Enemy Lines

The coffee machine takes eons to make a cup of coffee, in the dark, morning light, with its start up sequence, and then the coffee making itself, then the shut down sequence, it takes forever. I shiver in anticipation, as much as the cold. I don't like spending too much time out in the open, no cover, distracted, you don't want to be seen, not being seen is the key to the operative. We don’t know why, we are never given the reasons for our missions. The coffee is of secondary concern. (ed note – tell that to the punters who are caffeine depleted) It is a sortie over enemy lines. It is a test, of your stealth-like qualities. It is an operative, a culmination of all you have learned. How invisible are you, after all these years of training? How low to the ground can you crawl? How much shit can you shimmy through and still come up triumphant? Be under no misapprehension, this is a test.

Now if I could just find the answer to this runny nose of mine, we'd be half way to winning the goddam war.

Tissue?

Ah, the 5 for $5 bag of boxes of tissues, beyond enemy lines, out in the wasteland, beyond where the bogi man can get you. The same Bogi Man who prowls the hallways at night waiting for you to stumble sleepy into the bathroom and piss absentmindedly, to be charged for crimes against the sleeping. Urine is to never be heard hitting water. As you are brutalised in your pyjamas in the dark, dragged unhanded, imaginary down the house stairs, to a waiting black bus to be taken away, sped off in the night with duck tape over your mouth.

“Ah! Oh!” Only to be woken fitfully as daylight shines in your window wondering if "that" really happened at all. I must stay asleep to remember. Must remember the key to creation. No, it is gone. Good morning.

The same Bogi Man who accompanies the bears materialising the moment you stand on a footpath crack. He can wear a clown suit just as easily. "You wanna balloon kid?" He is what is actually rushing up to your back in the dark at night. He is the serpent’s hiss. He is the creak in the floor. He is the hand pushing you in the back at a great height, and the voice that says, "Jump."

It is really distracting, you know, to have a nasal drip, drip, drip. You can't practise self defence with phlegm leaking from your hooter.

Corner? Clear. Corner? Clear. Corner? Clear.

Coffee machine. "Come on, hurry up. Come on, hurry up. Come on, hurry up."

Corner? Clear. Corner? Clear. Corner? Clear. Buddy? Sniff. Corner? Clear. Corner? Sniff. Clear.

The night time raids are the worst. Standing there, in the dark, one eye on the silhouette of the doorframe, one eye on the dark, where the toilet would be if there was any form of illumination, pissing on one of two white porcelain strips. Don’t piss in the water. Don’t piss in the water. Don’t piss in the water. I'm lucky I am not pissing on the floor. Don’t piss in the water. Don’t piss in the water. Don’t piss in the water.

We stagger our waking times? Or is that, we are staggering at our waking times? It makes no never mind, as long as each of the inmates is suitably medicated by Saturday night, booze or weed, it is deemed a good job done.

Vampire hours. I am living vampire hours, at present. When you get rid of 9 to 5, you get rid of any notion of day, or night. There is a permanent pot cloud over my window. The world is suddenly all 24 7, no differentiation is made. I found it a major personal achievement when I knew it was 6 o'clock in the day, 6.03 as my digital read out told me, to be precise, but I had no, actual, idea if it was am, or pm. You know, in the winter, with no day light savings, it is the same kind of light outside at 6am as it is at 6pm. It was a proud moment, I had reached nirvana.

Isn't it funny, that after all of the economic theories, a couple of industrial revolutions, all the captains of industry who told us they knew what they were doing, the two industries the tax from which are going to save the Western World are medicinal marijuana and gambling. [Did 9/11 ever really happen? A Chinese property developer bought the twin towers. He came up with the most cost effective way to bring them down. He sold it to his good friend George Bush over a cocaine party on the ranches vast dinning room table, as a model for national strategy, “Y’all finally be able to crush those beedin heart…"

“It’s bleeding.”

“What is?” George looks at his own hands.

“Bleeding hearts, it is bleeding heats.”

“Er, yes… um… lefty, human rights be moaners.” The Bin laden family threw in, they had some ideological reasons, Aeroplane fuel companies sponsored. And, of course, Wall Street. And the usual billionaires who think climate change legislation is not good for business]

I know what I’d be buying shares in.

Of course, guns and military equipment must be way up there too, why else do we keep having these blastard wars? But us mere mortals don't get to see the receipts for that stuff. That’s super rich territory, where billions are dealt. [And they get to listen to every word you say, one way or another]

And of course, the biggest search on the internet is for sex, by far.

The only thing I take for the shadows in the night, my military style coffee procurement in the mornings, or the ghouls that spring from footpath crack compromise, is mother's herb. The Green Goddess, as my trusty side kick, Susan To, names her. My BFF. She makes the world a beautiful place. She can't fix a dripping nose, so it would seem, but she is fabled to make a difference to the rest. The rain washing your cake away, whatever?

Susan To has gone overseas to fight world poverty, on one of her regular sojourns. She has left me unsupervised. I have denied myself nothing, can you tell?

All the sweet, green icing flowing down…er? What is my positive affirmation for today?

"Don't leave your cake out in the rain."