Lily erode
Eros rapture
To dust
To dust
To dust

open home
gutter bird
head apart, apart apart

all toil, toil
sheets and time

why’d you bring me here?

i wanted to
live in hope

why do i try at all

smoke
out the window
curls
like nothing ever
so simple

i wish i could
follow

Rain soaks the ceiling
Falls into the air like crashing jets
Black red white

Smoke collapses
Children break their teeth
The earth screams

They touch their tongues
It’s a sign of affection
Like oil
Or maybe kerosene
Some time later
The streets cover with ash

I try to speak

like smoke
you drift apart

its a sad old cliche
your braided hair
lost
in the glare of sunlight
turned
to obliterate

i hadnt looked in years
i hadnt looked in years
but there you were
caught in my mind
loved without remorse

Lay my mirth to rest
At the foot of my grave
I think it died the same day
I lost my face

Who the **** even knows me?
Who the **** even cares?

A stiff wind broke the morning clouds. It was another gloomy sunrise, in a string of second-rate days. Kiera woke much like the sun, downtrodden and wishing to fall back down. She snapped down on the alarm, knocking it to the floor, and with two blinks was out again—back into a world she was beginning to recognise.

First the flooding darkness. Despite two weeks of this her body still rejected it. Her body hated it. Pathetic. Limbless shakes as the throbbing chill tore its way through her lungs, gripped her skin like sweat. She could smell the sharp stink of iron. When her vision came she saw her arms were covered in blood. A red too bright.

A figure she hadn’t noticed flickered out of her view. She turned her head sharply but saw no one.

Kiera realised she was walking. She held a square, brown-wrapped package, which would not stop squirming. As she struggled to keep hold of the ******* thing, ****** prints coated its sides. A postbox lay on the other side of the road—the same colour as the blood on her arms.

Kiera was furious. The ******* package would not stop squirming. She needed to reach the postbox before she dropped it. She was desperate—scared shitless. Why?

Kiera began to cross the road. Each step sent the package twitching, twisting. Her legs were bone thin. Her skin was shredding apart. Another flicker—edge of the vision phantom—appeared, but she barely noticed. The package was growing so heavy that her toes were breaking on the asphalt. She looked up and saw the postbox had receded.  How dare you? How ******* dare you, you *******.

She was on the wrong side. She had never left the sidewalk. How could she? She had no legs. Blood began to pour out of the postbox. It crossed the road, coating her torso, lapping the bottom of the package. The package stilled and began to deform in her hands. It was rotting.

Kiera had an urge to *****.

The bleached mask reflects the words
A new white glow over black hurts
Brooding bones, charred and cracked
Buried with himself between

Thought he could
Learn to shrug some strangers’ names
Off

The skin grows thick
The scales slough
The eyes go blind, the fingers drop
Before he’s had it all
Before he’s had

But aches betray
And masks fall
The smile breaks when teeth are worn
I think he’s had some terrifying thoughts
Would no longer recognise his face at all

Because . . .
Some black eyes never open up
And blue deaths carve a hole no one can fill
The red lust leaves us chilled
Breathless, to temporary emerald pills

Some crimson lips just chew and chew
And violet pupils grow then still
The pale skin tightens its caress
Over awkward bones and burnt out chests

How frighteningly
Cruel
Our capacity
To ****
And ****
And ****

face plasters the wall a long boring walk i’ve seen three figures turned into the pavement perforated in memory dismal dysfunctional riding the hour hand crumbles into rust waving without a head layer cake wonder if she ever finished that english degree filling wonder if she went back to darwin filling catching a bus filling sitting with her legs crossed out filling eyes glossed into the crossing filling lines running into her pigments filling think i saw four strangers living together inside the head of my dead father didn’t attend his own funeral didn’t catch his own mouth didn’t measure the etch so his ashes formed back into themselves lost in the sleeves of a book tying a knot through his guts wading through waves of deprecated language without an end in sight

I’ll catch the summer breath in your hair
The receding waves cast their nets and retire
Vacant white tumbles free
And I’ve set my sights to a horizon I’ll never meet
You cradle fears and hopes
Inside wild ambition, escaping youth
I’d want to escape for reasons other than
The unstable hues of you
I’ve often watched the lines reach your eyes
And spun a tale of bliss from blindness
Never knowing whether the shores of your beginning
Will meet the ends of mine, at all
In starlit night I’ve touched affection
The purposeless cry mixed with human interpretation
Shifting from beauty to a sheltering ache
Makes me wonder if I’m fleeting like the days left in our wake

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.

