Beautiful World

We live in a beautiful world,

it is a great shame that it will soon be gone.

Air conditioning in summer

and four wheel drives for the school run,

seem like a poor trade

for happily ever after, son.

And to think we could had it all,

the lucky ones, what is it called?

28 million to one, to exist at all.

A cosmic aberration when it all begun, way back when.

The smartest guy in the room,

or the apex predator at the top of the food chain?

Self-will in spades, smarts like nothing else, 

imagination that seems limitless, and humour to boot.

And an intelligent mind, now that’s hard to find,

or so we tell ourselves, is that where the delusion began?

What we’d call lesser species, don’t shit in their own nests,

something we lost sight of, in our quest to be the best.

We never could overcome our petty jealousies, and hate.

We never could get over converting our neighbour’s mate.

We never could learn to share everything we have.

We never really understood the concept of unconditional love.

So here we are, we have made it this far, our glorious home in danger

of falling completely apart. And what are we doing, now, I ask?

Well? It is business as usual, can I get my new car in the bigger size?

More coal, more gas, all of this drama over carbon, has to be for someone else.

Tommy Boller

Little Tommy B

had a cock to his knee,

when he took it out tonight

he gave everyone a fright,

then he dropped it and took a pee,

and two small dogs almost drowned.

The smile fell off the face of the clown.

The woman in full conversation, 

stopped and reached for her glasses,

the waiter walking by with a tray, stopped

and contemplated Tommy’s arse as,

the old man with a limp fell to his knees.

The monkey’s ran up the trees.

The cars out on the roads had a smash,

and pothead Billy lost focus and dropped his stash.

A group of refuges saw it and wanted to set sail,

Alan Davies once again bought up the blue whale,

reports from Hubble were they could see it from space,

and Jackie Kennedy left JFK just in case.

Once Tommy was done, he whirled it around and around, until

the frightened group, the two revived dogs, the clown without a smile, the chatty woman and her friend, the waiter with a tray, the old man on his knees, the monkeys in the trees, the arguing drivers in the street, Billy with a spliff in his mouth, the refuges, the astronauts, and Jackie Kennedy in her Chanel suit,

were all wiping pee from their face.

Satan

They make a cute couple, don't you think

Vladimir Putin is Satan,

he bans everything gay, while he is fucking Russia up the arse.

He's given it over to the orthodox church.

Have you seen those shots with him relaxing with his body guard? 

I can't help but say,

Gay gay gay gay gay.

We think she, er, he, perhaps, protesteth too much

A Sick Mind

A sick mind, is a good thing, it will think of interesting things, it will make the world have greater spin, it will make beige look even more beige than it did before, when you compare it with sick thing law. 

A sick mind is never bad, or even sad, but it could indeed be plaid. It is creativity had. It is black, yes it is, funny to its life enhancing knees, serious enough to make you say gee, turning convention on its ears, just for the colour and the cheers, making life more interesting by half, even providing a laugh.

And it makes the conservatives shit their pants, which can only be a good thing, watch them dance, at all the things that they can’t chance, what’s against their sentimental epitaph, looking forward, not looking back, which makes the conservatives quack, quack, quack, quack and quack.

Then we can laugh and laugh and laugh, as progressive thoughts flood the world, making life better for all concerned, new things, interesting things, things of beauty, and things to learn, and the world is free of all that negative churn, and we all move forward, kicking off the faux shackles of conservative concern.

A sick mind makes us laugh, makes us suck in breath and makes us think, gives us beautiful things, writes us stories that makes us glow, paints us pictures that light up the world, and poetry that makes our hearts explode.

Conservative thinking only ever says no.

Unless it is some aspirational idea of wealth 

Never for society’s health

Or some other way of getting ahead, 

bugger you Jack you bought poverty on yourself,

nothing to do with my privileged place in this,

then they say yes.

Fly high, painting pictures in the sky, even if they are only in your mind, tangerine flies, pumpkin coloured spies, with purple thighs, and magenta eyes, that so easily cry, when we have scarlet coloured good byes.

When somebody dies

Sucked up to the sky, so those idiot conservatives would cry,

(that’s call out to the world, and not tears, you understand)

And we all asked why? 

Is it just more conservative lies?

They are the sickiest minds of all?

With their stories so tall?

Telling people how things are,

When they are not like that at all.

But let’s not dally too long at the bullshit wall.

