There was a dream here. It passed over in the night; a blur that burnt a fever into the earth. It died in the gap between. Fingers unlaced. Hand to the side. The sun runs soft tendrils through thick curtains. Or something like that.

Have you seen the new Star Wars movie? No. You’d like it. It’s the same thing all over again, but with a black guy and a chick as the main characters instead. I guess that’s what you call progress.

There was a dream here. A thick, unfurling mass of potentialities. Sartre once wrote existence precedes essence. Schopenhauer believed the essence of a chair was as much willed into being as the essence of a man. There was choice once, but it died when we chose. The breath you took before your last smoke. The air is stirred by a passing train. A woman steps off a bridge, into the mourning blue of an autumn lake. There is an empty car on fire. There is a man inside. His brother sleeps through his exam, doped up on too much codeine. There is the stench of lack. There is death passing a mirror, seeing herself in haste, but too rushed to make sense of it.

He runs fingers down the scars of her arm. A trickling, stream awakening from a long winter thaw. Vessels blue. Oceans of laughter tucked deep in the folds of her skin, so faint you can barely see them any more.

The sheets are black. The city folds itself. The sky collapses into the gutter; Jupiter bleeds into the apartment block on east side. A man leaves his home, but never reaches his destination.  There is a movie Face Off, where the identity of Nicholas Cage is challenged through the transplantation of his face. If reincarnation were possible, would we even be capable of recognising our reincarnated selves, stumbling through the visage of a billion other, unknown vessels? The skip collectors come at 4am. Metal grinds against metal until all that is left is dust.

Hands shaking a pit of coal. Shake shake. Shake shake. Your mother is dead. Shake shake. Shake shake. Jesus working at a shoe store. Shake shake. Shake shake. An atheist. Hah hah, hah.

The channels fill. Ink drops on water. Fireworks blackening the contours. There is a sun in Peru. Waste water pumps through the vessels of the city. The mayor drinks punch. The catacombs crumble like desert bones. The roads split above. Traffic stalls. Shadows stretch. Meet at the centre. A core. Slender fingers. The infinite. A hollowed heart. A heritage.

Drink your punch, says the mayor, try the grape and cheese.

There is a comic. Five or six woodland friends play grab the tail. After one round, they look over to find friend raccoon sleeping. They laugh and shout next round. Friend scorpion looks at his tail with tears in his eyes. It is funny, because death is boundless, amoral, and imminent.

A group at a party. Someone brings up the right-wing branch of their government. Everyone begins laughing, red in the face, spit flying from their mouths, arms noodling into the sky. Yeah, yeah. Hella. It is an imitation game. A laugh track on repeat. Maybe someone scratched it on purpose, or the sound guy fell asleep on the button. Now everyone is stuck, laughing. They begin to doubt themselves, but look up, reassured by the glowing sign above their heads that displays the text laughter, in bold black Helvetica. The sign is faded from heavy use, a sickly cream that looked bad before it left the factory. They were made in batches of a thousand and shipped across the country. One begins to choke, spilling her drink, bunching the cloth on the table beside her. They keep laughing. She is purple now. Another group spots them and joins in. The party next door. The whole neighbourhood. It is broadcast across the city. A wave of hysteria sweeps the nation. An online celebrity creates mugs. A famous rapper uploads himself eating pancakes. The sound guy wakes up and turns off the display, but everyone keeps laughing.

God died today. Crumpled jacket at the foot of an apartment block. Creased ticket. Crooked can rolling down suburbia. American dream wakes up. Finds herself an amnesiac in a foreign land. Catches bus downtown. Wanders vacant sun. Blood trickles from wrinkles. So many now. Creased, crumpled, crooked. Drinks from gutter. Chokes. Stumbles into abandoned church. Blood dries into grotesque mask. Hard to feel through it. Like second skin. Tired. Rests head against wall. Waits for pulse. Finds nothing.

A joke to break the gloom. Two crows are perched opposite one another, partitioned by a one-way mirror. Both break into laughter.

No, wait. Maybe tears.

