Tag Archives: heart

The spine dies, as love

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The dreaded death
In your lung breath
In you heart reach
In your soul stench
Tastes like vomit
When you take her hand in yours
Her small hand
Her little loving hand
That has done nothing to you yet
But has held cocks before
Hasn't it?
It has held a large hard cock
So it's hard to love those little fingers
In the same way you'd love
Fresh cooked food.

I feel sick
As the seed
Grows beyond me
Growing even now
Wrapping it does
Feeding on my hope
And smiling
So badly
As it grows.
It kills the spine.
It kills the soul that thinks the spine is important.
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Imagine if love wasn’t the main reason for existence?

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We’d wake up every day, wouldn’t we, we’d lie there looking at the wall or looking at the closely weaved cotton of the sheet. We’d look through the little crack in the blind to see what kind of day it is and that one by three centimetre view we’d judge our entire day. If it was all blue we’d think it was a lovely day. If it was grey we’d think it is a different kind of lovely day. The colour checks to see if it matches with what we are feeling. If we are ashamed and depressed then the little piece of bright light blue is cajoling, mocking. If we are ashamed and fearful and depressed the grey is a blessing, it says “go on, stay in, stay in and read. Don’t bother talking to anyone”. We’d do different things you and I but we’d eat something. We’d eventually go and let the piss stream out of us, eventually. The smell of our own urine comes stronger in the morning,  we are like doctors, we are checking ourselves, we are looking at our tongues together, pink is good. If we are scared and sick our tongues are white and our piss is dark and our face is sullen and your eyes are crying out to remember something, looking at someone in the mirror trying to remember to want. It’s not the same every morning, no! It is mostly the same every morning, some mornings you are not alone and you cannot smell anything but the coffee that someone else has made and that they have opened the blinds too early and it all feels different and fresh and alive and you piss quickly to get rid of it like an animal does, cover it up. Brush your teeth the same way still staring at yourself, your worried look, your rushed worried look, your purposeful look. Body Maintenance: Not Dead. It doesn’t matter about the ‘sky’. We’re just sitting together with hot coffee and talking about, oh, what was it? I think I said I have to brush my teeth again and you smiled, sorry, they smiled, but not for any reason, but something happened the night before, something…we don’t know anymore because it is not something we want to remember. Just the morning, that different morning where everything was more than usual, and fast and light. We don’t always start like this. In the morning. It’s very much in the afternoon at our desks too when we are sitting there, looking at all the little things on the desk surrounding a luminous flat screen. We are still checking the sky to see what it wants us to do, we are still letting the day go on, we are still pissing in the afternoon, clear, clean, empty urine. There’s nothing we forgot. We wouldn’t be able to work right away, not for a little while. Oh I guess other people would talk to us, wouldn’t they? Asking mainly. We’d have to look at them together and smile perhaps and talk. Answer mainly. Answer them right away. I would even last three days like that sometimes. Three whole days of waking up and answering questions and looking at my eyes and pissing and eating like that. Looking at the sky to see what it was supposed to be like today. Sometimes we’d listen out especially well, there’d been a time together and we heard so well, so clear. We weren’t alone then, in a small room, the sky was bright blue and then sun was the lightest clean white on the carpet, on my leg. Like a perfect day. We’ll be out of there soon, outside, alone. We’d wake up like that again, with coffee and the blinds drawn to wake me up so I can have a shower in time to get the train you’d say. Mostly you’d get up first like that and make the coffee. I remember. I didn’t forget you. Sometimes five days goes by like this.

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The Rabbit

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The dread from inside
Keeps coming out
To remind you
That the beautiful love you feel
Can not last.
The head will be cut off,
The rabbit will run
Half headless
Into the darkness under the ferns
To die there alone
Panicked and starving.
But that little rabbit
Held trembling
Alive
Kisses your fingers and looks at you
So honestly
Because it needs you
And you can feel its small body
Breathing and shivering
And settling down in your lap
It forgets that there is a world
Away from your lap
That wants to eat it
And boil it
Or put it in an oven
Because its better that way.
That's how you eat a rabbit.
Didn’t you know?
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Jonah and the Whale

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Jonah’s older brother was mean. Mean like when they were kids, Jonah eight, Mark ten, they had baths together still and even though Jonah would cry and cry and yell ‘no’ their would put them in the bath and close the door to the bathroom. Now, as we know bathrooms echo a lot. They are probably the only room in the house that shouldn’t echo, really, but there we have it, we’ve made the most embarrassing, bodily function-centric, gross room the most cacophonous vestibule for us poor we-don’t-want-to-be-animals-animals[1]. So locked in that chamber Mark would begin at first pushing the bathwater back and forth in a tidal wave, just for fun at first but greater and greater until the water caused Jonah to move about and for great amounts of water to be displaced. Jonah hated both aspects, the mess and the fact he was not in control of his small body rocking back and forth in the bathwater[2]. Tossed about with Mark laughing, he felt sick and alone and his crying out was over-shouted by Marks fun yells, as if the two brothers were having fun together, playing, having bath-time fun with games and splashing and all of that. After some of this, and not every night but often enough, mark would stand up and start pissing on Jonah, in his face as much as possible and Jonah would try to avoid it under the little water left in the bathtub. Coming up for air like a whale he would just get the rest of the piss stream in his mouth, tasting his brothers piss and trying to breathe, not really drowning properly but no really able to breathe properly either. When Mark had finished pissing on his bother, and had nothing left like that, he’d soap himself all over, throw Jonah the soap and fill the tub up with more water. Just hot water. Jonah would try and turn it off but Mark would hold his hand under the hot water coming out and Jonah would cry out and Mark would yell “Muuum…..Muuuuum” and she’d come in and see the mess, the water, the hot water pouring out and set it all right, as in, get Mark out and hand him his towel so he’d leave and close the door and the mother would wash Jonah properly in the small amount of three inch hot as hell water and Jonah would give up, his legs as he knelt there burning in the hot hot water and his mouth full of salty tasting piss his brother pissed into his mouth almost three or more times a week, more and more as time went on.

