Like You Want to Win -29/05/2010

.

Never intended on seeing the shore again
so I haven’t saved anything
for the swim back
brother,

That is how I got this far.

Dancing like there's always someone watching
just like you're supposed to
and I'm always dancing
sister,

just to make sure,


someone will keep watching me.





________________________________




-Peace



.

Light Switch -24/05/2010

"In darkness I can do no wrong."

-Henry Rollins, Get In The Van

I'd prefer
that the light stays off
while you're in here
with me.

While you're in here
you can hear my voice
you can have my time
but I can't give you a kind face
and it's better
that you don't properly see
what I have instead.

It's safer
not to see
the set of a chin
the curve of an unmovable mouth
the hours-bridged nose
the bone-thick brow
the stubbled expression
a flat, lined face
how little it blinks
the way its eyes
look back out
at you.

I've seen
what it looks like
in the mirror.

I've seen it
on a face that looked
just like yours.

Seen it
walk in
through that door
and back out
again,

too many times.

Not kind
my kind
of face.

So
I'd prefer
that that light stays off
while you
are in here,


with me.



__________________________




-Peace






.

The Write Stuff -17/05/2010

.

I write
then try letting it rest.

Then I write
about the rest of it.

I write
then try and sleep
because
when I don't write
I don't sleep-right
either.

I write
when the words want out
I write
about the wrong way to go about it
I write
to hold it together
I write
to pull it all apart again
I write
to keep some things I want with me
I write
and the words will take it all away
I write,
when it's all I have left.

Someone else wrote
the world is what you make of it
and the writing of words
has now become my world.

Writing
has become
a meaning, to me
though
I don’t know


what that is going to mean, for me.


_____________________




Here's the thing about-writing-about-writing:

"...It's hard to threaten an alcoholic that you will leave them,
how do you threaten someone who wakes up with a hangover everyday, that you're going to make them feel bad." -Sage Francis


(and it occurs to me now, it's also kind of like when a social worker tries to figure out what their own problems are)





-Peace







.

All Told -15/05/2010

.
Don't tell me
I'll feel better
when I wake up
tomorrow.

I know that.

Like the Billy Joel song said
that's a long time away
and right now
it's -right now-
always is
and I won't
be ready for bed
for a while yet.

Don't tell me
this isn't the same sleepless night
I keep coming around to
now by the thousands
don't tell me to forget about it
don' tell me hope isn't a joke
a curse
nor a vice.

You can't argue against these long hours.

Don't tell me
to calm down
to cheer up
I'm all grown up.

But tonight,
I remember fire breathing
adolescent rage
I remember it like an old bedroom
crammed full of my story
like you'll never catch me smiling
one time
I remember walls that won't talk back
black and white
remind me all those resolutions
remember really righteous in my indignation
like I proved it so irrefutably
can't you see
that whole of the world's against me.

Don't tell me
man grow up
supposed to suck it up
not supposed to give up
no matter how fed up
watching it all break up
break out against my now armour-plated-iron age.

Desperate for the touch
of another
not forthcoming
tonight I can feel... that.

A subject too touchy to sleep on
don't want to dull this with a drink
thrash it out with another bike ride
distract it with a DVD
scour phone contacts for a plan B.

Don't tell me anything else,
I want
to be my own hero
the only number you can't divide
multiplied by itself
and multiplies,
yet remains itself

The one and only,
the one I want to be
don't tell me
how stupid this is.

Don't try and tell me a damn thing
when all I have
in front of me
is tonight.

Don't tell me that what I got ~tonight
won't hold
because all told
I don't have to tell you
that I need
something to hold on to.

And behind my back
don't tell this tonight
as it's holding me now,
a little rough, but still like a lover
that I don't want
to sleep with it.

I feel tonight's vice grip
remembered rage
it will stop me drifting back
into that
pleasure of forgetting
the same mistakes,


That got me here in the first place.






_______________________



" I have a love,
the likes of which you could scarcely imagine
and a rage,
the likes of which you would not believe.

If I
cannot satisfy the one,
I will indulge
the other."

-Mary Shelley's Frankenstein






-Peace





.

Small Talk -12/05/2010

.

So how you been?
Yeah-fine.
What you been up to?
Not-much.

The polite thing
would have been
for me to reply
in-kind.

Instead I start into story~
the creative projects
the ideas grappled with
the never ending battles
on the social frontiers
the existential loneliness
the magnificent desolations
how
I have been and
what
I have been up to.

Just the same old shit?

Shit...
find me excited just to still be breathing
and I’m talking to you
and I've offended you
not thinking my life is mundane,
too.

I only know how
to hold up one end
of the conversation
at a time
all I can do is,
try
and get the ball rolling.

What can I tell you?

