Tired
Brain spits words in fits and starts
The internal running commentary misfiring badly
Ideas stuck in bottlenecks
Traffic backed up and down the on-ramps
Leading off the congested thoughtways
Tired
Stormwater overflow pours out of blocked drains
Sidling up the gutters of fallen leaves
And other assorted detritus of modern existence
Spewing out over footpaths and under cars
And over the tops of the boots of downtrodden dawn treaders
Tired
Mountain pass impassable under it’s mercurial precipitate mask
Features only glimpsed in snatches
Like looking through a white picket fence while running
Thought trees bunching up around the middle
Warping under the sun and the scrutiny of others
Tired
Collapsing under the weight of the wave function
Subatomic particles currently in a state of nonexistence
Abandoned altogether by the Higgs, thoughts vibrate and dissipate
In extraordinary frequency and noise
Drowned out by the audible hum of the big bang
Tired
As if running a marathon in treacle
Start with a whimper then dribble to a halt
Running barefoot on salt flats
Or over pillows in stilettos
More time spent on face than feet
Tired
Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more
The court jester prances for the Big Queen *****
And her merry King of Fools with his band of merry drunkards
Quickly losing the point of it all
As words start tumbling down in random order
Staccato signal messages like binary or Morse code
Information overload threatens to upend the boatload
Like the military dumping refugees into the harbour
Buckle up armour and wait for the onslaught
Of somnatic visions, twisted psychedelic impressions
Land mine concussions in the fevered dreams of veterans
Who witnessed limb torn from limb
In the name of something nobody remembers
Lose their tempers and start a war on home turf
Jungles petrified into concrete monstrosities that blot out the sun
From the flowers that feed in the cracks of the pavement
Everywhere bereavement and none shall take leave
From the cold, impassive logic of Death
Who comes knocking as you read this
Wired
No chance of sleep now
This is why one shouldn’t write poetry late at night

One step in the soft concrete
and the direction you turn from there
will shape decades.
You may find the very place,
step there again, walk over it;
turn again.
It is the same pavement noticeably
worn by micro erosion, cracked
by the hard ice of twenty winters.
The place is the same,
the space is changed—
shaped as it is now
by twenty years of urban development.
Some buildings provide
familiar shelter,
others drip stormwater on your head
from strange appendages.
Stand there
if you can spare a moment.
Turn again.
No pavement lasts forever;
concrete is liquid
and can take decades to dry.

The hands of time
intertwined with mine
we walk down this street
through puddles of years
in the rain
where minutes fall
onto our heads
soaking our laughter
until it dissolves
and flows down the drain
to the stormwater pond
where the past awaits

but we keep walking
ignoring the ache
to retreat our steps
to what is now a lake

and we journey until we've left behind an ocean

THE GULF WAR DID NOT |
THE GULF WAR DID NOT |
THE GULF WAR DID NOT

WHY WE OPPOSE:
Staid quanta of individuality. Phenom asks if they can go. The Big Mouth replies, babble babble. In a fit of rage, Phenom shouts, I’ve had enough of this. They wrench themselves off the dissection table, fetters flying into the air, but a sudden bout of vertigo sets in. They lie back down. The Big Mouth sticks a thermometer into their mouth and begins heating a can of corn soup.

WHY WE OPPOSE:
Professor Kippotkin takes the stage. She coughs into the mic to quiet the audience, but they are caught in sordid *******. She coughs again, managing only to project a trail of spit onto the shoulder of the nearest security guard. He turns immediately, a perfect ninety-degrees spin, automatically signalling the first in command. He has been trained since seventeen for this one task of momentous disciplinary precision. The first in command bellows, Let her speak! a phrase his colleagues repeat in serial down the chain of command.

The crowd soon catches on. An isolated few nod in consternation. Let her speak! they yell from the pits of their lungs, Let her speak!

Thank you, thank you all, Professor Karlpoppins exclaims, cheeks flush with amazement. More and more of the crowd join in. It is a rousing spectacle, a poignant display of human decency. But something is awry. The professor’s gratitude is swallowed into a cacophonous whole. Let her speak! The carnal grip of the big Other’s command unleashes the crowd’s jouissance. United in the master discourse, the crowd fragments into a bewildered totality. Let her speak! they scream at one another, arms jostling, heads tilting back, necks bared to the beating pulse of the earth-sky. LET HER SPEAK! Their combined blows begin to generate an ominous om.

Pl-please, Professor Kibbiezsche sputters, please, everyone! but the crowd have already forgotten her existence. Reams of toilet paper fly through the air. A crashing plane sounds in the distance. Crops burn.

The security team are forced to intervene. They close in from the sides, wielding riot shields and tear gas. HYPOCRITES! one of the members of the crowd screams. OPPRESSORS OF THE WORD! another follows. Footage of security guards flailing on the ground circulate on social media, tagged with the phrase WHO SPEAKS MY SPEAK?

