And all the ghosts came running.

You are moving fast. 

You are

in the woods

yes

the woods

the American woods

not the Australian forest

maybe even

the Bavarian woods

yes, that's it

colder

foreign

and yet

god

so familiar.

You are in the woods.

And you are moving fast

and there are things ahead

but that's not it

oh no

it's not the ahead the fire in your feet

it's the behind

the behind

the 

run, matty, run

it's dropping silver crumbs

which leap from your heart

and pour from your eyes

unbidden and unwanted 

this trail left behind 

betraying your position

so

run, matty, run

I'm tired

don't stop 

run

SNAP

run

MEMORY

run

GUILT

RUN

FEAR

RUN

FUCKING

RUN

WHAT

RUN

THE

RUN

FUCK?

[it all 

goes

dark]

Life. Lies. Bleeding. A Detective Story.

I hear a knock at my front door. It's the local Constable. They've found me dead down the street, by the creek. It's my spot, you know? I like to sit there. Well, not anymore. Now I'm dead and the Constable thinks I did it. He turns me around like I've written so many times before, turns me around and pushes me against the wall and spreads my legs and I'm laughing a little at the familiarity but only a little, mostly I'm thinking...

Mostly I'm thinking, I'm dead. And they think I did it.

********

[we were talking you see]

There's a Cypress tree which sits beside the water in a part of my dream which I rarely visit these days. But I still know how to get there. And these bars which surround me, these bars which you associate me with, they don't hold me, nothing holds me. Not even your happiness can hold me. Do you understand?

No. [I am sad here]

It doesn't matter. All that matters is you know where I have gone, all that matters is that you can see it, that place we shared. Those moments in the night. When your fire set me free. When I danced as smoke. When...

Stop it. Stop the words. You worship these fucking words and I'm fucking sick of it. Fuck if I could pull apart every word, rip it open, skin it alive, get to the fucking meaning, split the whole fucking library apart and squeeze the fucking life out of them all, down to one fucking word, just so I could shut you all the fuck up with all your fucking words, your fucking shallow intellectualism, your desperate attempts at immortality, your ham fisted fallacy, your lies, your loves, your fake blood drip drip drip on the fucking page, just fucking STOP IT WITH YOUR FUCKING WORDS I CAN'T FUCKING TAKE IT ANYMORE NO MORE FUCKING WORDS NO MORE FUCKING WORDS NO MORE FUCKING WORDS...[I am angry here]

There. It is done.

And we were free.

********

What the Hell does that mean, When We Were Kids?

It was a name of a band once. A band that never was. But in me, it held a key, it opened the door to some writing I did which I gave to myself just before...

Just before what?

Before we fought. Before I walked out on me.

Interesting. He writes it down. We're not so different, he and I.

I finger the letters we carved in the wood all those years ago, When We Were Kids. God I can almost laugh about it. But there's blood now. On the tree, on the grass and on my hands. Or so they say.

I turn my back on it, walk up the hill to the Constable.

********

Now and then it keeps you running
Never seems to die
The trail's spent with fear
Not enough living on the outside
Never seem to get far enough
Staying in between the lines
Hold on to what you can
Waiting for the end
Not knowing when
Let the wind take your troubles away...

What is that?

Son Volt.

It's nice.

Yeah, I love it.

I'm going to miss you.

I'm going to miss you too.

It's time.

*********

He leans over the table, Just tell me Matty.

I look him in the eye,

I am Telling

I am Told

I am Done

Being Bold

I am Tired

I am Tough

I am Burning

I am only..

I am only what is left,

and what is left is Truth

for I swear Officer...

Fuck how I swear.

I haven't seen myself in a very long time.

On a scale of 1 to 10.

Tell me stories.

Ok. I want to make an orange spongy fish hat.

Of course you do.

Yes, I really think I'm on to something. It will be goods.

Maybe you should make an entire fish suit?

No. That would be weird. I just want the hat to be a fish. A big orange spongy fish.

Oh. Ok. Well, maybe you should cover the fish in sequins and have a sequined fish hat!

No. My fish hat will be orange and spongy.

Oh. Ok. Well will it have anything special about it?