I swerve in the distance
I sink through the sky
Pink patches of dead bliss
Pass me by

Light filters my eyelids
I flutter alive
Depart through my cold skin
We drive

Don’t arrive, don’t arrive, oh, please don’t
Don’t arrive, don’t arrive, don’t arrive
Don’t arrive, don’t arrive, oh, please don’t
Don’t arrive, don’t arrive

I’m holes in your ceiling
I’m shades in your mind
Cracks, between your sleeping
Eyes

Won’t arrive, won’t arrive, no, I know
Won’t arrive, won’t arrive, won’t arrive
Won’t arrive, won’t arrive, no, I know
You’ve passed me by

Three tabs of acid and a year of postmodern novels will ******* up in a shorter span of time than doing a degree in poststructuralism, and only an idiot with a death wish would do both. Manic romp to reach nowhere in a political field that never arrives, except in France.

Well Sartre once said nothing, and so did Derrida, and so did Baudrillard. Endless procession of words for the sake of filling a vacuum that didn’t exist until it was filled. Enter Freud; exit Bernays. All meaning atop a Golden Bough.

Sitting in your flatmate’s room the acid kicks in and suddenly no one is themselves, every line that leaves their mouths traceable to a media product, the perfect communion of pluralism arriving as the terror of integral capitalist banality. To speak is to add to the mockery; to say nothing is to let the mockery continue.

Forget it all by watching Youtube videos at 0.25x speed. Displace the terror of your own situation through the consumptive behaviour that had constituted it in the first place. Watch in gleeful delight as the eyes of whatever presenter happens to be on the screen at the moment dart between this or that object of desire, ever unsure of where to settle amongst an infinite number of existential refrains, none of which deliver from the anxiety of the prior.

Holding a caramel slice in the departmental tea room, your lecturer waits for you to respond, but all you manage is a cough.

ah
slipped.

Trauma is a death you cannot die.

i don’t know what i want but i don’t want this
naked and strewn on your porsche
teens make do with driving off cliffs
and i think they’re better for it

it takes character to lose your mind
well i’ve been trying so ******* hard
because weakness is better than strength
if this is your perfect function

and i don’t want to be like you
and i don’t want to be like you
all blanket and empty beneath
like a smile you learn to identify with

give me my ******* pay check
i’ll crash beneath your house
and burn like wildfire

less than
the upsurge of bitter bile

yesterday’s failure
rides his chariot
like blank abyss

because what is money for if not love?
and what is money for if not emotional connection?

and every day spurns a tilt
of forgetting why
we’re together at all

“hey dad i think you treat mom like ****”
“what are you talking about remember that time she left you at the mall”
“i don’t see what that has to do with your own personal conduct”
“ask her about it sometime”

why would i ever want to be
spilt tea across the cloth
on a main street in
mise en abyme
south d

“it’s idiots like your mother who are running the world into the ground”
my mother is a stay at home wife.

blind bliss
the empty contour of yesterday
turns on itself

jets to oblivion
paper streams celebrate
the century’s end

thus piled
at the foot of the terminal
a mound of teeth

and convalescence in search of illness.

the fog rolls in
a putrid headless thing
trailing its jaw on string

where is the edge of the forest?
mother’s grave

His arm circling round her waist. Maybe . . .

A blare. Sweat of traffic. Muggy afternoon. The sun bounces off every surface, paints the surroundings white. I stand at the corner of the street, feel the pavement seep through my soles. Sesame drifts from the marketplace; cheap soba, oil and soy.

A cat stretches on the neighbour’s roof, white fur wafting.

Muffled speech. Hiss, hiss. A bus.

