About A Girl

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B008T9SFCE/ref=as_li_tf_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B008T9SFCE&linkCode=as2&tag=widerscree-20https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/211811http://www.xinxii.com/en/double-pass-to-aberration-p-337017.htmlIt all seems so simple, as easy as sharpening a wooden stake and ramming it through the dead heart of a sleeping vampire. As easy as jumping off a suspension bridge into a plate-glass ocean below, forget rat-eating uncles and night-nurses with heaving chests, forget the past and concentrate on the here and now. Concentrate on staying alive, focus on not getting your blood drained and your eco-system re-engineered. I don’t care how cute she is, how alluring her eyes, lips, fangs are. Some women aren’t made to be considerate bed mates. Then there’s the kid from the band, the kid with the eye-liner and self-mutilation fetish, what’s up his skirt? Flying, that’s what, and it’s not the crash-landing bothers me; it’s him coming back as a sushi-munching zombie. Rock stars are bad enough when they’re alive, but dead, well, dead they’re a right pain the butt. If I had to choose, if my back was against the wall and my front facing the countess, I guess I’d go for the leeching, that’d have to be one fuck of a way to go. You can keep the zombie boy, keep him in your bath tub—keep him at bay—if you can. And so what if I never get to see sunlight again, who needs it anyhow. No, the dark is fine with me, as is sleeping in a coffin with a vamped-up temptress, sometimes, all you really have to do is just let go.  

Hunter & Hemingway

Hunter & Hemingway

Death rides a Harley
covered in post-it notes
chasing the dragon
the punt return,
no more phone calls, football season is over;
Johnny’s left the basement
The moot point & the point/discharged
smoking guns & wild turkeys
bullfights, postage stamps & grieving wives
we wrote the lines, drew the lines, inhaled them,
blotted & besotted
punctuated with violent intent
the last full stop a crimson droplet
running down a wall to the end zone.
Postscripts plastered on white boards & fridge doors,
The matador gouged
The wide-receiver gone too far . . .
the gentlemen won the cold war,
gnawing on a president’s skull
in a glorious graveyard;
listening to the anguished howls
of the lost & soon-to-be found.

