Perhaps the day is waning
Maybe corpses in their graves are
Wriggling
With the worms
And in turn
Maybe gods are laughing

I don't know, or care

Perhaps they’re up on high
Maybe they’re just high
Giggling
With their cronies
And ambrosia
Flows like rivers

Perhaps it flows like rivers
Through their fingers
Perhaps their fingers are the rivers -
They are gods after all

And they smoke joints in the park
And they get kebabs at 2 AM
And they get kicked out of bars
And they do it all again
Until their words slur
And they do it all again

And whiskey runs like water
And laughter runs like water
This is a litany, a prayer
A toast, blessing, laughter

This is us giving a homeless person 10 bucks and our last tinnie
Just because we can
This is us waving at occupied taxi cabs and night buses
This is us singing hallelujahs
This is us making guns out of fingers
This is us laughing at
Those poor souls who are too embarrassed to laugh
This is us wasted in a graveyard, saluting all the names
Claiming that we’ll never die
‘Cos we’re gods here, we walk on and run on this town.

This is the day in which the birds die
We’ll watch them fall and dance slowly at a ball
For them
The next day will be that in which the cats die
Because they have no birds to chase
To catch
And we throw a ball for them, too
And the day after that the polar bears will die
But we expected that
And the day after that we’ll hold a memorial
We’ll be dressed like snow and sorries
Dogs will howl, because they know
They are next
The next day is the one in which the dogs die
And nothing but wolves can howl again
Until their day comes
Which is not the next day but
The one after the frogs
The one after the foxes
And then the cicadas
And then the rats -
Even the rats
Even the cockroaches
And we stop giving memorials
We stop throwing ***** because
No one will be able to do it
When our turn comes around.

I was sitting with a boy
We weren’t doing much of anything, just playing
Video games and eating crisps
We blow something up and he turns to me and says

“Man, if I had a piece of gold for everything I knew
I’d be no richer than I am now.”

I snort.

“Don’t be stupid, you know heaps.”
“Oh yeah, like what?”

I think for a bit.

“You know there is blood in your veins.”
“Yes. One gold then.”
“You know that it’s sunny outside.”

(He cranes to the left to look out the window and nods.
“Two gold then.”
“You know your name.”
He shrugs his shoulder.
“Sometimes. Am I the name on the lanyard I use at work? Am I my girlfriend’s endearment? Am I the nickname I had at school? Am I my mother’s darling or my father’s ‘tough little man’?”

He pauses. “I’d only give it a silver.”

I say
“You know that you were born, and one day you will die.”
Another pause.
“Three gold, one silver.”

After that we can’t think of anything else.

Yesterday you died and I bought lilies for you.
But wait, back up, this isn’t where it starts.
:
Last year I was in an airport and saw lilies
And fingers touching the petals and the stems
Like a lover
And I had never looked at lilies as lovely before.

No, this isn’t right, this is still not the beginning.
:
I think it began when I was just a kid and I saw
A smile for the first time
It wasn’t for anything serious,
I didn’t know what lilies were back then
I made daisy chains instead
I got ***** in sandboxes and didn’t understand
Romance films. Still don’t, but that’s by choice.

But no, let’s move forward, there is too much
To tell
:
There is a day in which you fry me bacon and eggs
There is a day in which I mix the colours and whites in the wash
And everything turns pink and we laugh
There is a day in which your car breaks down
And I drive you to work.

There are some hours we spend in front of the TV
There are some hours we spend walking in the park
There are some hours we argue and
There are some hours where we just smile as we read in silence, Together.

There is the time you buy me a ring
There is the time I buy two tickets to Morocco
There is the time in Morocco where we dance in a bazaar
There is the time I argue with your parents about refugee policy
There is the time we spend Christmas in a tent in Colorado
There is the time you tap my forehead
When I say something funny, when we’re drunk.

And then there is the time
I buy you lilies for no reason other than I saw someone
Touching them in an airport, and you cry
They’re your favourite you say and
Did you know, you say
They mean purity, in both Christianity and Buddhism?
That it was formed from the breast milk of Hera, or
In the case of the Easter Lily, the sweat of Christ? You say,
You should be a Tiger Lily –you’re belligerent enough, you say,
Lilies are ****** and lilies are pure and lilies are death
And these are Lilies of the Valley
For our second year of marriage.
:
I had no idea, but smiled anyway.

So now we can return to the end.
:
There is an accident
There is a hospital
There is waiting
There is laboured breathing
There are machines beeping
There are tears.

Then there is a funeral
And I can no longer give you lilies
Because you do not have hands I can touch
So I give them to a block of stone with
Your name on it, instead.

I adopt lilies as my favourite flower
So I can never forget.

There’s something damaged in your hands
Let me see? Maybe I can help
Why do you hide it from me?
Is it embarrassing?
Is it something of mine?
Was it an accident or on purpose?
Come on, I’ll just pester you until the mailman comes
Or I have to go to work
Or the birds stop singing
Show me what is damaged in your hands

You show me what is damaged in your hands
-oh, it’s my hands
-oh, it’s my heart
So – that’s where I left them
Don’t worry,
They were damaged before you came around
Maybe together we can fix them