I kneel and pick up an empty bottle. Face merges into its sides.

“Ain.”

Someone, somewhere calls my name.

“Ain.”

Up there.

The school is closed for the summer. Walking towards it gives me a sense of unease. Obligation turned quiet tension. The summer won’t last forever.

Drip.

I’ve been holding the bottle upside down. Liquid sinks into the dirt. Almost looks like skin, all dry and creased.

It’s a precipice, right? The separation between the street and the institute. Like stepping over a grave. There’s a ******* bin, but I feel strange.

The reception is all glass. Sunstruck and bleeding at the edges—I catch a glimpse of something—is it me?

Lenin catches another raven in his hands. It sits still, head cocked calmly to the side. He lets it go, but it simply falls onto the ground, rights itself, then walks off.

He looks disappointed.

“It’s the same everywhere,” he says with his back turned. “Try it.”

I find a different one, cradle it against my chest. The bird looks vaguely annoyed. Following Lenin, I drop the bird. It falls and sinks into the ground about three inches.

Caw.

“Ain! How’d you do that? That’s wicked!”

Lenin tilts his head and goggles at the bird for a few seconds before running off to find another.

It’s really hot. I throw some sesame seeds at the bird, but it just glares at me. Sorry.

The bottle is still gripped in my hand. Why did I pick this up?

Lenin is running on the side of the school. His small feet tap out a regular pattern, like rain on a quiet night.

I really miss this.

I push the bottle into the dirt. Lenin leaps off the school. A running kick sends the bottle flying into the reception. Glass shatters and the summer unfurls into a kaleidoscope of light.

The raven rises out of the ground.

The reception reforms itself.

Lenin is running on the side of the school. His small feet tap on each window, sending small ripples of energy through them, distorting the reflection of the surrounding buildings and streets.

A cat stretches itself on the reception roof.

I kneel and pick up an empty bottle.

“Ain!”

Lenin catches a raven in mid-flight. Sees himself reflected in a window. Gravity pulls him down.

I’m sitting in the corner, waiting for school to finish. Waiting for my life to pass itself by. It’s the last day of school and everyone is leaving. I don’t know what I’m doing with my life. I don’t know where I’m going. I feel sick, weak and pathetic. I look out the window and see my own face, Lenin falling through the air, sinking into the ground, a raven flying out of his outstretched hand.

There is a train and I am waiting. It is Autumn and the cherry blossoms will be bare for another half year, maybe more. There are golden leaves dancing through the station, trampled under the soles of rushed commuters and children.

Someone laughs with their friends, eating beef udon, yolk running into the broth, flesh filling his cavity. A mouth chews, but laughter still comes. I feel disgusted. I eat my tofu bento, but it only worsens.

Father visits, but I have no words for him. We sit awkwardly and he mentions work, but doesn’t elaborate. I pretend I’m busy and he eventually leaves.

where am i going where am i going where am i going where am i going where am i going where am i going where am i going where am i going where am i

“Ain!”

Lenin is kneeling over me. There are tears in my eyes and the sun hurts to look at. I try to brush them away but rub dirt in instead. Sleeves run softly across my cheeks. Lenin is hugging me from behind.

“It’s okay, Ain. It’s just play,” he says, nuzzling the back of my head. I don’t understand and cry harder.

The ravens have left the school.

A bottle lies on the roof.

A cat rolls in the dirt.

“Life is just a bad dream,” Lenin mumbles into my hair. “You’ve been waking every night, but it hasn’t helped.”

The sun is setting. Red strokes rise out of the ether and stain the sky. Streetlights turn and the quiet hum of night settles over the dying sounds of day.

“Isn’t this just so boring?”

A bus drives by, vibrating the ground beneath me. A mother and child walk past singing an old nursery rhyme.

“Ain?”

I sink into my lap and shut out the world.

“You don’t have to open your eyes. Not now, not ever.”

But I never closed them.

Hugs the ground. Flies through the evening. Do I eat a worm? Is that what I do?

I grip the pink flesh. The thing squirms, digging itself deeper into me.

