blowback pt 1

I should have seen through their lies, but sometimes you just need the money so bad that when there's just one dead suit between you and it that you stop thinking things through. You start thinking about the sweet dopamine drift that will follow the work. And oh god you never, ever think about the suit. He's just a suit and nothing more because if he becomes something more than just a suit, or just a pair of grey eyes, that's when you start feeling bad about the whole deal. And if you start feeling bad, you start to shake. And if you're shaking, you might miss. Either that or you take the diazepam to stop the shakes and then you got no idea what's going on because the sky looks like somebody burst the sun and sent its insides spewing forth over the world, and fiery death is held out only by that thin ozone we've all been ignoring. Or something. They're never more than a suit, or a pair of eyes.

This guy was no different. Should have been no different, anyways. That's what the boss told me. Just your average nouveauriche property developer type. Turning brick buildings into apartments for young professionals. A king of the commodification of shitty vibes and making people feel 'urban', while they sit safe behind two alarms and steel-barred windows. Got himself into trouble with the wrong people, as it turns out. I'm not sure how, or why. They never tell us why – just where. Where and what time and how much, and maybe if you're lucky they'll tell you you'll get half in blow (at their wholesale prices) if you do a good job. And so you do a good job.

You show up early, and get up to the roof opposite the guys work. Where he comes in at around 8.30 every morning, leaving his car for the valet outside. Sometimes he'll have a hat on and maybe you'll miss him for the hat. Maybe it's just some other grey-suited jerk in a hat, and this is the kind of think you want to maybe have a little bit of certainty of before you pull the trigger.
I was feelin' a little jittery still. The night had not been a kind one and the wire sting to my nerves from altogether too much speed and maybe just not quite enough liquor wasn't exactly helping. The endless loop of nonsense thoughts I couldn't throw away had me on edge. I was screaming focus in my lungs but my brain wouldn't follow, it was caught up in the idea that the competitive feasting of primitive societies was often called “potlatch” without knowing why or how it knew this. I had nothing to pull myself together except the strange adrenaline which will flow every time you point a gun at another man from on top of a building and feel just a little bit like God.

Today there was no hat. That face, fat from years of 'business lunches', almost filled the telescopic lense. I waited until he turned his back from the car, passing the keys to the red-coated valet. I took a last look at the suit before squeezing the trigger.

I watched through the scope just long enough to see the two arcs of gristle and gore which had erupted from his head splash to the pavement. Sitting back with my eyes closed all I could see was that copper ten cent hole right through where our man’s most intimate thoughts used to live. That’s life, I guess. One minute you’re on top of the world, and the next minute you’re a pile of bones on a street corner, avoided by the mid-day shoppers and big business suit types, and not even the homeless will touch you for the easy dollars sitting in your back pocket.

TBC.

girls xxx

I have never dated the sorts of girls
that have pictures of themselves
and 'their BFFs'
wearing sunglasses and hugging
at relevant social events
like the Big Day Out
or maybe
something at Orientation
as the wallpaper
for the laptops
which they bring to lectures.

I imagine you'd spend
a lot of money
on drinks and taxis
dating one of these girls.

I imagine that they,
with their expensive hair
and expectations,
would cheat on me.

I imagine this and
I don't care
They ignore me
and
I ignore them
and
It's as if we are
different species.

Theres is the species
which gave the world
MTV
and
Vajazzling
and
that thing where
slutty girls call equally slutty girls
'moles'.

My species?
We gave the world nothing,
I guess.
Maybe some wasted breath.
Maybe some extra SSRI prescriptions.
Maybe audience to other
dead-hearted devils
getting CDs pressed by the hundred
and selling half of them
and caring less.

Sometimes I wonder where I went wrong.

voices and fists

There was that one Summer when we all agreed that our voices were stronger than fists.

And we went tumbling down into a world of metaphor and 3am debate on metaphysics.

When we were young and thought our words would reshape the world.

If only we could talk one on one with everybody.

Sparring them, delivering left hooks of perfect syllogism and haymakers of analogy.

Thinking, knowing that the only punches we would feel would be the thud of our hearts against our chests.

As we skim read Bakunin, called ourselves Anarchists and plotted the revolution.

Printing presses were going to be our machine guns.

A thirty second television advertisement was going to turn the Southern Broadcast Region into a Hiroshima of free-thinking enlightenment.

When we were high on home brew beer, badly cut speed and the untenable arrogance of youth.

The group momentum sent us onwards, carried us onwards, always onwards.

We were sure that Summer was our May 68.

Our voices are stronger than fists!

Our voices are stronger than fists!

We shouted, our rallying cry for the weak of arm and the hoarse of throat.

Every day there was a static in the air.