We want to cartwheel away, one and all,

Like umbrellas in a twirl,

As the rain drops stall.

As we pirouette into a plie and start to laugh.

And point,

Poking holes in reality,

So that good intensions seep out,

All over the ground, until we are standing ankle deep in goodness

Causing us to yell love and happiness for all.

It takes a really sick mind to say that we are all equal, one and all,

You would have to agree.

Surely.

Such dangerous talk.

Only a really sick mind can imagine where that might lead.

1DA McG1da

Ida McGida, my lovely old aunt

she liked the girls, she liked their curves

she liked what they had under their skirts

she only ever had lady friends, after her husband died.

I'm sure she loved him, I'm sure she cried,

but after he'd gone only the girls she spied.

That wasn’t talked about of course, it was a different world way back then, but even my mother thought it was true, and that isn’t something she would normally do.

My lovely great aunt, who adored my mum, and who adore me as well. She was married for 25 years, to a man with whom she very much loved. 

She had a gay best friend, and she had a lot of other buddies who were, let’s say, arty types, and I have photos of all of them, looking very much like more than friends.

My mother told me many years later, that maybe my gayness came from her, down the maternal line, and if it did I’d be very please, I couldn’t think of anything I rather it be.

Ida loved Billy, yes she did, all the years that 

they were wed, 25 during which he was devoted,

spoken about by everyone as a really good bloke,

In the end, when the doctor messed up his pills,

and Billy fell fatally ill, reading quietly in the lounge,

Ida called the doctor and, inconsolably, tore him down.

Belinda, the Cuntless

Belinda has no cunt, she stopped eating and it fell out.
Then it chased her down the street, clacking at her heals, with its big yellow teeth. 

Its red, red gums, swollen like the tyres from a cartoon car's wheels, making her teeth look like the saddest picket fence you ever did see, unevenly spread and wobbling dangerously.

She was like a barbie doll down there, the biggest hole of despair,
bones sticking through her skin, places for disease to get in.
A crunch, crunch here and a clack, clack there, between her legs nothing but air. 

Bones a walking barely holding true, and mouth that never stops talking, not for me, not for you. Yap, yap, yap. Yap, yap, yap, debilitation has not reduced her mastication of hot air.

Nobody loved her, it was all despair.

The DJ Blew My Mind Again

The DJ blew my mind, it was sublime, dancing under the flashing lights, floating on the good vibes, with sweat dribbling down my face, and my neck, even down the back of my leg. I'm inside my head, the world has disappeared, floated away when I close my eyes. The beat is fresh, beating in my heart, and my ears, and my chest, beating deep down in the depth of my soul. 

My eyes are closed for the longest time. I'm alone. Even if I can feel the bodies floating around me. It's how I imagine it would be like in space. What a place.

I'm in the zone. you know where you get to at 3am, after all of the chemicals have done their thing, when you body has gone to the groove and almost seems to be working despite yourself. It is belief. It is relief. Better than sex in so many ways. It is floating on the groove with no anticipated stop. Just dof, dof, dof. My feet are moving by themself by now. I can't get enough of it, and I never want to stop. I never want to come down. This is living, right here and now.

Just me... and 100 of my closest friends.

Communing together on the latest tune.

Thank you Stephen, thank you Phil, thank you Guy, thank you sexy Gill, dancing shirtless behind the desk all covered in sweat.

Then another track. I love this song. Big breath.

One tune slides so easily into another, like butter. The beat beats, the vocals soar, "Yeah! Woo! Hoo!" Spin around. Raise my arms to the roof. Doof, doof, doof.

The DJ blew my mind again.

There we all are right to the end, until the last note is played and we all wind down and stop. I feel spaced out. My feet still want to move. I can get the smile from my face, not that I want to, I’m not sure I ever will.

We’re all standing around afterwards, yeah sure, we’re buzzing, all of us above, some of us are still dancing, even if it’s just in our own head.

We all get together for the unofficial postmortem of the party, that’s never really intentional but happens in due course. My own intention is just to find each other, before we all head home. The conversation starts and we start telling stories of the night. Who was the best DJ. Who did the best set. Who danced with who. Who lost their minds and at what time of the night. Who had an adventure in the toilet, with whoever they may have met there.

I stand with Gill and his shirtless in sweat, his olive skin is glistening, his muscles are shiny. He is a solid boy, stocky, muscly, a good look for sure.