Sitting in his room drawing a lot, Jonah, 11 years old, drew scenes from the bible, Exodus, Job, New Testament Mathew Mark Luke and John stuff (it’s all the same). Drawing Moses with his staff commanding the Israelites, commanding God’s punishment upon the Egyptians. Drawing the boils on the skin, drawing the fire coming down on them, drawing really drawing with a red pen a lot the fires and the burning dead of those who opposed God’s chosen. In Jonah’s class he heard the story of Jonah and the Whale, imagining himself getting stuck in the belly of a whale, praying in there, waiting in there.  His teacher put on an animated video of Jonah in the whale; making a little room for himself and staying in there, talking to the whale and the whale answering back apologetically and eventually releasing him. Mark is like the pestilence, coming in, pushing all his work to the floor, pulling him over onto his back and hurting him really bad by twisting his arms and legs together and saying things like “you love god now?” and “mum doesn’t love you because you are so weak” and as Jonah calls to his mum and nothing happens Jonah starts praying like he has been told and actually says the words of the lord’s prayer out of his mouth which makes Mark hurt him more trying to get him to stop saying that stuff.

In the family home there now lived Jonah, his Mother and Father. Mark was gone, living by himself in some house with a few friends. No one had heard or seen Mark in over a year. Jonah was happy and free and not scared for the first time in his whole life. He heard his mother worry about Mark and his Father console her but he was happy that this person was gone.

The local church was, not really a church thing per se that he had been brought in, more like a hall thing with a whole bunch of people that seemed normal and cool and happy and god-loving. Jonah liked these people, their openness, their honesty, their acceptance of the words he said and the other words they had that added to what he said. He said “yes!,…,yes!” a lot at the end of their sentences, sat listening to the preachers talking about a god they believed in and he cross-referenced what they were saying with all the stuff he had read. It didn’t make sense a lot of the time, sometimes they were talking about things that did not match with what he read written in the bible. A few times he said to them things like “but really do you believe that?” and they always pretty much said ‘yes’ and he quoted other bits; “passages” they corrected him and “um yes” he said and went on and told them the other ‘passages’ and they were solemn faced and said things like “that was the old testament” and “that is not really god” but Jonah knew it was, that was god, that was really god, in the bible and they were talking about the things that sounded good, just good and that was when he didn’t go back anymore[3].

Working was, of course, unreal at all times. No one knew of the soul inside, they were all smiling and busy and talking in words like “fiscal year” and “debt recovery” and “final transaction”. Jonah, surrounded n these concepts and words was sick, at lunch he rode his bike far away from the office where he was working in customer service at age 22 to a lake, on the edge of the lake he would cry, for himself mainly and he felt bad about that and then praying, started crying then for the human faces he saw every day. The sales reps, the older lady desperate to keep her job, the sexual young women smiling and flirting for money, the male managers gross, tucked into their business suits and moving about with papers in their hands, half smiling, going in rooms, small rooms, talking and laughing and not doing anything, just talking and laughing and staying late doing it. Jonah’s life was empty in purpose but he prayed every night for his brother Mark; that he would come back and be redeemed[4].

Uncomfortable place, but of course, they had expected that, Jonah and his girlfriend. Jonah had wanted to impress her by going to what he thought was a fancy restaurant. She said “wow, this is amazing” and they had only sat down and had napkins placed on their laps. Jonah looked at the prices on the menu and felt  a lump in his throat because it was really expensive and it seemed sacrilegious and he didn’t want her to think he was shallow like this, like he bought food so expensively. “You now, this is….this is..”
“I know” she says “this is too much. Let’s just hare an entre and a main, really, it’s ok”
“No, no it’s not the money it’s the…waste…oh, sorry…not a good date thing to say” and he is blushing and shy and trying to laugh and express how he really feels, who his is.
“I agree Jonah, its to much.”
“It’s ….oh god, it’s…”
“Shhhh. It’s ok Jonah, really” and they sit and order one entre and one dish and she orders a glass of wine and he smiles at this and orders a coke.

“What the fuck you been up to?” Mark says, Christmas lunch, getting there late, bringing his wife and three kids in the door while the rest of the extended family are already on the lounges and around the place, on the floor. Mark’s father stands up and says “Mark, don’t you talk like that today” and Mark says “Calm down old man, we’re all adults here and these kids, Christ, they wouldn’t know what the hell is going on anyway, would you, you little cockheads?”. The kids don’t even look at him, everyone else looks at everyone else in some way or another. Jonah gets up and walk over to his brother. “Mark, how are you?”. “Good as shit mate. Fuck look at you, you been working out?” ‘Yeah I have been a bit Mark. Good to see you”. “Shit yeah man you look fucking good. Hey, you met my latest bird? Hey, Stacey, check this shit out, my little bother is cut as fuck…hey Mum, get me a beer, huh”. “Mark, hey, come on now, this is Christmas, you can’t keep going on like that?”. “Huh. Jonah come on, what the fuck are you talking about?” “Mark, come on…there’s kids here, man:”. ‘Kids? Whose kids? Oh shit look at them. Dumb little cunts haha. Fucking cunts haha right?” “Mark!” his mother says, shuts him up. There’re all sort of sit downs in various spaces and getting drinks in their hands, sip them. Jonah looks at Mark like he’s waiting. “You want to say something Jon-ah? Huh?”. “No Mark”.

