracted her to that particular mannequin and not the others. The shape of the lips and the head and body, but especially the lips.
The owner of style classics dress shop had thrown it out the day before.This upset Dana deeply. The owner hadn’t bothered consulting Dana, but more so because the owner put no value on the inanimate mannequin. How could teh owner not see the beauty?
It had frustrated Dana, but Dana saw herself as a hero, riding out in her 1992 model hatchback whose motor was a noise pollution violation to the landfill. She had told herself after she had retaken the mannequin, she would pretend it had never happened. Because deep down Dana abhorred landfills. And the thought of her mannequin touching the rancid waste bothered her further.
Dana had spotted the area where the new trash was going in. And she had backed her little hatchback up to the pile. She climbed over a television, stepped around a broken chair and pulled at the mattress until it rolled down the slope. She spotted a head of another mannequin that had been discarded from her shop. That was it. The mannequin must be nearby.
The mannequin's hand appeared first.
She stopped.
The white plastic arm was buried beneath clothes, newspapers and a broken display cabinet.
A plastic back with black liquid inside that by the smell could only be rotten meat.
She crouched and began dry reaching for several minutes.
In an effort to contain herself she hopped back over the obstacles to her car and pulled a small flask of perfume from her purse. Spreading a few drops under her nose and cutting off her olfactory senses altogether.
Back into the mess she went, pulling everything away. A leg came loose. Then the waist. Finally she dragged the whole mannequin from the grimey heap and laid her against the side of the grimy mattress. She felt the smile start to take on her face as if it were a foreign impulse.
Mud covered the dress, the owner had neglectfully thrown out with the mannequin.
The clerk girl went back to the car again, took a bottle of water from her bag and poured it over the plastic face. Dirt ran from the painted eyes. Dana grinned, everything was intact, the face the way she liked it. The way she needed it to be. The way she imagined it in her bedroom at her house.
She lifted the mannequin under the arms and carried her toward the hatchback.
Did her best to fit it inside the trunk, having to adjust the back seat down.
The head and painted eyes looking back directly at her.
As if to say thank you.
Morning revisits thus bodies lift sheets
Check their heads and orientations
Some straighten and tuck clothes underneath
Some look through mirrors and hum
They walk toward the city center
Disatisfied with how they are dressed
Mentally adjusting to becoming spenders
To kill the monday to friday stress
Shop lights pop behind dummies
Clerk girl turns with movement finess
A delicate hand adjusts mannequin dress
Pedestrians move closer to the window
I watch fake candlelight weaken behind glass
As first sunbeams boldly make demands
Clerk girl touches mannequin's hand
Her gesture catches the attention of the queue
By afternoon the line reaches the corner
She sees the same faces through the glass
Some smile but she looks away fast
Some lower their eyes and wait
With the inner knowing
They'll never be served
I walked toward the entrance
A chef with knives and fire
My stomach had begun to yearn
The waiter came outside laughing
Asking if he could take another plate
I asked him to use his own discernment
I head out back shocked at the mess
Past bins filled with bones and paper
A dog was waiting beside the kitchen door
Sniffing through yesterday's acidic scraps
I crossed back through parking lot
leaving the waiters and cooking staff
The smell followed under my shirt
I opened my car and turned the engine
Waiting for my senses to forget the foulness
Then that beautiful hunger returned on my drive home
Slowly taking the place of the day's errors and stenches