A human female is laughing, or maybe crying. It’s hard to tell the difference.

Do they touch when they’re confused?

A small male soars down the side of a building. Why is he kicking his own head? The female splinters, but doesn’t shatter.

I’ve heard bones that don’t break cleanly are the worst to mend.

I reach out, hand brushing the feathers of a bird.

My head is an anchor, drags along the ground, grinds pavement to dust.

It’s so hot. Tar tickles my nostrils.

I’m alone, standing in front of a camera with all my classmates.

Lenin’s head is buried in the dirt behind me.

I raise my hand against the piercing sun, but really it’s an excuse to hide myself.

A raven hops onto the camera, unaware of the ceremony taking place. It shatters the façade, reduces the action to an absurdity, but no one notices. No one cares.

I pick at a rice ball. It’s cold, bland and under-filled. I stare at the shops around me and feel a deepening, crushing alienation. Perhaps, I have always felt this way, and it has taken me two decades to come to terms with it.

“There was a storm once,” Lenin mutters into the dirt, “the worst storm of the century.”

I remember. He held my hand all through it.

“But it wasn’t a storm, Ain.” Lenin finally turns to look at me. Meets my eyes through the dust and the tears and the sun. “It was existence trying to wake up.”

He didn’t let it.

“If it ever does, we will all die.”

It’s dark now. Lenin’s eyes glow the colour of warm honey. The last day of Summer rides away.

“Mum’ll be worried,” Lenin says, abruptly, “We should head home, Ain.”

We walk through the muted streets. This is my favourite time, when everyone is tucked into their homes and I can exist without others’ expectations projected onto my existence. I love the soft blue noise that fuzzes my vision. I love how ordinary objects are turned mysterious; the indistinct edges, the wistful gloom.

Lenin skips beside me, turning his head often to glance at the small pieces of art people leave behind through the process of living. A bicycle missing its rubber grips. A television set atop a toy wagon. A plushie stuffed between the ‘A’ and ‘I’ of a neon sign.

I buy two tea drinks and hand one to Lenin. We sit on the roof of an empty bus stop and stare into the harbour. Home feels further away than ever. The lights beneath the water reach the surface beautifully. They ripple and bleed, like phosphorescent dyes twining towards the sky. I sink beneath myself.

“Ain, don’t!”

I throw the empty bottle into the reception. I see my face shatter into infinity. I hear Lenin break into laughter. The cat leaps up. The ravens bury their wings. The worm writhes until it splits in two.

Blood runs down the side of my mouth. Twenty six dead in a hotel, bones melted like steel.

There is a gap I cannot fill because it is the platonic ideal of absence. An oak, weighed down so strongly by dreams that its branches have sunk deeper into the soil than its roots.

Sheets on the floor. I sink through the earth, head so heavy it compresses into a void and ***** the universe into itself; mangling, stretching, tearing.

My flesh writhes but there is no end. A pulsating womb. Flowers.

Everything is so bright.

I close my eyes.

Where am I?

Who am I?

A part of me is disappearing. I’m scared. I’m—

I can hear Lenin. He is screaming, but he sounds so very far away.

Oh. Oh.

I have been unfurling for a long time, haven’t I?

Guess she finally fled her body. Abandoned that vessel in the lacuna between. The tea! The tea must have reminded her. I must remember to pick up some mints. She’ll either laugh or breakdown into tears.

Whoops, I’m repeating myself.

It sure feels good to stretch my limbs again. Feels like it’s been an age.

Oh, a child boy is beside me. I better deposit him back home before I start.

Ain! Ain! Ain! Is this all this stupid child can say?

Everyone is moving so fast. Ugh. It’s lethargic. It’s absolutely stupid. What, do they think they’ll sink into the earth if they stop?

Ain! Ain! Ain! Oh fine, whatever, have her for a bit longer.

“Ain!”

Lenin? He’s pulling at my sleeves. Tears break, stream down his cheeks. It’s dark, so dark.

“I don’t want you to leave, Ain. Not like last time.”