In ward E4, bed 103 Jonah lies watching TV, has three channels to pick because two stations haven’t signed the proper copyright agreements that allow patients in hospitals to watch TV shows. The ultimate copyright law that comes down to affect people that have absolutely no intention of breaking mere copyright laws. But here in an establishment it applies en masse. Been there two weeks, had his blood cleaned four times, had his head scanned by fMri three times, had his pancreas and a kidney removed, the fucking thing cancer it is, moving around being a prick and taking bits and pieces here and there. Jonah has told his wife to keep the kids way until he is looking better. Jonah’s Dad came by out of nowhere and was crying too much about losing a son before he was dead himself. Jonah couldn’t say anything because that was right. You shouldn’t die before your father. What could he say. Another week, he spoke to his wife on his iPhone she bought him. He mainly payed games on his iPhone really, a good thing to have when you are dying of a cancer doctors can’t find. In the pieces they cutting away, Jonah imagines himself a half human which is living with almost half his organs and big chunks of flesh missing. He imagines a leg or arm or both missing. One morning when he wakes up Mark is there, sitting there reading a newspaper. Jonah closes his eyes and Mark doesn’t see him wake up. He holds his eyes closed for a few minutes, starts counting up from one, gets to two hundred, keeps counting, trying hard to count higher and higher and, even though this is the last days of his life, would rather count up and up the numerical scale rather than talk to Mark. Seven thousand, eight hundred and sixty seven he gets to.


[1] There is most probably a religious-based reason for this.

[2] Bathwater: yet anther gross term,. Though it shouldn’t be. Some families these days take that water for the garden. How do the children feel after having cleansed themselves in the same water feel about this stuff going out to water the crops they will eventually eat?

[3] He went back a few more times of course, just in case these new amazing loving all good all nice god did exist. It turned out he didn’t and they were all so stupid and simple and amazingly false. They kept asking for money for one thing. Over and over. God…

[4] And he never wanted him to come back. He didn’t want to have to try and help him redeem himself, and he didn’t think it was possible. He hated himself for thinking that. He hated not wanting him back. He had read the prodigal son, didn’t agree with the message, felt bad about this disagreement.

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Love Teaching Living Devil Science

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Go along with it:

I hold your hand and you thrilled with conviction you are, so long before I knew that any true urge was basically false or pretend, and I didn’t know then you were pretending, I thought you were magical and amazing and holding your hand was as if I was learning and getting to know something, getting let in on something which really is what we all want and I know now that is what your power is and after all these years I still think you have this power and at any time can come and take my hand again.

The point of living:

There are those of us chosen, born, made to teach (gross, as if there is any way we can actually talk or in any other way effect all these people oh dear god, really! They don’t listen, they all do their own thing and they love ‘their own thing’ and we have to get into their ‘thing’ thing and from the inside turn them over and over and tell them the truth and oh god my god it’s so hard and long and getting worse over time, I mean, these days sure I am still loved but the window is closing and pretty soon I’m going to have to scream “fuck you, kill people, fuck school” in order to have any kind of coherent respect influence) so you have to get your ass equipped like angels to get these morons smarter, right, that’s the goal. So we can’t fake it, we can’t wear the clothes and ‘blend in’ because these kids sniff that shit pile from a mile away…they know more about psychographic marketing then anyone…they could analyse how shit house the latest campaign is top to bottom. They like what they like. Full fucking stop.

Didn’t you know:

The time comes for your body to be put into the ground or burnt and displaced hence forth in verdant fields of green or else in concrete holes, wherever in which you wish to be desecrated/consecrated. That other time when you, so troubled, so selfish, so self-fucking-centred you…you decide you have to do it for yourself, you have to do it from nothing. It is open and clear, there is no reason to do anything, you have to have a reason, you have to make it up, you have to make it up and believe it and then you have to do it and go on doing it as if you actually really believe it and then say “this is who I am” and that voice inside then says “this is bullshit!”, “this is all an act!”, “I am not this thing!”, “I am not this person”…but you have created this person, you are the only one, you are alone and you have created this person and when you look around all you see is yourself reflected in the eyes and minds of others and how they treat you and you hate them as much as you hate yourself for having/letting them see you like this and the bottom of the pit stuff is where you think you can’t get out, escape, change yourself that you hate and so after fifteen fucking years you are, you really are that external thing, that created acting false thing. By god how hard and disgusting is it to keep living like this: alone, alone on the inside with all these smiling faces who ‘know’ you or at least have learned how to know you in the way you have wanted to be known, because what, because it was easier for you to navigate life being this invented digestible version? This handle-able product, this known entity…this…thing that you are, this shell, this approachable malleable, understood, talkative all-round proper clear cohesive unit thing that you are now?

What devils want:

They give you something, its what you want, it’s a certain kind of, I don’t know, power? No too much (because hey look at you, you are still wearing clothes); but it’s the people. The people: Smiling when they meet you, wanting to be around you, wanting you tell that story or do this thing. And of course you aren’t stupid enough to not realise you are being either a clown or an entertainer, but what it gets you is far more than an entertainer or clown would get. You get; people, money, security, trust, sex, desire, tears and so many other human things. It just comes and sits on your lap and you think ‘why is this happening?’ and then you remember. And then it’s ‘oh, fuck…did I make a deal…did I say the word ‘yes’? Did I say it by not saying it? What then now what do I owe, if anything? If I was so flippant to not care then what happens now?’. Stuff like that. You become scared. And then it’s The Oath to Love.

The scientist speaks:

The room was too small, the walls were so close, making it hard to breath in or out. In was fine, he could fill his lungs and hold it, feeling large, and then after holding his breathe for thirty seconds breathe it out and feel empty, feel as though there is a space available. Then again, looking around the walls, there and there and the roof just there again. He isn’t a tall man, isn’t an obese man, he is a small man sitting in a room feeling trapped and finding it very hard or at least finding the only thing he can do is breathe. Deeply in and slowly out. Closing his eyes and doing this over and over. Seeing the stars and the bright fireworks behind those closed eyes and feeling the chest expand and contract. Feeling the human body taking in air and letting out air. Sitting and breathing trapped in the room he lives in. A glass of water with ice next to him. The ice making popping sounds as it changes. He breathes in again because in this world you live in you breathe and live and drink water like life like breathing. He lets it our feeling the lungs like bags empty out, the body emptying and closing. He drinks cold iced water. The ice slinks and makes a life affirming sound as it pushes its way towards his lips and then slinks back down n the glass. His breathe is shorter and the cold water cools his throat and gut and the lungs now take in more air and they fill up. His legs are short, his arms are short, he breathe deeply and holds the breathe again, arches his back to push the lungs to capacity, spits out a little air as he forces the engorged lungs to their limit and spits out the sir bit by bit through his nose and then mouth. Hunching over the expel all of the air the man is not a large man, he is on a holiday. The room is small and has the essence of ;life. The things you must need. An empty fridge he wanted to put food in but of course he has been sitting in this room watching television and breathing. His legs are skinny and his arms are short and his neck hurts a lot and this time he strains his neck back over the bed waiting for it to crack, thrashes his head left and right and opens and closes his jaw full of effort. Tomorrow he has to talk about stem cell research and how we need to create these blastocysts in order to cure cancer and spinal cord injury. He will say things that will be argued against on the newspaper. The bar fridge has three beers, a mini bottle of wine, a bottle of water and a juice. He drinks a beer and writes it down on the card that you write down what you had from the mini bar on. He opens the nuts on the table and writes it down. He stands up straight and tries to touch the ceiling and breathes in hard and hold his breathe reaching up with his toes to try and touch the roof and collapse on the bed exhaling and sore. The beer is cold, he takes out his phone, looks at it, drinks more beer. The presenter takes out his notes and lies them on the bed, looking at the room, a movie, he is a man in a room preparing for a presentation. He is a man in a room who is trying to breathe. He is a man in a room who will drink the mini bar. He is a man in a room who now walks back and forth in only ten steps saying

“Today we discover a truth, a truth we all know but have been unable to voice, I want to voice this now. And I will tell you there is something deep inside of me that comes from, it comes from perhaps my upbringing. And I can tell you that it makes me feel sick, in some ways, to create, to play with these forms, these little forms of a life. I have experimented on rats, lab rats, I have seen  them squirm in fear or thrash in pain. I have attached electrodes to the exposed brains of primates, I have dissected dead or dying bodies of every living animal including human. I have seen them twitch, I have seen them react. But today I am talking to you about the ideal subject. The immoral yet moral subject. The unformed human, the small creature we want to get our hands on”

He sips the rest of the beer and throws this draft into the hotel room’s provided small waste paper basket. He lies face down on the bed and pulls his arms up over his body and interlaces the fingers and stretches. There is a space enough to live in, it is paid for by the university. He pulls his socks off and throws them over near his bags. He has to pack it all up in the morning. Tomorrow he will leave and take all his bags and check out and take his bags to a small room annexed to an auditorium and tell all those people what he thinks. What he has been paid to say. He is paid to say what he thinks. He draws in a another long breathe and tries to hold it as long as he can. In his mind the medical reasons, the spiritual reasons, the kind on personal in-the-body sense stuff of self healing. The feeling that making unborn-not-really-babies-yet things to dissect, the feeling that making embryos to extract dna from, the feeling inside that tells him he is wrong, he is evil, he is disgusting. His chest is full of air, quitting smoking three years ago is working, the air coming in pure and full.

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Shopping Excursion, bus 120.

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I am perhaps forty five or nearly fifty. You know I don’t remember? I know what it is generally but ever since my wife left me about five (eight?) years ago it has never been something I need to keep track of. Funny that. How life is marked by birthdays and father’s days and christmas and children’s birthdays. How they make you acknowledge it, another year, cards that tell you, pictures. I tell you one thing is that in the morning I see a face I know, hair getting wispier and wispier, man, and I smoke cigarettes again, now the god damned bathroom mirror; me and my face, my old whispering hair flying out from my head like a madman. Ha! And that cigarette on my lips man, I feel like a kid again, looking like death though really. God the mornings, the same mornings. Take a shower, iron my clothes, smoke a cigarette, feed the cat, put on my pants and slip my shirt on and do this dip thing to get my shirt into my pants, move around a bit, feeling so alone when I do this though, really, like a dance move, like a little doot da doot to get into my normal attire. Pull the belt closed, adjust the shirt, raise my arms up to pull a bit of the shirt out, look in the mirror to see how its looks and of course it’s the same every time. I fill my pockets up with wallet keys lighter cigarettes handkerchief coins phone and this little piece of coloured paper my daughter made me and she said “dad keep it with you” so I do. Now it’s barely held together, the folds on the corners have been worn away so that when I unfold it there are holes in the places where the corners are but I can still read it and see the picture she drew which, you know, is enough for me. At least for now and for the last three months since I’ve seen her. Yeah I know I know she’ll be around again soon, in a few weeks but man it’s been a while and this little thing, you know, it keeps me going. I know I know. Today, no, recently, though I’ve met this woman and she’s invited me on a shopping junket, it’s on a bus with a whole lot of other people and we’re going to hit all the warehouse sales and factory outlets and stuff for twenty bucks each but really I am going to see her and hang out with her and there’s a lunch in there somewhere so we are going to have lunch at Birkenhead Point which is like a place over the water near Balmain so we are going there with a bunch of her friends to shop and have lunch. It starts at eight am so that’s why, you know, I am getting ready on a Saturday to go out, just get out of my place. I need to put a load of food in my dog’s tray and some in my cat’s tray and put some seed out the back for the birds and half a handful in the dish under my budgie’s tray and there’s enough water there so I can get back later tonight. I’ve been running around so much my emphysema is playing up, man, so I have to stand over the sink and cough cough it out, fuck, breathe in…out…in, you know how it feels? And suck in that air and spit out that lung shit, man, at least I did this before I left and fucking hell why did I run around like that? Stupid really when you’re about to go out on a date, but shit it’s hot out there. I light another cigarette after that because, because, I can do that, I can smoke a cigarette and it helps. Um… that’s what helps because soon I have to walk down to get on the bus. She said eight thirty onParramattaroad. So early! I leave then, closing the door with the click of one lock and then turning the deadlock only my key will close.