Excerpt From A Work-In-Progress

36
But too much thinking undid the moment, the moment was all he had, all everyone had, and the moments left available to them were fading fast. They were all dying, one way or another. He rolled off her, her body, such as it was, releasing its part-mechanical hold on him. He sat up on the edge of the cot, wondering what came next, what the protocol was. Sex didn’t mean anything, sex wasn’t love it was justification; justification of the fact one was still human, no matter how small the quotient of human remaining, that one had urges and needs requiring fulfilment. Sex was a business practice, one entity gave and one received and after those donations one or another picked up the bill.
    ‘What are you thinking about?’ She asked him.
    ‘Life.’ He answered immediately.
    ‘Life logging?’
    ‘Huh?’
    ‘You know, continuing to build up and define your memories.’
    ‘Why would I be doing that?’
    ‘One has to, it’s pivotal.’
    ‘Pivotal to what precisely?’
    She sat up, ‘Pivotal to your intellectual property database, to machine intelligence and the replication of oneself. Without comprehensive memories and learned actions one couldn’t be replicated.’
    ‘Why the pig-sticking shit would someone want to be replicated, isn’t one of each thing enough?’
    ‘Plants replicate them-selves and to survive we’ll need to do the same.’
    ‘We do, it’s called breeding.’ He answered abruptly.
    ‘Insufficient I’m afraid - breeding alone won’t save the human race, only the Nano can do that.’
    ‘Uh huh, more futuristic science and shamanism I suppose, let me guess, we need to become thinking plants – but wait, we already have one of those, one big enough to think for all of us!’ He mocked her.
    ‘You’re against science?’
    ‘Isn’t everyone? Didn’t the Old People’s scientists do the planet enough damage already? We don’t need them or their bogus ideologies.’ He could feel his chances of another deep and un-meaningful encounter slipping away. How the shit-jack had he become so opinionated?
    ‘All ignorance stems from a rebuttal of originality by minds full of fear of change.’ She rebuked him.
    He felt him-self growing angrier with her judgemental bias toward the appliance of science, of course she’d admire it, after all, it had already improved her, saved her otherwise worthless life. ‘Originality breeds contempt.’ He fired her way.
    She poured scorn on his retort immediately, ‘ICU propaganda!’
    She was right about that at least, but maybe the ICU had a point, maybe this reckless careering back to a reliance on tech was simply the start of repeating what had already occurred with disastrous results. But if so, why continue to approve, even endorse and fund new machined entities?  To pacify humans and their fear, and then fully eradicate them, that was why; the math was logical, it added up, no matter how the answer had been tabulated.   
    ‘Perhaps,’ he answered tiredly, the sleep-deprivation kick he’d been on really hammering home. ‘But I didn’t come to your cave for another lesson in future science because frankly I’m sick of people having all the answers, having opinions that overrule everyone else’s. I don’t care about the future, about memes, about Nano particles or replicating myself. One of me is enough for me to handle, all I wanted was the docking, the wet-job was a bonus, so thanks.’      
    ‘All take and no give huh, I thought you were different, but you’re not, you’re just like the rest, in it to win it, only, you don’t have a clue what the prize actually is, do you?’
    ‘Freedom.’ He replied stoically.
    ‘But you’re already free, you just don’t see it, you think that freedom is out there over the Golden Platitude, but what if it isn’t?’
    He didn’t want to hear it, if there wasn’t anything over the Golden Platitude, no Custom Culture with its glimmering boulevards and towering temples of flesh, then he’d be shucked, left standing with no place to go, no dream to follow. ‘It’ll be there, and if it isn’t I’ll go someplace else.’ He countered.
    She smiled at him, almost serenely but far too knowingly, ‘You’re probably right, I’m sorry if I offended you, mangled your dream out of shape, say, have you ever swum?’
    It wasn’t a sidebar he’d ever considered, after all, where could one go to indulge in something as pointless as swimming, if he’d have been meant to swim he’d have been born with flippers. ‘No, and I don’t really think I’d like too, being underground is enough, but being underwater underground would probably close my mind completely.’
    She placed her hand on his, ‘That’s what you need, mind closing, the freedom you’re seeking is right here.’
    ‘You mean the Pimp has a swimming pool?’
    ‘Better,’ she beamed, ‘Why’d you think the Pimp resides down here?’
    ‘Because it’s safe, because he’s a fruit job?’
    ‘Right on both counts, but there’s something else, you want to see?’
    Curiosity breeds insobriety and right now inebriation sounded fine. ‘Why not.’ He said, letting her pull him up from the cot.
She led him, luxuriously, through the quieter tunnels of the Pimp’s underworld palisade, here and there they past spent couples sleeping off their exertions, and as they penetrated deeper into the fascinating maze of excavations he grew more excited. How long had the Pimp and his minions been bunkered away down here, either oblivious to, or totally disinterred in, what was going on above ground. There was still that disturbing doubt though, the gnawing and growing snippet of negativity that told him constantly that if a plant had roots, those roots could travel anywhere so long as there was – water. And the Pimp had a . . . ‘Almost there!’ She interrupted his contemplation with a delighted quickstep to the finishing line. He had to jog a little himself to keep up with her, and when he finally did catch up, he was staring at the most magnificent sight, even more breath-taking than the ICU’s Wall of the Sun.
An enormous underground cavern, its curved ceiling shimmering with the cool green reflection of the pool it covered. ‘You see,’ she said, obviously pleased with her-self, ‘an aqua-dome, the water’s always fresh, always warm, bubbles up from someplace deep in the earth, this is why the Pimp stays here, not only can you drink it, but swim in it too.’
    ‘The people here, they swim in it?’
    ‘Only when the Pimp authorises gala days and suchlike.’
    ‘Uh huh, so usually it’s off limits?’
    ‘Unless the Pimp wants to impress a certain concubine or another or some travelling dignitary, though a lot of the hybrids here couldn’t go in it anyhow.’ She smiled.
    ‘Rust I suppose.’ He offered casually.
    ‘I used to swim, before . . .’ she started.
    ‘Before your accident.’ He finished for her.     
    That infectious smile again, half genuine, half manufactured, ‘Doesn’t stop you though does it?’ She teased.
    ‘I don’t think I’d like to incur the Pimp’s wrath, or get . . .’ But it was too late, her synthetic shove had sent him stumbling to the water’s edge and, unable to maintain his balance with his soldered arm floundering, he plunged in. The weight of his new-found, metal-sprouting limb immediately dragging him down into the clear green depths – depth’s that were, seemingly bottomless. Thoughts of corrosion, the ICU, assassination and fornication fled his mind as his lungs began to reel against the all-encompassing wet dream. It was then he realised, that he’d never actually learned to swim, because there’d been no need – after all, there was no water to swim in.  Down he continued, his lungs at bursting point, bubbles streaming from his tightly closed lips, if this was death, he was in, well and truly in, let the good times roll, all he had to do, a voice inside his head said calmly and loudly, was to just relax and open his mouth, wide. He obeyed it too, he unclenched his jaw and let his lips flap free and the cool green fingers of death flooded in, filling him with new life and instant karma, relieving his lungs of the onerous burden they’d endured since his unlawful conception. Everything was so easy, so pure, so bracing and mind-cleansing, this was it, the absolute freedom the Symmetrical Girl had spoken of – the ultimate ride. As the green eternity surrounding him began to darken violently, the in-built human survival instinct kicked-in and panic crashed all of his memory banks as it raced for an answer. To every problem there existed a solution, that was funny – a solution – because solution’s were invariably liquid. He was about to die with a smile on his face and a stiff tool in his pants, erotic death syndrome, now he was really living . . . 

