Burnt

*


Lucille sat smoking on the step in the sun. She took a drag and continued to dream through the fresh blue smoke. The sun burning brightly in the summer sky. The blue back porch peeling in the heat – the timber creaking under her young dreams and aspirations. Flipping the cap on her steel lighter, tapping her feet on the top step to a silent beat. The sun good and warm on her young thin skin – white t-shirt loose flapping languidly in the warm afternoon breeze – bare feet breathing, feeling the worn grain of the wooden step – blue jeans beat and holy with worn wounds torn in knees and backside. The flame, as if from her fingers, dancing in the whispering air – white spots pop around the flame.

Lucille tired of her imagination, yawned and tugged her sneakers on. The sun now dying in the distance, floundering behind the dusky silhouette of the suburban horizon. Her black parka and red baseball cap – protection against the coming night. Dogs began to bark in hungry expectation – their master’s cars creeping home up the street. A bus half-lit against the twilight – faces forward, vacant eyes – floating along like leaves on a breeze until home, then caged again. Lucille’s old man wouldn’t be home again – lost somewhere in the desert between then & now. A gecko slithered across the porch and into the black shadows under the chair. Her mother might be home tonight, if she didn’t score – her mother that is. At least she didn’t bring them back anymore – she figured the old bitch had probably realised it was easier to let them do her in the alley behind the bar – less of a walk to get the next drink from a trick.

Lucille lit another smoke, the light from the flame orange white glowing in her stony gaze. She spat in prophesy into the dead flowers beside the porch – the screen door snapping at her young heels as she went inside, switching on the yellow hall light. The house stank of meat and grease – flies broke away from the walls and dirty dishes in the sink as she entered the small kitchenette. She opened the fridge – last beer left. A white spark then dark, the bulb blew – she fumbled in the empty rank fridge for the beer and left the house, slamming the chain-link gate behind her. She sucked on her beer and headed on into the musky night.

A greasy burger on Main Street, moths beating themselves to death on the popping fluorescent light under the street cover. The burger tasted good, her thin stomach moaning with gratitude, licking fingers. Another smoke. Walking again. Damn, she needed some cash. She’d just spent her last loose change. A plane rumbled overhead – ominous, its undercarriage low and visible, wings blinking red and green, then gone. She lit another smoke with the butt of the last – sixteen years old and full of dreams and the warm city night waiting to swallow her up.

She kept walking, images flashing faster in her brain – her mother, her crabbed face white and wrinkled blood-red lips charcoal dead eyes bleached blond dry hair – soulless posture. A photo of her father, remembered, black and white – long beard shaved head jailhouse tattoos straddled on a clapped out chrome horse. Fire, always fire licking the edges of everything – the houses the moon cars windows trees fences people . . .

People moved inside the white house. A family scene – steaming dinner on the table. All smiles and throwback head laughter. Man cuts the meat. Mother hairbuns blue apron, dishing out the sliced pink roast. Plump blond children squeal, banging table with fisted knives and forks . . .

Lucille stood hypnotized, rooted to the spot. Her face dissected in the reflection of the quarter windowpane. She didn’t know how long she stood there, watching, trembling – mind blank. Hairbuns blue apron appeared in the window, a laugh on her red lips, head turned over shoulder as she drew the curtains across her pert apron encased cashmere breasts. Lucille snapped out of her trance. It was like she woke up, but was outside of herself. Everything – like one of those old black and white James Cagney movies her Ma used to watch on the TV late at night. She watched herself walk around the corner of the west wall and stand before the half open bedroom window, the linen curtain slowly flapping in the breeze against the white window sill. She closed her eyes and dreamed a dream.

Lucille kicked open the gate and walked up the old wooden steps to the dark porch. She wasn’t home. She sat on the top step and looked out across the suburban landscape silhouettes lit with faint ghostly lights. Haunted figures across the way, shambling in and out of sight like voodoo zombies framed in the windows. A cat moaned for sex next door. A car slid its hissing way up the empty street. In the distance, a siren started to peel itself out of the black night. Lucille lit a smoke and took a drag, holding the cigarette up and watching the red ember glow as it took to the thin cigarette paper – her other hand absently brushing up against the growing urge in her torn jeans.

