A Dawn of Fevers

Well it's a new day in the big brother house.
Bloated faces eating the lungs of neutered giraffes as they spill red wine vinegar down their corse hairy chests.
Young girls with pearl necklaces stuffed in their arses carry trays of forgotten songs.
A blind alley smacks a cane across the buttocks of a stuffed brown bear reared up as if to strike.
The shamans beard bright in the sunlight.
A dawn of fevers.
Hip bones jutting and the scent of her on the long grass. Broken trees in the distance, a barren plain of her creation. Ancestors crowd me tearing at my hair, graveyard fingers, dirty nails and ashen faces.
Black is the mood, black the dress and black is the back of my teeth where my fortitude is rotting away. Sometimes I discover a memory trapped in a cavity, a taste of something forgotten.
A man once said
"If we will separate self-elements in our perception then it will be found that the deadness which we ascribe to the external world is not really there, but is put in by us because of our own limitations."

But what the fuck would a man with a silly name like Ouspensky fuckin know huh.
Another man said something else but I can't remember what it was. In my desk draw I have two large throwing knives. Hanging in a shoulder holster from a 5ft standing Homer I have an agent knife and a gas mask, easily in reach from where I sit. On the wall I have pictures of Hunter and Jack, papers strewn all over the floor and a tumbler that smells of last nights whisky. A microscope on my bookcase which I use to search my blood for new pathogens swarming like locusts or migrating birds. A dervish twirling next to Danger Mouse and Penfold.
My worry beads are broken and rattle in an ashtray coughing up dust.

The serving girls are now bending over to let you pull out the necklaces while they have their shivering stinky orgasms. Whores in Paris Hilton clothing sell watches on the midnight footpath as I stroll through the city.
Ever on the defensive,
saw a bag on a bus with no owner and got off at the very next stop but didn't tell anyone. Watched the news to see if it had blown up killing 26 innocent people 2 molesters and 3 others who were guilty of something, it's so hard to find innocence I myself am guilty of multiple crimes and indulgences, all of them amusing. Thought crime is real I just committed it then (I'm sure she wasn't over 15).
Went to the butchers to sell some meat I found on the side of the road but he didn't give me a very good price and I watched him sell it to a woman with snotty nosed kid in tow for three times what he paid me for it. Fuckin rip off merchants.

There are stone circles under my eyes
and a druids wind across my brow.
The wicker man is growing in the field
and he looks a lot like me.



edge

Everything rests on edge,
like the 59th second
of a minute waltz.
time stretching eternally
into the void between one note
and the next.

voices screaming in the yard
of a cottage on a hilltop
overlooking the bay.
mountains,
ocean views
and the rusted swings
blister the skin
of children in search
of laughter.



The Triangle

I have seen the lady now three times.
Once walking an Irish Wolfhound,
once walking with a gentleman I took to be her father.
And now, sitting across from me
letting the smoke of her cigarette drift languidly
from the corner of her mouth,
up her cheek to disappear in the midnight of her hair.
She is watching me, watching her being
watched by a man at the bar.
Now the man is watching me watching
and our positions form a perfect equilateral triangle.



My father on the beach

My father on the beach
used to piss on seagulls.
Blurting obscenities from beneath
a blood red umbrella,
beer hidden beneath a
beer advertising towel.

"Fuckn look at that pasty white fella
over there must be a bloody Pom."
"Barb, stop lookin at that black fellas speedos.
That's just a myth about their big dicks ya know,
black women just have small cunts, har har har."

In the afternoon, well into his second six pack,
he set out to swim .
I could here him calling rude
comments to the girls by the shore line.

Then he was in the water.
I was tempted to call out
that he should beware of Ahab
but he wouldn't get it
and if he did I'd probably get hit for it.

He was outside the flags,
he considered them an instrument
of social control,
to brainwash us into obedience.
He thought the same way about
walk/don't walk signals.

I had been building sand castles
with my little sister for a long time.
My father never spent much time in the water.
Usually only long enough
to get cool and take a piss.

I looked up and couldn't see him.
Mum was under the umbrella looking out to sea,
Tight lipped.

We sat and sat,
no one saying anything.
It started to get cooler
as the sun passed behind the cliffs.
Shadows heading towards
the waters edge.

"Start packing up Tim."
The first thing my mother had said in hours.

We did it in silence,
even my always chatty sister
stayed quiet.

I dragged the red umbrella
up the beach
leaving a mini canyon
in the sand.

We left the beer behind,
hidden beneath it's towel.

Mum drove home
with the radio playing loudly.

No one spoke.



Won’t you come out and play

"There's no point waiting for a smile."
she said, crushing the whisky bottle
between her thighs.

The churches round window
in the distance
a black eye of fright.

I took a moment to gather my thoughts.

Prudence steals books
from the pharmacy
across the street.
Prudence isn't her real name
I just happened to be playing
the 'White Album'
when I first saw her.

We started drinking at dawn.
Our fear of the day mutual.
Curtains drawn,
candles and a surreal atmosphere,
sitting on stolen futons
drinks on a broken pallet coffee table.

"Can't you at least put some music on?"
but I'd hocked the stereo
to buy the whisky we were drinking.

"What about some food?"
I had half a loaf of white bread
and assorted condiments
so I made toast with peanut butter.

I asked about the books
she'd been stealing.
"One persons shoplifter
is another persons
economic freedom fighter."

We sat
drank whisky
and at dusk she left.
Stopping at the pharmacy
across the street on her way.

Her thighs were bleeding
and I still didn't know
her name.