What I do know is,
there's more to your life
than juggling your yeah-fine and not-much
you
have thoughts
worth expressing as ideas
you
have experiences
both unique and universal
and all of it yours-all-yours
and any of it there-right-there,
ready for your to share.

What I don't know is,
how to get it out of you
don’t believe any silence of mine
could ever get you talking.

I
am not
fine
and neither
are you.

So talk to me
tell this tall-poppy one of your tales
because I’m here
all ears and all the time you need
I’m sure I’d find your life
real-interesting,


If only you would too.



__________________________________

Envisioned as a sequel to I Statements, this damn thing has been sitting around half-finished in my "stuff that's half-finished" folder for far too long, (yes, it was sparked by one or two real life incidents so I wanted to wait for that topicality to cool off), and meanwhile the idea here has been overtaken by another much larger thing on the same thing I've written last week, so here it is, for better or worse, but at least it's out the nest now, neglected no longer.



-Peace





.

Vogue -06/05/2010

.

Nah look,
they're all the fucken same
and they reckon we're the racists.

They're not getting beat up by aussies
didn't you see the news mate?
yeah
that one guy made the whole thing up.

Truth is, it's them beating us up
my mate's brothers wife cousin
says she knows someone who got beat up
by Indians
it's fucked up mate.

I don't know why they're coming over here now
all of a suddden
we didn't used to have all these Indians in Australia
a few years back
now they're everywhere
you know they come over here
they expect all these handouts
and don't want to work
then they take all our jobs too.

They can't even speak english good or nothing.

I applied for a job
but then this Indian got it instead
I reckon that's discrimination.

You know how it is mate yeah?
you walk around the city
you wouldn't even know you're in Australia anymore
I don't feel safe walking around the city
all these young bloody asian students everywhere
they come over here because they have rich parents
and they're taking our jobs
too.

Mate.

They treat their women like shit
we respect women in this country
you know
if a women wants to go out
well, we'll let 'em go

that's okay,
if she wants to earn a living
and look after the house
and have kids
and dress up nice
and wear make up
and go to the beach and wear as little as they like
that's okay.

...no complaints from us, hey mate!

You know when you go to their country
I mean not that I ever would
but if you did right
you'd have to obey all their bullshit rules and customs
but when they come over here though
the governments always just lets them straight in
no matter what
and they don't have to obey our laws
or speak our Australian language english.

In this country we're free to be whoever we want
but they don't want to be like us
want to cling to their own culture all the time
I mean I don't mind if they still speak
Asian or Indian
but they shouldn't do it out in public
you can't understand what they're saying.

Why come over here to be free and all that,
if you don't want to be like us?

They don't think about how uncomfortable they make us
if you come to a new country

you should learn to be like the people
who are already living here,
like we did.

My parents I mean,
they came from New Zealand
and they still managed to fit in okay.
but mate,
these immigrants don't want to change

that's why us aussies got to stick together
stay true to our old values
and shit.

But the thing I hate the most is how
all these foreigners
from these fucken' countries
don't want to learn about our different culture
they stay around their own kind.

I reckon if you don't want to live in this open
and accepting society
then they should all just piss off.

Oh, but don't get me wrong, I'm not a racist.



That's un-Australian.














______________________________

"Racism is the new black" -Sage Francis

I really (really really...) dislike politics, polemic and preachy rhetoric, at least inasmuch as I might ever detect it in my own writing, but this morning I just couldn't help it.

I don't watch television, surf the net or read newspapers, I avoid the suburbs like a plague (there's my bigotry shining through), and I still cop earfulls of this out on the street, and after a particularly ugly conversation I had overnight, coupled with attending a very politically minded slam ~ I needed to blow off steam (that disposition on the other hand, is always an indispensible element of Tales Told By An Idiot).

It hasn't been the 1950's since, like, 60 years or something crazy like that. And, just as it is for many people who arrive in this country... there is no going back.

So grow up.





-Peace






.

Girl with the Fuzzy Handcuffs -05/04/2010

.

It started
with her showing me
the fuzzy handcuffs
she saw the look
on my face,
and giggled.

It ended
a few hours later
with her softly whispering
filthy dirty jokes
in my ear,
and smiled.

Though,


that is pretty much where it ended.




_____________________________





-Peace



.

How You Play The Game -05/05/2010

.
She seemed interested.

She came up to me at the bar and invited me to play pool
she didn't care when I told her I can't play pool for shit
she said that was fine
she seemed just happy to play.

I then potted three balls in a row.

I was as surprised as she was
I had never done that before
I wasn't actually trying to...
I tried to explain.

She said, after that game,
she'd come find me back at the bar
she said
she just wanted to play another round with a friend.

I waited by the bar
I knew
I would never again play a game of pool so well
but

I uh, still ended up losing that particular game,


incidentally.



___________________________________






-Peace




.