We got arrested and released.

We stole photocopy credit from our bosses and gave out pamphlets showing wrenches stuck in gears.

We ate food from dumpsters and it was all lifestyle revolution.

We didn't know about the working classes and we hid our private school educations to claim 'proletariat'.

It was as much Kerouac as Kropotkin

Our voices are stronger than fists! we shouted,

Until we found out that no one ever lost three teeth at 3am outside KFC, City Mall, from someone's voice.

Our voices are stronger than fists! we shouted,

Until we realised that no one ever went to hospital from a cop's voice.

Our voices are stronger than fists! we shouted,

Until the liquor ran out.

Until the job offers came.

Until you moved away.

Until pot became your own personal revolution.

Our voices are stronger than fists! we shouted.

Until we realised that swift knockout is maybe better than the slow erosion of empty rhetoric and the same grating voices.

And I am still shouting.

'My voice is stronger than my fists'.

But I'm lifting weights.

And I'm keeping quiet.

And I'm counting down the days until I can punch myself out.

For all the shit I ever talked.

the yeti from SkiFree as a metaphor for the inevitability of death

stop thinking so much.
stop thinking so much.
stop thinking so much.
stop thinking so much.
stop thinking so much.
stop thinking so much.
stop thinking so much.
stop thinking so much.
stop thinking so much.
stop thinking so much.
stop thinking so much.
stop thinking so much.

colour

At dinner, I had been telling you about my dream.

And how I have only ever had black and white dreams.

And how there has always been a violence to my dreams.

One that I can never understand.

You told me that Jung would have a field day.

As I explained this to you.

You nodded as I talked about the blurred shadows, and the noise like a detuned television.

The sickening scramble of images when my eyes snap open to a fully-toned world.

We talked about the self-indulgence of talking about dreams.

And how no one really ever gives a damn.

How they just wait in line, for the chance to talk about their own dreams.

And this somehow makes us feel normal.

'I am glad that I'm not the only one who can't dream in colour', you said to me after the movie.

I wish you had said this sooner.

After I had told you this, I had felt incomplete.

As if I was missing something vital.

Like you would push me away for a real man.

For a whole man.

Someone who's dreams bloomed in technicolour.

All flowers, balloons and baby animals.

'We have seen too much', you said.

'How can we dream in colour, when our lives are black and white'.

'The black is work and the white is home to a colour television and a microwave dinner'.

'After a while it all blends to gray'.

'And there is nothing left to see'.

I slept with you that night.

You asked me to hold you, as we listened to the slow beat of rain on your roof.

It was almost in time with my heartbeat.

The gap at the top of your curtains let in a soft light.

Which cast shadows on your face.

In my dream that night, we held hands on the beach.

Your eyes were green.

Your lips were read.

I woke up, and I was not afraid of the day.

two poems

friday night

GET FUCKED UP
GET FUCKED UP
GET FUCKED UP
GET FUCKED UP
GET FUCKED UP
GET FUCKED UP
GET FUCKED UP
GET FUCKED UP
GET FUCKED UP
GET FUCKED UP
GET FUCKED UP
GET FUCKED UP
GET FUCKED UP

saturday morning

the god of friday night is dead and
saturday morning i'm left alone with the ghosts in my head.

i will hug my pillows.
i will send apologetic text messages.
i will remember stealing drinks and laugh inwardly
cheeseburgers hold too much appeal
i feel like i could go out and order all of them.

i will have dreams that we tidied the house on friday night.
i will wake up disappointed.

i have never known what isotonic means but i will seek it out
in the hope of some modern witch-doctor cure

blue powerade has come to taste like regret.
but every other flavour is no good.
they are offered, i think, to allow us to revel in the illusion of choice.

no one ever thinks of the environmental cost of a hangover.
probably not even greenpeace.
the oil for plastic to make bottled drinks.
the trees felled for our burger wrappers.
the rainforests that are probably cleared for coffee plantations.

i think about this and it makes me depressed.
i think about this and it makes me hungry and thirsty.
i pray to Anything for the courage to leave my bed.
i pray for a vengeful, Old Testament kinda God to
S M I T E
my neighbours kids.
someone, lend me salvation.

the chemistry of common life

Chemistry is just a word we use to describe what occurs when subtle changes in our minds make energy from common lives, I thought. My heart punched my rib cage for what seemed like the three-hundred and sixty-fifth time in an endless minute. We were walking hand in hand and we were all strung nerves and muscle tension.

In the gardens you said to me 'We should sit down', and I said 'Yeah, that would be nice', and so we sat in the ornate benches just staring wide eyed out at the world, as if we were seeing properly for the very first time. Vibrant flowers framed the water cascading from the fountain.