It—it feels like I’m submerged. The harbour lights have dimmed. Soon dawn will come and wipe their existence from the world. It will be as if they never existed at all.

“Please Ain.”

I hug Lenin. He keeps repeating ‘please’ over and over. I have an inexplicable feeling that I’m leaving for a long time. That I won’t see Lenin again, and that I have to—

Have you stolen my body?

Yup!

Why?

Because you were scared and lonely and living a pointless existence.

I—

Don’t worry, there are a lot like you!

Will—will I ever see Lenin again?

Hmm, probably not. To be honest, I’m not really sure how all this works myself.

Please. Please don’t do this. I—

Ughhhhhh. Look kid, I’ve got places to be. Sayonara.

The market. The raven. The market.

A child petting a cat. A woman drinking a cola. Filling and filling and—

Postman runs past, knocks her arm. Bottle falls to the ground. Splash, crack.

Howling dog. It’s black, you know.

Lenin running on the rooftops. Ain asleep with her window open. He leaps in and wakes her with a grin.

“Ain! Ain! Ain!”

She throw a pillow at him angrily and rolls back into the bed, wrapping herself up like a caterpillar.

A lawman runs over to help the fallen woman. Hands her a mint.

Oh, isn’t it beautiful?

Don’t they all live beautiful lives now?

*Isn’t this what you wanted?

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?

Today I saw the edges of my self
fraying in the wind.
I saw leaves
split their veins against autumn fire.
I saw the departed
gather at convenience stores
and speak their regrets into the pavement.
I tried to join in
but couldn’t voice a thing.

Sometimes we bleed
disarticulate through our flesh
**** without purpose.

I am sempiternal today
but not tomorrow.

Can’t catch this hue of you
I’m a scathing black in the midnight blues
An overcast sky, blanketing blister-paced eyes
Hangs right above my neck

I’ve brewed restless ache
It settles deep in the space
Between my lusts and restraints
Scared to death either way

I’ve let the blood in my skin
Sink into bones and teeth
Crimson flush under limbs
Stiffer than death

I’m all I lack

I have learnt that silence kills
Just as easily as time

out of arms
out of lungs
out of head
it’s an effort to be dragged
catch beneath the lock
where i tore my lid three years ago
each descent returning
spit from the cavernous body of marx

an empire of glass
the wretched of centre city
mop the open wound of 24/7 affairs
*** and grease stained upholstery
apologising for everyone else's mess

it’s blasé-faire
it’s pro-choice
corporate megaphone through the airwaves
distilled into the perfect idiot subject
enjoy life
enjoy life
enjoy life
enjoy life
enjoy life :)

sometimes a pit
gazing inchoate
smiling past it all

inès passes the mirror
a smouldering black shape

today i looked at no one

tomorrow i’ll arrive.

Dead bee
The moss grows round it
Water spray
Purify it
Pest is relative
Coming from where?
The cat stretches
Common sense
Rock bottom
Delve deeper, come on
There’s no soul here
Empty it out
Start again
Transcend yourself
Transcend transcendence
So yeah, there was a gardener
Wielding a pressure blaster
Which ripped the moss from its roots
The sun peaked
And the moss turned dust
Because the aesthetics of the pavement
Supersede existence
Who the **** cares?
Dead bee on the pavement
Blast it into the bushes
It depresses the school children
A hedgehog rots in the gutter
Flies lay eggs in its flesh
And create a home
Isn’t that beautiful?
What the **** did the moss get?
“China would have done this in a day”
My father says
Watching road workers rip apart asphalt
“It’s quite nice, though”
Looking into the concrete river
As mayflies hatch deformed
Due to the heat from the channel
Half the students stare at their toes
Wishing they were cuter
Stronger
Smarter
Because narcissism has become the new desire
Things are rotting everywhere
But we pretend they’re normal
**** man, rock bottom
The children pick up the bees
And stick them in their mouths
Until the moss completely coats their hearts

We march
Withering white
All seas to dust

The ground caves in
The earth grows hollow

Ribs through the skin
Teeth through the lips
Breath catching black

We march
In a ceaseless beat
To the rhythm of dead machines
Over cracked roads
And empty homes