Standing on the pavement smoking a cigarette, an old woman who I see almost everyday sitting there. She usually sits as a bus comes, people get in it and it leaves and she sits there. There is no differently destined bus coming, there is no other bus for this stop. I am never sure what she is doing there, perhaps she is hours early for some other pick up and she prefers waiting. Or worse perhaps she has nowhere to go and she sits there, sits there watching the cars and buses whiz by. It’s not a glamorous or lovely piece of road, this bus stop. It is very bad, very polluted, un-picturesque. Still, her in her make up, with her bag, newish clothes, she is there waiting every morning. The bus coming showing it’s purpose not so openly, so partially in fact that even Roe (that’s her name) stands up and take  few feeble steps forward towards the edge of the bus shelter.
“Are you going on the shopping trip?” I ask, normally, bending over to appear polite.
“Huh? No no no. I’m off to the city”
“Ok well, this is the shopping bus. We’re…never mind. Not your bus ok?”
“uh, ok” she says, slinking off in a shuffling side step, pulling her dress and bags closer together to get away from me. I step away from her and up the stairs onto the coach, the cold air conditioning immediately confronting. I scan the faces, half faces, people behind their seat and see the half-head of Justine I have known for the last few months. I walk down the aisle as the bus hisses the door closes, lifts and groans off along Parramattaroad. It helps me move down the aisle closer to Justine. “Wow you made it” she says, smiling at me and then to the woman sitting beside her. I feel young straight away, these woman are fat and wearing casual thin cotton clothes, comfort wear, I-don’t-give-a-fuck-about-how-I-look wear. Justine too, a thin t-shirt with way too obvious underneath brazier. I am overdressed, shirt and pants, but, it seems they like this, they are all smiling, bad yellow teeth, big cheap prescription glasses, no make up, no pizzazz, just showered fat eternal housewife women wearing the most comfortable clothes they have. “Yep here I am. Good to see you Justine.” She gestures for me to sit down opposite her in the aisle. It means squeezing in next to some other woman who is staring out the window and already clutching a plastic bag full of clothes. She shifts her bag over and continues looking out the window. Justine lets me in with “that’s Margret, she just spent fifty dollars on bras, we were just at the Berlei factory this morning”. “Oh ok” I say, not sure how this makes her rudeness acceptable. “Thanks for coming” she says, leaning over and touching my hand. “No, I look forward to it. There’s men’s stuff coming up right? Not just bags of bras…” and she laughs and we sit there as the bus moves on and on. She talks to her friend and the woman next to me looks out her window.

“Ladies and gentlemen, this is the third stop on our shopping excursion today, the Slazenger, Bonds andRiofactory outlet, in Sydenham. I’ve got you down for a thirty five minutes stop over so please, if you could alight I’ll be moving on in approximately forty minutes to the next stop in Alexandria. Don’t spend too much ladies it’s along day ahead, alright?”. They all stand up, I get up early to help Justine, she hasn’t bought anything yet so she is ok and turns back to her friends to say something and they laugh. Instantly I regret coming along. I walk slowly down the aisle with the rest of them, all talking and chattering and telling about what they want to buy and for whom. It’s as if their life has no other purpose than to feed and clothe those they are now obliged to care about and me, being basically alone except for seeing my daughter once or twice a month, am some kind of playboy spendthrift tight-ass weirdo (if that make sense) for tagging along or even being here. “Justine” I say, outside of the bus now, waiting for them all to get each other down I think of course that I should be doing that but the driver is and so it must be a part of his day to day, this bus driving shopping trip type of thing; paid for it. “Justine” I say again for no reason, looking about at the twenty or so women mingling around waiting to go in to the outlet. “Go in ladies!” I say, like herding sheep really. The driver says “this is it” and that seems to be enough to get them moving, all wearing individual name tag lanyards written in blue marker. Why would they need to know each others’ names? Inside, the all disperse in their familiar friend groups or two or threes, sizing up clothes, telling stories about who would suit certain things, barely shopping for themselves, instead clothing unknown families and nephews and nieces, each time its another story about who needs what more and how they should’ve talked to so and so to get some clothes hand-me-down but really they do need new ‘x’ or whatever thing they are holding to tell the story in the first place. The sales people are sitting there behind the counter talking too, not caring, this may be the second or third bus of a day of multiple buses they’ll have to process. I wander around, look at the measly men’s section, find a few t-shirts that I may want, decide I don’t need, look over to see Justine talking loudly and laughing with her friends in the bra section. Best to not go over there. Not into the bra and panties section just yet. What am I going to say, that I like something? I’d like her naked, that’s what I can say. That I haven’t seen a woman naked in five years? Hat they don’t want to hear. I am alone, down the aisles, at the end of the rows of men’s is the kids section. I turn away, look back at the reams of men underwear and t-shirts and sports wear. Justine appears and pits her hand on my shoulder with “anything you like?”.
“Uh, no, not really, yet…” and we walk into the kids section, she slips her hand in mine.
“Wow look at this” I say, pulling a small one-piece bodice from the shelf “do you remember?” I ask, holding the small thirty centimetre top to toe thing in on the coat hanger. “What? Do I remember having kids…Ron of course I do” “Yeah, remember how little they were” and I am smiling, probably too much. Justine turns and pulls an even smaller pair or socks from the rack “oooohh those feet, those tiny feet!” “Yeah…wow” and I bring another small piece over with me and we compare sizes, touching the places where our little children’s feet and hands would’ve gone, remembering together what it feels like when they are like that, those little things that we had once. “You know my daughter, she’s, well she’s fourteen now and, I’m going to take her to the gold coast in a few months…she, she wants to go with me. Just her and me. A holiday together after, ha well…it’s going to be great”. “That’s great Ron really, really great for you” “Yeah, I know…and…what I mean is that, it would be ok, I mean, realty great as well if you wanted to come as well, and, you could bring Jeremy too, I mean, they are about the same age and they could, you know, go and have fun and we could just, well, have a holiday and…I don’t know… I was just thinking about it that’s all”. “Ron! Really?! Oh wow, I mean, no really that would be great it’s just that, um, it’s…it’s not that easy to just say ‘ok, I’ll go toQueensland’ or wherever it is, you know. But hey, hey, look at me. Ron, I am going to say yes to you, okay? I am going to say I want to do that with you, ok? So, yes! That would be wonderful!” “Wow ok, really? Wow! OK, um, guess what…I’m going to go and book all that now ok? You don’t have to worry about anything. Consider it booked. Ha-ha! No, seriously, tell me if you don’t want to though ok? But cool. Hey, I’m glad I came on this shopping thing!”