An orange glow had broken out in the distance, about a kilometre south, above the black silhouettes of the houses on the horizon. White smoke flowered from the horizontal half moon of the fire, tapering up, drifting slowly into the black still night. Lucille’s eyes glazed as she flicked the smouldering cigarette butt into the dead flowers next to the porch. Her breath quickening as her hand worked against herself – the siren now multiplied, screaming. Tumbling red lights dancing flippantly towards the fire, now blazing cinders spread like small red stars high into the warm night sky. The smoke now yellow, billowing into the blackness hanging heavy over the suburbs. The scene like a consummated painting framed between the porch banisters. All Lucille heard was her heart beating, blood pumping like a drum in her head. The worn wood grain of the porch, cool through her t-shirt against the bones of her young back. The night now closing in.

Anomalous Perigee

He turned on his black polished heel, raised his well dressed right arm – the light dancing off his polished cuff link – repositioned his curved left arm a little higher on the delicate back of his true love, then slowly waltzed from the centre of the light into the shadows.
Over her shoulder he watched the light, drunk with love & wine, he could not contain the rogue tears that tumbled from his tired eyes. The smell of her perfume engulfed his senses.
The silk touch of her soft skin on his cheek.
The feel & smell of her fine hair against the tip of his nose, as they spun slowly in between the light & the dark.
The empty chairs & tables in the hall resounded with applause; confetti fell like snow upon their twisting slow sonata . . .
The adagio waned – began to fade – the click of a door echoed through the music & the lingering mumble of departing guests – the light flickered, swelled, then was full & bright again as it should be.
The confetti was gone, the guests too – the table & chairs nowhere to be seen – the hall walls had shrunk, chandeliers disappeared, but still the music continued as he took one last semi-pirouette & stopped – his hand raised, fingers together as if holding the smallest of hands – the other hand spread just away from his mid-section as if to protect the daintiest of waists.
He stood under the dim light, the yellow glow casting shadows on his face, his dapper suit now looking quite threadbare – the cuff links long ago disappeared over the grimy counter of a downtown pawn shop – his polished shoes, the seams along the soles split – the buttoned collar around his neck, loose – the mirror rippled darkly around his form transfixed. His hands went to his head, his shoulders collapsed, as he turned his back on his own pitiful image.
He slowly unbuttoned his jacket & hung it carefully over the back of a chair, unbuttoning his collar & stepping from his old worn shoes. He folded back the covers & pulled the cord, which extinguished the light. As he lay in bed, the adagio still tumbling through his mind, his chest tightened, he looked through the gap in the blind.
The moon was low & full & seemed to smile back at him drunkenly. The cold blue light beamed across the room trying to penetrate the black shadows of his austere bedroom. The mellow luminosity of the light filled his mind with a soft blue hue.
He knew there were angels, alive, somewhere. The heaviness in his heart began to subside. He lay on his side, one hand holding the blind open so he could see the moon. He could almost step onto the moon he thought. It’s so low. So blue. So big. His tired eyes closed, the hand falling gently away from the blind onto the mattress & he was with her once again.

Substance Abuse

a piece of news
in platitudes
hybrid hyper media
seconded to
a lesser kind of life
a soft intelligence
far from cut up
rearranged
reconstituted
just opaque
shamelessly profane
this is
a lesser kind of
layer cake
more a multilevel glass box
fixed together with
the filaments of yesterday
& the lifeblood
of tomorrow’s dreams.

http://nzartist.blogspot.com/

Hey everyone, I just realised I was starting to post a lot more photographs and art than I meant to on this blog which is supposed to be dedicated to my writing. So, I have just put the finishing touches on a new blog devoted to showcasing my artistic works. You can find it here. I hope you enjoy my work and if you like it please subscribe and share the link. Cheers.

Annual Commemoration of the Divine Passion

You eclipse me & I have stained the Sun with black love . . .
death from a bottle cools my ardour
for a while, until I see you again.

The damp distance is bleached
then blackened with shadows
& flocks of shrill birds, screaming for blood

Bound hands grow swollen
body – silently numbed
a bed on fire I laid upon
now reddened with burning life

In these blistered hours of insomnia
objects are like lead
I believe they are other things & less than they are
as if fewer of them would create
a stillness like sleep
— if only to dream of her again

The cushions beckon in the mirror
white & summoning, judicious
the bed reflected in that fantasy land,
that round pool of hope

Why stir dust on a sacred tomb
as I lay down with a prayer for darkness
a snowflake melts on her virgin eyelids
somewhere & now, together again
we drink every breath of poisoned air
she asleep, I awake . . .

