red66

waltz at the lost souls ball


burnt-out in paradise.



beyond the licorice trees..( yes i know your kid could have done this, but could they have come up with the title..;)

rainforest figs

i ended up taking marthas cat back to my place . it was skeletal and making sickening noises. it would lay under the frangipani in the front yard and roll on it's back when i arrived. i would turn the engine off and hear the cry ,almost in tune with the crows on the wheelie bins and the barks of the neglected backyard dogs. was i a thief, perhaps . anyhow, i hated cats .
i knew there was someone living in marthas house. i wasn't delivering any personal mail to the address.
two days after rescuing the cat, on a thursday, a day the bombs fell the least, i cut my index finger on the rusted lip of marthas letterbox. i wrapped it in a page from my receipt book and rode back to work. i received thirteen stitches and was stood down on a standard flat-rate. dave trimble , twenty one year-old student desperado and want to be big time ot earner, took my run and that afternoon was killed when he went under the tracks of an allied troop carrier. he had lost control of the bike when it slid on oil from a wrecked vehicle. at the funeral ray morrin called me a lucky bastard and i punched him. daves mother walked over and slapped me. her face was twisted in a pain i saw too often.
i called the cat dave even though i was unsure of its sex. it bit me once then settled in.

it was spring, the day had been warm yet the shower water was still cold. i stood under it for an hour despite the water restrictions. i was exhausted, my legs shook and my lower back ached. i could hear nina simone singing backlash blues somewhere in another room, and in another the sounds of violence, the storm-like rumble of discontent. not uncommon in those times with the shit of the enemy raining down like salt on steak and everything down but local correspondence and the share price of bomb factories.
i knew my kidneys were shot. they had been gone for a while. there were plenty of spare kidneys among other pink and vital things stocked up in the military hospitals. posties had high priority. i just had to front up. the lost income was the devil on my shoulder.
i slipped and hit my head on the floor. the heel of my right foot caught on the broken cement edge of the wall and i could feel blood dribble down my ankle. i was still shaking. i could hear mr bojangles through the water and the phone ringing, my phone.
i thought of the cat, the persian. i had seen it that day, a kilometre away from marthas house on the hill. it stopped and looked at me. i turned the bike off. there had been a weird silence, then the whistle of incoming. i looked up and saw the trail move towards the southside . when i looked back, the cat was gone.
i reached up and turned the water off. the violence had stopped , my bleeding had stopped. i lay back and fell asleep.

martha was her name. she lived in an old queenslander on the high ground in red hill. martha didn't have a shelter. she waited out the raids sitting on her back veranda reading dog eared mills and boon novels and stroking her mangy persian cat. she met me at the letterbox one day and told me she didn't miss emails as she had been to old to start using them in the first place. nothing like a letter.
what happened to joe, she asked me
he got hit.
oh, i'm sorry to hear that, he used to bring me my milk with the mail.
i see.
i don't suppose you would be able to bring me my milk.
sure.
the next day i took martha some milk with her mail but she was gone. a young feral from the share house next door told me they had taken her away. to the shelter over on the bayside. she had put up a fight and in the end they had sedated her.
she didn't give a shit about the bombs, the feral told me. she would put on dean martin songs and turn them up, it was an eerie mixture of sounds.
martha's mail was re-directed. the house was shut up, although i think some ferals may have moved in. when i rode past i looked out for the cat but never saw it.

i was in the locker room alone before the shift when dave flinsky walked in, sat down, buried his sun toughened face in his hands and sighed.
whats up dave
nothing.
dave, come on mate.
i'm on suspension for taking the bike home, i could be sacked.
fuck off dave, they can't sack you, a two year veteran.
funny , yeah well, i'm toast.
why did you take the bike home.
between you and me.
of course.
i'm on setback therapy, they found a bag of multi-nv, in my saddle bag,
tested me and it came up positive. i went home to dump my stash. remember what happened to mick. with the feds
that stuff will kill you dave.
haven't heard that before. you know most postie's are on it. it was designed for the military. before the "breakdown" to give to the troops in the middle east. for the high levels of stress.
how long is the suspension ?
two years, it'll be all over by then and we'll be shit again. you've got to do what you have to.
he stood up and opened his locker. see you then eh.
sure, i'll be here.
i knew he knew i was on it.

i didn't like to knock on doors with a registered mail, not those days. i would just drop a card in, a note to tell the concerned their mail was at the post office. leaving the motorbike was not an option. so when the old lady yoo hooed me from the top of her stairs i pretended not to hear her and road on dodging bomb craters and ambitious street brats until her hoo hooing was drowned out by my over-reved motorbike.
as i was skirting a fresh , still smoking hole in the ground, humming along to a jackie wilson song and looking out for magpies i heard a whistle and explosion as the old lady,s house was hit by a stray.
this time i didn't fall off my bike. the fire fighters passed in sounds and flashes. nobody came out of their houses. when i stopped shaking i took off. i had an express for the army base, it was triple pay.

