Falling

Standing, arms outstretched, wind flowing over neutered wings
on the edge of the precipice
I dare myself to leap
Knowing in my heart what lies beneath
Now my feet scrape the edge,

one last time

My chest pounds with the magic of terror,
force and fear.

When I fall I will become enraptured by my descent

Lucid

As I lay in bed before sleep, I promise myself that I will ask the question. I imagine myself floating in space with countless galaxies laid out below, above, around, within. I hold onto the image as long as I can, grasping at my focus amidst a storm of warring thoughts and memories, snippets of text and faintly cascading chatter.

It's strange, like de ja vu - that feeling, suprise I guess - almost as if you have suddenly stumbled across your own mind. It is a clarity of vision when you have forgotten you have eyes, life gone supernova, awake, at last - again. When I realise I am dreaming the first thing I feel is a muted joy intermingled with a delirious wave of sweet horror. Now! Now is my chance!

I am standing on the rooftop of a building. I know this even though I see no other buildings in sight. The rooftop and everything around me is covered in a thick and lush canopy of healthy green vines. Vibrant purple flowers with large petals and glowing yellow pollen adorn the vines, and the sky is light yet a blanket of grey - no sun nor moon, a uniform embrace. I fall to my knees, scrambling to make the most of my time.

Palms to the ground I feel the grit of countless fragments, dirt and sand and soil. Sprinkled between the vines are twigs and leaves, and I lift some of them with my hands, grinding them with my fingers and watching the broken remains drift back to the rooftop. I test this world because I know I am dreaming. I snatch a flower, toss it into the air, follow its path intently. Is it real? How good is it, how accurate my mind's eye? Close to perfect, as far as I can tell. But, that's the problem; as soon as I begin to clamber through my dreams, as fast as I can tear it apart and make sense of it all it begins to fade away.

Then I remember - the question! I fill my lungs and prepare to yell, I feel hot breath scratch my throat and a strangled cry shoot from my face. I try, again and again, screaming viciously, trying to turn my anxious howling into the words that I need to voice so desperately. But all that comes out is nonsense, just yelps and noise, no matter how hard I squeeze my chest and clench my tongue. Nothing, just noise. Then it all disappears.

The flowers, the canopy, the sky - all begin to pixelate, lose sharpness, as though a storm is clouding my reception. The world turns to fizz, at first oscillating softly, then more and more violently, until the landscape erupts into a foamy mess, no form nor feeling.

...

Focus

Its exciting to be caught up in the turbulence of new ideas, trailing your mind as it speeds ahead on the wings of possibility. Creating your own future is a dizzying prospect, but in reality it's what we all do anyway, whether we're conscious of the fact or not. I see myself doing the things I've dreamt about for so many years, I'm climbing towards my destiny, climbing the ladder. My muscles burn and my blood is pumping, and sometimes the finish line seems as distant as ever, but I keep going because every step brings my future closer into focus.

Yin / Yang

Outside. The air is chilled and the wind is blowing hard. A slight whistle creeps round the corner every time there is a gust, and the trees bow to the strength of a storm building in the distance. It is night, yet the glow of the city lights and the soft pulse of the moon render the sky a suggestive mauve peering throught gaps torn from the blanket of clouds.

Looking up, stretching my neck and staring into the night, I let my thoughts follow the wind, pockets of calm adorned with rough lashings of turbulence cascading one after the other. In the midst of the tide I see that a tuft of cloud has broken itself in two and curled inwards. Whirls and eddies have carved a shaft in each of the bodies, and I am facing a Yin-Yang symbol formed by clouds.

The moment is peaceful and wondrous, and although I know it is only a trick of the mind, and the shape will soon shift again, I let the idea enter me and understand the meaning of the halves, each side of us, of all of this. The balance.

I wait, watching the symbol and breathing in the stillness it brings, until it fades and then vanishes.

Fear and Self-Loathing

Fuck. What's wrong with me? There must be something wrong. I have upset people, betrayed my closest friends. I have destroyed trust and behaved so poorly that I can see the hurt and disgust in the wide, horrified eyes of those around me. Why? Why do I do this? I am sabotaging myself, I am drowning in my bullshit, my words spread so thick and oily that I become stuck in my mess and coated in the spray of nothing. I am so destructive that I can't even help myself. I want to laugh and tear my eyes out - why would someone so caught up in themselves not even make an effort to actually help the one they love? Do I hate myself? Am I doing this as a punishment; is this the lashing I deserve for the years of deceit and deception and bullshit? Help yourself! It's the bullshit - it must be. I have become so used to laying it on thick that I end up tricking myself out of success.

So, what to do? Take the hit, I guess. Swallow my pride, accept the mistake and move on. Learn something from this.

Singularity

Is this the last of it?

Are these the last days? The question has been asked, many, many times in the past, but maybe in a different way. I don't imagine the world to be ending, or expect the Universe to implode, the Earth to swallow us all in an instant. What I mean to say is how much longer do we - you and I - have left? The brief spark of love and life, the joy of this lucid dream, how much longer?

Paul

Paul is a sad man. It's written on his face in lines that slide from the corner of his eyes like deep tears staining his drooping cheeks. Even his stubble is sad, poking out from jowl and soft chin, surely disappointed by the world that greets them with its inevitably rotten outcomes and hardluck.

Addictricity

Wired. Hooked up. Connected. Facebooked. Myspaced out. I am fucking 24/7, I am really flying man, at 24 megabits with my pixels on high-beam and my motherfuckin' screen all HD'd while I'm O.D.ing down the information superhighway with a joystick between my legs and my prick in my hands all juiced up over little Sally big-boobs smiling at me like sweet candy from a goddam-million-miles away.

I will strangle any and all comers with a fuckin broadband cable cause I learnt how to fight on Youtube and I will punch you right in the face and get a thousand hits and become a minor celebrity and fade into oblivion, but - and now, this is important - but I will make a comeback with a sextape and a cumshot shot with a gram of high-grade coke jammed up my nose and my cock lit up by a night-vision camera stuck up my freshly waxed butt.

Then, not too long into my reinvigorated sit-com career I will be scandalised by the discovery of pictures of my seven year-old niece on my paper-thin wi-fi capable laptop, and pictures of me hiding my head in shame beneath the shroud of a trendy neoprene vest will shoot around the earth via blutooth enabled touch-screen smartphones, leading to my eventual suicide while out on a million dollar bail, my neck limp and raw and wrapped snugly in a length of reliable, old-fashioned rope.

I can't wait for the movie to come out on DVD...

Turnstyle

They come and go and I am the blur as they whisk around like cream being thickened by my blades. I remember names and then they vanish and I am left the only trace, the one that sees them all, maybe not as they are but as they appear before me for the merest glimpse of a personality destined to leave and never return.

Turmoil

I am not sure what to do. The phrase 'have your cake and eat it to' springs to mind. There are so many options, so many vague guesses and mental gesticulations. I like them all in different ways. There is always the promise of something new, the thrill of the unknown is balanced against the fear of what lies unseen in the future.

I am tempted to ignore them all.

I know I won't.

Handshakes

There are so many kinds of handshakes. This one means he is a man. That one means he is afraid. When you do that you are showing off. The one he just tried to do is secret and not meant for prying eyes. This one will let you in. Grip it any harder and I will beat you. You must be gay. I do not trust you. He is strong. You are not.

Shake on it.

Life....

It is speeding along now, days blurring into each other. Any attempt to document everything is futile....it just seeps in and out of my mind, occasionally spilling onto the page

Fade

This is how it goes:

First it's the end of school, then it's work and lovers and then foreign adventures and soul-searching and mid-life crises with kids and partners and divorce and newspapers with silence over breakfast; eggs sunny-side up and black with one sugar please. And, it's 9 to 5 and the morning crew on FM between traffic jams and fantasies about anybody but the person you sleep with and lie to.

Then it begins to fade like a photo thats been leftin the midday sun and dusk is coming, slow but steady, and now we are walking like we're treading in buckets of warm honey and the vision blurs - was that last week or 2002?

Soon it doesn't matter because we don't remember much at all and rest is a short breath between stairs that don't seem to end and now, on the deathbed, preparing to leave at long last, there is a flash - a burst of colour and sound -

It is a face, a friend from school and the two of you are smiling and talking about the future; wondering aloud of God and life while lying back on grass and staring up at the clouds that pass overhead like ghosts from tomorrow that answer all of your questions in between stabs of heat from the sun that hangs up there and will outlast us all.

Wide Awake

I'm here.

I open my eyes and find myself from scratch.

Another day on Earth.

Before I can ask myself if it's worth it I rub my eyes and splash cool water on my face and slam the door and start all over again.

I am wide awake.

White Pointers

I hide behind the smile as best I can, displaying canines and erupting with laughter, winking charm and handshakes, jokes and bravado.

Inside I quake with every interaction, I'm trembling with fear and praying my voice doesn't quaver and betray the me inside, amazed and terrified by the world outside.

I flash my teeth and pretend everything's O.K.

A Million Pairs

Darting arrows - slung from bows, eyes and furrowed brow. I'm hit, no matter how I try to evade them, they strike my shield, my practiced nonchalance, poker face. Down I go, again, bleeding from 2 million wounds, 2 scars for every pair.

Lullabye

I go to bed with my mind full of life. Thoughts cascade through my brain, mixing into each other and sharing their streams, a spiral of the day and the years and forever.

The further I spin into myself the more it the more it all makes sense and none at all, and as I drift I feel things as they should be, not numbers and taxes or break-ups and T.V., but gently perfect patterns, all the universe like the finely detailed geometrical beauty of a Persian rug.

I sink into the rug and feel it yield yet still it holds me as I rest my soul and the remains of the day tear themselves apart and the fragments float like flakes of snow all cool and calm and soft and now I feel the t....

The Dream Merchant

People need something to believe in, whether it's God or the news or the devil, we need something to have faith in, be afraid of, run to. In the same way, people need a dream, a hope for things in the future, a goal or a wish to shoot for.

I have dreams and hope, I wish for things in the future. In some ways, dreams are all we have. Although the past grounds us , tells us who we are and where we've been, , we can't just wallow in history and memories. The present is so flimsy and indefinite, so wafer-thin and elusive, if anything it is less real than the ideas we have for what tomorrow may bring.

