sell yourself hope.

he ripped off her clothes with three chords
and a protest song.
a song that implied there was hope,
hope that equality would write itself
into the stars of the southern cross.
hope in the essentially good nature of man.
hope in a future for our children.
hope that our borders wouldn't isolate us
from those that needed our help;
the cold,
the hungry,
the defeated.
hope that we'd accept the differences of others
without discrimination or
preconceived notions of race and religion.
he was clever,
he had done this before,
he knew
nothing gets babes wetter than hope.

i run out of cigarettes sometimes.

Sometimes I forget my name;
and my place.
I see manicured fools
slyly check their reflections in shop front
windows.
Like thieves, successful in their art.
Just keep on smiling you credit-card chameleons.

Time and again I forget my voice;
but not the idea.
I see these songbirds
gossip and scheme
I open my mouth and the sound is exiled
before it exists;
an unplanned child from an unplanned kiss.
Keep on singing you birds of prey.

Too often I forget my face;
my space,
my time,
everyday is a distant re-run
from a distant VCR.

amsterdam

my camera broke theother day.
i am now in amsterdam,
and feeling odd.
i bought a magazine.
ate a sandiwch.
drank a beer.
took a shit;
all the while i'm
sleeping on the floor.
the train station taunts me,
i feel alive.

olive tree oligarchy

It was under red wine and olive trees,
we spoke of women
we'd never know.
Where the sun baked our
socialism;
we cut our feet on the glass
of bourgeois ways.
The cigarettes started singing
choruses of flames
in the tall grass of our camp site,
dehydrated by the summer.
The panic was dulled by the
aforementioned wine.
Though the moon never shone;
we were preoccupied
with the cuts on our feet.
We fermented our gold.
We became alchemists.

forest fire.

She was a burner of cities;
a siren with a can of gasoline.
She bathed in flames,
and danced on coals.
The embers were her children.

She lured men to their deaths;
and each one she cremated.
She came in sparks,
to cries of help.
The embers were her children.

poison darts

She came into work with a walk

she had practiced.

a walk that was meant to convey

strength and composure.

I imagined her in front of the full length mirror

rehearsing; 

getting frustrated when she couldn't convince herself;

maybe the smudges were still on the mirror

from where I had fucked her;

that can't be good for this rehearsal process.

Maybe it was strengthening,

like mortar between bricks.

She threw a handful of photos at me,

I didn't care for the gesture.

She took a deep breathe as if 

summoning some more of this inner mortar

for some epic soliloquy; a monologue of her love

and how I had crushed her soul - or something lame like that.

She looked me in the eye, hers red, moist and fibrous;

her lip quivering like a composer's wand in the rapture of a crescendo.

"fuck you."  

She stood waiting for a response,

I must have taken too long as she

turned around and stormed through the door.

Her walk meant something on the way out.

It wasn't stylized or over acted.

It wasn't a choreographed march

with a well rehearsed connotation.

No.

This was real.

I picked up the photos and 

my stomach crumbled like dissolving mortar.

I turned the 'open' sign over; 'closed'.

an early midnight - like I was some ancient god 

with control over time. 

I spent the afternoon burning those photos

It's never a good idea to leave poison darts lying around.

late night

let's go late night shopping;

where the leviathans upsize their combos

for just a dollar extra,

the diet coke flows in downpours 

because we know it keeps you slim.

let's go late night shopping;

where the leeches stalk the carpark

with not a pubic hair to speak of

but a smoker's cough to rival

a seasoned, jaded writer.

let's go late night shopping;

we'll listen to the chorus of cash machines

we'll hand over our lifesavings

just to hear them sing.

let's go late night shopping;

let's whore ourselves

under the red light of coles,

on the corner of general pants and life.