We talk a lot all of us. Some might say that our speech is enhanced, ha ha, that’s how we danced. While the sun comes up, and the morning air turns bright and the sun becomes life. I look over a Gill in his old blue jeans, and shirtless attire.

People take stuff, the little plastic bags come out. Everyone drinks water. The water gets passed around. Some of us are smoking furiously, even the ones who never smoke. The cigarette packets get passed around with the water bottle.

“Did you see Harry? What did she come as?”

“Post stroke Bette Davis, by the look of him.”

“Was Christian there?”

“Sure was, he was getting his arse licked in the bogs by all and sundry at the end there.”

“Tim?”

“Yeah, I danced with him for a time.”

“Did anyone see Paul?”

“He was on the hunt for more pills for most of the night.”

“Who saw Jack and Nick?”

“I did,” says Alex. “I’ve got a catch up with them later on.”

“Greedy boy,” says Liam.

“You say it like it’s a bad thing,” says Alex.

“Just jealous,” says Gill.

“I know I am,” says Liam.

“What are you doing, Joe,” I ask.

“Lachlan.” Joe smiles like he’s the cat who got the cream.

Everyone “oo’s” at that news.

I wasn’t sure we were ever going to get the smile off Joe’s face.

Everyone was still kind of dancing, shaking and twitching, even just sitting still. I think everyone thought they were smiling, but really, they all just look kind of strained.

People start to wander off, in due course, one by one. I mean it was all over and we all had to get going.

The large group becomes a small group, we just seem to be standing around for the sake of it, to fucked up to move, perhaps none of us wanted it to end, we never want it to end. Except I’ve got plans, which involved the shirtless DJ to my right.

I’ll look over at Gill, he gives me a look, you know that look, squeeze his eyes together, lift an eyebrow slightly, and I know it’s time to go, I know I want to go. We leave a few minutes later.

“Hey bud, you’re coming to my place,” says Gill?

“Yes,” I say. That’s the only place I want to be, I think.

“Did you bring a car,” he asks?

“No,” I came with Joe.

“Good show,” says Gill.

I ask Gill if he’s right to drive, and of course he says yes. It’s not the same as an alcohol, that’s different, you can’t drive when you’re pissed.

Gills cars in the car park with the rest. He gets behind the wheel I get in the passenger seat of course.

Gill pulls out a small plastic bag and offers bargain offer me some pills. So, we top up before we get going, before Gill starts the car.

We cruise home, well, to Gills‘s place. We’re really peaking again when we get to the front door.

We fall inside the door. We lie there in the entranceway laughing. It’s like we can’t move. It’s because we don’t want to move.

“How are you feeling,” asks Gill?

“Like shit,” I say. “But fabulous shit.

Gill laughs.

“How are you feeling,” I ask?

“Like fabulous shit too.”

“I’m really high,” I say.

“Woosh!” says Gill.

“Fucking woosh,” I say.

“They are great pills,” says Gill. “Fucken great,” he slurs.

“They are blowing my mind,” I say.

Taking a Really Big Dump

Don't you wish, sometimes

when you are sitting on the dish, sometimes

that all that backed up crap

would flow right out of you, just like that,

pull the stopper, let go.

Leaving you feeling free, ho, ho, ho.

Furious

She stepped out of the shop, in her pink dress and her lime green cardigan and her yellow shoes, and stood directly in front of the door like she gave anyone else coming through that door no thought. She dialled a number on her phone, clacking her nail extensions on the screen. She held it to her ear, the palm of her hand gripping the phone, seemingly just by the skin, her claws sticking straight up in the air.

Someone clearly answered. "Oh, I'll ring you later. I'm furious. Can you ring me later… Yes… Furious."

She pushed end on her phone, her fingernail parallel to her phone, just so the pad of her pointer finger made contact with the button.

I wondered how she got anything done with those nail extensions?

She could see it was raining. She reached down into her sky blue bag, sitting on top of her mauve shopping jeep, and got an electric blue umbrella from one of the small compartments with the tips of her fingers.

She undid the strap with the edges of her pointer finger and her thumb. Gave it a shake. She pushed the release button with the pad of her thumb.

The umbrella made a click sound and then a whoosh sound.

She held the umbrella with one hand. She reached into her bag, out of which she pulled a cigarette with the tips of her fingers. She held the cigarette in the corner of her mouth. 

She reached back into her bag and pulled a lighter out with fingers that looked as though they thought they were holding a fine tea cup handle. 

