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.

Use By

Best before: 4-4-09
Ha ha fucking ha.

I can see all the spaces where the light comes through. Everything seems transparent.
Every so often, I can feel my heart faltering; strange, erratic beats that only the deepest breath can hold in sync.
Are you leaving me, little heart? After everything, is this too much? But, somehow, it keeps going. I may be weak, but you've more living to do yet, it says.
The paper faces on my wall are mute, no words of warning today. I take them down; we speak no more.
Strange, terrifying dreams slip away from me when I wake, and I can't shake the feeling that there's something wrong.
Calm down, kid. It will pass, or it won't. Patience.
I guess we'll see, huh?
Tomorrow, I eat acid for breakfast.

Surrounded by lights and echoes of lights, I hurtle through the dark. I don't know which is which anymore. I don't know where I am.
Shouldn't you know this landscape by now, kid?
But I don't, and so I tread coals and the tops of clouds like something out of a dream. Dissolve into the glittering dragon's scales on the highway. There are tentacles growing out of trees and my eyes are too big and too wide, and I am too much of a child to understand anything (but isn't that what keeps you safe?)
Maybe. But I'd like to think there's honesty in it somewhere.
And you'd like to think you matter.
Stop it.
Like there's anything you can do to stop you from being unimportant. Like there's anything anyone can do. Don't you get it? Nobody matters, no matter what they do. Whether you find the cure for cancer or you spend your life on the streets, talking shit. You are just another tiny little ant, crawling this planet day after day, hoping you'll find something worth living for.
Shut up.
Why? I'm right, and you know I am.
Yes, but that's the point. We have to keep making ourselves feel less unimportant because, no matter what anyone says, humans don't handle shit very well. We can't allow ourselves to believe that this is all there is.
Hey kid?
Uh-huh?
You just lost the game.
Damn. You two, whoreface.
Cunt.

To bring up children, use ipecac.

Trigger. Trigger. Trigger.
Today, I will be weak. Trembling and scared; catatonic on the bathroom floor. A familiar tapestry woven in new thread, but clarity is coming through. I argue with the voice of Fear.

This is nuts.
Yes.
I'm scared.
You're scaring yourself. It's all in your head.
Oh.

Nightmare

I am the sugar-fairy, subsisting on energy drinks and plums and bananas, curled up with my aching calves and leaning so close to the pictures (wonderful, swirling things) in my books, that I could fall right in.
In the dark, in my head, I am walking a path I know like the back of my hand. I am followed. The creature of my childhood nightmares lurks in every shadow; slinks and skulks and slides around the tree trunks. Gigantic catlike, monkeylike thing. It is all powerful limbs and ribs and horrible starving face, with a cry like something driven. Like something tortured. Teeth bared, it will not attack. Waits, instead, for me to go mad with the fear of it and run and run, and never stop running. Walks alongside me.

You will always be scared.

It's puppy-jabbing day!
Well, for Reece (yes, sibling spaztard spelled it that way). Fish was moping when he went. Silly fishpuppy. She's almost bigger than he is now, and she bites much harder. Must be her inner rottweiler. If she doesn't understand, she'll try to eat you. Reece kind of keeps her on her toes with his crazy loopy sheepdoggery. She tries to take his face off, but he's much too quick for her to eat him.
Anyway, I must remind daddy to tell the vet that they MUST DESEX MY DOG. There is no way in hell I'm putting her through pregnancy for sibling's amusement.
Hmm...

Infection control

Oh my... The number one method of infection control in hospitals is... Hand-washing. The OCD kind. The treat-everything-as-if-it-is-potentially-infectious kind. The oh-wait-I-just-scrubbed-my-skin-off kind.
But apparently nurses get to stab babies! I did a stabbing-babies dance when I found that out. I get to stab them in the foot. Yay!

Ferret

I'm really glad you've come to the conclusion I'm hateful. It's refreshing. I am, sometimes. I am human. I fuck up, and I try my best to mend what I can and not make the same mistakes twice.
But you are lying to everyone. Playing with people. A game with no consequence because nobody can hurt a mirage. And, as it would seem, nobody can touch it either.
Whatever. Enjoy your game. Maybe you'll tell them the truth one day, maybe not. But I'd like you to leave me be.

This, too...

There's something wrong. There's something wrong in my bones and under my skin and it's jangling around in there, screaming at me. I have to get it out. I have to get it out of me.
Hold my breath and panic subsides. This is what I know:
The easy option is a slash away. Old habits are so very easy to return to if you want them back. In the looking glass, she beckons. Icy fingers are grasping, reaching, begging for a decent grip on my throat. Clearly, she's found a weak point.
I make her disappear again. I turn away from the mirror.

This, too, will pass.

BOOM!