The Craft

This isn’t even a poem really, it’s more a thesis, an antithesis, a treatise, Armageddon in two hundred & fifty words or less, it’s meaningless, bereft, out of credit. All this word junk you get to collect on scraps of paper, other people’s business cards, beer coasters, hollow lines without companions, verse on crutches hobbling toward anonymity central. What the hell do you do with them? Me, I chuck them onto social networking sites so they can float away on the void and maybe hitch up with some degenerative mind surfing the waves looking for redress, absolution, a juncture, I’m a doctor I realise now, late in the afternoon of my life as the kids set up a ball game out on the grass. I never liked kids anyhow, a cliché, suck it in it’ll do you good. The first thing I found was the line ‘Caucasian Sky Lifts’, I mean, what the shit does that mean? I was sitting there twirling a swizzle stick, the ice in the absinthe slowly melting, reminding me of Tyler’s cave in Fight Club, then for whatever reason I turned it into ‘Under pretty Caucasian skies’, yes, the juice was on and the current was pulsing through me – warmly. But where to go with it? ‘Turned on the lathe of mercantile credit’ sprung into my head like a randy hare, it made a connection, jumped a synapse with gay abandon, two dykes came into the bar – my mind went blank. I watched them engage in social intercourse and mimic binary protocols to a tee. Fascinating, ‘belltower rains silence onto mescaline sidewalks’, okay, I can go with that, the day is already crotchety and haggard, must have been thinking about that guy in Texas someplace, mass murderers can pop into the conscious any old time. Back to the dykes – oh look, ‘in the barrio they sit / clinking glasses with manufactured friends’, I’d started slashing. Juxtapose death, it’s beginning to become a waking dream, but now I have it by the nuts and it’s got nothing to do but scream the bitchy little poem. Time passes, then returns to ensure I was watching it pass, ‘thinking like Sunday papers/ guardians of democracy’, something from a recently read biography, lines stick in my head, words unglue me, sentences are handed out like free syringes in a drug bank. Flash dance mentally to a just watched movie, one eye on the roustabout dykes, ‘denouncing Kierkegaarde’s stance & Gross’s ideology’, would they even know who that was referencing and why or am I passing judgment? Probably, I’m prone to generalisations, nonetheless the slipstream is slipping, ‘Surplus of imagination comes with penury & jumper cables’, oh, okay, that’s a smidgin left field, very Freud, very Dada, heads on sticks with jumper cables attached – am I back to murder one? Pull myself together mentally, the poetry filly is bolting through Laura Ingalls meadow, papa is beckoning, shotgun concealed behind back. The first rule of Fight Club is . . .  ‘leap tall buildings & locomotion: strap in for harness free adult entertainment,’ certainly not that. But I have had harness free adult entertainment on my mind a lot, maybe it appertains to an electric chair, I’m prone to penning death poems whereas Dylan Thomas’s oeuvre consisted almost totally of childhood reminisces, we all bite the hand that feeds. Oh yes, the dykes, well, they’re off, off to a vet to get de-sexed and flea bathed. Now, I’m watching the bar girl wash glasses with the faux interest of a chicken at a wake.  ‘Sliding down the urethra to moulded-plastic logistics.’ Uh, what the toss is a urethra? The bar girl glances at me, I look away; I have a phobia about chicks holding tea towels. ‘One girl fists another in a bus station toilet,’ well okay, the tangent is established, the route marker set in stone, all mpt at poetic justice abandoned, back to the sex. Obviously I’m referencing the dearly departed dykes, or imagining what they’re up to, there’s a bus terminal not far away. ‘First thought gets western unionized,’ there’s the biblical interlude all you Jesuit’s were hanging out for. ‘Rock star leaps from bridge’ a Richey Manic name drop (no pun intended) ‘poet jumps from aft of ship,’ rapidly heel-snapped by a dip into Hart Crane’s tragic demise (pun intended), and they’re . . . off – and now we’d need a little bit of Ian Curtis me thinks and hey presto ‘idea hangs itself on laundry line’ Voila! But those jabs won’t stop coming and suddenly the faucet is on full bore and I can’t get me no emergency plumber ‘bride jilts herself for televised bliss,’ argh what the jack . . . ‘collection ends in fraudulent identity crisis,’ damn I’m referencing myself again  ‘parable consumes the inferno,’ subliminal Dante? Someone please turn this shit off because believe it or not ‘I just write the fucking words lady, I don’t underwrite them.’ And that was how it was done, I finished my dregs, folded up the paper and left, surprisingly, it was dark outside and I was stone cold sober.
http://www.youtube.com/user/insomniacalmaniac?feature=mhe

The Other State - Review

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/149857

I like this book. Not necessarily because it’s urban fantasy, I mean, let’s face it, these preternatural interlopers have had a fair run since Uncle Bram first nailed one to a stake, but for once we aren’t sweetly indulged with the high school reunion shtick that’s inundated this genre since – I don’t know, since whenever. Lizzie isn’t a high school girl, not by any stretch of the imagination - she might have been – once. No, this femme fatale protagonist is a chain-smoking vixen with an eating disorder and a caustic sarcasm that cuts through everything – literally.
In Eden Gray’s Australian set fantasy world, laconic humour and petty vindictiveness seep through everything, from murder and mayhem for kicks, to fight nights and SWAT teams. Hunting vampires, or, as Stacey Wiley and her adulterous Texan lover call it ‘Waiting for emergence’, sounds like fun, if that is, your idea of fun is blood, guts and hard love. Buick Chalmers heads up the Dog Collar Demons, a Melbourne based biker’s gang long since infiltrated by werewolves – and these dogs just want to have a laugh and turn a buck in the process. Enter Lizzie, looking for a little fun herself to alleviate the humdrum existence of suburban life – and what better fun could a girl have than being the head dog’s moll?  Well, to spice it up I suppose she could cheat on the dog with the leader of Adelaide’s techno geek vampire clan . . .
That simmering and petty parochialism between Adelaide and Melbourne is deftly portrayed by Gray’s regional knowledge – and transferred to his night-stalking characters with aplomb. Of course South Australian vampires would detest Melbourne werewolves, and almost as if it’s a footy grand final between opposing states, Gray lets his arbitrators run amok with cheap jibes, hearsay and put downs of competence – culminating in a twilight duel that spills across borders and into the lives of both the innocent and guilty.
In many ways ‘The Other State’ keeps the long-since defined plot of fantasy books close to its chest, adding where required, the sun-drenched frolics and lackadaisical ethics of a people more consumed with alfresco dining than homicide statistics. The old vampire, Lucian, does a fine job of provoking his charge into a fight that’s incidental to a greater cause and as in all fast-paced stories, Cobol, the newly-deposed vampire leader, enters the wolf’s den with his head held high and his physique suitably enhanced by a high protein diet. The end justifies the means however and there is no greater glory or resolution – carrying the dead dog’s pup and heir, Lizzie escapes . . . into the clutches of Cobol’s aides, now vampiric suburbanites themselves . . . leaving the coffin lid ajar enough to permit Gray the luxury of a later resurrection should he deem it just.
‘The Other State’ is, given its relentless pace and adult thread, not the kind of fantasy book where love breeds and the dead attend gym classes, in Gray’s world there is slaying for the sake of slaying and degradation on a large scale – oh, and there’s impotent police and corrupt forensic scientists, not to mention a girl hung up on sex with quadriplegics and married authors . . . all of which only ice the midnight cake Gray has baked. 

