She was in Mexico visiting her father
whom she hadn't seen in eleven years.
I was at home,
falling in love with her
about three weeks after we had begun to know one another.
She called me before she left.
Scared.
Uncertain.
I could see her on the other end of the phone,
sitting on the corner of her bed
in her half-lit room,
pondering over an open suitcase.
I spoke to her every truth I knew,
every caring thought I could think,
as fast as they could be born.

By the time she got back,
I knew I was in love,
even if I couldn't quite find the words to explain it
to her.

We had spoken once about our obsession with birds
when we were younger.
So I prowled around the day before she got back,
in the woods behind my house,
through thickets, brambles,
up the sides of leant trees,
in the remnants of abandoned nests,
for a feather
or two.

She got back from her trip,
and we sat in my car,
before the modern saloon where
I told her I love you
She said wait,
I have something for you
And she pulled out a long, brown quill.
Her cheeks florid,
beneath the thin light of the street lamps
that leaked in through the window.

I laughed,
and she grew redder.
Then I too produced a feather
and I saw in those eyes
something I could not possibly explain.
And even if I could,
I'm not sure I'd want to.

Treasury Casino, 3:03 am. Monday morning.

Casino bars shut at  3:00 am in QLD.


I missed a place to sleep by 9 minutes.
My timing is impeccable.

2 hours to kill until the last train home.

An older man in a slate suit enters stage right.
Crosses.
Disappears.
Reenters stage left with  brass buttons
lit up like embers.

The 9 network wants me to buy
stonedine frying pans.
And warns me about harmful gasses that have killed household budgies.

I wish I was more interesting.

You havent lived
until you've seen a man blow a pancake
off a frying pan.
Onto a plate.

----

3:12 am.

Late night bar personnel work in silence
cleaning beer nozzles and coffee machines.
They wander in and out of the scene under sophisticated lighting.

I wonder what to do about you, and what I'm feeling.
What our  hold on each other is and when (if) the sword of Damocles will fall.
Is this truly tragedy to which we are destined?
I shudder to think.
And for this am I classed by the title
"coward"
or
"lover"?

----

3:20 am - Existentialism strikes a vicious blow. No coup de grace.

The blackjack dealer on the $15  table has a gorgeous face that makes me wonder how her body feels on a post coital morning. Satisfied and relaxed, taut through anticipation of further pleasure?
Straight raven tresses frame a heart shaped face that peers over the ridge of a white collared shirt, sprouting from beneath a black vest, tight at the elbows.
She deals with deft machine-gun efficiency. Not all bullets hit their mark here.

Her back curves with natural elegance down to a tight, young ass. The shape of  it magnified by the black business pants writes itself as a factory on my mind. Light hands would fit well there, one on each cheek, her mouth open seductively, trading  tastes and sensations.

There is a dying rose in my lapel.
It's sad.
I contemplate leaving it somewhere poetic but  cant think of a place.
The thorns are still sharp.

----

3:45 am

The only place where time is invincible
is a place  where it is hidden.
Casino's are such a place.
Here time cannot be killed.
Yet I have smuggled it in.

They're Everywhere!, The Beautiful Badger Skins, All Of Your Things, To Conquer The Ant, Feces Feline, Pissed Off Traffic, The Coloring Books, I'll Catch You With Nets, A Truce To Trance, Pale Nosed Girls, Jars In June, Fake Fight Fridays, Just Like Madeline, Cats And Dogs, The Poor And The Smiling, So She Says, No Strawberries Please, Bicycle Chase, Chickens Don't Fly, Behind The Shed, Cars In The 90's, Carl's Disease, Anthropomorphic Crush, A Cheer From The Waves, Bubbles Bubbles Bubbles,  The Floorboards, Suitcase Joust, Beneath The Forest, Myspace Meltdown, Call Me On Tuesday, Take Me Out To Pho, Grave Of The Cameras, Toothpicks And Cigs, Wax On Wax Off, Bad Days For Good People, Burnt Bacon.