Not believing in resurrection —
I stroll through cemeteries
looking for her name, not wanting to see it
the damp brown earth reminds me
every hour we breathe is our last;
victims don’t want blind skies
their toil & consistency as mortals
are truer religions than faith itself,
so welcome me as one of them — into your house.

The last star’s neon spark
will be dissolved painlessly.
Morning will knock on the window, still —
like a grey wet wind
slow day will begin to stir.
Livestock shiver in the cold dawn,
some kind of slaughterhouse morn
the blood drained dreams
dissipate, replaced by
perpetual sameness . . .

Awakened from a long dark dream,
I thought I saw her somewhere in there
the awesome force of sleep’s return
shut me down like wild song
like black amphibious wine
a hollow ghost —
peering senselessly through the cold
window of every lost night

This morning once again
on motionless ground,
& along with it
drinking cold mountain air outside;
refined air, once, our air . . .

Across the crisp cool valley — white snow
blue mountains of decrepit glass & dream
dissolve, in this fresh green brocade

Hope sparkles in the diamond dew
that mirrors the sun
for a minute
while across the way, beyond this place
despair draws its dark curtain of cloud
over the broken road;
another day annexed,
closer to you again, I come.



This poem was written as a bit of a homage to Osip Mandelstam. If you haven't read any of his poetry then I recommend you do - far superior to most of the dross being produced these days!!!

Around Town: Wellington Zoo for real

Went to the Wellington Zoo the other day (true story this time) with bubz and another newage dad and his two offspring. A beautiful day kicked off with a Velluto coffee from the café of the same name. The Zoo was busy as usual with ominous groups of school children lurking at the side entrance, set to invade. Pushing on (we had prams) we picked up the pace for a quick walk to the top - the kids seemed to like the Ostrich, any kind of monkey, the sun bears and the Giraffe. I was surprised by the proximity of the new Giraffe enclosure as you can basically touch the creatures when they poke their inquisitive heads up to the manuka fence for a nosy. Hopefully this does not prove an issue re. human/animal contact issues later on. Anyway, managed to snap some pics as you can see - unfortunately none of the lion but some reasonable shots of the lioness. Maybe next week will bring some fresh pics and some more good weather.

Around Town: Wellington Zoo

Recreation of Actual Events on a smaller scale somewhere else!


Wellington Zoo. For the last few years there have been continuing issues with people climbing over the Zoo fence after hours. The local council and Zoo officials have remedied the problem by installing a 7000-volt electrical fence around the perimeter. Despite the new measures, resounding screams have been heard late at night as frugal zoo patrons still try to access the Zoo’s attractions nocturnally. Local residents have reported the screams that usually occur between the hours of midnight and 2am Friday thru Sunday. The human screams usually precede a raucous cacophony of baboon, chimpanzee and various angry animal noises.

Accident and Emergency Staff at the nearby Hospital have treated ten patients so far this year for electrical burns. Charge Nurse, Gina Jaja said that many of the injurious were superficial although they have had a few that were quite serious. One in particular, where a drunken teenage male managed to straddle the top of the fence before suffering bad electrical burns to his testicles. Apparently he had only been wearing a pair of nylon swimming trunks and had brushed his private parts on the top of the fence as he was attempting to launch himself into the man-made lake around the gibbon enclosure.

Zoo officials have made no apologies for the fence and since news reports publicized the injuries were quite confident that the intruder rate had dropped to nil. Police officials and nearby residents however have noticed a disturbing trend of drunk teenagers attempting to “climb the wall.” Like lemmings, the drunks take turns seeing who can outdo each other withstanding electrical shocks. “I have seen more than one of these idiots actually knock themselves out by licking the livewire whilst standing on their equally idiotic friend’s shoulders. It would be quite comical if it wasn’t so pathetic,” said Harold Dimwingle from the nearby Newtown Apartments. “We can nearly set our clocks by these retards. Me and a few mates from the RSA come down here at midnight on a Saturday and have a few brandies while waiting for these clowns and their ridiculous antics!”