Empty glasses sit like soldiers at attention.
8 wide, 10 thick;
ranks for drunks.

The business of boredom
beats the barmaids and patrons
into service,
or subservience.

We are watched over
by flickering eyes
which could
stop
staring
at any moment.

Loneliness is a half-pint.

I'm glad my glass is full.

I'm glad the barmaid wears checks on her stockings.

I'm glad the barmaid reads.

I'm glad the economy is ******,
so economists have something to make them feel interesting.

I'm glad the lesbians found feminism;
instead of Jesus.

I'm glad for the sad eyed, gray haired drunks
that live off Marlboro Red's and dream-fumes.

I'm glad the roof is stained with memories:
postcards
sketches
photographs
an old box of pills.

And I love you because you're a *******.

Write me your vows on paperflesh
Pen me your desires in lovers blood
Slip it in an envelope, seal it with a kiss
And I shall trace it, with the same pen
dripping still with lover's blood.

Curve your spine over my desk
And spread yourself open as a book
Desire lines penned upon your chest
Heartstrings bared, across open pages
covered with lover's blood.

Bookmark the chapter of desire
Close the cover in the dark
And retrieve my pen, an empty needle
from ****** page fold.
No longer dripping with lover's blood.

The cover band plays a tirade
of songs we all heard before.

They switch to originals;
which all sound the same.

Originality is as rare as a dollar in my pocket
and just as likely to be spent in tastelessness.

She wore her dinner loose - more of a greasy pub lunch.
******* harder than diamonds in the open winter heat.

Not hungry anymore.

I see the recollection
of a thousand and one memories
in the faces of strangers.

It is written
in the burnt out shellac
that write's the gospel
called ideal.

Upon all the waifs
that wail
on wainscotted walls
is visible a weary shade -
A woe begotten word.
That same ink
that wrote the scar
on a thousand and one faces.

It shone to eyes
of the right size
calibrated to the light
by a snowflake.

And once seen
O misbegotten dream!
Hours of amphetamine rooftops
under golden stars.
Mornings alight
with the free realm of jazz
which floats on hazy gaze
that constitute fields
of a thousand and one degrees.

Now not seen.

And is it carved
in the sweaty freedom
of a drunk?
Constellating crystal beads
pour to eyes
gray and sunk
with the wisdom of a prince.
With the stench of a skunk.

Brace yourself
for the wind does come
that marries wind
of heart and mind.

And behind it all
you see it now;
in the thousand and one faces
of the free
the bold
the meek
the drunk
the lost.

The recollection
of a thousand and one memories.

He burnt away my eyes,
he said it would make it much easier,
to beg, so I traded it for fear.

I was a little above five, wandering,
on streets a motley of black,
may be not, but my eyes couldn't distinguish the lack.

People would throw coins into my glass,
burnt eyes led to anticipated pitying,
towards the miniaturised cauldron of the dire I lived in.

I went to my master’s garage during my perceived evenings,
my hands felt the swerves of cars and formed shapes in my mind,
and before I departed, I would leave my glass behind.

Blitzed, he would hit me at times I didn’t collect enough,
I wouldn’t run away, the known seemed less horryifying,
than to trip against invisible, in the trying.

I survived each day, stayed thankful for life,
unfair as it may seem, my other senses were in poise,
and I learnt to see through reflections of noise.

He took away my eyes, my dreams stayed invincible,
so I left into a world, incognito,
my master waited for me that night, never to discover though.

I couldn’t steal, so I continued to beg,
I hitchhiked to stores, for a loaf of bread,
but God resolved to bless me with a stranger, instead.

He put me to work, for food and shelter,
little did I know my pay was in kind,
the kind was love, against everything left behind.

Sometimes he read to me, stories with happy endings,
he bid me goodnight before he would move on,
a word I recently learnt, to not be an oxymoron.

He taught me to read in braille,
being blind is no excuse he adjudged to me,
he couldn’t return my sight, so a vision he gave me.

Every night I cried myself to sleep,
for the choking in my throat helped me to believe,
believe in my angel disguised, so I cried myself to sleep.

He gave me fortitude against the vice,
he gave me words, and the power it imbibed,
and he taught me to live, when I just survived.

Her passions wrote lyrics upon the parchment of her lips,
Under the gaze of the scarlet night.

I could not hold her there and we felt alone; though we were together.
Under the gaze of the scarlet night.

The rose is red and the glaze is soft upon the open eye.
The poet in the attic - surrounded himself with ghosts and dust coated lies-
spins perfumed words in the cold scarlet night. He comes to realise
the mystery of fate in the hour of late advance as he comes to recreate
the masterpiece of failure; oh too late.

A portrait was painted in blood and wine
by the hand of a sullen amateur
Then burnt in the fire of music
In the deep scarlet night.

Her passions wrote her confessions in the ink of truth
Upon the eyelids of beauty, as the cars speed past
to unseen glory, waited upon by cherubs in the
bright sun orange light.

Will you give in to the grazing dawn?
Will you hold me in angel glance at the end of this deep scarlet night?