Special? IT'S AN ORANGE SPONGY FISH HAT, IS THAT NOT SPECIAL ENOUGH?

Yeah, I guess...

Ok, well, maybe I'll sticky tape a cigarette in its mouth, so it will be an orange spongy fish hat with attitude. Cigarettes give everything attitude.

And cancer.

Yes, Cancer and Attitude. A Fish Hat's Tale.

Hey, what about, if you built a string operated bubble machine which somehow opened the fish mouth as you walked around and bubbles came out his mouth so it looked like he was swimming under water?

Yeah. Mmmm. Maybe.

I think it's a good idea.

Yeah. Mmmm. Maybe.

Well, what do YOU think he should do?

Nothing. he should sit on my head and shut the fuck up and just be a big orange spongy fish with a man underneath it.

Hehe.

Hehe.

Okbbye.

Bye.

Chapter 1: A dark day's night.

I have a friend

I've never seen

He hides his head

inside a dream

Someone should call him

and see if he can come out.

Try to lose

the down that he's found.

********

After school isn't my favourite time. Every one else looks like they've got somewhere to go. Every one except me. It's not that I'm jealous of them. I like that they're happy. I like that all the kids who aren't friends with me and who ignore me - or worse - have friends. World keeps turning doesn't it? It wouldn't be right for me to be bitter. So I tell myself I like it. I should like it. I like it like a dog that's been beat up by its master likes it, when the master picks up the ball and throws it into the bushes and far out of sight. I like it because it distracts me, gives me something to hang on to. To drool over, to sit in a dark corner and masticate. The ball the rest of the world is having. And me, trying so hard to be a part of it that I don't know whether to eat it, chew it, or hand it back to the Man who keeps throwing it away.

It's not that I don't have a home. It's just I don't want to go there. I guess that's why I've taken up smoking. I can sit on the fence of the flats across from the school, just out of sight, and I can watch the whole thing unfold, kids with kids with parents with cars with families with bags with moldy bananas with books with new shoes with friends with a life with a future. I don't have a future - so I sit quiet and alone on the fence and see if I can't freeze time with every inhale exhale on my cigarette, because even though I'm not one of them, I'm not ready to let them go home. I need them. I need them to be here for me, even though they don't know I'm here. Smoking and staring and thinking and killing time. Sometimes later, I see the detention kids, or the smart and studied library kids, or the gym kids, sometimes I see them leave as the sun goes down, and I'm still sitting across from school smoking my cigarettes. I'm afraid. No I'm not. Yes I am, but it's not the sort of fear everyone thinks. It's just a flat, dejected and dull fear, not even a terror. At least terror would keep me sharp. At least the people in the movies scream and run and fight and sweat. Me, I just sit with my cigarettes until the sky hangs low and mirrors the darkness of my face. My mind. Sometimes, on a good day, I'll tell myself my face is the night sky and my eyes are beautiful stars. Sometimes that gives me hope. Mostly I tell myself, that's gay.

If I've stolen some change and I've got a full pack, I can sit there until it's really dark, which is better. For going home I mean. I'll wait until it's really dark and then I'll start walking along and looking into the front rooms of the houses I pass as I walk down the dark and empty streets. If I get the angle right, and the light, I can see my reflection in the windows and it's like I'm in there with them, one of them, sitting at the table, having a laugh or talking about Geography or how maybe I should look at a Trade and I'm just another kid at home and I'm not afraid of watching TV or being in the room the TV is in when someone else is home. I try not to think that really my reflection just looks like a ghost, forever abstracted, a stark, pale portrait staring back at a coldly appreciative audience. I try not to think that. I smile, not because I feel it, but because I think people won't be suspicious of me if I'm smiling when I look in. And I figure if you smile you've got a couple of seconds to get away, in case, you know, you get it wrong or you look like a pervert or they just want to come investigate. I've learned that, I can usually avoid a beating if I smile, at strangers, people don't know what to do with a smile on me. It's like it doesn't fit. They probably just think I'm crazy. What do you think of that? That I can't even smile without people thinking I'm crazy.