Within twenty four hours, the whole country is ablaze with media coverage. Political scientists gather with literary scholars to speak the unspeakable into commercially-viable forms. Semiotext(e) sign a deal with Hollywood to write a docudrama about Baudrillard’s turbid *** life. Professor Kubblebutts is flown to Hawaii to give a speech on combine harvesters.

WHY WE OPPOSE:
I desire, therefore I am not. Incantation of the other spills through my greasy fingers as I fumble towards the hot sauce, dollop dollop, chicken salt strewn across the nommy wedges. That’ll be $4.50. They have already handed me the note. Our fingers touched for the briefest second, an anointment of the greasy chicken, the wedge fingers, the have a good night mister gurgle bop.

The taxi man sits outside in the cold, back heated by the friction of the smoothie machine, an indefinite spin, western civilisation’s meltdown. The turgid heat breezes past my neck and I sigh, almost in delight, but mostly out of convention and solidarity with the other workers. I hear the pitter pat of my shiftpanion as she scoops hot chips into the fresh night; it is so fresh, there is still so much night, why are you giving me $5 dollars, there is a bug on your face.

I take a break. The cool taxi man glances over just as I put my hands down my pants to shift my boxers into a more comfortable why is it always like this.

Everyone blames Foucault for destroying agency, but agency only arises in the gap between discourses, which is never a gap in power, but rather, the transversal of one power relation into the discursive matrix of another; what appears original is merely the same performance in the wrong site, that’ll be $24 for your **** and condoms.

The crumbled fish is shrinking with each passing day, little gasping body beneath the heat lamp, waffle waffle, waffle waffle, I am suffocating :)

WHY WE OPPOSE:
|||||FEeling BOLD? FeEL BOldbous ;;;; new Paracetamol Jelly and the KINK-CATS tour out the last week—
Thank you for holding. Please note this conversation may be recorded.
To continue, please state: 'my voice confirms my identity'
||"my voice confirms my identity"
and again, please state: 'my voice confirms my identity'
||"my voice confirms my identity"
Please note that this conversation is being recorded for the purposes of confirming your identity.
||"thanks"

WHY WE OPPOSE:
Slowly, slowly, Juniper sinks into the bed frame, the draughty window, the rotting sink. Hibiscus coveted for its prophetic dreams, pale steam smites nostalgia for a vision of the beyond. Streamlined entry into New World, an endless reshelving of family-value Mi Goreng, stormwater through the hollow vessels that twist beneath Juniper’s soles.

Juniper climbs the Garden steps. Pale trace of past motions set to automate at the slightest incline. The cloying rot beneath the pines pulls her closer and closer to the vital cache, the hidden excess. Another hedgehog climbs the mound; it admits its body, it expands in putrefaction.

Exiting onto the street, Juniper is greeted by a sign that reads “Caution. Night Shooting. Stay Out.”

WHY WE OPPOSE:
Steam creeps the mouth of the lid. Pallid flesh of yesterday’s body, settles the kitchen table, the hand, as motes crumple beneath gravity’s well. Mottled refuse, tied with a plastic ribbon, thrown into the street. Keys digging trenches, grandfather, the hollow behind my knee.

Last summer I waited for the rain in the dry concrete channel of the Leith. I was alone with the kayaks and the road cones and the fish, holes festering, showing their ribs in the walls of our flat, legs spread wearing high school sweaters, unable to breathe through cling wrap.

The summer before that, I watched films of myself bashing in the heads of strangers. Every night the ceiling of my mouth would transfigure into a doorway and I’d force my tongue through its serrated edges, waking with a new face. The cassettes would arrive soon after, testimonies of a brute physicality I could not remember enacting.

Earth grins, death strides. Hydraulic incisors pry the dead awake. At the smallest unit of life: phones, condoms, water bottles.

The kids frolicked in the steam of hot summer streets
Rainbows appeared in the western sky
Rain cooled Main Street , a Tennessee breeze
removed raw heat , rushing downspouts and gutters
before welcome eyes
Tree frogs sang songs of dusk
'Stormwater' fell from oaks in perfect time
Crickets began to chime
Sailing stick boats by moonlight
A cardinal burst into song in the young night
A young dove sang a hopeful tune
Cicadas bid praise for unpredictable June ....

From the eaves with no L
gutters full of votes by those
who wished to vacate, are being
forced via the down pipe into
the stormwater drain where it
teams up with the main sewer
en route to the treatment plant
at which point they become
effluent and finally discharged
into the river, never to be seen
or heard of again because Brexit
was a **** that could not be passed,
therefore a laxative was necessary
by means of a national suppository
administered in 2016 but due to the
backstop, it is only now showing
signs of a run or even a Royal Flush.