In the summer
we will walk
the narrow
antique
streets.

The city sound
with midnight jazz
stolen and soft,
like the wind.
Cool and soft
as the wind,
wrapped its arms around us
the way I wrapped mine
around you.

In the summer
down the narrow
antique
streets.

There's something tragic about Brisbane; the city speaks of an older more Romantic time, though the people speak of a newer, modern; more disposable age. It seemingly looks at you with a lost lovers eyes.

Though the city still retains some of its antique glamour; take a stroll down any street in the center and around you will be found the remnants of that age.
Victorian Red-bricks dot the city like proud sentinels, keeping watch over the ever expanding invasion of its contemporary neighbours.
What tales would these monolithic madmen tell is if only we had the ears to listen, who's feet did once trample up the now year-stained wooden stairs, who lived and died and loved and uttered curses and birthed within those walls...and what tales would they have to tell if we only listened?

Ah, gentle reader, you see how your mind wanders at the mention of these thoughts?
The City certainly has its landmarks: the Clock tower of Town Hall, over looking the new modern space of "The Deck" in King George Square, the facade of Grand central station still retaining its grandeur and majesty; now turned into theme bars and a nightclub strip. The old houses littering West End and the strip of red bricks running like a sepia toned river up Elizabeth Street. And of course the dotted remnants of Old City Life being ever encroached upon in the center of the City's smoke filled heart.

The most curious of these is the impression wrought in plaster and cement, white over red, of a window in the city center, with a set of stairs leading up to a place that no longer exists; 50 feet in the air.
Whenever I gaze up at that window, that reminder of the past, I cannot help but wondre who would be staring down at us, on this date in the last century.

"Suffer them not" I wish to say, "for these people are of a different age, with different Gods and values than you."

Suffer them not, ignore their slings, suffer them not.

I love Brisbane.

It's mish-mash of centuries, its people, the tales of its unwritten past, it seems as if the city exudes both a sense of joy and one of unutterable melancholy.

I'm on the train, homebound now to my modern house in the ultra-modern Gold Coast. This is quite depressing. The freedom, the movement, the chance, the ebb and flow of the people soaked tide of the city is leaving fast behind me as this electric trap with seats barrels under facades and tunnels, with enormous neon snakes glittering down from the peaks of modern and ancient towers and we find them reflected in the winding river like innumerable fireflies...dying and twisting and being reborn in the soft moonlight.

South Brisbane Station.
An immortal Victorian construct, still surviving to this day. The same architecture, the same route...different paint though. This Industrial Relic is overlooked by the shining modern whirlpool of THE EYE, a gigantic Ferris wheel giving you the chance to see the city by air, to one side; and a multicoloured, four story glowing monument to the hairdresser franchise god Stefan on the other...which I dub "Stefan's Pintle".

It's garish as hell.

Passing through the night the train goes ever on, powered incessantly by the ticket payers seemingly endless dollar supply.

There's a strange transition from City to Coast, the outerlying towns left in the dust and wake of one and unsure whether they belong to the other. Places such as Kuraby, Banoon, Runcorn, Altandi, Logan and Eden's Landing.

Yet the train ponders on into the night, as it's denizens relinquish themselves to its discretion and desires.
Yes; the train ponders on into the night...

We slowly pass through Woodridge, one of those last bastions of civilisation, neither here nor there. A glittering town trying desperately to be a city. They have a McDonalds. Yay. These places always scare me, and confuse me.
What are they like? Their people? I guess I'll never know, i've never stayed in one long enough to realize.

Welcome to Loganlea, this is a strange place...the funniest thing about it is the fact that it IS a hole. Yet the sign into it shows a shining beach with palm trees and boldly proclaims "WELCOME TO LOGANLEA".
As you draw closer you realize it's pock marked with bullet holes and rust stains.

A train whizzes past, and we find ourselves reflected in its windows, our reality traveling one way; our ghosts another.
Into the long, pale night, coloured by the stars of a thousand distant streetlights. Like a million tiny man made suns; created to fend of the darkness and keep our fears at bay. We truely live in the age of endless day.

The melancholy of the city is far behind now, it's streets, its smells, its people all gone. As we are lost in the brightness of the endless day and the night grows ever long, touching those distant, far between places with its natural, velvet splendour, running its hand down the cheek of time. For there will always be a night, even when we create days, and the city will always be melancholy, and the coast will always be a glittering sequin on the dress of a cheap, soulless *****.

I love Brisbane.

Cross me now roombound
over the threshold.
Cross me now hellbound
over the bed.
Burn me now everbound
to your silken touch.

Bind me to the sensation
of skin upon skin.
Hang me from the rafters
of desire within lust.
Tie me to the taste
of mouth upon mouth.

As we flow as tides do
that endless ebbing and rolling;
With moon-tormented need
the waves make love to the moon
and the moon ***** back.

Hold me now with the grip
of your sinewy arms.
Taste me now with the whiplash
from tongue to flesh.
Hurt me now with the kiss
of your desire and mine.