The OTHER STATE is available amazon/smashwords & via Lulu for printed

A Note On The Travel Industry

How far he’d travelled and in what direction he had no way to measure, for all he knew he might be staggering back toward the ICU, back toward public humiliation and slate-breaking . . . he lay weakly against an ash-laden pile of waste, watching the orange break mean and omnipotent, every day was bathed in the colour of lunacy. He no strength left and his willpower reserve had been exhausted - he could already feel his tongue swelling. He drifted in and out of consciousness, dreamed intermittently of Chico Ink and the Paperboy and the Weatherman, all imaginary no doubt, no more embodied than him . . . and as the dark loomed menacingly he heard the sound – a known sound – or another cruel vision manufactured by his failing mind. He closed his eyes and let his head fall forward, they would find his remains like this, praying to the rotten earth from whence he’d come, his mouth full of blood-caked words and crumbling enamel, testament to the futility of a worthless orifice on a pitiful being. Death they said was just another hallway, another route into another dimension or story, someplace where it was dark and still for a while until the insidiousness of real time existence grabbed one again for its own amusement. Maybe he’d come back when the sky was blue, when there was other life apart from mutated humans and rodents, a place where the sun shone and life wasn’t full to the brim with one-armed bandits and twisted metal head cases. The soft notion buoyed him, his own mental anaesthetic kicking in to drift him away to a better place.

The pain jerked him back to cold reality, the pain in his right arm. He groped for it with his other until he stopped and felt fur. Had he already been recycled again back into the universe? He focused his eyes on his arm and adjusting to the dimness saw what it was . . . a dead desert rat pinned to his arm by its tail. He sat up and yanked the rodent away, taking a small piece of his own flesh along with it – and there between his legs, several vials of . . . of desal. Purified water . . . was the Machine Girl? No, the Tool Man had back-tracked - bringing him food and water, what craziness was unfolding now, a game of dare and double dare? He popped the top on one vial and drank slowly, the fluid making his tongue reel in horror until finally it succumbed greedily to the life preserving nectar. He had to make fire, cook the rat, and boosted by the water he set about finding kindling. They all carried flint, making fire was a base skill, and once he’d got it going he shoved a rod deep into the rats mouth until it was secure enough to roast. By orange up, fed and watered, he was ready to go . . . and there, not far from him, was the route marker firmly hammered into the blackened ground, and, at its base, six more vials of desalinated water. He gathered them up tenderly and stashed them, then set off dutifully in pursuit of a thing that had been trying to kill since whenever, but was now, apparently, protecting him from a fate worse than death by murder; protecting him from him-self.

He walked until the discarded and burned trash finally petered out and there before him began the Wages of Sin desert, stretching to the horizon like some fiery red magic carpet. Six vials of desal wouldn’t get anything across this and once he was in it too far, there’d be no about turning. He sat there as the heat it threw off slow roasted him, what now, there was no directional marker that he could see. They said the hallucinations out there were monstrous, that people had been devoured whole by sand worms and, that head-shrinkers and bone breakers acclimatised to the extreme conditions continually wandered the shifting landscape looking for victims. Those faceless ‘theys’ had a lot of scatological data at their fingertips apparently, but, if people had come out, no matter where, with these kinds of stories, then at the least he knew that it was possible to come out – alive. There was also the matter of the Tool Man, because if it had entered the desert, then the math followed that he could do so too. The Tool Man obviously had no intention of letting him perish out here, so, there was nothing to lose. There would be signs and route markers and water, all he had to do was put one foot in front of the other and not left the heat fry what was left of his brains. He stood up, ripped off his filthy shirt and tied it around his head, checked his canisters and took the first tentative step onto the burning red sand.

He’d only walked for a while, disorientation already creeping in, when he’d come across a booth. It was just there, in the middle of nowhere, shut up by the looks of things and hardly surprising, what the shit kind of entrepreneurial enterprise could be run from such a location. Passing trade was non-existent and there would be plenty of slow days for the fool who ran it,

to ponder bad business decisions and their financial ramifications on. He sat by it, utilising the meagre shade it offered, and popped another vial, three down already, three left, a fine film of sweat having already consumed his body he could only protect the mind from here on, use the ravaged human framework to transport his brain from here to eternity. He was about to struggle to his feet again when he heard noises behind him, emanating from within the booth. He moved away from it slowly on all fours, the sand scorching the palms of his hand as he did so. Walking was one thing, crawling was another, but he wanted to keep his profile low and his shadow compact, there was no telling what was in that booth preparing to open up shop for another deathly quiet day of risky business. He didn’t look back as he heard the booth’s hatch creak open, there was a dune not far ahead and if he motored slowly he could crest it and be out of sight, the sand would swallow all trace of his activities before he’d even slid down the other side of the dune to temporary insanity.

He crawled back up the dune, curiosity finally overcoming his better judgment, and as he reached its summit a shadow engulfed him. He looked up, and there, holding a tray with a jug and a cup on it, was an immaculately attired woman, a real one too by the looks of things. ‘Drink?’ She said to him through a beaming smile.