Sometimes I think that the only thing keeping people holding on to their fragile lives is the hope that the future will bear fruit, flinging ripe apples to the ground when shaken by time's arrow. When we wake up in the morning and make that decision to get up and confront the day instead of willing ourselves back into a coma, it is the promise of today, the hope for tomorrow that injects our spines with life and carries these brittle bones back out onto the battlefield.

People need something to believe in. Sometimes the powers that be also need the people to believe. The populace needs it's soma, the crowd its cake, the masses their opiate. The proles, us proles, need breadcrumbs thrown before our feet to make sure we head in the right direction. The loaves are baked in stoves and thrown before the feet of those that wait, salivating over a new pair of shoes, a plasma screen, a luxury car.

Our dreams are turned into clay and molded to whet our appetites, when what we really need is sugar but protein. Soon enough even our own lives become the clay we wish to mold, with ab-crunchers and Atkin's diets and silicone implants and teeth whitening; the teething rings for babies lost in dreams.

Prescription Medicine

She is scrawny, strands of dirty blonde hair pulled down straight in a ponytail, flung back over her gaunt skull. She speaks in a muted, mumbled stream, her voice trailing off at points while she stares into the middle-distance, waiting for her thoughts to catch up to her tongue.

She hands me sheets of paper; forms for doctors, forms for medicine. It's an elaborate plan for such a frazzled person. Cutting paper from here and sticking it there, scanning this and copying that. It seems beyond her at first; she's a two finger typist and dulled by whatever is partying in her system.

After an hour of back and forth she is done. Anxious calls over a battered mobile ensue, arrangements are made - appointments pushed back.

I had found myself treating her with mild disdain at first - but as she continued pursuing her goal I relaxed my self-righteous and became empathetic to her cause.

Just before she leaves I hand her one final document, a letter from her psychiatrist. She looks at the page with a sudden focus, jarred from the blanket of dope she is hiding beneath. The woman finds herself staring at a synopsis of her life - distilled to a minimum of symptoms, and the situations that provoked them.

...Borderline personality disorder...acute anxiety disorder....radical surgeries...deaths of siblings...aversion to doctors....death could have been avoided....mental disorders...

She lifts her head from the page - shocked, numb.

"I didn't realise what they'd written. I was so focused on typing it - making sure the spelling was alright - I didn't know what she'd written about me."

I watched her read her life story. It was a pause in the journey - a brief reflection - the knock of reality.

And then she left.

Fire & Ice

Some people are ice. Sub-zero kings and queens, shards of frozen eyes like cubes that hardly melt. One touch in frostbite, a touch of the soul that tears the skin from from fingertips and strips the pink from lips.

And people are fire, white hot light and blurred-blue flame. Spewing heat that draws you in, closer to the core, moths that dance on the glow of a fiery torch, destroyed by love they dream no more.

I need to burn. I need to freeze and fuck and fight. I long to burst into flames and consume the earth, or be burnt and turned to ash by life. If I could freeze I'd die by ice and rest my soul as cold as night.

Speechless

I don't know what I want to say. The words are not here. As much as I try I can't scream from the page, tear the screen or cry with type. I know where the meaning is though; it's in my chest, just below my heart - and it tugs but it's a lump like a ball and chain, it's an anchor that hasn't hit the bottom but sways as it is drawn towards the seabed.

It's at the back of my head, it's a hand rubbing and lightly scratching just behind the ears, but the itch never leaves, it just throbs and whsipers yet I can't quite hear it.

I feel it at the back of my throat, a shout I can't let out - it's my voice but it has nowhere to go.

I guess that's it. It is somewhere but I'm speechless.

The World is the Journey

The guys bustle into the store, jovial and sparkling with fresh energy. They are dressed in traditonal 'Kluft', sturdy black vests over white shirts, well used black top hats and rustic black boots. Settling down to surf the net, they are here to chill a little before the next leg of the journey.

They are on a traditional pilgrimage, a coming of age ritual dating back to the middle-ages. Once they leave their home-towns, they are forbidden to return for three years, exiled on the outside of a zone 50-miles wide. In the interim they travel the world - carpenters by trade. They help build houses, working with the locals, making friends and learning the slang, then, off again, on the next.

They seem happy, naturally happy, and I imagine all of the adventures and ups and downs they must have encountered along the way. They are not tourists they sya; Australia is not Ayers Rock and the Opera House. Australia is the people, the in-betweens. The world is the journey.

a Polaroid in reverse

The whores outside are hustling next to gutters and neon lights; shimmering orange outlines of full-length fishnet. On a quiet night the strip still vibrates softly, firing pulses along it's cables, voices through the exchange. The working girls are steady in the midst of intermittent surges, columns hardly faltering as waves after wave attempts to tear them down - wreck upon fear and leave the whole jetty of the Cross ruined, the remnants jetsam on the tide.

The view from my shop window is a living landscape, the strangest of Dali. It's not the worst of humanity though - not by a long shot. At least the people here have decided to jump into the fire. As I write that down a thought echoes through my head like giggles from the back of theatre; maybe they didn't decide. Maybe they were pushed. Would someone choose this life if they truly believed there was an alternative? I look through the window into the cauldron outside:

A slight insinuation of my reflection is drowned in the lightly transparent layers of scenes that melt into each other before my eyes. Is there beauty to be found here? A tour bus filled with fresh tourists gawking at the mess passes along the street - the vehicle exploding for a second in a vibrant pink mist, streaks of pure-white lightning wobbling against the windshield. The flare lights up a stairwell, and a girl's face is snapped for an instant in a grim tableau, bleached hair framed with a glow that hits her form and strikes the bags under her eyes and sunken jaw, a Polaroid in reverse. Just for a second.

There is beauty here, in all this strange and misery.

Autumn Leaf

Through Paul's office window, cutting through a wedge of sunlight that dances on dots of smog, an autumn leaf, crumpled and free, proudly swims against the wind's tide - the end of a life.

It's remarkable and wonderful and sad how much I feel like that leaf; the sun kissing my dessicated edges, helpless and brown as I fall while gravity gently mocks me.

Sinking - not drowning - in life, seasons merge as dreams, and the breaths of love drift like whispers through my tree. I am this way and that, swaying deliriously with passion; falling in love, at first deeply with night - until - she abandons me and now; I find happiness with day...

As I watch the autumn leaf descend I think; maybe somebody will take some joy from my flight - admire my grace as I tumble and spin in the morning air, awake and aware of the caress that awaits;

The earth, the cool, damp earth, beckoning me back to the fold with open arms - Home again.

Just a Thought

The thought flashed into my mind as I watched a B-grade movie on cable. Thoughts do that - as much as we can deny the idea of them popping into our heads out of nothing; they often do.

The thought that flashed and quivered in my mind was; if we - humans - imbue symbols with meaning, that is, when I write in 'English' what I'm actually doing is notating symbols that I have assigned meaning to, if we divine meaning from pictures and symbols and form - could everything we experience in this life be mere words in a book that only reveals it's true meaning at the end?

Could each image and sound and feeling and taste and smell and ... could all of this be another paragraph in a Bible that you and I will only fully appreciate at the moment just before death?

Just a thought.

Back to cable...

Acid Rock

"Turn on, tune in, drop out"

Acid Rock is a form of Rock’n’Roll music that was developed in the U.S.A. during the 1960’s. It can be characterised by a few distinctive characteristics. Although containing a large Folk influence, it featured a loud, malleable, and experimental sound. Acid Rock was heavily amplified, drenched in effects, and manipulated with brazen production, included eclectic performance techniques, and swam in copious amounts of mind-altering substances. Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead thought of it as “a sensory overload….it’s very loud.” (Szatmary, 1987).
Germinating in San Francisco and coaxed into maturity by the increasing flow of marijuana, the psychedelic drug L.S.D. (lysergic acid diethylamide), and mescaline, Acid Rock bands favoured extended guitar improvisations, distorted guitar effects, and created a unique style which combined folk music with a liberal helping of blues riffs, ripples of country-western, and trace elements of exotic ingredients including Indian ragas.

Other significant features of Acid Rock include an unusually strong spirit of community that was spurred along by a social movement of the time that became known as the ‘Counter-Culture’. Burgeoning alongside, and in parts intertwined with, the ‘hippie movement’, the Counter-Culture was a rejection of the traditional taboos and constraints of mainstream America. A polyglot of dissent connected by the thread of a common enemy, the creators of the Counter-Culture came from varied backgrounds and socio-economic classes, yet, were fused together by the shared agreement that this new generation were going to create and define a revolutionary period in American history. The Grateful Dead were to become one of the bands providing the soundtrack to this war against ‘The Man’, and their psychedelic sound pulsated to the rhythm of a country in the midst of a splendorous turmoil.

The core partnership of the Grateful Dead, lyricist Robert Christie Burns (known as Robert Hunter), and lead-guitarist Jerry Garcia, first met after (suitably) being discharged from the army. Based in Palo Alto, the site of Stanford University, they began to work as a two-guitar duo in 1961 (Buckley, 2003). While part of the nascent band, Garcia participated in a U.S. government research programme held at Stanford to assess the effects of hallucinogenic drugs, and during the experiments befriended a young novelist who was to help shape the future for the Grateful Dead, Acid Rock, and a whole generation of Americans. His name was Ken Kesey.

Ken Kesey formed ‘the Merry Pranksters’, a busload of psychotropic improvisers, kind of like a beat generation ‘Chaser’ on acid. Private Prankster parties at La Honda, California expanded into the Acid Tests – experimentation with L.S.D. in a group setting. (Garafolo, 1997). These Acid Tests (which would later be chronicled by Tom Wolfe in ‘The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test’), needed a party atmosphere. Cue the Grateful Dead, who were at the time known as ‘The Warlocks’. Although they continued to play at Acid-Tests and other venues, the band were soon forced to change their name due to another group performing under the same moniker.

The band, smoking the psychoactive D.M.T. (dimethyltryptamine) at the time, decided upon a name that would become indelibly inked into rock history: the Grateful Dead (Troy, 1995).

