On the way, on my scooter, I accidentally run over a snail. “This better be good,” I say to myself as I arrive, “I killed to be here.”
What am I looking for?
I write lines that make myself laugh into my phone and drink away. Nationalities sit around me and I try and guess them by their shape, the way they dress and anything as small as the shape of their front teeth. A pretty girl sounded like she could be Australian, because I heard her speak about Australia, after a while I thought maybe Adelaide, but then I realised she was British. Then, after a few further observations and more so hearings, I concluded she was unbearable. Poms look like they got here too early, their pride and poshness kept them from evolving, now they’re just intelligent without wisdom, now they’re just demented.
On the way, on my scooter, I accidentally run over a snail.
“This better be good,” I say to myself as I arrive, “I killed to be here.”
A boy stood up to sing and he looked like he couldn’t, like the drink or his holiday had very briefly told him otherwise, his friends maybe too.
He sang a song I cant remember now, but it was horrible and he tried his hardest, god bless him. By the end, the crowd cheered extra loud. Sometimes the crowd don’t really cheer for the performance, they cheer to save themselves from the truth, they cheer for themselves, for humanity. A cheer. The crowd. You can never trust it.
A man who I have somehow seen forty five times in thirty different places is there again. He plays the same song with his harmonica. It is a great performance. I don’t know anyone that hates the harmonica, it wins every time yet still isn’t overdone. The crowd love him and he wants to fuck a stranger, that is all he wants and with that harmonica I would say he gets it more often than he should.
The writing label is nothing but a lanyard, to go to places I don’t think I belong, and secretly enjoy them, enjoy something, enjoy hating it.
A girl walks over and sits next to me.
“You been here by yourself all night?” she asks.
“Almost,” I reply.
Then I ride home and fall asleep and wake up feeling like I didn’t fall asleep, like my observational writing brain does not want to turn off in case my dreams say a good line.
Sick, coughing, splattering, an old rag stuck in my sinuses. I search for relief, Panadol, then stop myself. No, it is all too subtle, do not become subconsciously addicted to Panadol and now your body whispers headaches to get what it wants. There is no use to being addicted to things that does not take the mind with it. In the end I eat the Panadol anyway. Lay in bed and go on my phone until I inevitably cum on myself. Getting up, feeling like I've eaten sugar for breakfast, I shower, dry, walk into the light and look at the colours of rain.
I am addicted to my phone. Like I am Frodo, holding a ring, I know it is bad, that it must be destroyed, but it is so alluring. And now, the girl I love is stuck inside of it. I wont say the girl of my dreams, I haven’t seen her in them yet.
Yes, us old men still have to play games, and yes, I see myself as an old man when I am only thirty years of age.
I ask myself, “Am I addicted to her or my phone?”
Then I think, the times I don’t feel time are when I'm just a soul, and with her, with writing, that gnaw of being restricted by three dimensions seems to soften. My relationship with time is something my mind can play with but my body acts as if it is a dog. Can you explain to a dog that he will be taken for a walk next week?
So they played a sick trick, putting a sweetheart into my addiction. Like needing to smoke to cure your cancer.
Looking over the ledge, my small bag of weed is on the floor in the rain. I left it out. I pick it up, it drips wet. I try and dry it, every attempt to the point of me writing this has failed, I hope future attempts are successful.
I do my yoga and some meditation, I think to myself, none of us know what is going on? Literally no idea. There is no firm concept of good or bad. For all we know, tomorrow we could find out we are using water wrong. That made me feel better, less guilty. Society kicked me out plenty of times and now I have gone almost a year without asking to get back in. I load the wet weed into my pipe, as I try and light it the lighter breaks.
“What more do you want from me?” I say to god.
He does not reply.
Then I wrote this poem
Got what?
it!
Its
all
corruption
hidden as care,
abandonment
hidden
as liability.
the boy
sweeping up the sawdust on site
needs a license,
if he lost
both his arms
in an accident
and he didn’t have one,
then
he is on his own
and now
without the ability to sweep,
or at least,
makes it very difficult.
post the big wars
must have just been something else,
they all came back
from a place
you couldn’t even imagine hell being,
littered with tiny heavens of course,
the good guys won
in the end
and the good guys
became the bad guys
cause the story
kept
going.
They come back as broken men
leaving as kids,
and you don’t sift back into society,
you have to create it,
they become optometrists
and surgeons,
in and out of the mental homes
that put volts into your brain
and sent you home
with a bottle of wine and a bible.
There was still a god on the streets,
still a tradition
to go to church
and the kids of them
all got molested,
and now my generation
are raised by them,
with trauma
but no god,
not after what it did to your dad,
not after what the school teacher did to him.
The present told us that even the past can keep hurting,
we try to correct it,
whilst everyone keeps a constant eye,
the bad guys
are still getting to work.
forgive,
but never forget,
let go,
but never forget,
die a million times
but never kill,
see if you can leave it where it got you,
see if you can turn it into something new,
you wont get them all,
you wont always be good,
but try.
you wont always be good,
but try.
It is because I am reading Kurt Vonnegut for the first time, and I tell you, he has got it. Its almost the ability and freedom to be subjective about everything. Where you can just be you, and a soul can read it 150 years later and relate. Soon, language evolves and away, and there is a new person to say what we have always said, in a way, that idiots can understand. Intelligent idiots.
He writes about the war, and after the war, I don’t know what is true or not, I don’t know anything about it. But he speaks of a man who became an optometrist post the war. I thought to myself, you don’t really see that these days.
My Dad didn’t get molested, as far as I know, let that be artistic liberty. Yet so many of that generation did. Now, my generation talk about the ‘Boomers’ like they were just privileged. They may have had some advantages we don’t, but there's enough suffering for all of us, there's plenty good too. Don’t hate your elders, do something and who knows, with their prosperity they may just support you. I have spent a lot of time writing, editing, writing and writing, translating, reading my own writing slightly translated.
My laptop says to me, “Now you want to spend time with me, cause she is gone.”
“No baby,” I say, as I caress her keys. “Me and you are in this together forever, and plus, there has been plenty of times when I have come to you, and you weren’t there.”
She smiles, but I don’t know if she has forgiven me.
I wonder to myself, if people used to get addicted to letters.
The body seems a little erratic, like its forgetting something, the mind stays sharp, the words continue to fall.
Man seems to feel smallest, when his soul is the largest. They say, you are far from your soul. No, my soul is here, punishing me, because I am wrong, but will not listen. Soon, I’ll surrender to his grasp, let me just see if I can wiggle away from him first, let me just try one more time my own way before I have had enough, before I admit he is far too strong, far too right.
A funny little man I am, I’ll die, he won’t, the poor thing.
Then I write a poem, that is twenty pages long, all in one sitting, of different scenes.
That will make a good movie, I think to myself. Then I start thinking of me at the awards ceremony. Talking about how I was in Thailand and I just wrote the script as a poem because I didn’t know how to write a script. Then I thought about all the people who thought I was crazy and lazy, watching me accept awards. It feels good to be right, before returning here and feeling fat. Manifestation is just making your labour enjoying fruits. If I am ever wrong, it will be too late to care. If I am wrong, it was fun finding out.