    He nodded, feeling rather stupid, and stood up brushing sand from himself to accept the cool water the woman had poured. ‘Allow me to introduce myself,’ she said gaily, obviously unaffected by either the stifling heat or his dishevelled appearance, ‘I’m the Tour Guide, thinking of crossing are you?’ she finished, sticking out a refined hand. He wasn’t quite sure what he was supposed to do with it but in the end he stuck his grubby one out as well, it was obviously some antiquated greeting protocol still utilised in the desert. She shook his hand with hers quite vivaciously, her flesh cool and soft. ‘There’s so much to do and see out on the Wages of Sin, really, it’s a wonderful destination for students and eco-tourists to really unwind, or simply get back to basics and study history.’ She said excitedly, getting back to basics was what everyone was doing anyhow, he thought to himself, but he didn’t want to usurp her obviously ebullient sales pitch.

    ‘I’m not actually on vacation.’ He replied, removing his shirt from his head, ‘I’m on my way to Dot Com.’

    ‘Wonderful!’ She clapped, startling him, ‘Dot Com is really booming, becoming the must see destination!’

    ‘Fantastic.’ He burped.

    ‘It is! But if you’re heading that way anyway why not avail yourself of the amazing opportunities the WOS offers?’

    ‘The WOS?’

    ‘Oh, just a travel industry acronym for the desert, we’re funky like that.’

    He nodded as if he understood whereas in reality he didn’t have the first clue as to what she was on about, what the shit eating sun dog was the travel industry?

    ‘Yes,’ she continued happily, ‘a whole new future of vibrant opportunities awaits everyone after the ICU re-branded everything.’

    How long had he been wandering since he’d first left ICU on the Sackcloth Whore’s ticket? This woman, this real girl, was talking about the ICU as if it were the most go-get authority on the planet and not the iron-fisted overlord it had been when he’d fled. ‘So many self-employment and sub-contracting opportunities have sprung up in Trauma Ward that we’re being encouraged to spread out and prosper, wonderful isn’t it?’

    Or perish, he thought.

    ‘Wonderful.’ He agreed with scepticism.

    ‘Now, I’m sure you’d like a little time in the shade, why not take the weight off a while in my office, it’s air conditioned you know.’ She smiled that half-moon smile again and he was unable to prevent himself from following her back down the dune toward the booth. She held the door open for him and he stepped inside to be immediately greeted by ice cold air. He looked around in surprise, inside - the booth was five or six times larger than it appeared on the outside. ‘I know,’ the Tour Guide said, ‘it amazes everyone, quite the venture isn’t it?’

    ‘Quite.’ He replied.

    ‘I live downstairs of course, would like the tour?’

    He shrugged, why not, her time obviously wasn’t worth money and it was hardly as if she had a queue of impatient clients to attend. He followed down a flight of stone steps to the slightly warmer air, and there, at the bottom, he could only marvel at the spectacle. There were huge excavations in every direction all nicely arranged with homely touches. ‘I had to deconstruct this first of course, before I erected the booth above.’

    ‘You did all of this?’ He asked in amazement.

    She nodded with obvious pride, ‘Just me and a pick axe.’

     ‘How long did it take?’

     She glanced at the sun dial on her wrist, ran a few mental sums and then said ‘Well, I started the dark before last and I was open for business yesterday so not too long really, would you care to peruse some brochures perhaps?’ She said, gesturing him back up to the office. Either he was nuts or she was, no one he knew bar Moleskins could excavate a burrow like this in such a ridiculously short time span. He sat obediently at her desk - he was becoming proficient in sitting at desks at least.

‘Now,’ she began in a very business-like manner, ‘have you heard of the skull caves?’

    He shook his head, she careered onward to greater sales figures ‘Oh well, you absolutely must! They’re the premier drawcard of the WOS, indeed, startling - they’ll blow your mind clean off I guarantee it, here, look at the brochure!’ She thrust a slick sheet of oil paper into his hand and he studied the images on it, they were gruesome, who would want to pay to see such a horror. He placed the pamphlet carefully on her desk and tried to smile.

    ‘Not your drug of choice?’ she said, with no hint of disappointment, ‘Well, how about wormholes, ever been down a wormhole?’

    ‘Not recently.’ He smiled back.

    ‘Then there you are! Oh, they’re simply fantastic, a real eye-opener into the workings of things that live below.’

    ‘I’m sure,’ he said, about to stand, ‘but I really have no time for side trips or half day excursions, I’m kind of pushed for time and . . .’

    They both looked at the door in surprise when it clattered open letting the heat and sand assail the cold air with gusto. He saw it first, the Tool Man, red sand falling from him as if he were some kind of mechanical hour glass. ‘Do take a seat!’ The Tour Guide said with obvious delight, ‘I’ll be with you just as soon as I’ve sorted out this young man’s itinerary.’

    ‘Uh, he’s with me actually.’ He tried to smile at the Tour Guide. ‘Wonderful!’ she cried, ‘trips with friends are always the most enjoyable.’

    ‘Anyhow, we must be going.’ He said, standing abruptly, ‘but it’s been fascinating making your acquaintance.’ He stuck his hand out again and she pumped it firmly. ‘Are you absolutely sure I can’t write you up a travel plan, I mean, there aren’t any route markers out there and . . .’

    He still had hold of her hand as she fell backward dragging him across the desk. He looked at her crumpled on the floor, a bolt protruding from her otherwise perfect forehead. He let go of her still hand immediately and rounded on the Tool Man still stood in the open doorway embalmed in the heat haze. ‘What? What the shit fuck did you do that for you mother fucker!’

    ‘ICU spy.’ The Tool Man grunted, his words dripping with oil.