Inhale. The whole wide Everything rides into my lungs on a cloud of smoke. Hold. Hold. Cough.
Look up and know that it just changed. It all just... changed.
Childlike deity, I am swinging my legs in the playground of the gods. Giggle. Patterns tessellate and change before my eyes. The colours are smiling at me. It's beautifully terrifying, but I refuse to be scared.
Don't be silly; it's always been like this, you just couldn't see until now. But you always knew, right in the back of your head. You always knew it was this simple.
I nod, feeling like a cabbage patch kid.
Look over at Tom's spiky head. He's got his face in the grass. Bong dangles from his limp fingers. Tom the person. Tom the being.
Andrew does chin-ups and roars; floats-hops-jumps-bounds over to me, sitting with my feet dangling off the trampoline. He swims before me, porcelain skin and red hair and blue, blue eyes. Kisses my forehead; cheeks; lips. I touch his face. I can feel him radiating out of that form. Spilling out of the gaps like sunlight because there's too much Happy in him for just one person, or one point in time and it has to, has to, has to get out.
If I had words, I'd say you're perfect.

Aftermath. Something's different. Everything's different. Sacred. Golden.
This feels right.

Ocean

Cool water. Waves lapping on the shore and the sea in my hair. I stay in the shallows, comfort fringed with panic. An old fear that something huge will come up from the deep and take me down. Recurring dreams of swimming out and out and out, of drifting into the desolate nowhere. The fear of being alone. Without anchor.
But it's nothing. Fear is a product of my mind, and fear itself is very rarely dangerous.
I step out into the water; lift my feet; float. I am driftwood, and I'll go where you take me.
I can still taste salt on my skin.

Barnacle

Barnacle, you are attached, and for all the good it may have done you in the past, you'll get no goodness here. This ship has places to sail and can't float with your weight on her hull. You'll not leave me 'till I scrape you from my skin. You'll not leave me 'till I throw you to the sea.
Eskimo, you've had this igloo far too long. These chunks of hard-packed snow need to be water again; need to be free. I'm going to leave you now, so leave me be.
Mother, you gave me life. I'm thankful, but the fact that you gave it to me means it is no longer yours. The tightness with which you grip dictates that this will not be easy, and so I score along the lines separating you from me, and I cut us apart.

In case there's any confusion...
Angel, this isn't about you. We've already sorted our shit out, and I'm glad of it. :)

It has been a draining week. A cunt of a week.
When it comes to irritation, annoyance, pain, and malingering things in general, one plus one always seems to equal four.
Still, life goes on. Good and bad are quality judgements. It was a week. Not even that. A few days.
Onward.

We used to be so close. Now we seem to bring each other down. Maybe it's time for a break?
I'll see you round, old friend.

It rained last night. This morning. Same thing.
The world is a slick-grey-damp thing; warm and wet and vulnerable. Early birds and scuttling things call out, cutting the distant car-hum straight through. The scent of wet eucalypt pervades. Morning's chill lingers.
(Then the rain came, and we were clean)

Certainty

Strange days. The cigarette-butt-end of Summer. I walk from the silk and barbed-wire web I have woven for myself. Away from an unexpected jarring. The day's heat still shimmers up from the bitumen. Comes up through the soles of my feet into ankles, calves, thighs, hips, torso, chest, self. Tread a well-worn path, to a place I've not been in some time.
Smoke spirals, as dustmotes, on slanting shafts of light. Skip and hop and scamper over rocks like they lead somewhere I have to go. Insects click-crack-hum on the breeze. Sometimes I think they're saying something of monumental importance, but I guess it hardly matters if I can't understand them. So I sit and breathe and make my own meaning. Fumble in the dark and try to interpret some sanity from what I perceive. This is my truth.
I think she thinks I'm going crazy. Breaking up bit by bit, like all the wires and strings and shoelaces holding me together are slowly wearing through. I hold her at arms length and fail to tell the truth. Her doubt hurts a little more than I like. I guess I put more store in her opinions than I thought?
Gigantic pink hibiscus witness everything. They bloom lush petals and blood-and-guts stamens over the fence as I watch them from my windowsill. In the balmy afternoon, I close my eyes and imagine the sea. Ebbing, pulsing thing. I think I need to be there.

C.........

There is nothing so conducive to the yelling of CUUUUUUUUUUUUUUNT as high school.
But I stomp my feet further into the ground in the hope that they'll stay there. Look away every time my eyes meet the shimmering blue so I don't get drawn in. I refuse to drift away this time.
I imagine it will be easier after a while. Autopilot will kick in once I get the gears turning right, and so I do. I am going where I want to be. I am getting out of here.

Rebirth

Late afternoon; strange calm. The air is warm and clingy and in this slanting, honey-gold light, eucalypt takes on a richer tone as it clashes against the blue. The air feels almost like rain soon, but no clouds mar the flawless forget-me-not sky. I am back where I need to be for the moment. I am back in the frying pan.
It's been a strange week. In some ways, a fitting end to the summer; throwing plates and breaking more than china. Still, hearts mend like bones if you let them, and we walk on through the craziness we've made and come out okay, if a little changed. We live with the choices we make.
We live.