Still, I try and smile as much as I can. Sometimes it's all I've got, that smile. Especially on the walk home. I'll get to the edge of the big park not far from my house that I have to cross to get home and the moon won't want to watch, it'll slink behind the clouds, a voyeur, a rodent, and the trees will start to whisper their tales to me as I cross through the park or by the river. You should see me smile then. I probably look like a skeleton taking a turd or something. I smile so hard I even chipped a tooth once. I smile and I try to look straight ahead so I don't see a rape or a murder or worse happen beside a tree. My grandma told me, she said that Australia never really had big wars or anything, but in the soul of some trees there were dastardly acts of cowardice and murder. That's her words, not mine. Lots of black fellas got it, too many to say she says, but a whole lot of white ones too. Jumped and beaten and cut and killed, behind the trees, and so the murder sticks to them, they eat it up and they bleed it, that's the sap she says, but she makes it sound a whole lot worse, and that's murder what you can hear them talk about when you're on your own out in the bush, or in a dark, cold street walking alone. I believe her too, I've heard 'em. They talk to me. Sometimes they even laugh. As though they know what's coming. To be honest, I run past trees a lot. At night anyway. Sometimes I'm the fastest kid in the world. Then I remember what I'm running towards. And usually, I slow down.

Most nights at home, the suspense is the worse part. Other nights, it isn't. Every night, I wish I was stronger, but every night, all I can ever do is pray. Pray to a God I wish more than anything I could believe in, and who never once answers me or helps me or makes it stop. But I pray all the same, because I'm frozen inside and I don't know what else to do. And that's what makes me cry the most - that for all these thoughts, I still don't know what to do. I'm sixteen, I'm frightened and alone, and I don't know what to do.

Our father, who art in heaven...

I'll pull the covers over my head. I'll hear the stereo get turned up, and I'll hear footsteps.

Look around it, have you found it

Walking down the avenue?

See what it brings,

could be good things...

In the air for you.

*********

Death of an Operator V.3.0

Yeah, I'm on Facebook, Myspace, I used to have like, three different profiles on Adult Fuck Find, I think I still have one on RedHotSexFuck.com though I haven't looked and couldn't remember the password if I did, There was some other profile somewhere on some other site a few years back that led me to walk up and down the laneway in front of Bond Bar because someone I chatted in the sex way to said she was the bouncer or door bitch there, I walked up and down the laneway, said hello to her, she was about ten foot fucking tall and dark as coal wrapped in chocolate in the bottom of the deep dark sea. I was freaked the fuck out by the cold hearted nature of the whole deal. I think the site was called Adult Friend Finder, which of course is different than Find Adult Friends or Fuck Adult Friends or Fuck Friends Let's Just Fuck which is probably still the most popular. I have, I think four, maybe five email addresses, I don't even know. In the drawer beside my bed, I have a couple of old phones and a few sim cards. I have four different business cards with my name on them. I probably still get sent mail to three, maybe four of the 38 different houses I have now lived in over 34 years. I have an Ebay profile, a Mess and Noise profile, I bid on auctions at Gray's Online, I've got some profile for a music website on the Lower East Side of New York for fuck's. I'm on The Scene, I listen to Ween, I'm a big fat fucking inhuman joke and a number, a cog, in your fucking machine.

It's fucking disgusting.

I'm gonna bunch that shit together, gaffer tape my identity, my soul to my old PC that sits humming and breathing nights next to bed, even though it hasn't been plugged in to a power source for six months, I know it watches me, listens to me, thinks about me, computes my next move, relays the data, cackles and sparks electronic dreams and giggles to the toaster, the TV, the Portable Everything Device which wipes your fucking arse and kisses your Girlfriend goodnight while wrapping your children in their blankets, reading them stories, making sure everyone is asleep, even having your 2am porno ready for when you wake up hard and human as Hell, it fast forwards straight to the scene which will have you demented and contented and stupified in 30 seconds flat, sedated and padding down the hall to bed, to bed, to dream of electric sheep.

You think your brain is expanding, you think you've opened up new worlds of friends, a network, like minded people with amazing brains who write a single fucking word that has you wet and shivering in awe of a mystery who hides behind a screen, a photo, an image, and it'll suck every single fucking one of us unless we remember what's what and who is who and what the wet grass smells like without having to take a digital photo, or think of the words we'll use later to describe it to everyone here, in the Land of the Undead.

