Expiry

My parking permit expired yesterday, and I don't have the money for another until the end of next week. If I am not permitted to stop, then I might as well drown in this mirrored river, and keep within me the sound of these words dying. Some sounds crisp, some sounds fading, some sounds dulling the brain. I once believed in the declaratory power of words. Pen it, and it was. I believed this. I wrote to cast out my moments of anxiety. I wrote to dissolve the self-loathing. I wrote away my guilt at my grandfather's passing. I wrote to defeat my fear of delivering a eulogy for a friend who had my name. I wrote incessantly, at one time to affirm that I was riding the clouds, and at another to obliterate all but none of my obsessive torture and tortuous obsession. But lately I have discovered this power, if I had the audacity to call it that, or if I had it at all, is gone. I am just aging. And not very gracefully. The anxiety festers; the self-loathing is urgent; the guilt is stifling; the fear is black; and not even the tortuous obsession is something I anymore have the ability or strength to describe. My grandfather appeared in my dream again to ask about the laundry. And in the midst of all this, winter is stubbornly passing by.

How many seasons will expire before I see you again?

Black and white boy

There was something awkward about the three of us walking to your home hoping you would be there to answer the door. It was the days when the only way to find someone was to physically go to their place. We rode the train in silence, hopped the turnstiles in silence, walked in silence, having decided that a week was too long not to have your charm infusing our drunken conversations.

We knocked on your door. We knocked on your back window. We peered. We suspected we were too late. Are you there? Say something about the Sunday before.

We didn't then want to go to your park, but the least we could do if we couldn't save you was to find you. When we did, I couldn't look at you, high up there on that tree already dead or dying. I had seen your face flushed pink with intimacy, red with rage, green with envy, yellow in sickness, but never purple. I expected you might swing, but your limbs just hung there. No need to grip, twitch, fret, wring. I gagged. Somebody wailed.

The police questioned the three of us for hours. I told them the name of your doctor, and the time we meandered aimlessly through the city to end up on the steps of the Opera House to see the Crowdies banter and bid farewell. Don't dream it's over was the last song of the encore. Hessie put on a good show. We were mesmorised by the drumsticks, do you remember? You even admired his hair of imagination. But years later the black and white boy took a leaf from your tree.

And it turns out they lied. That would not be the last time they sang in front of a live audience. Come November the three of us will see them again. Too bad the same can't be said about you. It wasn't the first time you tried, but it would be your last.

The large black bull

Within the close quarters of a housing estate, there was a bull. The largest blackest of bulls, and on its head an intricate set of horns ejaculating in all directions. It could have dreamt it was a moose, but it wasn't. On both sides of its body were singe marks where a branding iron had been: "Service with a Smile". Its hooves made a rhythmic but urgent heartbeat on the dirty tiles, on which children played daily with the dust and mayhem.

We saw the bull grunting from three levels below and knew it was coming for us, Target and me. Not sure why he was called Target but that's how I knew him. He could have dreamt he was in another dream, but he wasn't. He seized my hand and ran us to our enclave behind the refrigerator in our flat, which was behind the orange wooden door, which was behind the highest rusted gate. But the bull must have sensed exactly where we were and rammed its way through the barriers to drag us out of our hiding place. I looked down and clearly saw its left (front) hoof grasping my hand, and with its right (front) holding Target's. With the two of us on either side it dragged us out in plain view of the rest of the estate. I did not expect any aid, no, just eyeballs on us from behind their own steely gates. The bull walked, on its hind legs, somehow, and I knew it wanted to do unspeakable things to us. "Let us go," I said, not really expecting it to understand, but it said, "Shut your trap." I looked over at Target and saw he was as frightened as I was. I began a process of negotiation with the bull. As one would.

"Why do you need both of us? Two people are harder to handle than just one."

It kept walking.

"The last thing you want for these kinds of operations is any surprises, believe me. And Target is full of surprises," I said, hoping it was somehow true. "You won't outrun us, our made-to-run upright posture against your four legs, two of which you are using for a purpose other than walking right now."

"I can't choose between the two of you," it said, starting to sweat a little.

"Slip it past the goal post, take me," I said, "More holes and such like."