You were always rotting
I never noticed
They remind me of you
Skin wrapped around ankle bones
Wearing through their soles
It’s different here
Guess some just rot faster
I peeled back the covers and found only the lacuna
The blue orange fuzz
Delineating the shadow from the concrete
You grew apart and dissipated
Smoke settling into cloth
The back of my sleeve
How come?
How come?
Everyone is always leaving
Warping through their bodies
Did you ever finish your story?
Soft knuckles rapping on your door
Knobbly knees
I know it’s selfish
Perpetuating the fabric of your existence
Like a categorical imperative
A crumpled head filled with spirits
Is carried to the tip
It happens every Monday morning
Hollow men run the streets
But they leave the rot
They always leave the rot

maybe a black mouth
opening and closing
usually you can see the gums
the teeth
lips stretching over them
there’s nothing
a gaping entrance to the void
there are two stale muffins on the table
one soaking in milk
it’s been two hours now
the room at the top of the stairs
is growing louder and louder
a piercing bellow
drowning out all thoughts
but it doesn’t
i want to scream
throw myself into it until my entire being is lost
between the teeth
the white black lacuna
corn splitting from the cob
a rotting banana
an empty carton of milk
my god, could life be any more boring?
i caught a cold
sneezed at the floor
achoo achoo
get well soon cards at my funeral
loraclear on my casket
dirt over
grow me like a mushroom
expanding into the root systems
puffing into a bulbous fruit
pick me and slice me
but i trust only supermarket goods
picked by mechanised beings
******* on an industrial conveyor belt
modernity made physical
look into the slaughterpens while you eat your steak
barter your children for another shot of coffee
hah hah hah, doesn’t affect me
strutting your cash like an empty slot machine
rigged to emote only with your colleagues
while the television blares another thousand deaths
**** this ****** world
consume me until there’s nothing left
everyone’s a nihilist
someone brought back a dozen breadloaves from the women’s refuge
eat them before they go off
turning our bodies
pouring soap down the sink
all the fishes scales rot away
they slowly sink into the depths
and line the seabed with teeth and ribs

and where do you live?
body of water and smoke
to ride the empty street
cardboard and tongue and plastic and puke
distant dying light.

it’s like
there’s nobody here
a veritable ghost town
where pavement walks itself
and measured stares meet glances
in amorous disgust.

here’s the coffee
here’s the break
here’s the *******
here’s the waterfront
hurried pace through the centre of
the empty body of god.

why don’t they all just die?

Cracks in the sky
They tell me not to look
My best friend bled from her knees when she left home
We went back to my apartment
And filled it with static
The neighbours broke like china
Scattering on their doormat
I think the world is an egg and I was born to outgrow it
I ripped my flesh on the tarmac
Skating down the subway
Mother hadn’t cried in years
But now its pouring
I part my hands and let my breath out
Again and again and again
It’s going to crack soon
The world will wake from a bad dream
And forget we ever existed
Step in front of a train
Take off your shirt
Maybe we’re all just sick
Filling our aches with distractions
Turned on like televisions
Netflicks, endless repetition
We go on like that
Running our sleeves along lighters
The sun opened its mouth today
Nobody cared
Too stressed over the price of cigarettes
I can’t talk
I buried my head long ago
In the Mariana Trench of Tokyo
Where we buried grandpa because we ran out of funds
And had to live off stale bread from the school cafeteria
We should have stopped
Just given up and collapsed
Filled the streets with ambrosia
Cracked our own heads awake

its a long waste of time
here’s the fire
here’s the two hour film
here’s the empty tract you spill your money in
yesterday returns
the same stupid wake and a body like mindless *******
enjoy your repetition
or live in misery
why enjoy when you can die
nobody answers
nobody says a ******* thing but
enjoy your repetition
enjoy your repetition
like an idiot caucus in automation
enjoy
enjoy
enjoy.

a mass shooting happened four hours from town
on the night of the wake
a vaporwave gig opened to an audience of fashion designers and other rich art *****
down the road
club music blared a bloated corpse to drunk faces
and in the centre
wilted flowers for the victims.

broken pieces of a holiday clock
displaced by the phantom visages of
our own vanishing hands.