It’s different back on the bus, sitting next to Justine, holding her hand, smelling her perfume, listening to all the other women talking and talking and mentioning name after name of their cousins and children and their children’s friends and children of children…it all fades away into a blur of names and crap and repetitive wishes for marriage. I lean over to Justine and kiss her on the cheek, she turns back smiling and says “what was that for” and I say “nothing” and she smiles, goes back to looking out the window, still has her hand in mine. She is so beautiful, a lost mother broken by her man. I am getting older and have the same problem. We can talk about that but not on this bus. This bus is taking us to three more places where we will all get off and go on shopping and talking and breathing and eating. A bus full of pigs getting pointed at troughs. I don’t tell Justine that, I just get off each stop, smoke a cigarette, find a coffee and go to the toilet. We do this over and over, at least three more times. Later on, after all this in and out and shopping, the bus drops me off near me home, I tell Justine I’ll call her, tell her I’ll see her and her son for lunch like I promised. She smiles, kisses me and says “You should have bought something you tight ass” and I say something bad about spending it on her or similar and slink off the bus, light a cigarette and walk away, hoping that feeling last as long as possible.

I finish a bottle of wine, open another one, drink a new glass. It’s late, I know, I have to work in the morning, Christ why do I do it like this. The day was so lovely. Justine, so lovely, her hair, her face. She actually wants to see me, she wants to go to diner with me and my daughter and her son. Man can you imagine that? I light another cigarette, blow it out in to roof, watch the light swing a little bit under the breathe of the smoke. My daughter isn’t here. I am here. Justine isn’t here, her son is tucked up in bed in her house. She got the house, of course. Like my ex-wife the bitch got the god damned fucking house. And here I sit, dreaming of Justine, in her house, probably fucked some other guy over to get that fucking place, right? Fucking hell man. I pour the rest of the bottle into my glass, it gets almost near the top. Good. Good! Fucking hell man here I am right, no daughter anymore, my beautiful girl, no woman, she’s off in her house she raped from some man. No nobody. Just me and my day and my drink and cigarettes. Oh god damn. I light a cigarette and do the thing I hate. I call her:
ring ring
ring ring
ring ring
ring ring
ring ring
ring reing
“Yello?”
“Kate? It’s your dad”
“Dad! Jesus how are you?”
“Kate, come on, Kate. You know how I am”
“What? Dad…are you drunk?”
“Drunk? No. Me? Your dad? Come on….”
“Yeah right, so, you are just, calling me at, what, one in the morning for no reason right”
“No reason! No really Kate, really, the reason is, that, I wanted to invite you for lunch….yes…with my new girlfriend…”
“Really? Wow cool dad, well, yeah sure I’ll go to lunch….you’re paying right,….hahahaa”
“Of course I’m paying what did I say? Lunch, with you and me and my new girlfriend”
“OK dad sure whatever you say. You tell me where to be ok? Love you Dad”
“Yeah ok…love you too darling”

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A type of social

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It’s not a nice a place. I don’t believe a single word you say. I see your life. I see you living it. I see you write about it on facebook or on twitter or on your blog. It seems to be your life. It looks like a life. Your family is on it, your friends are on it. You reference things that happen. You reference them with nothing more than a reference. Everything, even the cancer that riddles your loved one’s body, pointed out, you are four squared at the hospital. You are sad. I don’t believe you are sad. I know you know you are supposed to be sad. I know you took a second to post that you are sad. I saw your friends comment on this post saying things that sound like condolences. It made your life seem more real. It made you feel better that your expected emotion and tags were responded to in yet another expected social networking way. Someone liked your post. You didn’t know how to feel about that oh wait yes you did, you thought because they liked that you were visiting your cancer ridden uncle that they were feeling compassion towards you, not that they liked that your uncle had cancer in his lung, kidney and liver and was most probably dying and that instead of calling or talking to you or even bothering to write a facebook message they did the thing where they click once to ‘like’ your “at the hospital visiting my dying uncle” status that meant they had sympathy for you. When he dies you can create a group event for the funeral. You can set the date and time and the text field what are you planning, because of course facebook thinks that all of life is a god damned party right, but this time, no, this time you want to invite people to a fucking funeral but hey, they don’t want this kind of morose shit on there, or else they think this kind of morose shit is best left off facebook, best left off this 600 million whatever people place…we don’t want this kind of “real life” people shit on here. We want parties and sluts and friends and university sluts and stuff right? For Christ sake why are you trying to use this site to organise a god damned funeral? Huh?
Well because you know we are all on here now. My mother is on here…my uncles are on here. We are all fucking on here and I need to tell them that uncle Tom has died and I saw him die and now I need to have everyone who loved him come and pay their respects and I want to tell them about it and I have been on here, sharing photos, sharing my life and now I want to share this and you make me fill out a form that says “what are you planning?”. OK, ok well I’ll fill it out. I’ll tell you what I am planning and it’s a fucking funeral, ok? A wake, ok?
I clicked ok after seeing that. The next thing: Select guests. Guests. Ok. Sure “Guests” it is. Christ.

There is a child that’s born. They call it Sebastian. They love their child, a boy. They take pictures and they make a profile for the boy. It is www.facebook.com/sebastian.fenwick and also www.twitter.com/sebfenwick. They want the rest of the family to see this loved child take his first steps, eat and spit and smile and sleep. They post everything on there. First words, the first time the little thing sits up. Inoculations. They write messages to their son, like “I love you so much my son” and “this is when I played with you in the backyard” and “daddy has to go to work and you didn’t want him to go” and tag all sorts of stuff on photos and videos they took on their phones. There is so much on there. So much love, so much for the grandparents and extended family (some overseas) and friends to see. So many comments and even the godparents are saying things like “hope to see you soon” and “bless you little one” and “wow so good to see you growing up” and the like. The boy grows, they post pictures and love and messages flow through. This boy unaware, growing under the microscope, other friends of friends commenting, the parents feeling that their child is loved and watched over. The boy grows more, in school, a child, learning, alphabet, colours, maths. More pictures, more videos. He is now facebook slash Sebastian. He has been tweeted for for six years. His parents let him tweet a little bit. He just tells the world things he likes. Things he ate. He even comments on photos of people he knows. His parents type for him. There is nothing that the world does not know, will not know about this young boy, growing up in this new world.

