Days Volume Two

* Big Night On The Town drunk on the dark streets of some city, it's night, you're lost, where's your room? you enter a bar to find yourself, order scotch and water. damned bar's sloppy wet, it soaks part of one of your shirt sleeves. It's a clip joint-the scotch is weak. you order a bottle of beer. Madame Death walks up to you wearing a dress. she sits down, you buy her a beer, she stinks of swamps, presses a leg against you. the bar tender sneers. you've got him worried, he doesn't know if you're a cop, a killer, a madman or an Idiot. you ask for a vodka. you pour the vodka into the top of the beer bottle. It's one a.m. In a dead cow world. you ask her how much for head, drink everything down, it tastes like machine oil. you leave Madame Death there, you leave the sneering bartender there. you have remembered where your room is. the room with the full bottle of wine on the dresser. the room with the dance of the roaches. Perfection in the Star Turd

* Consummation Of Grief I even hear the mountains the way they laugh up and down their blue sides and down in the water the fish cry and the water is their tears. I listen to the water on nights I drink away and the sadness becomes so great I hear it in my clock it becomes knobs upon my dresser it becomes paper on the floor it becomes a shoehorn a laundry ticket it becomes cigarette smoke climbing a chapel of dark vines. . . it matters little very little love is not so bad or very little life what counts is waiting on walls I was born for this I was born to hustle roses down the avenues of the dead. Charles Bukowski Blowing in the cold wind at the back of that desolate farm, heralding nothing but cold sprinkles from a stormy sky to settle the dust, was an old sheet of paper he chased across the parched fields. The End Of Sydney, it announced, and he realised it was an old flyer for a party he had held back in the 1980s. Some might have pointed out to him that just because he was leavin

* It goes a little something like this In my shoes my toes are busted, My kitchen says my bread is molded, I got a good job at the dollar store, One foot in the hole, one foot gettin' deeper, with a broken mirror and a blown out speaker And I ain't got much else to lose. I'm faded, flat busted; I've been jaded I've been dusted. I know that I've seen better days. One foot in the hole, one foot gettin' deeper, Crank it to eleven, blow another speaker and I ain't got, I ain't got much to loose 'Cause (Chorus) I've seen better days I've been star of many plays I've seen better days and the bottom drops out. I've seen better days I've been star of many plays I've seen better days and the bottom drops out. Now My cup's filled up with five buck wine I find myself here all the time Another rip in the glass another chip in my tooth Rained on I've been stained on Found another goat I tried to put the blame on And now I'm

* The straight shots of Jack Daniels went down like velvet and he knew soon enough he would be pissed, gloriously pissed, at last at one with the universe. Alcoholism was a spiritual disease, they declared, and he had been blessed with infinite longing all his life. From that first cherry brandy and lemonade the girls sneaked out to him from a nightclub, because he was too young to drink legally, and he drank it quickly and felt as he had never felt before, at one with the world, a unified person, sane, gloriously sane, triumphant, exultant. Alive. Normie Rowe was playing down the road and the next night he went with the little gang from the hotel he had fallen into, from the Stella del Mare, or whatever it was called. And it seemed like the whole world was moving on its axis, and all was well. There had always been a clicking point, the drink where he knew that beyond this one there would be no recourse, no memory, no regret, just glorious black out. He sought the point in the early

* The streets were already busy in the pre-dawn. There was an element of flight, he couldn't deny that. The ceilings in the kitchen and bathroom had collapsed, the plumbing was off line and suddenly he was homeless. Sam was at his grandmother's and Henrietta at school. The house was a bombshell, dust everywhere, Craig from nextdoor busily working. If everything he had ever believed in turned out to be a romantic falsehood, as was appearing very likely, even so life offered new turmoils; and he was forced to go. There seemed no other alternative. Everything was an inclusivfe madness. Everything was being swept clean. He loaded old boxes on to the back of the truck they hadd hired from Balmain Rentals. The heating doesn't work but worse, it blows a constant stream of cold air. It's freezing. He became frozen in a way he hadn't been since last in Europe, years ago now. He hadn't expected life to unfold here, children, a stable job. Thank you for my courage, thank y

* And so, as he passed out of consciousness and into the gutter, the office workers stepped over him as if he didn't exist. They were all the same, these carrion birds, these creatures from another planet, another place, the office workers. They bore no resemblance to him, there was no reflection of his life. They might as well have been another species. He looked up, phasing in and out, but none stopped. Except an old queen. They always stopped. Are you alright? the man asked. And he slurred his words. He wasn't alright, he hadn't been alright for a long time. He was as smashed as he could get, destroying his own consciousness. He didn't want to be awake. He didn't want to feel anything. He came stumbling around the corner, and saw himself, already dead, rising out of the gutter, helped by the gay guy who had stopped out of concern, or maybe he just liked a bit of rough trade. Are you alright, the man repeated, and he stumbled into him, unable to stand up straight.

* He couldn't be more devestated, just by the act of living. Simple, incomplete, the eternal yearning that masked his fate. God meant you to die a street alcoholic, living out those final years in Belmore Park, nearby the newspaper offices where he had worked most of his life; at various times making something of a name for hismelf. It was all so cruel, but destiny could not be defied. He coujldn't mask his own yearning, for oblivion, for love, by the shocking empathy they called the soldier, his own demise. So when he walked past the bar on the way to the meeting, and the desire to drink hit him like a sledge hammer, like a log being swung into the side of his head, he was completely taken aback. He knew he was off the air, had been for hours, but the vividness of his desire was something new. There were tourists and sales reps and the interesting looking middle class all sitting around the bar, already lit up as the last light of the day fled, and he just wanted to be in ther

* A process in the weather of the heart Turns damp to dry; the golden shot Storms in the freezing tomb. A weather in the quarter of the veins Turns night to day; blood in their suns Lights up the living worm. A process in the eye forwarns The bones of blindness; and the womb Drives in a death as life leaks out. A darkness in the weather of the eye Is half its light; the fathomed sea Breaks on unangled land. The seed that makes a forest of the loin Forks half its fruit; and half drops down, Slow in a sleeping wind. A weather in the flesh and bone Is damp and dry; the quick and dead Move like two ghosts before the eye. A process in the weather of the world Turns ghost to ghost; each mothered child Sits in their double shade. A process blows the moon into the sun, Pulls down the shabby curtains of the skin; And the heart gives up its dead. Dylan Thomas Why, why, he would ask, didn't he turn around and vacate this physical presence, return to the fold and embark on the journey in a ves