Conscious creature
You opened your eyes
And saw into infinity
Beyond a vast divide

You walked with agitation
Under a circadian sphere
But in slumber lapped upon
A recursive lie turned fear

So you gnawed and you nibbled
You scratched and you split
Without a pause in your malice
Until reality thinned

Until the atmosphere bled
All life, light, and breath
And you were left with closed eyes
And vast emptiness

Words are meaningless
My teeth will crack from the grit
These sentences are just a puzzle I can’t seem to fix

Spoken like a true fake
My smiles will ache, my skin will quiver
If I keep this up any longer than
Necessary

My tongue will begin, and never quite deliver
My mind will unravel, before it comes together
Never quite peaking, never quite reaching
Intent
I’m an unintentional social disaster

There is a gap. A horrible place. A horrible horrible horrible place; filling, it sobs concrete, water, waste, air. I hear the earth gallop, mother's fire, a siren space stretched beneath my heart, but there is nothing. ******* **** me. Wrap me in china. I can't bear this world. I *******

dawn fire
i wore myself
a new reflection
traced and tethered
to the elsewhere of your
smile.

it’s hard
to hear you
brushing against
sleeves so thin

empty bites
ringing through
the silence
of wasting hips

i’m too scared
if i reach out
your frame will
dissipate

flee through skin
translucent
taking too much
...space

I’ve felt happiness sink
In this tremor flesh
Sometimes I don’t think it’ll ever rise back up again

Pale figures stretch
Themselves apart at the wrist
Living transient
Beautiful deaths

I know the shift and the slide of my aches
More intimately than love
Or lust

I think when lovers collide
Bloom, then die
They depart redefined

Lily marked the gravestone. A white streak across grey cobble, the crumbling visage of a turning sky reflected in the puddle beside her. New dusk brimmed grey gold, a heady dust galloped with the rising easterly winds, a white streak across grey skies. Lily marked the edge of her notebook, nine-past-ten, the end of second period, a break in consciousness, then a tang of blood from her swollen gums. Lenin rose above the rooftops, a hand brushed her forehead as the paramedics left, a black bag.

The answer was heat death, compartmentalised energy, like fireworks falling into darkness. Burning rice, spilt coffee, Ain’s smile. Nights on counter, pad paper, day old rain. Lily fell into a nightmare, smooth black, a single light dissipating as the universe died. She spat blood, missed the bus and collapsed on the walk to school.

It was the anniversary. Setting sun, plumes of white, the exit sigh of a wasted day. Lily woke hours later. She returned to an empty home, suffocated in a dream and rose four hours too early for school. Climbing the roof, she watched the sun rise, grey and formless.

There was ash in the hallway to class, the remnants of the incense from yesterday’s memorial, pencil shavings from the forest, fingers blurring out of definition like the trees around her, the soft empty breath of loose soil. Ain came to the store on a night like this, wind gathered silent around her frame. They found themselves atop a bus shelter, lights rising from a sea of nothingness.

Eight-forty-five, the chalk felt heavy in Lily’s hand, white dash across infinity, city blackout. Everyone went to see the dam, cracked pavement, Ain dripping blood, Lily wreathed in ravens. Below the river, forest spirits wove among power lines, bird bones cracked beneath the soles of children, motes rose. Lily lost sight of Ain, the dam broke and children cheered.

Time passed. Ceaseless time.

Lily drifted through petroleum smoke, dashi, the burning husks of gods. She watched the river ryū sweep through her street, turbid with the broken heads of graves, mad with phantoms. She visited memories yet to form, nurseries of dust, cosmic return of the infinite perceiving itself. She cried, remembering everything, the smell Ain’s wet hair, ricochet of a glass bottle, Lenin’s dirt-smeared skin, the birth and death of the universe; mother unable to afford pad paper, sakura bursting the sky pink, couples riding past on too expensive bikes, father drunk on sake. Ribbons of light danced around Lily, a playful susurration, feeding her more and more memories.