Tonight I feel a heat in my chest
a heat that lets me know I've dug too deep a hole
a hole I've buried myself in
beneath this bladed grass
this serene soil
this poisonous air

Yesterday, I watched every strand of your hair
watched it become a sandcastle
rising and falling in the wind
and I thought to myself
I could love him forever
That's when I recognized I'd let this go too far
I'd let my love for you drown out all the walls I'd spent so long building up
and I loved it

A vehicle rumbled along a sorry excuse for a road,
A convoy trailing behind it

A soldier looked out his window
Watching the dust swirl up in clouds beneath the
Heavy vehicle's tires

He said nothing to his partner and they rode in silence
He, thinking of his perfect baby
Whom he had not yet gotten to feel the warmth of
In his arms
And his partner, he was sure
Had nothing but the image of his fiancée racing through his mind
She was all he ever talked about

They were close
As close as a pair of friends could possibly be
But rides were becoming increasingly more solemn
Unspoken yearning for home had become almost unbearable
These days the soldier missed home so much
And longed so badly for his wife's warm embrace
That he swore he could feel his heart aching

The solemn silence was broken as something caught the soldier's eye

"Stop!"

The convoy came to a halt
The soldier jumped from his vehicle
His boots making a hard thud on the ground below
He called to a group of Afghani children who had been
Collecting shell casings they would later exchange for food
In the middle of the convoy's path

The children looked up, alarmed
And scurried away

The rumble of the military vehicles again resounded
Through the desert
And the convoy continued on its way


Looking back
At the men in the strange uniforms
With the huge trucks,
A little Afghani girl
Caught a glimpse of the sunlight
Bouncing off of something
In the middle of the road

She rushed into the street to collect it
Thinking only of how pleased
Her mother would be
With all the money they would earn
From her painstaking hunt

The soldier saw the young girl
Dart into the path of the convoy

He shouted
And leapt from the vehicle
The girl looked up in terror
As she saw the big trucks
Getting closer
And closer

The soldier leapt into
The path
Of the oncoming sixteen-ton vehicle
Toppling the girl to the ground

As she sat up, out of the path of the convoy
Dusting her self off and
Trying to comprehend
What had just taken place
She looked into the road searching for her
Treasure
And saw it
Reflecting the desert sunlight
Just inches from the lifeless form
Of the soldier
Who had just
Given her
His life

The quiet servants to  a neon god
walk beneath blind stars.
The sightless man sits, as two lovers pass
him by, under his feet the ground the changes colour,
Off  time with the chatter that surrounds me.
He takes the hand of an elderly celestial
and they exit the scene
the way of waves.

Laughter explodes like a bombshell
the only casualty is silence.
Through the steel arch I watch
ivory wave burn the black
rippled
sea.

A child chases a seagull
through the slits of sea-fog
caught in the light.

The barmaid leaves and my eye follows her,
resting on the corpses  of our  modern age;
bullet ridden with boredom and the chill,
swathed in the sear cloth of modernity
and eyes glazed by rum.
They wait.
The "Sons of the Silent age"
who's thoughts are as stolen
as this line,
stolen from greater men.
The Lindbergh baby has grown up.

I bear witness to the silence and pressure
of the girl to my left, it  encroaches this space  as
her gaze encroaches the distance.

These streets were once filled with the
flotsam
of wasted  youth,
the steady stream of touristry.
Now, in the winter
they lay empty, cold and pecked
by the multitudinous hordes of bird and man alike.
Where once they writhed with life
now they sit dormant and sleep atomic
on a chill stream,
at once both mirror and glass to our
wonderous world.

If we are the dreamers and music makers,
then  our instruments sleep in dust
and our dreams walk silent in this defeat
of waking.

He felt the chest move up and down,
Like a clock, it’s moving was certain, one, then two
Then three beats, then five hundred, five hundred and twenty,
He could feel the pressure of breath, moving so gently out, so gently in,
And he could watch the soft slumber as it rested
Upon the face, the eyes moving gently beneath that
Fragile skin placed there, that made the eyelids,
A beautiful song; a soliloquy maybe, coming up from that
Glass-like face, lost in its own respite, lost in its mysterious feelings
Of day and night and all the time between wrapped into one.
He knew, that somewhere there, deep inside, maybe today
Maybe not today, maybe in the will of the sanctum,
He too was there, as she slept soundly, folded against his body,
She lies there, so soft, so gentle, lost in her own device.
He could feel every inch of her body, and never move his hands,
The warmth of her, the essence of her, pouring over him, consuming
Him in a soft, luxurious liquid, the essence of sleep.

She walks beneath the moonlight,
Dodging the street lights
And lurking beyond each corner.
She yearns for just one star
To descend and kiss her face;
For every single birthday wish
Since she was a little girl
Was that . . .

Though she never quite believed it.