********

I want the country, that growth, that feeling of being ten foot tall, of being real, of one on ones and easy smiles. This shit stinks like Death. Of you, me and everything we've ever known.

********

You know, a few years ago I couldn't give a fuck. Ask my man G, he'll tell you, whatever we couldn't spell, couldn't write, couldn't design, didn't know that Religion was alive in a High St Boutique...we would forget to use apostrophes, we would use bad grammer, we would shock fucking horror, spell IT IS like ITS.

Insert Vampiric Music Stab. Mozart I think works best.

You know then I met some people, some good people, and everyone was chewing cud and grazing in the fields and agreeing with each other about the importance of grammar and spelling, and how it really showed the measure of people, and puerile syntax and worse still, ignorance was scorned or from a great height with a broad, generous heart...pitied.

Because words are Golden, right?

And you who do not have the touch, Midas well give up.

********

Status: This may go on all day.
Mood: Happy as all Hell.
Music: You and me and the Devil makes three...
About me: I like profiles. They feed my vanity.

********

Time for a bonfire.

And liberty she pirouette, watched by empty silhouettes...

Maybe the sun will shine today
The clouds will roll away
Maybe I won’t be so afraid
I will understand everything has its plan
Either way...

********

Some people got shot this morning as I was walking through the city. There was a barricade, a mob of onlookers gorging on the spectacle, some blood on the concrete, police with the police look on their faces, the not nice one, the MOVE one, and there was me. And I couldn't get these beautiful songs out of my head, and I'm sorry for the fucking human tragedy but the whole thing's a human tragedy and one tiny decision made by two people to speak out about a girl being dragged by her hair means they got shot for their troubles, and that's how quickly everything can turn and that's the ironic curtain closing on an act of kindness. I keep walking, the music in my head and the winter sky makes the whole thing more real, my dream, is more real, I'm sorry you had to get shot in it. People are fucked sometimes. No wonder it's so nice to find love.

********

It was raining real heavy and it was dark and the moon was out but barely and I just wanted to cross the road, near the bend where the cars can't see you if they're going too fast. I put my hands in my pocket, it was ice and velvet and I just tried to get to the other side of the road when all of a sudden this fast red car came around the corner and you know what it did? It sped up and deliberately swerved toward me as I was running across the road, nowhere even near it, and all I can see in my head is what if I had tripped, or better still...what if I wanted to die and just stood there and took it and my brains were a sexier, slicker more attractive red - a stain of my mind - and that driver with his vibe his tough, lived haunted by me, the guy who only had to cross the road. People are fucked sometimes. No wonder it's so nice to find love.

********

The whole purpose of finding love is to escape the madness of the rest of the world, into an insanity of your own creation. An insanity where lovers are the sun, the centre, the explosion, revolving around each other and discovering billions of unexplored stars deep within each other's eyes.

I love Uranus, you love M'ars.

********

The mass - pulsating flesh, opinions, ambitions, flaws, wars, politics - when looked at from a distance, repulses me more than I can eloquently describe. But people, individual ones, are sometimes so amazing, and so full of surprises, and so human. When you're close to someone, it's common to say, "we're so alike, you and I"...

I wish we were all a little closer to each other.

********

Oh yeah, I almost forgot. If there's still anyone out there who hasn't heard the new Wilco album, please do so now. The world will be a little bit better for it. It's quite indescribably perfect.

Culture: A Bacterial Odyssey.

You got a smoke?

Sure mate.

I reach in to my pocket and open the package, hand one over. I've had a rough time brother, he says. I'm not going to make it. I know I'm not going to make it. Too many charges, I'm going inside, and I won't come out. I'm not doing so good man. I'm not going to make it. I've been taking it out on the dog, I don't know what to do. I'm not going to make it. The dog, small, white, sits obediently beside his terrified master and reflects the sadness and horror in his eyes. Another victim, two victims. Scars still scabbing brown and black blood form a relief map across the curves - the ridges and ravines - of his face, the map of his past and the route ahead. It's fear and resignation and death, a horrible fight against death, that light, the spark behind the off milk eyes and he spews curdled and panicked words at me in the hope of one last show of kindness, or more importantly - brotherhood. Proof of existence. Proof of humanity. Who writes this man's story? Who stops to mark his passage as he becomes a shadow? I don't know what to say, so I speak the truth for what greater crime than to lie to a doomed man, I say, I can't help you brother - but don't be hard on that little one - the dog - he doesn't know, and he's your mate. I'm not going to make it, I'm not going to make it. I shake his hand, give him that, and keep walking. I flick my cigarette aside and it's forgotten, swept far away, out of sight.