Just like the names, the sounds that Rock bands of the time were making were largely channelled through the altered states provided by the popular drugs of the time, such as D.M.T. and L.S.D. Acid Rock was particularly impacted by L.S.D., due to its immense potency and potential to alter the perception of the user. Timothy Leary, known as the godfather of the L.S.D. surge, describes the effects of L.S.D. below:

“...The organ of the corti your inner-ear becomes a trembling membrane seething with tattoos of soundwaves. The vibrations seem to penetrate deep inside you, swell and burst there...You not only hear but see the music emerging from the speaker system like dancing particles, like squirming curls of toothpaste.” (Szatmary, 1987)

L.S.D., as a result of its consciousness expanding high, affected the performance and visual aspects of Rock; designers attempted to evoke the visuals of the psychedelic experience by developing a new kind of ‘swirling’ concert poster, and stage shows were enhanced by light shows as a way of incorporating the vibrant colours and movement of a trip, all melded together as an integral part of the music the bands were playing. Many San Francisco Rock bands also referenced psychedelic drugs in their songs. The Jefferson Airplane hit the airwaves with the anthem, “White Rabbit”, a song that wears its influence with pride:

“One pill makes you larger, and one pill makes you small,
And the ones that mother gave you don’t do anything at all,
Go ask Alice when she’s ten-feet tall” (Garofalo, 1997).

Nothing exemplifies the impact that L.S.D. had on Acid Rock in a more matter-of-fact way than the means by which the Grateful Dead afforded to record their 1968 work, “Anthem of the Sun”. A man by the name of Augustus Owsley Stanley III underwrote the band’s finances during the recording process. Otherwise known as ‘The Bear’, Stanley III was also the country’s biggest L.S.D. magnate, and handed out so much acid that he is regarded by some as one the main facilitators of 1967’s ‘Summer of Love’, a significant cultural turning-point for Acid Rock, the Counter-Culture, and the U.S.A. in general.

The final word on the impact of L.S.D. on Rock music during the late 1960’s is best left to the late Jerry Garcia;

“Along came L.S.D. and that was the end of that world. The world just went kablooey...It changed everything, you know, it was just – ah, first of all, for me personally it freed me, you know, the effect was that it freed me because I suddenly realised that my little attempt at having a straight life and doing that was really a fiction...it just wasn’t going to work out”.

Jerome John "Jerry" Garcia (August 1, 1942 – August 9, 1995)

About God

She asked me about God - about life and everything. She told me that she knew God, that she had a relationship with Jesus. I have known people - I have loved people - that have said the same. But, this time, I asked her,

"do you know where we are?"

"Do you know how big our galaxy is?"

"Do you know how many stars there are in our galaxy - each on average as big as our Sun"

Then again, what do I know?

I'm just an ignorant, naked ape.

Under the Sea

I wonder what they would say to us if we could understand them. Do you think that they would be angry, or shun us for our stupidity? Would they forgive us for the destruction we have caused, chide us as one berates a child for wreaking havoc - stern yet forgiving?

Maybe they wouldn't talk to us at all - maybe they would continue going about their business as best they can, as they have before we came along and as they will once we're gone.

Someone - I think it was Buckminster Fuller - said that we are the crew of a great ship, planet earth, our great vessel carrying us through the vast seas of the universe. Our ship is grand and true, but we are fools navigating while we mutiny.

Maybe, when are all washed overboard, drunk and drowning and ruined - maybe they will swim beside us. Saying nothing, quiet as we arrogant captains of a beautiful wreck struggle against the tide - they will say nothing and guide us to shore.

Graffiti

I have corrupted myself.

I lie prostrate, not bare, before the Universe. I am covered in my own graffiti, my own technicolor scars. I am streaked with my own mess, the spray of age, highlights of my crimes. Each crime goes unanswered, committed silent and perfect. Scrawled across walls under midnight's cloak, only the stars witness my wrongdoing - only the stars that burn hot and bright in the vicious, freezing depths of infinity.

I am corrupted.

I look into the face of a stranger, stare deeply into pupils like black holes, colour seeping from the edges; a lucid brown corona waxing and waning as I breathe in and inflate my chest like the breath of the Universe as it expands ceaselessly. The vacuum within is my own creation.

Corrupt me.

Is there a voice that whispers? Is there a reason for the pictures I paint, the signatures and limbs and slurs and words I scratch on my wall? Do they mean something, these strange hieroglyphs; is there a meaning to the pain the symbols create?

The more I draw the heavier I feel; weighed down by the ghetto-art of sins and slumber I inflict upon my soul.

Fantasy Land

I am walking, alone in the dead of night, watching a halo of starlight softly dust Centrepoint's crest, beams grazing the sides before falling to Earth. I pick up the pace as I reach the halfway point, breathing heavily and letting my briefcase swing like a pendulum from my right arm.
There aren't many people about; mainly barflies and shift-workers, a few stragglers and some of Sydney's homeless. I pass by one of the transients, he's lolling drunkenly on a bench. I'm caught by suprise when he emits a rapid-fire slur in my direction.
The first part of his message is unclear - lost in translation - I can tell he's swearing, but aside from that, I can't make out his meaning.
The second half of his statement is clear, eerie on a sullen night;

"You're living in a fantasy land".

He spits this phrase with hatred and venom, glaring directly into my eye, and while I continue walking he snarls it several times at my heels.

The clarity of his intention are a shock to my system, juxtaposed against his unshaven, drool-encrusted jowl. The words hit hard because I have spoken them to myself many, many times, over, and over, silently.

"You're living in a fantasy land".

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Drifting Away

I've seen things become change, people become indifferent
I've seen them shifting - only pieces remain
See; they're shells on beaches that keep drifting away
With the waves like

....sssshhhhhhhhhhh.........

Rolling into the bay
Sometimes I could give it away, just go swimming and
Ride the horizon - dive towards infinity
Sink to the bottom; would I lie with divinity,
Rust like a relic or be treasure like memory?
I'm trying to surface but my conscience's heavy, see,
Kind of like the Earth in relation to the heavenly
For what it's worth there is so much ahead of us
That I'd be content if the ocean remembers this
I get the bends when friends become anonymous
You never know how it ends till the moment hits
And no regrets till this heart stops beating this chest
and all these questions come to a rest, yet;
I'm dealing with a lot to confess - aren't we all, right?
We build them up in the day and dream them all night
Swept away by the currents, they keep on coming, and coming,
But I don't want to be pulled under
To nothing

The Only Thing to Fear...

One of my fears is that I am crazy.

Sometimes I will be chatting with a friend in the middle of the city, a close friend from school or a girl that I'm seeing, and all of a sudden a wave of anxiety will sweep through me. I'll catch the eye of a stranger, feel a pang of fear, sense something..... My friend could still be chattering away in the background but I lose focus and feel my heart pump through the skin of my slightly sweaty palms as their voice is drowned by the blood rushing through my ears.

The thing is; I wonder if my friend is real.

Am I just standing here by myself, laughing and joking around in the thick of the CBD, sharing memories and playing games with a phantom? I notice people looking at me with a sheen of awkwardness, yet my friend keeps talking to me as though everything was completely normal. I kid you not, I often look into the nearest window or shiny metallic surface, telling myself that even my vivid imagination could not create the perfect reflection of a ghost.

What do they see? What do they hear? These people we pass - swearing at shop fronts and arguing with the sky. Is that me, so deluded that I have created a fantasy to whisk myself away from the life of a transient? Am I locked in a perfect cage, the perfect prison? So perfect I really think I'm free.

Please. Please be real.

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Boys

At first I see one group; a collection of thin legs, long and gangly, clad in dark jeans, puncuated with loafers. Their hair hangs loose over gaunt faces, arms dangled straight down by their side. They are very 'trendy'. Soon they are joined by another group, dressed the same, individuals fresh from the cookie cutter. It looks like feigning disinterest is also in this year; conversations are held while gazing at navels or hands, words spoken this way and that, anywhere but at the target.

These men look like boys. I wonder if girls like that. Is this a reaction against overt masculinity? We had our metrosexual phase, then went back to blokes, is it now the time for pretty little men with fine, glossy hair and size-zero hips?

Then I see a group of girls walk past, baggy pants and crewcuts, arms like tree-trunks. One of them looks as though she would destroy me with ease. I am very confused.

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Daggers

They have daggers for eyes. They stab at each other through red-veined slits, cutting through the strip. There are nodders on all corners, droopy, half-asleep and worn-out from days that melt into one big confused puddle. As night drifts across the metropolis the vibe stiffens, the streets jitter and sway with the meth-heads that bounce from corner to corner like shiny silver pinballs. On drab corners underneath neon signs hookers drowsily offer themselves, legs for the mind but the heart’s not in it.
A thick-jawed man and a blonde stand to one side of the strip, heads twitching while they discuss something. It’s not the daily news. The blonde has boobs like bazookas, and her husky voice is an octave too low to be safe. Their discussion is disrupted by a swarm of motorbikes cruising down Darlinghurst Road, mufflers baying for action, helmets bright and flashing as they rev past. Men peer out of open bars over middies of beer, and bouncers jut from doorways, draped in black, sullen and silent.
A deal is done. It all happens in the blink of an eye, blades glinting razor sharp. This is a hunting ground, when the time is right - when the price is right. It’s not piss that marks this territory, though there’s plenty of that; up walls and seeping through pavements, ingrained in the fibre of the strip. There’s a code here, raw as morse, deadly staccato taps on the spine. Tapping out letters to loved ones lost long ago.

Lady Beetle

Looking out the window onto Fauveaux Street, I notice a lady beetle trapped in a spider's web. The poor little thing, speckled black on a sunflower shell, legs pushing against nothing, struggling to no avail. I call out to Luke, and we both stoop down and ogle a life's last moments. I mention to Luke that I would save it if I could open the window, but we are in an office building and there are no latches. There is nothing that can be done.

It is at this very moment that I feel the eyes of the gods penetrating my soul, peering down through the window of the Universe, staring down at my struggle, well aware of my plight, yet, helpless all the same. For a split second I feel like my own god, wanting to help but unable to; there are no latches on this window, no way to save me, to save the lady beetle.

The insect writhes furiously, and, for a moment I become excited; it looks as though it may free itself. Spinning on a tenuous thread, its wings are splayed and flapping crazily, liberation within reach. I urge on the David, fighting against Goliath - life. A gust of wind shoots through and the lady beetle is trapped more securely than ever.

Luke and I walk away and continue our conversation. The beetle is still there.