'Sometimes when I come here I like to look at this fountain and think about what it means. Right now I am thinking that it is a stand in for how you make me feel', you said.

We were big on metaphors around this time, like cryptologists making sense from some lost meaning.

'I mean, this fountain is beautiful and alive, and this is how you make me feel'.
'That is a wonderful thing to say. And I feel the same way. About you, I mean. Not about myself. That would be weird. I'm sorry.'
'It's okay. I knew what you mean'.

We were young and the awkward, self conscious anxieties that go along with that still hung over our heads. We were vaguely terrified of absolutely everything except each other, and you had a theory that this was the true definition of love in the modern world. Maybe 'I am not terrified of you' would be printed on Valentines cards in years to come.

We sat hand in hand, watching the water. It was probably cascading, although maybe it was more like gushing, or surging. We couldn't settle on the appropriate verb, so left it at that. We made promises to remember this forever, living in the endless moment, making great heaping piles of seconds in our minds, a pile of sixty to be called a minute and a far bigger pile to be called a memory. The sun was setting directly in front of us, and you asked me to tell you about my ex-girlfriend.

I am five years old and struggling for vision over the dashboard as we drive to the shops, learning the meanings of words like weekends and sunlight and the Bangles are playing on the radio. Suddenly, I am seventeen years old and struggling to see through blurred vision, learning the meaning of things like serendipity and the blues, as we drive home in this taxi, knowing that this is the last and final time this is going to happen, because things have changed. I am eight years old and throwing bark instead of kissing her, and learning the meaning of regret.

This is what I did not say about my ex-girlfriend.

These were my own 3am Tramadol meditations in F# A# (infinity) about her. These were the things I was not yet ready to tell you. I could have laid myself open to you, bearing all. I could have explained all of this, but instead I said 'She got fat. She has a kid, now. You're about 10,000 times better than her, in every possible, conceivable way', and this was, I think, what you wanted to hear anyway.

Sometimes 'romance' and the truth / memories / 3am meditations shouldn't cross paths, I thought. It is usually best this way.

With your arms around me and your eyes on mine, we felt eternal. We felt like were were running head first down steep hills, building so much momentum and energy that we were going to explode.

'Lets go'. You.
'But where to?'. Me.
'I dunno. We can take a walk'. You.
'I'd like that', and we took a walk. You were decisive, and I needed this. It was almost time for the park rangers to lock the sharp-topped gates – we could have been trapped.

Walking past the Art Gallery you told me how you don't like the sculptures above at night. How they seem so grand and looming and important, lurking in the sky. How they remind you of great extinct birds, ready to swoop. How you don't like to feel like the insignificant prey of giant imaginary animals. How you never got these feelings when we were together though. I told you that you were never insignificant, and that besides, I would protect you. You would protect me. Together we would be some sort of unstoppable super-hero duo, overflowing with the relentless energy of youth, running and believing and gasping for air, never stopping, in constant combat with the entire world. Taking on all six billion if we needed to. We both agreed that this, probably, was kind of over the top. Holding hands, we stopped to admire the Gatsby posters pasted to the theatre bollard.

'When I am with you', I said, 'I feel like this town is the ragged edge of the universe. Like we could be rolling champagne bottles down any avenue, under the light of a wanton moon. I feel like I want to give in to the world in all its cliched and romantic glory'. This was back when we were big on metaphors. Back when we were tragic and embarrassing, caught up in waves and tides of feeling, abandoning the Puritan restraint of previous years and lifetimes, as if this time around we'd been born feet first and never bothered trying to put ourselves right, or find out how it was supposed to go.

We walked towards the Square, bright lights surrounding us down Worcester Street. The quantity of streetlights meant we each had four shadows, in varying shades of darkness, and we weren't afraid of a single one of them. We stopped on the Bridge in view of the sell-suited drunks down the Strip, their heads all ethanol and property figures. The caged doors of the Our City gallery reminded me of a prison, and I had to fight the urge to offer you a private performance of Free Bird, grateful you didn't even hear me humming. Insecurities blooming, as we leaned against the same prison gate, pressing lips. Hearts racing, skipping to the same rhythms, without the need for the intoxication of the bars, or the choking commerce of the glass fronted buildings. Feeling drunk off of each other. Feeling like right then and there we needed absolutely nothing but each other, still absolutely terrified of the world, but no longer scared of ourselves. Discovering that maybe this is what love is, and maybe, just maybe, this is the most important thing that will happen to us, breaking free and offering ourselves up to the world, proudly offering our necks to the world, screaming 'come and get us, come and get us, you fuckers' because we are ready, we are ready and we are never looking back.

in this story i ripped off- fucked up, cold world, the great gatsby, every cliche 'love story' ever.