She held the lighter with her fore finger and her thumb, flicking it with the shaft of her thumb. 

When the flame lit, she tilted her head sideways and sucked until her cheeks appeared concave, at which point I noticed her eye lashes were almost as long as her finger nails, also clearly fake. 

She dropped the lighter back in her bag. 

She removed the cigarette from her mouth with the shafts of her pointer and middle fingers. 

She blew the smoke dramatically into the air, her lips puckered like duck bills in a way that I could only think was painful.

She stared at the sky as though she was contemplating how to destroy it.

“They wouldn’t buy my stuff,” she said.

Was she talking to me? I thought. If I looked around, I would be engaging in the conversation we weren’t having, didn’t want to have.

“They didn’t believe me,” she said.

I knew I shouldn’t, but I couldn’t help it, I looked around in her direction.

“They think I nicked the stuff, or something. Nicked the stuff? Seriously.”

She was talking to me. I don’t want to talk to you, I thought.

I could feel my mouth open, almost against my will, I made a satisfactory noise of acknowledgement, sort of an inhale and an ‘ah’ sound all at the same time. “Oh I’m sure…” already more than I wanted to engage with her.

“They said they couldn’t take my stuff without receipts? What do you think that says?”

I didn’t want to say it said anything.

“Who has receipts for things they have had for years?”

“Oh, no,” was all I could manage, all I was willing to manage.

“It was all my dear, late husband’s stuff, may god rest his soul.”

Did my face say I was interested in anything she had to say? I must check it in the mirror to see what it says.

“I just wanted to clear the stuff out and perhaps make a couple of dollars in the process.”

I could feel my eyebrows rise up, I could feel my lips purse, almost despite me.

“Is that so bad?”

“Ah.”

“Who does he think he is…”

Who are we talking about? I could feel my eyes widen.

“It is very upsetting, that’s what it is, upsetting.”

Not unlike this entire conversation, seriously. I wondered if I could just move.

“Very upsetting,” she said. She stepped on her cigarette with one of her yellow shoes.

She reached into her bag and pulled out another cigarette. She lit it again awkwardly with her over sized talons appearing to make handling anything difficult. I wondered what the purpose of them really was? Are they like high heels, supposed to make her look sexier than she otherwise was? She was too old for anyone to find her sexually attractive, I thought. I know, the hair on the backs of post middle-aged necks everywhere just bristled and none of them really know why.

She dragged on that cigarette like every frustration and disappointment was held between her claw like fingers. She exhaled like she was releasing the anguish of entire life time, it was pageantry, it was a performance, known, or not.

Smoke billowed around her head. “I’m guessing you don’t care?”

“I guess he has his rules.”

“What are you some bleeding heart liberal.”

I wasn’t sure what my political leanings had to do with this conversation, but fuck it, I thought. “Yes,” I said.

“Yes?” she repeated.

“I am a bleeding heart liberal.”

“Oh yes, good onya,” she said. “You’re everything that’s wrong with the world today.”

“And what do you believe in?” I ask. “Nothing, like most conservatives?”

“Nothing?” she repeated.

“What do you believe in?” I asked.

She dropped the cigarette to the footpath and ground it out with the sole of her daisy cup shoe.

“Clearly not anti littering,” I said. I looked at the remains of her cigarette ground into the concrete.

“I don’t have to stand here and listen to this,” she said. “I’m not going to be spoken to by the likes of you, and him.” She indicated the guy in Cash Converters with a nod of her head.

“And what is the common denominator in both those conversations?”

“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean?”

“Oh, a common denominator means a characteristic, or attitude, that is shared by…”

“Don’t be a smart arse.” She took the handle of her mauve shopping jeep with a big hand gesture and stuttered off down Smith Street.

Lola

Lola, she was a show girl, she was tits & arse, and a whole lotta class.

She was beautiful, all the boys liked her, they all wanted to take her out.

Lola was a romantic and she wanted a boy to win her heart.

She said, "It's not my heart all these guys are interested in."

"They all just want to sin."

She looked with a grin.

"And while I am not totally against that, from time to time,"

You know it has its place, of course it does. But now I am looking for a sweet boy, with a nice smile, who is going to make my heart buzz, just as a matter of course. I want a boy who wants the best for me, so I can feel about him in exactly the same way. Is that too much to ask? And, until he comes along, I'll be up on this stage dancing and singing a song."