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Homo Vendens

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Gossip

A new job. Hey, you gotta do what you gotta do. The boss isn't so crazy. Not that he isn't, it's just that his is the comfortably normal kind of madness, the kind we all find seeping out like drips from a leaky faucet. The shop is situated right in the middle of the shit in Kings Cross, the red light district of Sin City It seems as though I can't escape this area, as though it wants to suck the blood right out of me, suck me down into the vortex, spinning and twisted, screams drowned out by the gurgling of the drain. So let it.

The huge front windows provide a handsome view of the ugly outside, the junk and mess tossed about by the whims of a sleazy wind. All the drunks on the streets are having a blast, the peakers are scratching at their lips, licking and chewing feverishly, clumps of spittle gathering at the corners of their writhing cakeholes. A young thug slams his fist on the window, pointing out a customer to his fucked-up mates. My boss isn't happy, but I get it. The youth makes a giant phallus out of a long neck; the customer is looking at porn. After a while they move on; better things to do and be done by.

Sparrows

I don't see sparrows anymore. I have memories of them as a child, watching them scattered on the playground, pecking seed from between the cracks of rough gravel. The little speckled things, hopping about, just doing what they do. Sparrows are not like magpies; birds to fear or avoid, shocking black and swooping, low and fast. Sparrows are not like pidgeons; cumbersome and ungainly, tattered and slow. Sparrows are spritely fellows, speckled brown, soft and petite.

Through the distorted liquid of my memories I can see them everywhere, from the break of day to the end of night. They dust the sky with their wings, sparks of joyous energy, to and fro. Sometimes I would tear crusts from sandwiches, toss them to the ground, chunks of wholegrain smeared with peanut-butter. The sparrows would gather about, supping on the gift politely. Sparrows were nice little things, happy just to be dining, not ferocious and squawking like seagulls; harping at each other over inflated chests.

Where have they gone? Now all I see is city.

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Hot Knife (4)

Today is the day. I know it. I have been offered another job, more money and nicer owners. Over the past four days it has become plain to see that Anthony and I will never get along. Sometimes I wish I was the type of person that could get along in a place like this; nodding assertively to the local cops, swapping 'fucks' and 'cunts' with the local drunks. Sometimes I wished I felt comfortable with the trendy boys and girls, the people with fresh haircuts, and $300 jeans, and those looks that say so much, look down from so far.

I am not ever going to fit in here. Anthony is a madman, he strikes me as the kind of guy that masturbates to snuff flicks, thickly drooling at the money shot, grunting angrily. His eyes are dead, his is not hollow; he is filled with icy-cold rage. I feel my edges melt in his presence, his outside is fierce and molten, not so much his body, more his aura. I hate using bullshit new-age garbage, but that man glows with dark.

I make up my mind. Still, as frightening as the man is, I can't just walk out. I decide to finish my shift, feel a burden lift from shoulders with each passing minute. As the seconds tick by I ask myself one more time if I really must quit. A few minutes later Anthony enters the room, shooting me a glare that confirms everything.

I wait until closing. I finish lugging rubbish to the cans out the back, return to the bar, grab my bag. He saunters out slowly. I swallow heavily. I feel sweat rising to the surface of my skin.

He explodes when I tell him. He fucking detonates with even more fury than I had dreamed he was carrying. Abuse erupts from his mouth, floating through the cafe in a thick mist, noxious and sharp. I fear for my safety. I wonder if he will grab a blade and tear my throat out. I picture him strangling me with an apron; my last vision the knives I had polished harder than I had ever screwed. His language is rotten, and despite my impressions of the man I still find myself suprised by the outburst. And then; I see it.

He is a little boy. He is a sad little boy, crying for a mother who never comes home. He is lonely and sullen and frustrated. He has been rejected in life, he is a child who never got the love he needed. Now, as an adult, power can come through the injection of fear into the veins of those around him. He can feel people shrink away from him when he pushes hate forward, and his reward is a power that replaces the love his mother never relinquished.

I prepare to leave.

"I'm sorry I wasted your time, Anthony."

"How about; Fuck off?"

I open the door, turning to say one more thing.

"Thanks for the opportunity."

The sad little boy replies the only way he knows how;

"Fuck off you fucking cockhead."

I am gone.

Hot Knife (3)

The Mardi Gras was building towards a climax. Groups of men sat around tables, gesticulating wildly amidst hearty gulps of wine. There was a buzz all around and, outside, huge groups were forming on the pavement, boys and girls, flirting and peaking and drinking and fucking. A table at the front of the cafe was taken by a bunch of tarty young girls dressed to the nines; apparently very little fabric goes a long way. I swung trays of coffee and burgers and beer to all corners of the joint. The night was warm, heated by the gyrating dykes parading down Oxford Street, helped along by drag-queens caked in make-up and doped out on all sorts of poison.

Sydney goes wild on a Mardi Gras night. It's an excuse to let your hair down, put on a wig, shave a leg. Testosterone and eostrogen and methamphetamines gushed down roads and through train stations, tainted with ecstasy and fury. I could feel the energy crackling amongst the crowd, all hearts racing together in an orgy of pouting lips and sneers and cackles.

I signed off, leaping out into the pulsing air, alive with the overlayed bubbling of a million crazed voices. I felt out of the loop in a way; I was just finishing and all these people were just winding up their engines. Admittedly there did seem to be a few early casualties, mini-skirts retching in grimy alleyways and black, puffy eyes weeping lightly. I felt an itch creep up the back of my spine, the first tingle of the hunt. My eyes darted about, sizing up opponents and prey, adrenalin seeping into my brain, hairs standing on end. I clenched my teeth and fought desire, then fought my way through the crowds, then fought my way to sleep.

Hot Knife (2)

My first real shift started at five-thirty in the afternoon. I was five-minutes early, Anthony hadn't arrived, and one of the staff told me to sit down and wait. I pulled out my laptop and started writing. A quarter-of-an-hour later, Anthony streamed in the front door.

"Up the back."

I sat down opposite him. He began with a rant about using a laptop during his time; he wasn't paying me to sit around and do fuck-all. Once again I was silent; I just nodded, smouldering inside.

The other staff were a roll of the dice. Chris was a sturdy New-Zealander with a cheeky smile. Andrew was a Chinese design-student who had been working at this place for five-years, and I sensed that he had absorbed some of Anthony's personality traits. That wasn't a good thing.
Santos was a runty little fellow from Nepal with a protruding jaw and kind eyes. He never said much, but the twinkle in his eyes spoke of someone who had seen a lot and knew what it meant.

I plugged away. I kept quiet and made sure the customers were happy. I moved back and forth, like a pendulum, up steps and down steps; rare or well-done, red or white? Polishing knives at one point, a great crash came from the coffee machine in front of me. Fifty clean, white saucers lat shattered on the floor. Andrew looked down at them forlornly.

"Shit. I'm in trouble."

I helped him clean up, forgot about them and continued as usual. Towards the end of the night, after closing the doors and piling up chairs and tables, I grabbed my laptop bag and prepared to leave. Stepping outside, I heard Andrew tell Anthony about the plates. It sounded like he knew what was coming; there was a chill in his voice, as cold as the air that greeted me outside.

Hot Knife (1)

Today was chalk and cheese. The first stop was an art gallery cafe, clean lines and carefully placed forms. Baroque chamber music wafted through the interior, gliding over framed prints and around androgynous statuettes. The owners were softly spoken and gently amiable, in hushed tones they told me of their plans for the gallery, while a pretty young artist from Iran flittered about, humming to herself as she hung nouveau-impressionist musings on the political landscape of her homeland. The owners seemed genuine, and I imagined myself working there; serving coffee to perky-breasted art graduates, debating the merits of pre-war cubism with lanky fops, helping young Iranian artists hang their paintings….

The second part of my journey landed me in hot water, literally. Polishing knives and forks while trendy handbag-house pushed its way through my eardrums, internally I debated whether to just drop everything and make a run for it. I looked at Anthony. I figured I could outrun him, and had started to plan my escape route when he let out a caustic expletive.

“Fuck! Fuck that waters hot, mate. Shit.”

Steam rose from a small bucket of water, jammed with hot utensils.

“At least it lets you know you’re alive.” He delivered this line in his trademark monotone, staccato bursts like bullets from a Tommy gun. I nodded slowly in agreement, absorbing the statement.

“That’s important.”

“It sure is.”

I finished polishing, moved on to meet and greet, customers came and went in a steady trickle. It was a diverse bunch; athletic young gays, sturdy lesbians, middle-aged women reading the Herald or the Guardian over a latte, a couple of grizzled truckers. After about half an hour Anthony came surging towards me with a grimace. He slammed down a container filled with cutlery, fished out a sharp steak-knife, and held it up in front of my face.

"I don't pay you to fuck around. You see this?"

There was a smudged fingerprint on the blade. I nodded.

"All I ask is for you to come here and do your fucking job. This is my livelihood, you understand? How would you feel if you came to have a meal and someone handed you this? It's not on, mate. Do 'em all again."

There was more to it than that. Anthony had a menacing aura that hung about him like smog. Even when he smiled it was like a playful grin from the barrel of a gun. He glared at me. I was silent. He turned and left. I got another container of steaming hot water, dipped my hands in, and I knew I was alive.

Heatseeker

The man smiles, teeth beaming like the headlights of an oncoming car. I am a deer on the tarmac, eyes wide, frozen by the chill of my impending doom. There is a woman next to him, smiling with the same radiance, blinding me with her ersatz pleasure.

They are holding each other close, gazing down at something with all the pride of newborn parents. Music sparkles in the background, drawing me into the scene, a melody as repetitive and comforting as the growl of an engine revving.

I am silent and willing, I am still as the vehicle accelerates towards me, pushing my buttons as the driver changes gear. There is no time to think, no time but now. They are so close that I feel heat glowing off the hood, feel the grill pressing my flesh...

Holden Caulfield

It had been an enjoyable lesson. We delved through the vaguaries of clever song writing techniques, from the brazen egoism of Bono through to the honed rhythmic athleticism of Eminem. Towards the end of class we began discussing a protaganist's charming cynicism. The song's genius came from the way he acerbically dissected popular culture, yet, all the while making it clear he knew he was as sick as everyone else. Discussing anti-heroes, the lecturer made a remark that jarred me out of my daydream;

"...everyone thinks that they're Holden Caulfield, everyone imagines that they're the anti-hero, the tacit observer of the madness around them..."

