Fucked

There was not much I could say about her really. I hardly knew her. She was young, she was beautiful, and stood up in bed and took her medicine like a good girl. For all I knew, she may have enjoyed it, but now she was dead.

Unconsciously, I put the milk in the fridge, dumped the papers, full of old news that no one would read, and lit a cigarette. I knew what it looked like. My junk was all over her, and all through the blood stained bed. There was enough evidence to try and convict me even before the cops had been called. I needed to think.

I stubbed my cigarette out on last night’s dinner plate, walked back to the bedroom and leaned my body into the doorframe, as much for my own support as to keep me from entering the room.  The wounds were neat, precise and calculated. Almost certainly 9mm, soft tipped, hollow points. The amount of blood in the bed told me without the need to look that the exit wounds would not have been so neat, and were a whole lot bigger. The puff of black powder on her forehead spoke of the point-blank coldness of the hit and the economical pattern of a shot to the head and a shot to the heart was as good as a calling card from an Eastern European military college: "belt and braces Comrade."

Whoever had done this had been in no hurry and did it with a deliberate, steady hand, looking her in the eye as they pulled the trigger. This was not some junky robbery, they knew what they were doing and had done this type of thing before.  There would be no fingerprints.  There would be no DNA and there would be no ballistics. The gun would have no history and he will have picked up and taken both bullet casings, just as he was trained. To the extent that you can make a living by killing, this guy was a professional.

The three draws of the bedside table were lying upturned on the floor, their former contents looking more violently assaulted than Helena, who despite the carnage around her, lay much as I left her half an hour ago on the bed. An angel on a red cloud.  On 'my side', near the window, the late morning sun revealed a similar assault on the top draw and its contents. The second draw ajar, hung like a broken jaw, open only far enough for someone to get out of it what they had been looking for and leave.  I knew what they were looking for. I just didn't know why.

Another siren screamed by on the street outside. In a third rate hospital on the other side of town my mother was been eaten alive by cancer. Meanwhile, in a neighbouring state my wife and my creditors were in a race to Court to file their writs; hers for divorce, theirs for bankruptcy, and I was due back in Kazakhstan in less than a week.

The Gift

I weep for all that I have lost
I drown within my tears
The road is long and dark and cold
The gift is all I fear

A Lost Weekend

A dirt road in a hired car

With a lover unfamiliar
A distant light or evening star

It hardly really matters

A pampered bed in paradise

The books of Alexandria
A glass of port and deep remorse

The child we called Amnesia

The scent of roses fill the room

A robe of finest silk

Falls abandoned to the floor

To be walked on in the morning

The chaise lounge,

the wrought iron grill

A promise made and broken

She stabs her teaspoon in my heart

A Curate's egg for breakfast

Say, hey that you Frank .....?

No I ain’t been round here now in ages
Christ how much this place has changed
But you’re hardly lookin’ older Frank
Maybe just a little grey
Yeah I did five of six in Pentridge
Thou’ they promised me parole
They’d get that look and close the book
Put me back down in the hole
It was a minor complication
I didn’t ask her for her age
She was just 15, it now so seems
So they threw me in the cage
Sure, she was dressed up like a school girl
Christ man!! How was I to know?
With the school books on the side board
Thought it was just part of the show
Now they got me on a register
Shirl’ won’t let me see the kids
Took my taxi drivers licence
Can’t even get a factory gig
So I'm drinkin’ cut price whisky
Can’t afford those single malts
Yeah she looked young in the papers
But it weren’t really my fault
It was dark in there, her golden hair
Pig tails done in plaits
Then the vice came in ‘for we’d done a thing
But the court don’t care for that
And the lesbians at the newsagents
I kind of think they know
Always reading Sunday papers
And looking down their nose
Hey, you going to buy that magazine?
Well what’a you suppose?
You want a tip, buy a bra,
And wear some women’s clothes?
Sure Frank, I remember you
Yeah, you ran the wrecking yard
Sorry to hear about your brother
And what happened with the car
But you haven’t got a dollar, have ya
Like I wouldn’t normally ask
Just my cheque aint cleared
And with the weekend here
I’ll pay you back next time we pass
No, don’t you even think about it
I understand, yeah times are tough
Sure that’s okay, another day
I best be gettin’ off.

Perth

This stifled belch of civilisation over which we trip, as the continent drags itself, listless, out of the desert, to stumble and drown within the sea. A fragment of cool air before the salt water bites this blistered skin and drags us down beneath the waves. Was that a shadow of hope, or just a 'trick of the light'? Backs bent, westward trudging, our necks on fire, we shed these threadbare garments of sophistication, a burden now, objects or ridicule, a vestige of the East. Help us slither beneath the lowered bar. Our bellies dragging in the sandy earth. A barren soil, in which nothing grows, but vitriol and hate. We pass our minds through the eye of the needle, narrower still. Our blood turns to venom as we burn from the inside too. Fitzroy is just an itch now. Surry Hills a yellow bruise we can’t recall sustaining. A pint glass smashes on a table’s edge, a form of conversation, where words are disused organs. No painted sky, no sandy shore, no coloured lights on Council’s chambers will breathe life into this still born dot upon the map.

Mary O’Shannesey

Mary O’Shannesey had long black hair
She combed it every day
A hundred times on either side
'till her long black hair turned grey

Mary O’Shannesey once married a man
A man not fit for a wife
He gave her her sons
and took leave with his gun
To put an end to his miserable life

Mary O’Shannesey bore seven sons
Not one is alive today
Those not killed in the war,
or dead before
Drank themselves to an early grave

Mary O’Shannesey lived a life of remorse
For the dreams that she never attained
'though she prayed to the Lord
Her prayers were ignored
As her soul was indelibly stained

For Mary O’Shannesey once murdered a man
When she was barely more than a child
He took what was pure
To the pits of the sewer
‘till something insider had died

Mary O’Shannesey had one great love
The beautiful music she made
The strings of her harp
Were tied to her heart
and made her courageous and brave

Many years later
when her husband was gone
And her sons had drifted away
She hunted that man
'till she found him again
And with a rock she beat out his brains

Though nobody knows,
but Mary and Joe
And he aint got nothin' to say
She's riddled with guilt
for the life that she build
Was laid on foundations of shame

Corpse in the Copse

The following work is currently subject to dispute as to translation. It is published here in its "raw" form, translated in accordance with international standards, however as PedroTheBoatBuilder wrote in a now little know form of archaic Catalan, the accurate translation of which is still subject to debate, there is considerable scholarly disagreement as to correct usage and interpretation.

Cut the crust from off my eyes
Burn my flesh with fire
Dash my lifeless body on the rocks
Drag my corpse into the copse
And bury me in borrowed skin
I have no right to live within

Lay me out upon the snow
Leave me to the carrion crows
Naked in this time of toil
Consumed above the frozen soil
I have only ancient seeds to sow
And so the answer must be "no"

I am worthless in this thicket lost
I stumble on this ocean tossed
Hate me with your sharpest lance
The weak relinquish beauty's chance
No more vile within your mind
Than I so vile within mine

Drink your fill and turn away
Those were dreams of yesterday
Tomorrow brings a different light
Dead secretions of the night
Carry only useless weight
A broken will and self hate

Talk of ashes of a future past
A history that could not last
Broken glass glitters still
The glint of blood foretells the kill
And dogs released cannot be tamed
I've no one but myself to blame