Do you have a membership card?
No.
Do you now about the benefits?
No.
Well you get 5% off every purchase after you spend $500 or more.
Ok.
Do you want a membership card?
No.

Oh wow darling wow, I mean wow. You are, like wow. I have seen pretty girls before but wow. You could be, like I mean, come on. OK, wow. Stop where are you going. Haha I know I sound stupid crazy, like lalalalalal crazy hahaha but no…no. Hey, are these your friends, stop wait! Hey! Guess what, I am serious here…but guess what. I want to give you five hundred dollars. Yes! I do. Uh huh yes you. God. This is not some weird ass gross thing. Look where we are! Ok? Calm down. Hey, your parents let you girls come out shopping huh? Good for them because guess what! You, maybe not just you, hey come here sweetheart, you both maybe, yeah, you two ok? And what’s your name? Sophie. Ok Hi Sophie I’m Mark, Anyway ok what we want is a few girls to be the kind of, face, no, just, ok, do you girls want to be on video? Huh? Mac’s makeup that’s who. Come on. Ok for starters, you. are. gorgeous. You know that though right, and I’m not even supposed to say that! What are you fourteen. God! Really? Thirteen ok. Wow. OK. So, we’re cool. You want to do this? Great ok. So, what we need to do is get you three, sorry love not you, you three sitting over there, we’re going to give you a proper New York make over, ha, yeah I know right! Ok sweetie here’s ten bucks go get some juices or food or whatever, you know, here’s twenty, go crazy, go get whatever you want ok, your friends are gonna be a bit busy for an hour, so…yes great um what’s your name? Kate! Ok Kate great what the hell you look almost twenty shit damn ok. So wait, you girls got phones right? What’s that iPhones? Perfect, ok, what we want you to do is start filming, ok? Just now just shoot whatever you want. Me, you, them, the people looking, anything. Whatever, I got to take this call so go crazy.
“Phil yeah no great great…I got like three chicks ready to roll…huh?…oh yeah yeah no worries…hahaha yeah they’re shooting now. Fuck they’re even recoding me talking to you (waving at the girls)……what?…….I’m sorry what?……….yeah of course, of course, what you think this is my first time?……..yeah yeah of course……….well there’s one………yeah I know…….Phil they are doing it right now……..I don’t know, iPhones it looks like……..huh?………yeah yeah, well one is……..ok cool call back in…(looks at watch)…half hour ok?…..ciao”
So girls! We ready to start shooting?

Trent:
I hate you. I hate your face, I hate your friends. I hate seeing you in those fucking disgusting poses. Do you even care about me anymore? You fucking slut. You fucking bitch. I fucking loved you and now look at you. Why the fuck do you tag yourself with all these guys. Just to fuck with me? Just to make me look like fucking idiot. Well guess what! I’m not going to post this stuff anymore, you cunt. I did it. I told everyone that I wanted you back and now I see you running around looking like a fucking slut loser. Who the fuck is Tommy? What the fuck is he doing posting on his wall about you and him getting it on last week? I thought we could work it out but now I know you are just another fucking whore out there looking to get the next idiot to give you all his money and time and stuff. Fuck off.
Sandy:
Stop posting on my wall you loser small dick asshole. You are BANNED from my friends list I thought we could be cool and stuff and still be fb friends but you are such a jealous douche that no way can we do this, I hope you told all your friends you are a drunk tool who can’t even get it up after a few beers which was every time btw so yeah. Fuck off and stop tailing me every where. I can hang out with who ever I want. Get a life. Get a girl but you never will get one as good as me. Oh and fuck your body, your steroid ugly chest is so gross and we all think that. Ha ha peace out x

Footnote:
None of this actually exists. This disgusting hinterworld of fake realities, online selves, masked falsities, creations, imaginary existences created for others to see, judge, assess…comment on and worse, feel a part of. Our real true connections are never there. They are in the holding of a hand, they are in the quivering voice of a friend who just can’t do it anymore, and you say to them I know, I know, I can’t do it anymore either. And you sit on the phone with them, finishing another bottle of wine together and asking each other why can’t we go on, we will not kill ourselves yet will we? No we won’t and we smile at saying that, at finally saying that out loud. The triumph is in saying it. In saying “I drink too much” and hearing their steady, person voice. In talking to your mother or father on the phone and thinking “I don’t see my parents enough”. That deep feeling in the gut where you want to see them more because you remember you felt a strange despair when your grandparents died but you didn’t know why and now you can see how your parents felt. Their mother or father died. They lost their parent. And now you won’t let that happen. But you do. And you update facebook.

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Exit

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This is the endThere is no emperor
There is no lord
You get to die
All alone
and you can’t even choose
Who surrounds you
At the last
When you most want
To say the truth.
Look at them!
I wish I could have…
Leave me alone!
I love you
My darling
I didn’t know
I didn’t know
The dark birds
Can you see them
Oh god my life
I didn’t know
You could do that
I knew that it was
Something is wrong
I don’t want to go
It’s so stupid
I

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Adam and Eve (no escape)

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The snake curled it’s tail in a way that it flicked just the tip on her clit and she felt that laser shoot up inside her a little bit and she squirmed back away from it and the snake curled up into a ring and, sleeping, let the sun bathe on its skin. She closed her eyes and laid back, wanting to sleep or just at least dazed off and let her hand come down and gently touch on the hood of the clit and move over the soft flesh there up and down and it felt good and pure and the sun was just like a soft warm blanket that meant she could feel happy there. God killed a lamb and it was horrific, it was screaming and half dead and it’s stomach was open and her and the snake stood up and looked at that fluffy body writhing and crying and they had never seen that before and it wasn’t horrific because they hadn’t seen it before and it was just strange and confusing. The young naked man came back then at this time to see it all and saw the snake and stepped on the snake’s back and the snake flipped around and curled up and extended and bit the man on the leg but the man just watched it happen and looked over at the half-blood half-white wool mess that God had made and pressed down harder on the snake’s back, raising his other foot and really pushing down in a  half jumping way on the snake until the snake stopped squirming and the lamb was still and not crying and the woman looked up at the man and saw him changed, different, but the man was as blank as ever, smiling, holding out his hand to her.