It's true. I'll be damned if I can't believe that I am the only sane one in the madhouse, laughing on the inside while the other inmates let it all out. I mean; what joy can be had if one doesn't believe that they exist at the centre of the universe? There is a sweet sadness to be had from solipsism, a kind of gentle justification for one's frailties. The thing is, without being Holden Caulfield, all I am is an extra, a side-character, superfluous and superficial. If I can't be Superman then I want to be Clark Kent, life's not worth living if I am relegated to playing Jimmy Olsen.

Ghost in the Shell

Some people have had the life beaten clear out of them. They are not hard to find; these husks of men and women, soul-less eyes wanting for nothing. It's life that does it, it's life that wears away the joy, eroding the imperfections that make us human, leaving a smooth surface and a hollow core. I watch them as I make my way through the city, the poor forgotten shells, discarded on a shore; empty. The spark has gone, worn-down, run-out. They aren't dead; they walk, they talk, they do their jobs. Underneath it all, though, they are just running like clockwork - not for the pumping of a heart or wind through the hair; just running because that's what a clock does when it has been wound, it just ticks away until the cogs cease to turn.

It scares me that life will run me down eventually, sap my juice, leave me empty. That day may come, when every morning is only a reflex action, alarm buzzing and poking me awake, not from a dream but from the still black of sleep. That day may come, yet I know - at least for now - I am alive.

I know I am alive because on the inside I am haunted, inside I am cut and bleeding, in here I lay dying. Demons keep me up at night, blaze through my dreams, blood boiling and pistons churning. My rage and my anguish are enough to stave off the threat of emptiness, starve the parasite of apathy hungry for my indifference. I know I am alive because the blades of my past are sharp enough to jolt me from a vacant reverie, violent enough to battle the stubborn ennui of days as gray as pavements.

I know I am alive because there is a ghost in my shell.

Double-Shot Latte

Anthony was a straight-down-the-line kind of guy. He spoke with an earnest monotone, the sentences being driven out in stacatto streams, more rhythm than melody. I found myself answering in a similar tone, shooting back my own version. I felt like a telegram.
The whole deal was simple enough; make coffee, serve cake and sandwiches, wipe the tables. I could make coffee in my sleep. I stirred sugar into my cup, creme swirling with froth and forming a fluffy spiral.
The joint looked straight out of middle-America, large booths where people can really dig themselves into a corner and chat over food and drink. Black-and-white prints lined the walls, and the bustle of the kitchen swept out into the dining area with the aroma of melted cheese and tomato sauce. I liked it.
Tony took down my details, scrawling an abbreviated life story onto a yellow pad. He swore like a sailor, the coarse words flowing out, like coffee beans through a grinder; bitter and comfortably familiar.
Lodged in the middle of the Cross, twenty-four seven...I can do that. Only, this time, I would be serving rather than buying. Now all I had to do was actually get the job...

In the Dark

...All of a sudden I feel hopeless and alone. I want to be with my friends, but, they are spread to the corners of the earth, and good luck to them. Nope, I just have to hold them in my memory, hold ‘em close and remember the way it used to be. It’s a damn shame, the way we grow up and separate, carried by the wind. I guess that’s the way we prosper, seeds on the edge of the storm, waiting to be laid down; getting our roots into something solid. Meanwhile, I am desperate for the comfort of the way things were, the way it was - when the future was a mere fancy, and not the reality. I wish them well, God bless ‘em, wherever they may rest their heads, wherever they are getting their kicks. My kicks are swimming at the bottom of a bottle, swaying to and fro, as I clear out a bottle of beer and let it ride through me, past the shame and the regret.
The strange part is knowing that they are out there, doing their own thing, engaged in ongoing conversations, thoughts of me as vague as the dreams we once shared. I know this kind of talk is shallow; it’s rare to find a kindred spirit. If it’s difficult by day it’s nigh impossible when the moon is high, shrouding the connections in layers of thick fog. Even as I engage I am disengaged, my mouth moves while my soul is frozen. I don’t even lament the shallows of these collisions; it’s inevitable, isn’t it? To careen into another when journeying through the night; headlights off and blind drunk…

Bang Bang

Holding the gun in my hands felt good. The barrel was smooth and sturdy, and the weight of the wooden stock gave it a sense of quality. I caressed the trigger with my right index, the stock wedged tight up against my shoulder. I squeezed my left eye shut and squinted with my right, moving my torso slightly, bringing the target into the line of my sight. I inhaled, held my breath, started to pull the trigger...

It takes a long time to build a life. Sure, the act of creation might only take a minute, ten if you're lucky. A life, the thing that makes you you, that takes a long time to really get going. Layer upon layer of experience, years of emotion and ideas and filth and showers. Throw in some parental abuse here, maybe a superiority complex, this one has a skin condition. All the paths we take, mostly because we can, or don't know any better. All those roads lead somewhere, they press your flesh and guide the grain, leave you with the patterns that make this one oak, that one pine.
There is a sharp crack. The gun pushes back against me, then rests gently in my grip. It's a good shot. The target tips back, spins half-heartedly, falls to the ground. I lower the gun, pointing the barrel at the ground, start to walk towards the target...

Just like that. Faster than you can imagine, it's all over. All the years, all those words. The people, the love, the laughter, all of the wisdom, all of the mistakes. Snap. Just like that. It seems a cruel joke, that life is so wondrous, magical at times, yet, click your fingers and it can all disappear. No matter what you have, what you dream, at some point it will finish. In the blink of an eye.

It was a direct shot, in one end and out the other. I pick up the milk bottle, show it to John.

"Good shot", he grins.

We've been doing this for years, pulling out air rifles and shooting junk. I even have some of the Coke cans all shot up from years ago, ragged cans faded by sunlight. I won't keep the milk bottle. Now a man, even as a boy it was clear to me how dangerously easy it is to pull a trigger, hit something, throw it away.

There's no point fighting it; maybe tomorrow I will be the target.

Cocoa

Headed up the road to the supermarket. It's close to midnight. John had a hit of the munchies, and I felt like a walk, so; up I go. There are a couple of pubs open, raucous laughter and shouting fill the night, mixed in with pop rock, like hot gas from a heater. The supermarket is just ahead, a glowing beacon on Darling St., blinding neon coaxing shamelessly, sirens luring ship to shore.

Entering the arena is the easy part. The fight is what kills you. Workers fuss hastily; closing time bringing thoughts of home to mind. A few fellow stragglers trawl the aisles, baskets piled high with toilet paper and band aids, all the crap you need just before bed. I reel from the assault of brands, logos piercing my mind and triggering jingles that mix into each other until they form a single word: Buy.

I am an obedient subject. First stop; Coca-Cola. Check. Next; what else? Chocolate. Copious amounts of hydroponic marijuana inevitably lead to copious amounts of cocoa. It's a proven fact. Kit-Kats and roast almonds, all the flavours under the sun. It's a wonder that people can function in this day and age. We are bombarded by choice, a relentless stream of 'what's next?'. How can a man get by when he's being battered around the head with a million fucking flavours of peanut butter? I put it on toast for crying-out-loud!

Defeated, I head back home. This what the hunter has been reduced to; Homo-sapiens, bag carrier of the future.

Grimy Little Fingers

Having my glasses fixed was like seeing the world for the first time. Catching the bus home, I drank in details as we sped over the highway, out towards the tributaries purging workers from their daily ordeal. I was perched up on a seat towards the back, the seats were raised and provided a good view. The engine hummed as we gained altitude, and I looked down to see Darling Harbour laid out like a banquet below. Sydney is beautiful, a sparkling gem of a city, yet, as we climbed onto the Anzac Bridge, just over the fish markets, I had to suppress a gasp, and not from the stench that wafted through the carriage. My awe was reserved for the afternoon sky, the radiant firmament putting our manmade trinkets to shame with its glory.

What was down here? I looked at the passengers around me. All that is here is what we have made for ourselves. All that we have made, all that we make ourselves. Down here; there is war and attrition, fat men wearing suits and women and buildings. I catch a man's eye in the reflection of a window, and I think; what do I know about you? What do I know, except - we are all in this big mess together. Down here; beards and cars and toxic fumes. Yelling and sport and babies and toothpaste. I looked up again.

Clouds pierced the sky, ran across it, blurred and dappled across the great blue of it all. The sun was wedged in one corner, shining down as it always has, rays catching corners, tufts of fluffy white. There was a pleasant yellow smeared over the horizon, an amiable shade heightening the contrast between above and below. It struck me as an obscene diptych; the two halves torn clean through the middle, polarised opposites - one child the apple of mother's eye while the other sank into squalor.

Today I read that human beings have tarnished nearly fifty-percent of the world's oceans. Just imagine that! We can't even breathe underwater. I looked up at the sky, at first thinking of how pure it seemed, how removed from the mess seething underneath it. The way the shades of blue drifted carefully from one to the other, the way the clouds whispered to each other in hushed tones. Then - I remembered. No, we cannot fly. Nonetheless, we have managed to leave our mark on the heavens. As if to punctuate my disgust, a jet flies into my line of sight, thick tendrils spewing from it's engines, a sick simulacra of the clouds it smashed through on it's way to anywhere; nowhere.

We have touched the sky, our window to the infinite, our portal to the future. We have held it in our grimy little fingers and left our mark, smudges upon the dreams of our ancestors. Looking up at the sky, I am glad I have my glasses back. Maybe, one day, I will tell my children of what used to be.

Stomping Ground

The boys mark their territory with chests protruding and cocked heads. Sneers and forced laughter are plumage, motions made towards crotches splayed like peacock feathers. The girls preen as they squawk their approval, battering eyelids and pouting lips. Eyes flicker like TV sets in a storm, tuning antenna for the right reception. There's one bird that garners the most attention, the boys punch each other at regular intervals, coinciding with her nonchalant glances in their direction.
One of the boys is building the courage to make an approach; his friends egg him on, hoping to live vicarously through his success, or revel in his failure. He pauses, looks back for a reassuring nod from his right-hand man.....and is promptly pipped at the line by an effeminate young prick with a decidely girly laugh. Our boy attempts to disguise his thwarted hunt by shifting his attention to one of the girl's less-comely friends, his group scoffing disapprovingly.
The girl knows that she has scored points, making the boys look like fools while she basks in their dim light. She flirts unashamedly with the ponce, pushing her boobs to the fore, heaving cleavage bursting out of a low-cut top. The effete focus of her show, who looks like a 'Lawrence' or a 'Basil', does not seem too enamoured of her undulations, and appears to be performing a matinee of his own for the boys.
Just when it appears that the tension will reach a cresendo, all competitors jerk their heads towards the foyer's entrance. A nubile blonde enters, locks to her pert bottom, silken and shining from the day outside. She knows how to walk, like a pony, a whole lotta wiggle. Suddenly, Big-Tits and Lawrence are forgotten, off the radar. The new girl sashays past the boys, her scent rousing the momentarily stunned pugilists, a surge of testosterone reminding the brutes - the first round is over; the bell has just rung for the second round...