I wonder what it’d be like to stand on a human face
Would my foot sink right through their flesh
Leave a hole circled with broken teeth
Gnawing the empty air?
Seems no different
Someone writhes on the floor in a club
Is pronounced dead the next day
Exorcised *******
It’s where they go to get ****** up right?
Tequila and lime
Body shot
Set it on fire
A worm died so some middle-aged manager
Could fail at recapturing her youth
****** up, let’s get ****** up
Bones bleeding through the sleeves
Stuffing flesh into mouths
The river overflows with fast food wrappers
And rotting couches
Sit on the pavement and ***** in your lap
It’s what you came here for
Is she going to jump?
Take a picture
Hope the whole roof collapses
We’re trying to ******* sleep, a neighbour yells before slamming the door
Feels awkward and steps off the roof
Lies on the floor of her room
Slits her wrists instead
He’d been angry since he moved in
Kept finding apple cores in his yard
Sometimes it’s Christmas here
And the entire city decides to take part in a ritual
Where the vacuity of existence is concentrated in the shopping districts, so everyone can feel awful together
It’s really something
A black heat descends on Dunedin
And smothers all the children in their cribs
Teenagers light up and skate through the throngs of blank-faced adults
Too deeply enamoured with percentage discounts to even notice their bags filling with the blood of foreigners
Did you know one million Chinese children die a year from vitamin A deficiency?
Good thing we’re buying all these Chinese made goods
Sometimes the smog is so strong
And the water so red
That everyone begins to think the clear days are the strange ones
Sometimes the power poles collapse and generations of children are born sterile and genderless
The fathers all choke their wives with plastic bags
And no one questions them
This existence is nauseating
No wonder your mother hung herself
No wonder your uncle ***** your sister then hacked his own head off
None of this is real
A guy was hospitalised because someone mistook him for a child molester
Smashed his face up so much he lost seven teeth and got brain damage
He’d been a famous writer before
And now he can’t speak
Isn’t that the funniest thing you’ve ever heard?
Doesn’t this existence make you want to breakdown into laughter and throw your head against the wall until there’s nothing left?

A dream escapes itself.
Goodbye dream, a little boy says.
Is a dream nothing more than the silent play of indolence?
The boy has already forgotten.
I am lulled into nonexistence.
Cars pass. Water streams off tires. Fireworks exhale dust.
A mist settled here once.
It drew in the collective breaths of all the inhabitants within the city.
A blanket unfolding into itself.
Nevermind.
A bright death swept through me.
The sun drank my body like ambrosia.
I became the abyss.
Or perhaps always had been.
The pavement is grey with dampness.
Vapours rise.
The world escapes itself.
But no one is there to notice.

There’s too much air to breathe here.
A swirling mass of emptiness heaves through the crowd’s lungs.
Stop.
Won’t everyone just *******--

Someone sings at the bus stop just outside my window.
Wires hum, ignoring the melody that person has so carefully constructed.
A hiss.
Rising steam.
An abrupt end.

Another listless night.
A beetle flies in through my open window.
It takes me twenty minutes to help it back out.

I think about wandering the forest.
But am too scared to confront loneliness, and the frailty of human existence.

There is a gap forming already.
Here.
A dialectic that seeks to sublate my very identity.
Subsume those closest to me.
Until I am completely alone.

There is a bush down the street which is in bloom right now.
I think the sun is too hot.
The flowers are wilted.
And the pavement is littered with dead bees.

Voices.
An exchange.
A language game.
Two horizons meet, merge, melt.
‘Wait--’
The horizons drop.
If only for a moment.
And the abyss is revealed.

The only universal in this world is that we are all alone.
Trapped in our own understanding.
Forever interpreting one another.

I am waiting for the day the wind carries me out the window.
Perhaps it will never come.
Perhaps I will live a long boring life amongst friends, family, and all those people I despise.
Oh well.
No point, either way.