    ‘A spy, out here? What the shit dip for? Look around you metal head, there’s no one here but me and you! Man, you need to learn some serious fucking enterprise bargaining skills.’

    The Tool Man clomped over and studied his handiwork briefly with disinterest, ‘Get up, we’re leaving, there’re assassins nearby.’

    ‘Ha! You’re a fine one to be talking about assassination!’

    The Tool Man turned back toward the open door, ‘Suit yourself aqua boy.’ It spat, and then strode out into the desert’s hot loving embrace.

    He stayed there a while longer, all that work and endeavour just to be shot dead on the whims of a tin pot demi god, so much for the travel industry and its bright new future. He closed the booth’s door solemnly behind him as he left; no need to let the place fall into a state of disrepair – maybe some other investor would take it over and make a mint into the bargain. He started off after the fast-vanishing footprints of the only thing out there that had his vested interests on its agenda – whatever its agenda actually was.  

     

    

Experiment In Sanity

Move away from the cross>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>I don/t see dead people

or bring it to the bonfire>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>my spirits come with ice

we’re burning hesitancy & conspiracy>>>>>>>>>>>>my eyes are cinders

the bridges of the inner sanctum>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>my lips sentinels

tomorrow will be a good day>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>my tongue a spit bar

not at all, like the one previously planned>>>>>>>>>my heart a steam valve

everything will be licked>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>my vessels rivers

by the tongues of association>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>my innocence guilt

made moist with heresy>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>I want to shuck your love

flickers & shadows>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>pulverise your dreams

shall illuminate the way>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>extinguish your cruelty

through this stifling madness - bondage your virtues

to perfectly sane insanity - molest your candour

The crazy will jig - silence your songs

on piss-stained tiles - Write your temper

to an orchestra of lunacy - vilify your nightmares

conducted by the infamous - condemn your patience

cosmic ape - move with me

Rimbaud will sell hot nuts - in the night’s heat

under plantain leaves - isolate carnivores

the dead will hit a beat - exhume your pity

for the living to march to - inter your memory

as the godless & useless - drink with me

ascend to the throne - from silver clouds.

SLASH/ mind the erogenous zones/watch out for vital signs/rebuff the kindness of strangers/ life is harness free adult entertainment a go go/ Kafka on battery acid tampering with one dimensional characters/the fair is in town/kid/ clowns on stakes/the innocent are always the first proven guilty/the other side is the same/break on through/pop culture anarchy/this is no damned way to end a poem or begin a dissertation/ tomorrow is a blank page/leave it be . . .

Red Has Always Been My Colour

Her breath creeps across me
In the morning light, like years . . .
I remember, wanting to live
under trees: marvelling at a butterfly,
Listening to the sea’s sonnet;
constructing the wall, she now dismantles,
trick by trick, this thawing veneer,
Drips into her arterial system
re-routes love bugs
as she lays with me, adjusting my focus;
cheap wine & cheese on a riverbank,
collecting abandoned shells, watching cacti
erecting cities of thorns –
there is a beauty in her wisdom
so exquisite
it defies words, eludes capture,
the damnation she vanquishes
manufactures its own temple of sin,
in desire & temptation, we shelter,
Binding books & beating skins,
as the day splits a yoke &
the night spins a yarn.

POEM FOR BRIGHTON (UK)

Poem for Brighton (UK)

I hated you when I was a kid
Your cruel & merciless ways,
Those endless hours at the
Railway station dreaming of other
Places/ Your colours transfused my blood,
Short-sighted my periphery,
& I left you, there, on the platform,
Dressed in yesterday/s furs & flaking white paint
Never/to return /the same.

Fat Boy on a beach/
That cheesy seaside tack
Rusty pier & cold grey sea
Salt laden air on everyone’s lips
How you got your name
remade yourself gay –
lanes & lawns,
Gardens & alleys & bi-ways,
Those gilded bars
Iniquitous dens with shaved butch bouncers,
The dross, floss & electric fight nights . . .

Bric-a-brac & opportunities lost
Gas lit nights & neon days under umbrella skies
Bank holiday weekends on motorbikes
B&B adultery & roller skates
No one told me you’d become a trend,
Got famous for sin; again, pinky
These days I miss you - the pavements,
Bazaar arcades, silicone smiles,
Even despite the memories, bad love affairs
& your underhand wiles.

The Colour of Your Blood

England is a plain and vicious land, a land of dreary housing estates, mounds of rubbish, grey skies, beaches made of rocks, sewerage, leverage, blue blood and moronic laws. It was made that way by a couple of thousand years of mismanagement, inbred royalty, war and tribal in-fighting. No one really gives a shit about England, especially not those living in it. They all want to escape. But they can’t, there’s nowhere to go – nowhere. Because, everywhere they go they find a little bit of England, find that their filthy forebears have been there before, impregnating, manipulating and killing. The English are a very violent people, they live too close together; there is no space in England. That's it, so fuck off. 'This is your whole essay on England, a country with a history that stretches back to the start of time?' 'Yes.' 'Well you're getting an F for Fuckwit.' 'I don't care I don't want to live here anyway!' 'Of course not, no, the likes of you wants to be European, or worse, French.' 'I'd rather be Welsh than English.' 'Get the hell out of my class boy!' So I did, but there was nowhere to go - England's too small.Sometime Much Later: 'So you knew she was dead before or after you ordered Indian food and watched England lose to Brazil?' 'Uh . . .'