Grey

It was a maudlin kind of afternoon. I didn't rise 'till midday, groggy and still heavy from the beer. I rubbed a trickle of drool from the side of one cheek, dug the sleep from my eyes. Pulling back the blind, I grunted; the sky was steely grey, a thick, foggy blanket, dead and still. There was no yelling today, the street was empty. There are days that sort of float about, days that just...are. This was one of those days, just another idyll Sunday. I don't try to fight the inertia, I find a good book and get back into bed.

Muffled

I can hear them yelling at each other. It began as a muffled cry, it was soft at first. Every second it gets worse, the screams become shrieks, from anguished, to violent, to hysterical. On it goes, back and forth. They are accusing each other; their voices are pointing fingers and blame. They do this all the time. Sometime I don’t think people are even angry at each other. We are really yelling at ourselves, yelling at this whole god forsaken mess. Some people are perpetually on the edge, just itching to raise a voice, swing arms and get attention. Some people seem as though they just couldn’t bear to live without a fight. Bad feelings are better than no feeling at all, I guess.

Inside

I have a sinister streak. It is something that I have known for a long time, something I have known since I woke up within myself. There is a time in your life when you wake up, when you begin to poke around, explore the mind. You might discover a fetish, a prejudice, a fear. Me? I have found this terrible duplicity (I have found a lot more, actually...). I have lived with it, watched it develop. The way it may twist a truth, redefine a fact, shake my tongue. Many times, like the audience in a movie theatre, I have seen it do shocking, amazing things, things that have left me gasping. Yet, all the while, as I gasp, I have been thrilled, I have been delighted to expose myself to the horror, sitting through yet another murderous thriller.

This is where I should give an example of my sinistral acts. I think not.

The consequences of the streak live within me. They alter my perception of those around me; if I am like this, what are they like? I am not sure if it is right to judge others based upon the knowledge of myself, then again, what else do I know? The ramification of my deception is to live forever in doubt of the authenticity of my experience. I know how easy it is to distort reality, to live within the multiple levels of a web of deceit. Do others seek to entangle me as I do them? With no answers, all I can do is prepare my traps and wait for dinner. Unfortunately, I am not as nimble as a spider; sometimes as I weave the thread I find I have caught myself.

Sometimes I fear the filter of my perception is clouding the clarity of what is really 'out there'. I imagine the fear of one that becomes trapped by their own mind, the inescapable enclosure of the thoughts we ride upon. I have seen men in the streets scream at bricks in a wall as though they were an arch-nemesis, I have seen a person chat to thin air as though a close friend. Thin air, from my point of view...

Break

It comes around again. We fall in and out, baptised once, twice, three times; waving - not drowning. In the midst of the splendour we lose our minds, we desire to lose ourselves, smuggled within a lover's breast. Their scent infuriates us. Intoxicated, we long to be maddened, swept up and away by the turmoil, crushed by an exquisite insanity.
How many times? How many times can we throw ourselves back into the fire? I have been burnt, charred, gutted. Shame on me, as soon as that glow implies a blaze, back I go, a Phoenix in reverse, enlivened by diving back to the embers, longing to be reincarnated and destroyed .

One Word

It's amazing really. The whole country was transfixed, it was front page news and the word on everybody's lips. It was an issue that could divide families, an issue that had divided families in fact. There were tears and ceremonies, promises of reinvigorated efforts, new hope, peace and love. One word! A symbol, a letter in the dust, a sandcastle, wiped clean by the tide. Tomorrow?
Back to business. Back to the norm. Back to the way it was, prejudice and sneers, inaction and obviation. One word? Can it achieve anything? The amount of times I have apologised, meaning it less than half the time - if that. What could it do, what can it change? If the world could be healed with words then I would scream all day long, till my lungs bled and my tongue cracked. If words could heal pain, I would whisper to my wounds, serenade my scarred heart, plead with those I had betrayed, left bruised and broken. If one word could do these things...

Maybe it can. Words can burn and explode, smash and destroy and build anew. Words live within me, fertilise my spirit, rend the heavenly mantle and scatter with stars, worlds that inspire with energy and meaning. When I say love, it can fill me with thoughts, till I overflow with memories, it imbues with ineffable joy till I brim with desire. When you say hate, I recoil, my blood boils and my eyes burn, my chest beats with murder and I feel my heart pump in my clenched fist.

One word...

Poison Ivy (4)

I've reached the top. Over three hours of drinks, mindless banter, soul-searching. This is it. After all of the fuss, the charming smiles, the bouncers and their threatening biceps. This is where I am...

I'm at a loss for words. The rooms are large and quiet, hush hush and laid back - like a library, only there's a bar. I don't know what I expected really. Circus freaks? Burlesque shows with buxom women cavorting in oversize champagne glasses? The Wizard of Oz? Justin Hemmes?
None of that is here. Just a bunch of guys and girls in nice clothes, drinking and chatting. Downstairs it was all go, go, go. There was wheeling and dealing, show-offs and what appeared to be organized crime members. Men with neck tatoos, luxury suits, and girls on both arms. Up here?
Everyone seems to be minding there own business.

I must've looked pretty dejected. I end up talking to a group of Swedes, lead by a strapping blonde boy named Oscar. We talk about a lot of things, he seems down to earth and genuine. He is obviously wealthy, but there is no gloating, no smirk, no air of entitlement. We have shots of Tequila and joke with his friends. After a while a bar tender calls last drinks. We share another shot and begin the spiraling journey back to earth. On the way down, with the house lights up, nobody looks as glamourous as they did a couple of hours ago. Just men and women, boys and girls. You can't tell who's worth a million dollars and who's worth ten. We are all just heading home, to rest our heads after a night out.

That's it.

Poison Ivy (3)

The night begins to blur. Everybody is young and rich and beautiful, at the very least a combination of the three. It can be rather intimidating, especially when one has a very tenuous grasp on but one of those qualities. My businessman friend is chatting up a rude-looking brunette, and I'm struggling to understand what this Italian bird is saying. I attempt to pronounce her name correctly three times. Not happening. I decide to mingle, swimming through the crowd, a glass of champagne in one hand and a cigarette in the other. I don't even know where I got the cigarette; I don't smoke. I toss it into one of the luscious pot plants lining the balcony, leaning over and drinking in the panorama laid out before me. So, I think, this is what the rich do. Bloody hell. There are about five levels of pomposity, bells and whistles. It is absolutely breathtaking, hideously gorgeous, gaudy and fashionable. I guess, really, it is one or the other, it's just that the two sides of my brain are fighting for adjectives.

Coming from a working class family, there is an inherent hatred for those that have more money, more style, beauty, etc. The only thing is, it's all so bloody desirable. The women are different here, as though the wealthy breed them especially for their own amusement. The guys aren't so physically special, but the stench of cash is thick at this altitude. And, there are so many of them! Layer upon layer, like sponge cake, it looks delicious, but you just know there is very little substance on your plate. I feel dizzy. It could be alcohol, or bullshit, or just plain old resentment. I collapse on a plush lounge and am immediately engaged in conversation by a charming Irish bloke. It doesn't take long before we begin dissecting the merits of the rich. It turns out to be a rather gory vivisection.

Getting pissed in a place like the Ivy becomes a dream. It's all new, strange. Three hours ago I was drinking beer on the street, and now I'm being ushered past the door bitches and bouncers with nary a word. The funny thing is, it actually gets easier the higher up you get. If you are mingling at this level, you must be someone. I'm reminded of American Psycho, of the way Patrick Bateman would confess to murders openly, only to be asked if he'd like another drink.
This is a whole other world, a universe unto itself. I begin to understand the precious glass bowls that these people live in, so coddled and spoiled that there just isn't time to care about much else outside one's exquisite sphere.

Some of the people here are pretty normal. They don't even seem to particularly enjoy themselves, not even with the money or the glamour. I talk to a girl who seems to despise her boyfriend. I ask her why they stay together, and she just shrugs. She has another sip of brandy. She shrugs again. I find myself longing for the familiar, for the streets of Sydney, where...I don't know. It's just people. Everyone here seems to be anchored down by all of the wealth. Like the credit cards and ease of life has sucked the enjoyment out of everything. There's no challenge. You want that? Visa or Amex? I wonder what Mark and Helena are doing. My phone has died. I decide to leave. Poised to begin my descent, I turn back. I've made it this far, there's only one level to go...

One more door bitch.

Poison Ivy (2)

Cal worked for Macquarie Bank. He came with a palpable sense of self-interest, and a cold smirk plastered across his chubby face. I don't think he was buying my story. Actually, I was convinced. I thought my accent was pretty good. It didn't really matter - I was gonna jet as soon as I spotted a better deal. His hanger-on was a guy who's name I didn't catch, but I figured he was all right. He had a genuine aura, offered to buy me a bourbon & Coke, and I nodded my appreciation while continuing to lay my absolute load of crap on Cal. He was a bore, too busy diluting appreciation for himself with an obvious self loathing; he wasn't rich or good-looking enough to smirk down from the upper level.

His friend returned, and I finished my drink, taking Cal's number and promising to call him about one thing or another. It was a conversation rich with ennui, both parties going through the motions and not really caring how it ended. I said goodbye. Gosh, what a pile of crap. I decided to go with a different story for the next group, I don't know if 'New York journalist researching Sydney's night life' was really gonna cut it. Besides, I figured, you needed a bit of cash to pull that one off. I checked my wallet. I wasn't concerned. I was determined to reach the top. From the ground floor I could see the flash of sharks teeth and jewelry, models and playboys; all that glitters. It looked like fun.

The next group was much more pleasant. They had a couple of girls with them, and seemed eager to find out more about a man who's family had just won the lottery. No money? I felt 'uncomfortable' with my new-found wealth, I refused to take money from my parents but had come here on their insistence: Go and learn about the world we'll be living in.