Awkward pause
A bird drones on in the background
Unaware
You try to meet my eyes
Don’t bother
This life is just boredom trying to transcend itself
Someone somewhere lies on the ground
Traffic picks up
Voices in the crowd align with the bustle of the city
They fade into insignificance
Too loud to be heard
I comment
I stop halfway
Words elude words
Connections wither
A sprawled empty sentence meanders half hearted out of existence
Frustration tastes a lot like the memory of past relationships
I have noticed
So many people just want to be affirmed
They speak to be heard
Exist to be noticed
You’ve been repeating that sentence since the beginning of the year
A mockingbird singing at a broken mirror
**** the jays
Dissenters, right-wing *******
Yeah, yeah, ***** them, hella
Swallows the choir
It’s disgusting
Regurgitation has become the new culture
I realise I haven’t talked for a minute
You try to meet my eyes
Sorry
There are too many voices here
Repetitious wavelengths cascading into negative space
It’s all white noise
I don’t care about the weather
The whole city can drain into the gutters for all I care
It’d be better that way
Look there
There’s that homeless guy who has no one left
Family or friends
Let’s invite him to the house
He hasn’t read anything in years
Maybe he has something worthwhile to say

I look pale. Where's the blood?
They are scared. I knew it.
What gets better? They are all gone.
It's dusty. Fragile. Old thing.
We all want to leave the town. Admit it. Just like that.

light, light, light. it's a whole experience. cut me into two pieces. right left. i'd never been so symmetric. the ground sparkled. dorothy knocking. the house blown. wind whisper leaves laugh. i'd never felt such courage. candles weren't lit in the dark haze was reflecting the light.

moon hanging too low it hit my head. ruby glistened between the branches. hands reaching out for fear, god trembling and dropped the glass. it rained hurt only to remind life to remain. every body is a coffin to the soul, food to the soil. when finally we are one it doesn't happen. the window was open. only small i carefully ran away it doesn't end.

All along in my tongue mother comes she stays for quite a long time. it was all in my head when i decided i had my own taste because i certainly don't, i had been so tasteless before i was growing out of a broken moon in mother's funny womb.

My tongue is the ungrateful one. at least i can appreciate the fact that i once had purity but when in this silly world nothing greater than intensity and dirt all over the place so, basically mother saved me. she'd put all her might on my tongue and god it is definitely infinite!

Now stomach is exhausted and head understands too much, now and then they both ache for each other, they both are trying to ruin me again and burn me with jealousy. for all what i've done is mother's doings, for all what i've tasted is mother. honestly i can't remember anymore how neutral tasted like, how my own tongue tasted like.

All along in my tongue mother has been lazy and a queen. nothing moves her except i remove my own tongue, but twist is she only comes and stays and she never goes. (god isn't this pointless, what use of your face if i can't see it, if my feet keep dragging me further from your back, if my glasses keep shattering and my eyes full of sand?)

(Nothing is keeping me away from you anymore, even when mother nags in my tongue and sour thing meddles with my throat.) i have been emptier before but nothing matters anymore, i was here before i am not, now i must have known the taste i've lost because of mother or not because of her, it's actually nothing at all.

We made nests in clocks
that Summer the electricity died.
Stars rose out of the ether for the first time in centuries.

Autumn rolled in
but it only grew hotter.
We climbed on rooftops to escape the heat of our homes
and saw the silhouettes of strangers follow.

Winter choked the freeways, the subways, the old ways.
Rust fell on us like rain.
We danced in the belly of an abandoned ship
cheeks burning with mirth.

By Spring
the plants had withered
and the animals had slept until their bodies devoured their souls.
We sat on the town hall as the sun engulfed the sky
Thankful for such a beautiful life.

There’s nothing there anymore
Empty space
A neck without a head

I remember how you taught me to tie my tongue
Or maybe I taught myself
Doesn’t matter

I just wanted to fill the space
So we made nooses on our deathbed
I caught your breath and framed it
‘Holly blooming’
Before asphyxiating

Never did pick up my head from your apartment
You’ve probably moved away
Shifted flesh and become someone else

Doesn’t matter
Never did