The bull looked me up and down with its cloudy eyes and a raging lust swelled from its loin chops. "Fine," it said, and relaxed its right hoof. Target was pale in the afternoon sunlight. I'm not a hero, I said in my head, you have to kill the bastard. The bull slowed down to a pace that suggested we were lovers taking a scholarly stroll through these narrow corridors toward the faraway unmentionable place. I turned around to look at Target one last time, already missing his fear. But he held out his right hand and in it was the largest blackest of guns, with a silencer no less. The last thing I saw of Target was his taking aim. I waited for the sound of the shot, but it didn't come. Take the fucking shot, Target. Still there was no sound, and just when I thought it never would come, the bull was flat on the ground with a hot river of blood streaming from underneath its carcass.

It is easy when they are young, gullible and in love with the world. All that is needed is some measure of attention, a kind word, and a bit of a smile, and they will trust you. I even made her go ask her mother to create some illusion of legitimacy. Some things you can't fake, but for everything else there is a mastermind. She ran to her mother and said I want to go to the park with Auntie Nessa please Mum please please please. Her Mum looked at me and knew that I had put her up to it, and in a split second I saw flashing behind her eyes all that she knew about me. I am better, I protested, even though I knew she didn't trust me, not after what happened. Frankly I wanted her to say no, I would probably fuck it up, but I was the one with nothing to lose, while she would have had to deny her daughter the ties of the womb and introduce her ever so prematurely to the taste of bitter disappointment. She stooped to her daughter's height and said be good and listen to your aunt, then wrapped around her small frame layers of clothing, as if the wool, the felt, the ribbons and the zip would have protected her. She wound her scarf three times around her neck in a way that was not tight enough. I will take care of her, was all I said.

I put my hand on her bony shoulder and took her on a drab concrete path towards the purple park. My patience gave way to anxiety when her short legs did not carry her fast enough. There are wolves to the left monsters to the right and meaningless voids in front and behind, I said, stay close to me. I could see she was exhausted, yet too shy to ask me to stop, and I had forgotten how to be kind. I took a turn hoping to escape, but we ended up in a lift, four walls of hurt in a little box going nowhere but down. I knew this was the last moment in which I had a choice, but one flicker of hesitation and we were both falling our way through the depths.

Give me your hand, I said, but she refused to open her hand. I will try to protect you I promise, but sounding hollow, my words hung in the air just long enough to hit the incandescent bulb on our way down. I kneeled to pry open her hands, but she had curled her thumb under her other fingers and I knew then. Her mother had painted her fingernails a slutty red, as our mother had done to me many years ago, after which a strange man took my hands and told me how pretty I looked. Do you like Mummy, I said. Do you like Daddy, I said, and she didn't move. I held her tight against my chest in the warmth of my lap and felt her tiny breaths in my hair.

It's okay you can tell me I said, tell me now, before you forget. But her body shook and I didn't know how else to ask. I stroked her hair gently and said well don't forget, don't forget then, whatever it is, I will wait, I can wait forever. In time when you find the right words you will tell me, whisper it to me in a dark lift just like this, write it down, paint it in the sky, or tell me in symbols and code, and I will know. I will understand. I will understand when you want to scratch off your face, I will understand when a headache is enough excuse for you to whittle away, hide behind the wallpaper or deflect everything with a self-deprecating humour -- to everyone else it's sharp wit but to you it is simply the truth. I will get it when there is only torture, no logic, or when you start to question whether it was even real, was it your imagination, or someone else's projection. I will know when you are addicted beyond belief, addicted to the one thing you deny yourself, when you won't stop needing no matter how much you try, or don't want to try, too weak to try, too tired to try. You think it will pass, you think it will pass, you think it will pass. But it doesn't. It hangs around like an uninvited ghost, lingering around your ceiling just outside your grasp. I will be there when everywhere you turn will reside all things dangerous, but you won't know how to defend against it, and nothing lasts, except the dependence on the thing you can’t have. I will be the only one to understand your base need to cry when you see flowers in full bloom. I will even get it that you will burst into tears for no obvious reason, or even a reasonable need, at a pub, in a meeting, or in bed at night when no one hears. But someone will hear. I promise you that. And promise me you will listen, listen intently, because the only time you stop crying is when you hear those sounds you make, your whimpers, your choking, your sharp intake of inconsequential breaths, those self-same sounds of your crying coming from someone else. He will sound just like you. You will stop then, dead in your tracks, and hold your breath so you can hear him. I will tell you all this, when they never put anything on your nails again, when you remember to tell me, when you confess to all that happened before.