One of the guys in the group was a real buzz, he was on the same wavelength, and kept looking up at the upper levels longingly. I suggested we have a go, so we made our way to the gatekeeper.

Same look as before. Head to toe, eyes, watches. A glance at the list. It's almost like they are waiting for you to crack before they make a decision; they wait for you to break down, sweaty and tearful, begging to be lead out of the establishment, back to where you belong. Fuck that. I smiled, a real lawyers smile. My new friend looked the part, he was a business owner of some kind. The door bitch looked at the bouncer. Moments pass. He looks at us. He doesn't appear too intelligent. Just dangerous. She looks back at me, almost as though it's a hassle to move her lips.

"Go on."

Poison Ivy (1)

A familiar scene. Bottles of beer scattered around us, a fresh one in hand. A Sydney night; downtown. The streets are buzzing, girls in short skirts sway their behinds while boys in tight shirts whistle and growl and fight. It's a few minutes to midnight. We just caught the cut-off for buying more alcohol to drink, desperation turned to relief. Amid frequent trips to an alcove cut into a skyscraper, jeans open and pissing on a wall, we talk shit and watch the passers-by. Mark's girlfriend is with us, doing a very good impression of a girl that doesn't mind being all dressed up while drinking in the gutter. She looks bored. A group catch our attention, eye-contact is made.
Uncertain what they're interested in, we play it cool as they approach. After the boy in the group opens his sales pitch, and I flirt with one of his girls, it becomes clear what the deal is. We end up selling a bottle of beer for eight bucks. Shit, I think; we paid thirteen fifty for the whole six-pack. I talk myself out of writing up a business plan and get back to the conversation.

Five minutes into it we are interrupted again, this time by a homeless man who had been dozing on the steps of the next building. He has a Russian accent and is well-spoken. Asking us politely to move on, we exchange glances and agree the time is right. He thanks us, and I wonder what the hell is wrong with this world, where a man like that, a perfectly good man, can't get a place to live. Not just shelter, a real goddamn place to live. What would I know? Maybe he deserves it.

We make our way up the street, towards the Ivy. It's the new hotspot, the brain-child of one of Sydney's stinking rich playboys, getting richer on the silver-spoon permanently attached to his jaw. Hey, I'd do the same thing. The complex is enormous, built the way churches used to be, ceilings so high they force your eyes to the heavens, reverence and awe just an architect playing tricks. Trendy and beautiful people mill about out the front of the joint, talking on mobiles or pretending not to be focused on who's looking at them. The line is stupidly long. We stand and wait, edging along. When we finally arrive at the doorbitch's podium, we are looked over and rejected. Some bullshit about blah, blah. Not good enough. Heading back the way we came, I notice two girls and two guys exiting the building. One of the girls looks like she jumped off the cover of Vanity Fair. I approach, my turn to make a sales pitch. She says she'll take me in. I follow her halfway before I realise that Mark and Helena are still back on the street. I don't stop.

Versace

I am sitting on the stoop of the Gianni Versace store on Pitt St. It’s around 11:30 in the morning, and the city is really bustling, the traffic has warmed up and is gassing along the streets, tradies driving around with one-tonne trailers loaded with junk; bags of cement and lengths of wood. Workers mill about out the front of office buildings, smoking cigarettes and passing the time, idyll banter and glancing to and fro. Workman lean against poles, leering at the skirts as they saunter past, butts serenading the greasy men, all that’s left for the boys to do is whistle back. An elderly couple peer into a department store window advertising 5 years interest free – the marriage itself looks as though it is just about to hit 50 years interest free. A woman approaches people sitting on benches at the bus stop. I don’t hear a word, but the expression on her face says enough – wrong stop. Heels click against pavement as she totters towards the right one. A young boy and girl embrace each other tightly, whispering sweet nothings as the boy prepares to embark on his journey. The bus isn’t his, and as I board the 309 and it bustles from the sidewalk, I can see them clasping each other tightly, for another few minutes at least.
Another chance to say goodbye.

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Queue

Here we are. The rain is drizzling lightly, as if the clouds are so tired of the deluge of the past few days they have lost their enthusiasm. Everyone is silent, looking at their feet or peering with hopeless anticipation up the road in the hopes their pitiful expression will bring a bus sooner.
It will not. I have only been to one funeral in my entire life, and I can state, with utmost certainty and sincerity, this is more solemn.
In moments like these, sometimes, I become so bored that I will start mucking about; turning around and looking someone in their eye, not saying a word, hoping that someone will rise to the challenge of an impromptu staring contest. These competitions generally last about five seconds, my innocent opponent twitching uncomfortably and returning their eyes to the pavement. Loser.

Inside, I gloat, undefeated in seventeen years...

Anchors

I watch them with the sound off. Talking heads, perfectly coiffured, plastered with foundation. They don't look real at all. They're from another planet, a land where the inhabitants are only ever seen from the waist up, a land where fate is an autocue, a planet of disasters and murders and scandal.

I flick the remote. There are more of them. They must build them, assemble them from made to order parts, molded and precise. Is it Botox? Mood suppressors? It must be something. Maybe they are lobotomized before being put to work?
Starving children. Oil spills. A man throws his children off a bridge to spite his wife. A dictator annihilates his opposition. Nothing. They are unmoved, unmoving. Just the lips, and eyes flickering almost imperceptibly.

Another channel. Now they sit around a table, clucking at each other like best friends. Their smiles are ersatz, as joyous as the Coca-Cola sign that presides over Kings Cross. It becomes meaningless. Does it even sell soft-drink anymore? It exists because there's nothing else to replace it; it's there because nothing else can fill the vacuum.

Do you think that they pray for rain before bedtime? There's no news in utopia. They are attached to tragedy, to utter suffering, to misery. They function because all is not right, and that's the way it must be for their survival. They are pallbearers, holding their position in a tempest. Without anchors, they will perish.

Vodka?

Ryan frowned at me earnestly. I struggled to look him in the eye. We both knew what was going down. The same thing that went down every single time we did this. Nine times out of ten at least. The funny thing was that we both desired and feared the inevitable. A bottle of Vodka. That was going to rule the night, there were no two ways about it. In theory we were supposed to catch a movie. That was never actually going to happen. I was late - we missed the film. I couldn't help but wonder if I had subconsciously arrived late on purpose...

Later, sitting on the steps next to the War Memorial, we talked of our plans for the future as we drank cups of tepid vodka and flat ginger ale. Conversation flowed through the humid night, each sip adding a layer of joyous mist to the proceedings. Bats swept out of the giant figs and flew millimetres from the surface of the park's artificial lake, scooping water into their mouths and returning to the sky.

There's something comforting about maintaining a friendship throughout a lifetime. Having known Ryan for over half of my life, I can see how the patterns that had formed during our youth were manifesting themselves as we matured, like the features of a boy's face hardening into the shape of a man's. We share dreams that have been growing for over a decade, true dreams of the kind that can't be shared with strangers, for fear of appearing crazy or foolish. So there we were, two fools sharing our dreams and a bottle of Vodka.

I wouldn't have it any other way.

Self-Fenestration

Have they started jumping yet?

It can’t be too much longer. The signs are in meltdown, hoardings flashing in noxious neon, turning on their owners. In some ways I even feel a little sorry for the bastards - what a feeling of sheer terror they must be experiencing! Realising that the huge beast they have been feeding is opening its fangs to bite them. What lovely teeth it has! Razor sharp, strong enough to slice through societies, raze communities, chew up lives and spit them out. What a mouth! Such a tongue! Butter would not melt, it is so nimble and slick, jargon flows like saliva as soon as the beast catches a whiff of a hot opportunity, the delicious smell of a deal on the boil. They are all on the run now, frantically chattering and tapping away, mixing this with that, alchemists performing balancing acts the likes of which you could not imagine.

This has all happened before, of course; it’s a cycle, a vicious circle, a big, fat nought. Our new gods rise like Icarus on gilded wings, ever higher, leaving us mere mortals in awe of their acrobatics. They do loop-the-loops and spinning barrel rolls, twisting and turning so far above our heads that, if you were to stand on a billion barrels of oil, you still could not tickle the soles of their feet. We wish them higher with every breath, for the height of their success determines our own; our fate is bonded to theirs. They are so far away now that we do not see the heat of the sun beginning to melt the wax of their golden wings, the paths of flight faltering, skin searing under the very sky they had intended to touch.

Down they will go, plummeting from a hundred storeys, wind punching the anguished faces with all the gusto of a jilted investor. All the way down, turning end-over-end, Armani suits buffeted by the turmoil outside. They plunge like stock-prices, compelled by gravity to terminal velocity, to rest at that unholy number; zero. Nothing. Nada. As strange as it seems, their screams will not be heard. The panic has set in, around the globe, and their colleagues are too busy yelling into cell phones and issuing cryptic hand-signals to whomever will pay attention. Sirens are wailing and front pages baying for blood, fingers pass blame on like sub-prime loans, hot potato, hot potato. What a scene!

When the fog has cleared, when the damage has been assessed, when the world is ready to jump back on the rollercoaster; we will do it all over again. We will blood new gods, build them new wings, and wish them luck. They will take our wishes, take our hopes and dreams under their arms, and, sprinting towards take-off, they will leap from the crumpled bodies of the gods who perished before them.

Fade

The first month has passed. It's a cliche to say that time flows faster the older you get. Just like a tired and politically incorrect stereotype, sadly, sometimes it's true. It's racing now, galloping along, and all I can do is hang on for dear life, arms wrapped around the furious beast as it snorts and hustles and speeds down the track. Looking back over where I've been, it all seems so close, like I can just graze my fingers over the texture of my past, hold it in my palms and let the sand trickle through my fingers. But I can't. As soon as I look over my shoulder at my history I lose sight of where I'm going, travelling so fast that I find myself wrenching the steering wheel and anxiously correcting my course. The strangest feeling is driving down this highway with headlights dim as candles, everything beyond the faint glow buried in the pitch black of midnight. There's no point trying to navigate the journey using the stars anymore, this one's shooting and that's a plane, a satellite, a mirage. As I become ever more entrenched in the stream, I find that the truest compass is instinct, as illogical as that may seem. Instinct and impulse, these are my GPS, my position in time-space. These are my beacon, the light inside that shines brightly while I continue to fade...

Who Are You?