the postman is the new capitalist, if he can survive the day. the year is 2016. emails have been gone for three years, lost in the maelstrom that was the "breakdown". there are two hundred postal positions filled every day in brisbane. by each afternoon there are one hundred and fifty resignations and two deaths.
i have been on the bike for two years. a broken jaw and two steel pins came as an interlude as i watched the ceiling vibrate from the bombing. many go out with the mail and do not come back. the mail is scavenged and the bikes are shipped to melbourne for the vic censor. for ten hours of the day i see death in the periphery and for the rest i am indulgent and decadent.
the new world has reconstructed wealth distribution similar to the way picasso fucked with perspective. i am at the top of the tree where the view is great but my hold is tenuous and my fall greater.
now that there are less humans about i feel a weaker pull of gravity, of death. and with it a greater responsibility.
if you are game to walk the few metres to your mailbox then i am prepared to bring you the mail. wait till dark and don't use a torch. and please tie your fucking dogs up!!!

when two beings hug
two hearts get to within
inches, fragile flesh
between beats, the closing
in of ribs and lungs,
the vitals.
there is a heat,
a passing of something,
a gesture.
to cling that moment
longer, to linger near
the neck,
to compress your love
into your loved ,
to let them know with
the tightening of arms
what stumbles and falls
with the inadequacy of words

so here's this guy who grew up in nambour queensland, just up the road , telling chinese students in china that the tibet situation is not viewed too well by the australian public and government. and he's telling them in a fluent chinese diatribe.
well(insert grin) china is not happy. noooo not happy.
kevy
kevin 07
taking on the world.

whales
how nice must they taste
to risk their extinction for
a fleeting taste-bud moment.
whales harpooned,
waves of red wine suffering
to fall on a plate,
table for two.

they are whales
they are majestic.

hunters,
may neptune change
your destinies
and the winds blow you home.

the universe is a form of divine law,
your reasonable father.

when you feel ungrateful to him,
the shapes of the world seem mean and ugly.

make peace with that world, the elegant patterning,
and every experience will fill with immediacy.

rumi

weave our way through a
left-wing crowd, past
sandlewood sarongs and
stalls selling steaming
spanish sausages and the
shiny by- products of the
locally grown olive.

gypsy wagons with organic
coffee.

sacks on milk crates
and the hollow tree jazz of
a true australian.

and another sunset
candy- floss pink and
i think what a picture,
this night, this becoming
dark and fooling the
birds once again,
this sweet scent
of sexing flowers
and horny animals.

the bees brain is about
the size of a poppy seed.
the bee measures distance
and direction by
analyzing and remembering
what it passes.
zooooom
bzzzzzz
incredible, don't you think.
after the food source has been
discovered..mmmm nectar, the bee
zooooom
bzzzzzz
returns to the other bees
sister bees
sisters do all the work
in bee land
men bees are lazy bastards.
anyway, the bee having returned
from the food source,
nectar...mmmmm
does a little complex dance
telling the other sisters
how to get there
where the nectar..mmmm is.
three miles away.
yes, incredible,
with the brain the size
of a poppy seed.
they must laugh at us.

i am not sure i could be a spectator at an air -show. i think it's more dangerous than flying. these shows are for showing off.
"shit jim, look at all em people down there, all watching us. fuck it! i'm doing the 360 backward triple flip with a shudder twist full reversal to finish it off"
"no hank! are you fucking serious! you've never done it before!"
"look at all the people jim, all looking up at us"


if it wasn't for air-shows we wouldn't know what a plane crash looked like (unless you watched lost).

i saw the presumption of
innocence skip town
on a sad cold day.
rights floating off in

orwellian currents,

i feel the induced
paranoia like a pain.
headlines, bold , black
ambiguities, seeds,

goldstein, victory gin.

oh what a state we
are in.

PARIS HILTON LEAVES PRISON
it was the second explosion that killed
the most, men women and children, near one
hundred. you may have missed the details,
turned from the television for one second.
multiply the dead by the family effected.

BECKHAM AND POSH LAND IN LA
the young boy woke and cried every morning
because his dreams had ended and the things that
made him warm in the cold were out of reach.
father, mother, uncles, sister. rebels with guns
and disease had erased them all like the early
morning gun shots that steal his dreams and make
him piss the bed.

WHERE WILL BECKS AND POSH LIVE?, WHERE WILL POSH DINE?
in his squalid part of the slum he was like
a king because he had the ability to steal food and
avoid death. he always ate after everyone had finished.
he smiled all the time because he was strong and proud.
within six weeks of him being tortured and shot in a
muddy back alley his family were all dead.

gravity and fatigue
pulled his lower eyelids
down
dark shadows falling down
cheekbones.
taxi driver, night shift,
failed marriage
junk food and gout.
i want to tell him , go
to sleep. i want him to smile
more than i want the dark
chocolate i came for.

one of the great jacaranda trees of new farm
park fell in the strong winds today and crushed
an empty parked car. they think it's the drought,
they all might be in danger.
the beautiful circle of lilac planted in the
twenties may be doomed.
i've written poems about this place.
i was married within the circle.
petals falling in season such a sight.
tree's falling.
not so good..