Bobbies & Bards

Of course it was a case of mistaken identity. No one could have known there were two people identical in every detail, down to time of birth. They even shared identical fingerprints, authorities said, as they scrambled to undo the judicial bows they’d neatly tied up years before. But these two people, bound it seemed by the umbilical cord of destiny, had never spent time together, certainly not in a womb. After John was pardoned and released, and Joe was arraigned and charged, the uncanny identicalness between them became the media’s fascination. Was it possible they co-existed in parallel universes and somehow time had betrayed one of them – dropping whichever one into the timeline of the other by sheer fluke. They met once, according to an undisclosed source, in the holding pen of county central, for DNA tests – again. Like watching two opposites attracting and detracting at the same time, the source said, as if they were both magnets and the urge to unite was exactly equal to the force of repulsion. It was an interesting story, a real headline grabber, and as John began to readjust to civilised society and sudden wealth, Joe began his slide down into the bowels of the penal system. Joe had been reasonably well off, while at liberty, John had been a drifter, a dreamer, a poet of little merit. When Joe’s lover Caitlin became romantically involved with John, the TV and sofa brigade found them-selves irresistibly titillated . . .

I bet they did, but enough of that, someone else’ll finish it off one day. More importantly, let’s talk about weather – it was minus five, maybe minus six, people have a tendency to quit counting anything as the thermometer plummets, even sheep, unless they’re real ones. Keeping warm takes over, no matter how, but what you don’t want to be doing is wandering around the streets of a deserted town a long way from your own, in the pursuit of cheap punk thrills. But of course you are, otherwise there’d be no story – would there? It’s 1977, the Sex Pistols are “rumoured” to be playing this frozen toilet I’m stranded in, underwear-less. I know, the weather was cold on the coast, but here, four hours by train later, I’m rueing my decision to be recklessly King’s Road chic. I came armed with a friend, another gormless tosser with a septic lip, a tattered raincoat, and a string vest, and just now he’s vanished . . . my arse is blue, like the jeans, the ripped jeans, barely protecting it from the elemental cold of a Midland’s winter’s night. If this is some kind of hoax perpetrated by those gimps at the NME, or worse, by some cretin from Rolling Stone, then it’s not funny – no fun, to coin Mr Rotten.
This is about when a boy in blue, as in blue serge with the lawful epaulettes and insignia of Westminster’s law enforcers stitched on it, comes up to me and shines a flashlight in my face. Of course I look pallid, fallow even, the last time I ate was two days ago. He asks, nay, demands to know why I’m on his street at half-past sheep dip at night looking like the thing from the crypt. As soon as I open my gob to speak, the game’s afoot. ‘From London is yer?’ He grins, rather malevolently.
‘Brighton, actually.’ I correct him.
‘Same difference isn’t it?’ He answers my answer with.
‘Not really, I mean London’s up here right, and Brighton’s . . .’
‘Shut the fuck up.’
‘Alright then.’
Which is when I spy my friend walking along the street towards my situation and then turn around abruptly when he finally realises my situation is irrevocably entangled with the local constabulary.
‘Oi! Scarlett O’Hara, where’d you think you’re going? Get your arse here, on the double.’ The cop shouts in my friend’s direction.
‘Alright then?’ My friend says jovially in his best Liverpuddlian accent, and they’re always jovial, even if they’re intent on smashing your mush into a brick wall or a pint pot.
‘Do you know this piece of garbage?’ The cop says to me.
I shrug in a non-committal manner, ‘Never seen him before governor.’
‘Have you been inside?’ He interrogates me.
‘Inside where?’ I ask . . .
‘This isn’t London boy, you know what I’m talking about.’ He threatens me, with his flashlight.
‘I might have been . . .’ BANG! Ooh, I can see the Big Dipper.
He rounds on my friend, ‘Are you from that bog hole Liverpool?’
‘That I am sir.’ My friend smiles in a cretinous and malignant way.
BANG! I wonder what he’s seeing? Mostly likely the Kop – haha.
‘You two are connected somehow, I can smell it.’ The cop growls, ‘One of you has no underwear on and the other has underwear but no top clothes, what are you, fags?’
‘As if,’ my friend says, climbing to his feet unsteadily, ‘we’re here to see the Pistols.’
‘The fucking what?’
‘Sex Pistols, they’re a band like.’
‘A band, like, like what?’
‘Like you know two guitars a set of drums and a singer.’
‘A pop band then?’
‘Uh, yeah.’
‘All fucking pansies, pop bands, and pansies don’t play here, we like brass, the bigger the better, and that’s all we like, understand?’
‘Uh, yeah.’
The cop takes out his notebook, and worse, his ticketing book, it’s a quiet night and the op to ticket to stragglers from the greater cesspit of the Union is obviously irresistible. He takes my name and address and gives me a ticket, I look at it in disgust, dismay, dismay and disgust. ‘What the fuck?’ I say. He grabs it out of my hand, rips it up, scribbles a new one angrily, ‘Public indecency and verbally assaulting a police officer.’ He smiles, categorically. He scribbles another ticket and shoves it in my friend’s hand, my friend peruses it, as is his wont, let alone right, and smiles graciously, ‘Thank you kindly sir.’ He says ingratiatingly.
‘Now, there’s a train in,’ the cop says as he checks his watch with the flashlight, ‘thirty-eight minutes, be on it or you’ll be in a cell, now, fuck off.’ We comply . . .

‘Fucking wanker.’ I say to my friend.
‘Right fucking sheep shagging plod head.’ My friend concurs as he squeezes puss from his septic lip. ‘How much you get?’ I ask him.
‘Fifteen quid, you?’
‘Twenty fucking five.’
He whistles appreciatively. We sit on a cold hard bench on a cold hard railway station in a cold hard place. My friend screws his ticket up and boots it onto the tracks, I follow suit. ‘What name you give?’ He asks me.
‘Steve Jones,’ I smile, ‘you?’
‘Paul Cook!’
Well, it wasn’t as if we were gonna use Johnny Rotten and Sid Vicious, was it?

