Rain

I am lost in the boil of the clouds and the rain and the steam rising off the streets. I'm soaked right through to the skin and my hands are so cold I can't move my fingers. I am alive. The path through the trees bears the scent of decay. Like a home or an old pair of jeans or the skin of a lover, I take for granted that I'll always find comfort there. I close my eyes and tread as if my feet will know the steps they've stepped before.
Halfway across the bridge, I stop and look out. The water level has risen. The river is flowing. Strange memories dance below the glassy surface, only to be whisked away and smashed onto the riverbed on the other side of the dam, rushing and tumbling as they try to rearrange themselves. They disappear behind leaning branches long before any semblance of coherence has been reached. Still, the water goes. Goes and goes like it knows where it's headed. Like something gigantic and fucking inevitable, like a hanged man, or something fated, it moves.
Sometimes, I think there's so much water this whole town is going to sink. Puddles reach up, up, and ankle-deep over the cracking pavement. The stormwater drains overflow, and still the rain comes.

Soon, it would seem, everything is going to fall down.

Whimper

Morning. The room smells like stale piss. They strip you bare and coo; wipe away the shit so you don't turn stomachs at the breakfast table. They dress you. They take you to begin today's circus. Incontinent and spoonfed, you gargle and wail and grab at the air until they strap you down. Choke you with lukewarm, lumpy porridge. Trapped in your chair, soiled and humiliated, you are alone. This is what you've worked so hard for. This is your reward.

As with everything, it is a whimper, and not a bang, with which we go in the end. Old age is infancy in a backward fashion, like you get to the strongest and the fastest and the most developed you'll ever be, and then the bastard with the remote presses rewind. At the end of the rainbow, there is no pot of gold, just a bedpan to catch whatever falls the fuck out of your prolapsed rectum as they sling you out of bed.

Your family may or may not visit. They may or may not care. For all you may have contributed to this society, for all the years you've spent walking among the living, all the children you may have raised, they are ungrateful. You are a rotting, disgusting thing to be swept out of view of polite society. You are to be kept moderately clean and somewhat presentable, lest any of the normal people deign to see you before you croak. For a while, you become a topic of discussion among the nurses and the drones. They discuss your difficulty breathing, your fluctuating temperature, your reddened genitalia... Then you die.

They strip you bare and whisper; wipe away the shit so you don't turn stomachs at the morgue. This is what you've lived so long for. This is your whimper.

I do not understand

I lie in the dark, still half-tangled in the tendrils of a nightmare. My hands no longer claws and my legs no longer those of a gigantic cat, I can move. Put on a coat and slip, barefoot and silent, out into the rainswept dark. Out into the starry night.
Old habits reek of nostalgia, or the sense of longing an old man once mentioned. Pinch your nose and dive in, kid. Just don't forget to breathe while you're under, writhing in the dark like some deepborn thing.
Into the garden I burst, squinting in the bright. He steps close; guides my hand. I do not understand. Head thrown back, he basks in the sun's golden afternoon glow. My fingers are trapped between his and a hard place and he moves me. Faster. Faster. I do not understand.
He leaves me alone, then, with the butterflies and thesugarsnaps. I can hear cows in the near distance. I lean against the blue wall, 'round the side of the old weatherboard house in the slanting honey light. There's something sticky on my hand. I do not understand.
Once again, I wake.

There's a drumming in the distance
Far above the clouds, above the mountains
Sound cuts the sky like broken glass
And they say it's the end of the world
There's a whisper in the darkness
In the cracks between the rocks, in the damp
The fairy-things are buzzing
And they say it's the end of the world
There's a war upon the pavement
For this blood-spattered, filth-breathing city
Men in robes are weeping in the streets
And they say it's the end of the world
There's a strangeness in the morning
In the bleak sky, grey sky cracking
In the sunlight on the dew-damp trees
Far cry from the end of the world

Shiny

Slash. Drip. Slash. Drip.
You're right back where you started, but nowhere near at all. Start the cleanup now, little surgeon. Minimise the damage while you can. Skin stings and smells of antiseptic and I know you'd like to think it cleans your soul as well, but you're still in the gutter.
Trace a path through the crisscross mishmash mess. Back to the start; back to the root. There's too much inside. Like everything under your skin is clawing at the surface, desperate for air. Too much thought.
But then... Something fast and sharp; a moment of focus. Something fucking vibrant. Suddenly, you're there. You're actually fucking there, and you know you're there because you can feel it. Isn't this what you've been wanting?
Maybe I'll never stop, in the complete sense of the term. Never forever. Right now, though... I'm not trying to. The lake is calm.
You are right back where you belong. Nowhere near at all.

Dxm. Half a bottle of the vile, gag-inducing syrup and an hour of nauseous waiting, and I am dissociated. Sitting in the passenger seat, staring at the moon. I become the music. Nangs. He cracks two and I take them. Then he loads me another. Take it all, he says. Inhale. Stop. Inhale. Stop. For a second, everything goes still. Am I dying? Dead? Music loses its nuances. In a moment, it's nothing but noise. White. Black. Same thing. A lick of guitar, well placed, takes me back-back-back. Stopstart pictures run across my vision. The rear-view mirror anchors me, and the world pieces back together around it. He speaks; I look. Who is this strange man sitting beside me? Are we in the car? I could've sworn I was just dreaming about this.

Good Day.

I am peaking when my sister, home sick for the day, announces that I must buy her Mi Goreng. Distracted by the patterns in the road, I can barely walk straight. I spot a fellow pair of tortured bare feet and watch them cross the road; cracked at the edges like worn leather. It is only when I hit Coles that I realise my true dilemma - I have no idea where they keep the darned stuff. I dial home, get a wrong number, and try again.
"Hi"
"Muz?"
"Yaah?"
"Mon can't find the Mi Goreng."
She turns out to be no help. I try the aisles, each more confusing than the next. It's not with the two minute noodles. It's not with any of the noodles. Or the pasta. It is, in fact, with the taco shells.
To whomever decides where this shit goes: I'm on LSD. What the fuck is your excuse?

Outside, there are flowers on the walls, breathing blue like the sky without these dropbellied clouds. Vines multiply beneath the petals. Sinister fingers, they creep behind the loveliness, yearning for a throat to choke. Above is purbleblue and heavy-wet-trembling with anticipation. The Earth, full of a hunger I don't think I'll ever comprehend, is begging for God's cumshot to the face.
I am almost home when it starts to rain.

2pm. I'm sitting in the kitchen, chewing gum and rolling cigarettes. There are flies in the house and cracks in the walls. They shimmer and shift and breathe sickness into the afternoon; I am afflicted. I am free.