Days Volume Two

* Handed black flowers Lined with dead moss They release the pungent stench of disease Scorched by the sun Decayed to ashes Animated sleeves of despair But with each chapter We learn much more But it brings us closer to the end Edge burned photos They show the past Seven deadly sins hold their purpose Just lives to breed Summary of a virus Running rampant through the races Encased in glass Each breath you take It brings us closer to the end Cannae. Black flowers grew against the glistening walls, he wasn't sure what would happen next, he was summonsed and dismissed, he was carried forth and surrendered up; and in this sacrifice, the cruel passage of time, he found at last the peace he had long craved. There weren't going to be any reverses now. He had fallen off the cliff and had no deep care whether he survived or not. He woke each day in the most appalling state of mind; and so it continued. There was no way back. He didn't love anyone; lost in the woods, afraid of the da...

* Faces along the bar Cling to their average day: The lights must never go out, The music must always play, All the conventions conspire To make this fort assume The furniture of home; Lest we should see where we are, Lost in a haunted wood, Children afraid of the night Who have never been happy or good. W.H. Auden They are arguing outside my window at 3am, but rather than the familiar scenes of Redfern, which had become so much a part of himself and his family, he was now at Bondi Beach; where the contrast was total. From inner-city grit to the clairvoyance of the surf; from being careful each time he stepped out the door not to be robbed he was surrounded by young, fit tourists from around the world and pampered Eastern suburbs beauties in their flash cars; leaving a spray of arrogance wherever they went. He had thrown himself off the cliff and it had taken months to recover. He had been psychically tortured and physically bullied; and the world queued up to have another kick. He was...

* clouds now and then giving men relief from moon viewing soon it will die yet no trace of this in the cicada's screech ailing on my travails my soul wanders over withered mores Three Haiku by Matsuo Basho (1644-1694). The snow upon my lifeless moutains Is loosened into living fountains My solid Oceans flow and sing and shine A spirit from my heart bursts forth It clothes with unexpected birth My cold bare bosom: Oh! it must be thine Oh mine, on mine! Gazing on thee I feel, I know, Green stalks burst forth, and bright flowers grow And living shapes upon my bosom move; Music is in the sea and air, Winged clouds soar here and there, Dark with the rain new buds are dreaming of: 'Tis Love, all Love! Percy Bysshe Sheely (1792-1822). Both these poems were part of funeral. Amanda Meale, with her short bleached hair and face puffy from crying, began her recollections of Richard Meale, haltingly. I would like to begin, she said, by making two corrections to a piece that appeared in the ...

* "This is a private matter, Archer." The gun stirred slightly in the Admiral's hand. I could feel its pressure across the width of the room. "Do as she says." "I heard a shot. Murder is a public matter." "There has been no murder, as you can see." "You don't remember well." Ross MacDonald It wasn’t darkness for darkness sake, it was a torment he couldn’t escape; and so entered the valley under the illusion he was fighting for a better life. That’s what cruelled it in the end; there was no reward. Snakes sat in their offices, rewarding themselves. The labourers fought for survival; and were always down trodden. Was it just a failing psyche? A failure of command? Or something worse, more misshapen, more confused than ever. He was shocked by the blackness; the rapidity of it all. And the corny voices trying to make him laugh. And fading life forms prodding, prodding, as if they really meant something, as if they could make a diffe...

* 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...