In the afternoon he sat in the office kitchen, drinking his coffee, eating a biscuit and she comes in and she is wearing a tight skirt and an even tighter blouse, makes a green tea and looks over at him. He watches her eat the biscuit, watched her lipsticked lips close over the cookie and all but suck off the edge of the biscuit she takes into her mouth and then her closed small lips moving up and down slightly as her small teeth chew the small piece of hard biscuit she’s managed to pry of with those succulent, decorated lips. She almost looks over and he averts his eyes back to the table, finds a magazine there and pulls it closer, flicks it open and almost as quickly looks back at her body, the outline of her figure simplistically available, imagining her naked isn’t hard, her ass and legs, her waist, her breasts and neck and face all stand there and he looks back to the page again, mainly looking at words and reading them over and over. She finishing dipping the tea bag in the hot water, takes it and drops the finished tea bag in the bin, then a smile at him and leaves. He sips his coffee, tastes bad, looks back at the page, reads that line, over and over.

She was washing away the blood between her legs, she hadn’t ever had this happen before and she thought she was dying. For three days she washed away the blood, in the stream and each time he came close she told him to go away. She lay on the grass beside the stream and waiting for more blood to come, closing her eyes and listening to the water to soothe her mind. On the fifth day the blood stopped, she finished washing herself and cried out to God to save her life. God said that now that you have had the pleasure of the flesh, you will now know the changing of the season, and every month you will know this, like the changing of the seasons, you are now unto the Earth. She was happy because she felt closer to the world she loved, the dirt the grass the sun and the animals, she collapsed sighing and feeling all of nature now inside her and without. God became furious, and so condemned her to feel an unnatural pain in childbirth.

Her father comes home, closes the door, hasn’t seen them all sitting there together on the lounge room floor yet, her and her sisters and her mother, playing a card game and they were laughing and playing. They all watch him walk over to the table they have near the door and empty his pockets like he does every night and the mother says “your turn” to her little sister and they all look back at the game and are aware that they are pretending now, not playing like they were but playing now as an exhibition, as a way of telling the father that they are happy and have a life too. He walks over and kisses the mother and they all savour that smell, the smell of their father coming home, like wood and smoke and old clothes, sweat they don’t know about yet but it is his sweat and the three beers he had after work with his co-workers. They try not to stare too long at him kiss their mother’s cheek but they love seeing it and he smiles at them and silently disappears into the kitchen and the younger one throws down a card that matches the one underneath and the mother looks back from her husband and says “Snap!”.

In the beginning Lucifer Morning Star was the first Angel, with the unwitting power of a true God, and as such the ever loving God who created him became scared of his creation and cast him down to the world of the mortals and so then Lucifer taught the mortals fire, life, love and companionship and told them that one day they would be like God himself and when he was finished instructing them God in his anger made Lucifer King of Hell where he was told to punish all those who did not heed The Word and when hell was overwhelmed God came down himself in the flesh of a man named Yeshua and felt the painful sting of humanity and hence forth changed what it was to be saved or condemned and so Lucifer, now righteous, holds his place by Gods side as a saviour of human souls.

Around the table in this meeting we talked about how having these poor sales performance figures was most likely related to how our sales people were getting old and they kept having things happen to them like heart attacks or hip replacements or sick children and how we could directly see their ailments reflected in our figures and we decided really quickly that we needed newer younger sales people and we discussed how that having the younger ones coming in would yeah sure take them a while to catch up to the expertise and capability of the older ones that in the ling run we would as a company be better off by having these fumbling, learning, need-to-be-hand-held new ones come on would actually in the long run be way better to the bottom line because, hell, surely these older ones would get worse and worse, right, I mean, this is symptomatic of having an ageing sales team, I mean like what’s next, you know: cancer, Alzheimer’s, liver failure, you know, what else kinds of old age stuff would we have to deal with, I mean, they need to use a computer at least and Christ like osteoporosis would mean soon we’d need to give them , what, aides and things to help them do their job and we’re not a charity I mean we need to let them go right? A young bright executive discovered a good way we could legally pay them out.

Adam was so in love that he cut off all his hair and, crying, told God that he hated him and thought he was an insane lunatic who didn’t care for anything other than to be blindly worshipped. God asked Adam where he got his ideas from and Adam said “from you, you heartless monster!”. God knew it was the snake who had filled his mind with sick thoughts and so madeEdena horrible place to live which of course only made Adam hate him even more. God was confused and asked Adam after a thousand years why he did not hate the snake instead and Adam replied “what snake?” and God told him the story and Adam knew then it was hopeless: God created the snake.

He had her head in his hands, lying on top of her with both his hands under her head and she was crying and they hadn’t finished making love and he said “what’s wrong?” and she said nothing in that half true way women say it and she had her eyes shut tight from the crying and he let his penis slip out of her, losing the erection anyway. He stayed there like that holding her and kissing her cheek, feeling with his lips how hot her cheeks were and looking at her clenched eyes. He started massaging her hair and kissing her cheeks more but she shook her head to brush him off so he moves off her and lays beside her, both naked and she rolled into a ball and cried harder and harder. “What’s wrong?” he asked but she didn’t say anything, just lay there sobbing. He stood up and put his pants back on, walked into the bathroom and looked at himself in the mirror. His face seemed wrong, not his. He wondered if he had raped that girl or did something wrong. He smiled at himself in the mirror, just to see if his own face was still there. He washed his hands and went back into the room. She had a blanket pulled over her and wasn’t moving.

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