Come glorious morning

Pain in right knee; open eyes; stare at ceiling; close eyes; now knee throbbing; shift around; tuck quilt into a sleeping bag; pull quilt over head; hide; try to sleep again; shut eyes; one; two; shut eyes tight; three; wide!awake!; curse; peer at clock; will it to go faster; beg; will pay; fucking knee; then heart pounding; realising; recalling; forgetting who I am; remembering who I am not; whole world's worth of burden on chest; can't move; suffocating; can't breathe; sit up; try to stand; room spins; crumble against wall; try to stand; room still spinning against the earth; knee collapses; sit down; crawl under; shut eyes, everything still spinning; something stabbing at knee; repeat;

Still entirely mundane ...

words i hate

transience; circumstances; motion sickness; expectations; momentary; flowers wilting; explore; yesterday; tomorrow; now; flowers in full bloom; rot; before; soon; disappear; after; the now; the then; indifference; blue bottles; expire; you; i; word; wording; words; crowding; write; writing; writes; fuck; piss; shit; breathe; blink; skin cancer; barely moving; temporary relief; fiction; lies; barely breathing; must see tv; collapse; nausea; barely weeping; pass; fail; high distinction; abandon; abandonment; reckless; agoraphobia; holes; nobility; anxiety; honour; nerves; heaving; sighing; openly weeping on a freeway; faces; voices; vices; all things forgotten; all things lost; creases; knuckles; meningitis; detritus; addiction; ost; Monty Python; part one; part two; drugs; part five; momentary love; fleeting hate; gouge; decapitation; lizards; front porch; a lit cigarette in the dark; letters; come-ins; feel-at-homes; wrists; warm water; pumps; motels; sawdust; lights; cataracts; free-fall; something about clay; something about blood; something; nothing; everything.

Something mundane

You stayed up all night to pack but left the floor for me to mop. I thought I was just here to take you to the airport but you made me help you clear out your apartment. It took a whole hour and an half in which time the hazard lights had drained the battery in my car, and once your bags and half your life were loaded it refused to start. There was a frantic rush while everyone ran around asking for jumper cables, but all I did was curse. When the car whirred back to life wearily your friend Mike held me close and, though not licensed to drive, advised me to keep the car running to charge the battery so that I wouldn't get stranded at the airport with you. I drove like a madman through the busy traffic faster than I had ever driven this piece of trash, all the while trying to elbow your bags out of my field of vision, but you just laughed. I parked at the curb and left the engine running, but the security guard told me not to leave the car unattended or he would arrest me. So I flashed my toothiest smile and put on the dumb blonde shtick, and ran inside with you to the terminal with your oversized bags holding your ordered life. I hugged you for a brief second and said, I’ll miss you, but you had to be contrary and said, I already do, and snapped a quick photograph. No time for long goodbyes when my engine is running whilst illegally parked and posing a threat to national security.

You never really understood what I went through, no matter how much I tried to explain it with my rubbish words, but you always listened and had somewhat intelligent things to say. I say 'somewhat' because sometimes all I needed was for you to say, you’re torturing yourself, and I would say, fuck you, and we would laugh. I needed your dogged pragmatism to keep me grounded, when all I wanted to do was walk in dreams and words, and write. You made me get out of my apartment with your French-Canadian accent screaming in my ear to get my sorry arse to the courtyard, the coffee shop, even the library. We ridiculed my therapist's opinion that it was dangerous to me but you must have been secretly scheming to make me stop the writing, the thing you both thought would destroy me. I hated you for it at times, but it was good, I guess, I might otherwise not have been still here. But then again you never understood it meant letting a part of me die.

And then you had to leave, didn’t you, now, just when a gaping black hole decides to suck me headfirst and backwards faster than I could ever drive in the other direction, igniting the burning words and scorching phrases bubbling in my head haunting, taunting, threatening to overwhelm all my senses, to implode deep in my guts, until I am repeating them endlessly under my breath. They are coming out of the woodworks, from nowhere I can see, and everywhere I can remember. You had to leave now, just as I have an urgent itch to describe the entire world and my suddenly altered dreamscape, to compensate for all those times of hiding behind the blank. Look where I am now, look at this. I'm writing again, very reluctantly. All it needed was for my car to refuse to start. What am I to do? You're no longer here to stop me. I can only promise to confine myself to mundanities.

So ... thank you for your message at four in the morning to let me know you had arrived. I would have said fuck you if I had picked up.

Mundanities, for now. My car probably won't start tomorrow.