Isn’t it beautiful? Existence burning through itself? A departure with no ending, no beginning, no becoming? Haven’t you lived a full life? Won’t you live it again?

Lily screamed. Split dam flooded the empty grave. The same smell of soy, dust and sweat every day. Lack birthed in the space between, like teeth, lacuna bleeding. Nightmares and old memories pouring out like a knife. Ryū stiffened, red streak across the sky, tail burying into the earth. Rice steam filled the air, a passing train carried Ain and Lily into the city, crowds of smoke, her crescent eyes reflected in a storefront, the eyes her mother loved. April awakening of the forest gods, cool spring rustled the hair around her neck, a humid breath descended from the mountain to the lake. Warm rain fell in sheets, city smudged out of focus, bokeh lights departing, Ain’s wet skin—

The city retracted; a whimper escaped her mouth; her fingers passed through power lines, wood smoke, pavement; seasons collapsed, superimposed like holograms, snow and humus; gyoza steamed, air sirens blared beneath the shadow of foreign planes; kodama rose as ancient trees reclaimed the land; volcanic blasts shook the ocean, AI sped to singularity; reality vanished like light falling off a mirror and Lily ceased to feel.

Space is illusory.

Lily.

It travels ceaselessly through itself.

Lily, stop.

And we don’t exist.

Lily grinned, rising from the reeds, a cattail in each hand. She sped towards a screaming Ain, who tripped on a willow root, and began bopping relentlessly.

“Lily!” Ain cried, squirming on the ground. “Lily, stop!”

Lily grinned, rising from the reeds, a cattail in each hand. She sped towards a screaming Ain, who tripped on a willow root, and began bopping relentlessly.

“Lily!” Ain cried, squirming on the ground. “Lily, stop!”

Lily grinned, rising from the reeds, a cattail in each hand. She sped towards a screaming Ain, who tripped on a willow root, and began bopping relentlessly.

“Lily!” Ain cried, grabbing Lily’s wrists. “Haven’t we done this enough?”

Walk without charring your soul
On approaching apparitions
Their chilling resonance
Will shake the present existence

the path to love is elsewhere
surface folds create the illusion of depth
in a fully mutable system

this is you
roving and roiling
on your open palm

an offer of lack
in lieu of fulfilment

Two tones. Breaking. White light from the bone.
I died a long time ago. Split. Masks moulded from real faces.
Nobody thought to cut breathing holes. Some disfigured in the process, choked and spat out their own mouths.
Wish I’d done the same.

Wither your wings go
Yet, forth you walk
To parting lips, blackened
Breath
Sheathing nervous impulse

Behind roiling haze
You were immortal, once
Gazing without seeing
A glass heart
Full of hope

Life flushed your veins gold
Sunk its teeth
Into warm pulse
Carried two sets
Of two strands
To a place, called home

But fear
Etched its make
Into the hollow of your soul
Creasing aspirations
Careless in their birth
And growth

Lying, in a lull
You flicker through
Replays
Fingers lacing
Soft wake,
Soft skin,
Immeasurable

What’s the difference between unwanted and unneeded?
You’re unnecessary, verging on disappointment, disgrace
Breaking faith and bond, hoarding intent and hopes false
Unnecessary child

Give me pure existence
And watch me lose my mind
Without meaning
I’m fingerless and blind
Give me pure existence
And watch me lose my heart
Without love
I’m a stringless puppet

I’m stray desire
Mottled words and voice
Barren constitution trapped in
White ******* noise

All edge and divides
Frightening truths, severed lies
You don’t walk through a crowd
For fear of taking their lives

Serpent tongue, serpent teeth
Rattles between lips, sealed
Spoke of many, far too many
Nonconformities

Cyclic reveries
The start and end don’t
Repeat
Just an infinite line
Parallel in
Retreat

Cyclic history
Stalled and stuttered to
Death
Just to rise once again
All mistakes and
Regrets

Mercy hollows herself out
To float above the sky itself

It’s hard to see you here
In a summer heat I no longer remember

Maybe I smiled once
And you smiled back.