The night before is Henry Miller - I am the germ of a new insanity, a freak dressed in intelligible language, a sob that is buried like a splinter in the quick of the soul - and it's cunt and cock, cunt and cock, alone in the world, a sailor in dry dock lost both on land and sea, and emotion spills over when one teenage girl does not win the million dollar modelling contract, I shed a tear for her when the scarred face of death brought naught but an opiate of emptiness, an echo of compassion in the dark cavern of my soul, our souls, the world is a living creature and we are the dream rodents, scurrying and consuming and there's more cunt and more cock and more money and more death than we know what to do with and all those who don't look in make their way in the world and those who do simply close down and are lost, the incompatible waste of evolution's steady march and us in between, we try and find balance and love who we can and forget what we must and it's never, ever, ever enough. Ever. How do you love an insane world without going insane? I do it. I rub garlic and salt into a fillet of kangaroo and sit alone with red wine and watch the storms watch the wind fall for rain fall to earth and the drums beat a funeral march on the roof and it's all I can do not to laugh, an old dirty insane bastard, laugh as the world collapses, ready to be rebuilt at dawn.

I wouldn't be asleep for quids.

In the dream I'm smoking cigarettes with Michel Onfray and I'm pissed off he's here because I wanted to talk to him before his fluff piece feature in the lesser of two evil weekend time wasters.

Fuck you, I say, you're only in my subconscious now because it's convenient for you!

A girl walks passed. I laugh at the syntax. The universe is round.

That may be so, I can get his French accent right in my sleep but you should hear me slay it when I'm awake. But I am 'ere now, so let's talk.

I smoke. He smokes. Mutated flying fish dance on the water beside us, holding hands and spinning circles. It's a cobble-stone street and I can see Inspector Cliche in his beige hat reading the New York Times on the other side of the cafe.

Onfray laughs as an ambulance screams past.

He says, It took off like a homosexual comedian! Weeeooooo!

Don't quote that cunt at me, I say, his material kills but his prose is conceited. Still, I do love that fucking line.

I lean forward and I'm ready to talk when all of a sudden I wake up and it's dark and cold and the rain is knocking on my back door, let me in, let me in, so I get up in time to see the back of the night as it disappears, the fog its spurned lover, the rain the notes of their song, the rising sun the caring parent, come to console the frozen earth.

Strange Fruit

Feel that? The trip tickling tantalisingly tempting taste and traces of a dying summer. Arousing in its death throes, libidinously fresh and crisp in its ardent desire to travel around the globe and leave us breathless with sleep and ready to curl into flannel sheets - deceptively seductive as they are - as outside the reign of frost begins. And today...the sun is but the warmth of a lover after they have left the bed, a fragrant indentation and companion to the doe eyed loner left behind. Clarity is so fucking sexy, you can smell it on days like today. Days where the air dances electricity on your goose-fleshed arms and every hair stands to attention, marshalling the senses to a near orgasmic readiness. Everyone's alive, everyone's working, everyone's a busy beaver, and damn it feels good to be an animal, smelling, foretelling, hunting and killing. Days under a cold bright sun, nights a mystery behind closed doors, in front of a fire, with sated hearts and bellies and further down still. And if your toes could talk, they'd say...hehe, come lay by the fire, the fire with me.

********

And in perfect synchronicity, my Boss informs us all, that he has learned the Art of ejaculating up his own spine. Initially I picture him doing an "over the shoulder" and catching it on his back like those childhood wooden toys with the ball and string. Or perhaps he bends it down and around in some sort of gymnastic Holmes-esque ritual...but no. It's Tantric..and the office is nervously awaiting his offer to workshop us all.