Surfing the net I find this question peering at me from a banner lodged in one corner. It seems like a pretty probing question to ask a person while they surf hotornot.com. Unable to answer immediately I find the question reverbates through my mind over the next few days.

Who am I?

It has become so easy to identify yourself by looking at what you own. I think about the junk in my room, strewn across the floor, lying stagnant and unloved in dark drawers and hidden nooks.

I hope that I am not defined by these things.

Beer

One Beer: Little buzz. Just a tad, a soft pleasant scratch behind the ears. Watching the football. Feels good to drink a cold one and watch men bash the living daylights out of each other, while watching sport.

Two Beers: A bit wobbly. It feels as though there is a delicate shroud placed over my perception. I decide not to use any editing from now on. What I type will be left as is. I have a decided thirst for another beer. I know this feeling. So many times I have promised myself that I would practice modration, only to wake up the following morinign with a throbbing headache and no left shoe.

Three Beers: Doesn't take long. I call Ryan and tell him I want to go out. He seems reluctant. I understasnd, we have had some shockers. Some real shockers. There was one time, a weekend; no sleep, at least three bottles of Vodka, a bottle of scothc, a few exctasy pills, ....a line of cocaine? No, maybe that was another nihgt. Anyhoo, the escapade ended with Floyd lying comatose in Sydney Park, then we had to lug the 100kg brute into a taxi, soemthing happened...an argument...I pushed Ryan into a wall for making a derogatory cooment. I broke his nose and wen thone...went home cryoing. Ryan is going to call me back in ten minutes, let me know if he wants to go out...that's him noww...

Four beers: It's decided. Chinese Laundry, midnight. mIt took a bit of convincving on my behalf; Ryan is always platying hard to get. He wants pingers - that's going to be fun. Trying tio find a dalwr , a dealer, in the midest of a swaety cowd of drugged up clubbers. I check my watch. 50 minutes is thr countdown, better get a move on. Y, Tiome to put some mpre beerts in the fridge.

Body Beautiful

Kris and I are working out. We're pumping iron in a boutique gym; he's working arms and I'm struggling on my legs. The pain is immense. I try not to show it, although my poker-face is clouded with sweat. Kris doesn't seem to mind, he's focused on honing his bulk, face clenched and grimaced. He's a tank already, all shoulders and quads. I'm no runt, but I am being absolutely dwarfed by some of the behemoths striding about the room. They sway their arms proudly, straight-backed, biceps at the ready. Some of them are trainers, pounding their charges with more reps, more weight. A poor little man looks as though he's about to burst, he's beetroot red, and there are tears gathering at the corners of his eyes. His trainer shows no mercy.

It's quite obvious what the deal is here. Man lift, woman run. Simple enough. Pop music blasts out of speakers attached to the ceiling, and music videos spray the action from plasma screens, animated surrealism where still life won't do. It's a sensory experience, warm and wet from gyrating limbs, endorphins streaming, all of this grunting and groaning while JT serenades himself to a relentless drum pattern.

There's no time to think here. Just move it, work it, stretch it, lift it. These exteriors are eye candy, rippled stomachs and toned behinds. There's not a lot of talking, either. It's too loud, too busy. Stairmasters and bench pressing is not the time for growth of the soul. The mirrors surrounding us all seem to reinforce that fact; it's what's outside that counts. No one takes you seriously in our world, not if you don't look the part.

Amidst the strain, the pain in my calves, I see that the people in dynamic suspension around me are the execs in the ad agencies, the managers of the promo teams, the sales force that convinces those outside, the formless mass, to eat the crap that prevents them from looking this good. The people in the ads on TV, the blonde beauties, the grinning jocks, the ones on the screen holding the triple-bacon and extra mayo Whatsit Burger - they are all around me, shredding the fat from their bones, running on treadmills in fear of the effects of the products they purvey.

They are all so pretty and empty.

Cigarettes

A group of workers exit an office building through revolving doors. Within seconds they have drawn the object of their desire from pockets and bags, thumbing lighters and inhaling the first of many, deadly breaths. Smoke curls amidst the throng, edges blurred in the haze. They puff hungrily, sucking in the vapour with relish. A man stubs out a quickly devoured one, leaving a rough black smudge on the wall. Withdrawing another from a depleted pack, he asks the girl beside him for a light. She looks too young to smoke. Old enough to get pregnant, apparently, from the look of the bump jutting out beneath her woolen sweater. They chatter intermittently, in between drags and the din of traffic.
A suit and a skirt flirt over their Benson & Hedges, smouldering looks over smoke and ashes.
The skirt exhales smoke suggestively, pouting her lips and letting the streams rise against her blonde bob. The suit smiles, eyeing her intently as he places a filtered end between his lips.
An older woman with a pursed mouth and saggy jowls lifts one carefully, smoke following the course of her hand in slow motion, long fake nails attached to the ends of her reedy fingers - chemical purple and shiny as night. She briefly pauses the ritual to allow a wet cough to erupt from her chest, the explosion bubbling like a kettle on the boil. Confident that the tremor has run it's course, she continues with her original plan, sucking it in appreciatively.
One by one, the group dissipates with the fog that had surrounded them, like thoughts from idle minds. Some hurriedly squeeze everything they can from the tubes, discarding the exploited remains on the footpath.
They are gone. All that's left is a pile of twisted and deformed butts, yellow and brown, smeared with lipstick and spit.

Kiri

Kiri's eyes are sunken, shy, leaning back in their pits. They no longer pierce with the certainty of youth, darting here and there, inspecting the world, asking questions with a glance. Her face is wan, it looks as though it has been drained. The vitality that used to animate appears to have escaped, like a rat leaving a sinking ship, a cruel blow from a friend with whom a whole life had been shared.
A scab has invaded her nose, a weeping sore that began as a scratch, it has spread and lodged itself their, dulling the beauty that she once possessed. She walks with a hunch now, bent over and hobbled, leaning a little to the left, an unseemly punishment for one who had moved with so much grace. At her peak she shone with grace, she reflected the sun's admiration, bouncing in tune with the rays.
Boy, could she move. She was a melody, a pure tone, she was Art Tatum's fingers caressing the ivory, a controlled frenzy of fury and joy, as intimidating as beautiful. She's quiet now. The beat of her heart has receded, from Vivace, to Andante, and now Grave. She sleeps the days away, and, when she does murmur, it is plaintiff, resigned.

Resting in my lap, breathing with unbearable lightness, I wonder if she is dreaming. I stroke her forehead and she twitches. I can see her eyes vibrating under the lids. Maybe she is there now, back in her youth. Maybe she is nowhere, preparing for her finale. Who knows where she is, soft and peaceful, purring at infinity.

Man In The Mirror

The pub is the only building on the street with the lights turned on. Resting on the corner, it's one of those old style drinking holes, complete with faded advertisements for KB and Melbourne Bitter. Inspired chatter leaks out into the night air, mingling with the patter of a light rain.
I step inside, greeted by a blast of warm air, humid with laughter and rosy cheeks.
I don't particularly like the West End. I never drink here, only visiting to pick up a takeaway on increasingly regular occasions. The clientele are redolent of the decor, musty and just a little too well-worn. I recognise most of them; mainly the parents of kids from the neighbourhood. While the little ones sleep (or, more likely, smoke bongs and raid the liqour cabinet), mum or dad and sometimes both are getting wasted and flirting with anyone they can.
Come to think of it, I don't know if the decor is actually that terrible, its just that the air of desperation makes it appear more sordid than it really is. I hand the bar tender a crumpled note and collect my beer, trying to avoid eye-contact as I leave the building.
Stepping out onto the street, I clasp the bottle clad in brown paper close to my chest to protect it from the rain, heading home as the opening chords of Michael Jackson's 'Man in the Mirror' ooze out of the jukebox.

Lunch Break

A dishevelled man lies on the grass staring into the distance, a ragged cigarette smouldering lazily in one hand. It's midday and hot as hell, sunlight warming patches of drying grass as it passes through thirsty tree branches. People hunt for spaces and sit on benches, some with partners, some alone, unwrapping sandwiches from paper bags and blowing on steaming cups of coffee. Shyamla and I are eating lunch; plastic bowls heaped with prawns and noodles and a healthy amount of chilli.

Most everybody is dressed for work, men in suits (what else?) and women in skirts, some prim, some tarty. Couples engage in intense discussions; these ones are in love, this pair are breaking up, they say nothing at all. A middle-aged man snores quietly, slumped over so his chin almost hits his chest, spectacles perched on a scalp well past it's used-by date. A young girls giggles into a mobile phone, so animated and bubbly, thoughts of work as distant as the person she chats to.
Shyamla and I talk, small talk, big talk, jokes and observations. It's nice.

Time passes. People pack up their lunches, some leaving the containers and bags behind, some stuffing them hastily into trashcans overflowing with waste. Sleeping beauty snorts and looks around with glazed eyes, scratching his skull while his operating system reboots - back to work.
The park is nearly empty now, just people walking here and there, somewhere to go, back to screens and meetings, booths and cubicles.

As we say goodbye and retreat to our lives, we pass the dishevelled man, smoking another ragged cigarette, lying on the grass, soaking up the remains of the day.

One Man

He is dead.

When I first heard the news a chill ran through my belly. It was a shock, leaving a bitter taste in my mouth. How terrible, I thought, how awful and sad. I could see the wave run through the people around me, a sense of loss, a feeling that we had all lost someone close to us. In some ways we did know him. We do know them; we know their names, their history, we learn of their pasts, their failures, their triumphs. We see them achieve things we could never hope to, possessed of extraordinary beauty and abilities, surrounded by wealth, living the dream.

He was just a man.

Is it a tragedy? To say that he died before his time is to deny fate, to embrace chance. Maybe this was planned for him all along, as much a part of him as his smile, or his laugh, as intrinsic as his heart beat, as necessary as his peculiar way of showing disdain.

He has become more than a man.

In some ways I'm jealous. Yeah, I know, that sounds so....selfish. To be jealous of a dead man, to envy one who has nothing. Why? He has become crystallised in time. This, this is how idols are born, myths created in the void of their passing. He can do no wrong, besmirch his legacy no longer. His flaws will fade as time passes, his success magnified, good looks crystallised by his demise. As I continue to make mistakes, disappoint the ones I love, try and fail and wither then die - he will remain, halo glowing and forever young.