We sit there a while, then a figure, all in black, shambles onto the platform carrying a guitar. We look at each other, the figure comes right up, says to us ‘Aye up lads, where’s the gig?’
‘What gig?’ We both say in unison.
‘Like that is it, right, another wasted night. Where’s the pub?’
‘The Brass Monkey?’ We both say in unison.
‘Aye, figures, in main street is it?’
‘Aye.’ We both say in unison.
We watch him lope off into the frigid night. ‘Fucking hell,’ my friend says, ‘that were Johnny Cooper Clarke, the Bard of Salford himself.’
‘He’s a fucking long way from Beasley Street.’
‘Nah, we all live on Beasley Street.’
We both recite the poem – in unison.

PRINCIPLES of CULTIVATION

They were pumping what water there was, mainly from the old power station run by the Adulterates, into Capital Investment. Not into the tenement slums the New People inhabited, they got their water from fouled standpipes and that sluice had to be filtered by any number of filter sharks operating around the city. Under the collective water agreement, the Corporation had primary use of the resource for whatever needs it deemed fit, and those needs were always its own. It never rained, although the ash storms that blew in all too regularly passed as a precipitation substitute, and as the Corporation began to store its water in huge underground vats, more and more desperate New People made a play for it. Tunnelling, the Corporation said, was undermining the whole infrastructure and if people did not desist from such subversive activities, the whole city might well collapse. Even mandating a death penalty for those discovered burrowing, hadn’t stemmed the number of those attempting such. Anarchy, such as it was in a state that was already anarchistic by design, was becoming a major problem – dissidents were regularly made examples of, hung by the neck at Traitors Corner, but even this, was proving to be little deterrent. Why did the Corporation itself need so much water? Few had been within the inner sanctum, the giant biosphere that passed as Corporation HQ, and almost all dictates were delivered by Brigade, humans willing to do the Corporation’s bidding at street level, and below. But it hadn’t always been so, long ago, the one known as The Recluse, the one now in sole charge of Urban Jungle, had once been a key figure in the inaugural charter of Capital Investment. He, along with the one known as Evangelista, had set up the recycling and reclamation systems, the ones now defunct in Capital Investment – their original aim having been to at least provide drinkable water to an ever-swelling populous. Then, as the story goes, the one called Argonaut had walked from the still ocean one day and had assumed control. The Recluse and Evangelista had left almost immediately, striking out for the then mythical Urban Jungle, and since that time relationships between the Corporation and the Recluse had been precariously balanced on a knife edge. The Corporation continually broadcast propaganda about the Recluse and his intentions toward Capital Investment and its citizenry claiming the Recluse had an Old People’s jet plane and was training a metal man to pilot it, and that this jet would tear into the Wall of the Sun and kill hundreds of innocent New People. At the same time the Corporation had embraced metal technology, determined to create its own alloy assassins to counter the threat, only, the jet plane never came and instead, the Corporation’s metal progeny had become the terrorists. Despite the annual promises and purges, renegade Machine Girls and metal killers, continued to proliferate, and people began to fear the Corporation more than the Recluse. That was when they began leaving, striking out over, or above ground, for a safer existence and the Corporation’s answer had been to unleash the ultimate murder machine, the Tool Man. Those who dared to estimate in private reckoned the Tool Man had already killed several hundred New People, perhaps even several thousand, and while the Corporation maintained that the Tool Man wasn’t of their making, and, that they were actively hunting him, he continued about his gruesome business seemingly unmolested. This quid pro quo propaganda disabled every stab at rational discourse and democratic liaison with the Corporation, leading ultimately, to a state of siege. Already the Corporation locos were continually hijacked by renegades, and with the accord with Chico Ink breaking down, the Corporation had begun to prepare itself for the final conflict. This was how they’d lived in Capital Investment, under the shadow of fear and the cosh of subjugation, all the time dreaming of fresh water and escape, all the time wondering, both secretly and aloud, whether it were true that the Corporation was a giant thinking plant that required all the water in Cultivation to maintain itself – and, its offspring. And if, if that were proven true, what would the New People do? Would they rise up, destroy the Corporation? Would they welcome the Recluse and his jet plane back into their bosom? This perilous stalemate needed to be solved before they all perished at the hands of men or entities with everything to gain and nothing to lose. Things whose choices were as simple as their own, yet their outcomes offered considerably more scope for privilege than their own choices proffered. Where there was an end there was a beginning and all one had to ensure was that the beginning was not the beginning of the end, and that likewise the end was not the end of the beginning.

THE FISH HEADS RULE AGAIN

The old men kept them for ages, through revolutions, tribulations and golden ages. Took it in turns guarding the ever-growing pile; their original quest, now long-since lost to time, had been to unearth the next book, but it had never arrived. What had, by the score and hundred and thousand, had been the work of those who thought they had it. But the old men knew better, they were wise and had fallen from the broken stars to the hard ground long before the roots took hold. And now they were paper barons, new moguls with the raw materials to prosper at their disposal. But they didn’t, for whatever reason, in one night of madness they terrorised the planet with their wrath and disappointment – setting ablaze the whole rejected mountain of paper until charred visions, incendiary grammar, bogus incantations and incestuous verbs rained upon the earth. And then, as the organisms seized the moment, the three old men walked into the ocean and the ocean boiled in its greedy acceptance of their failure. They were no longer monuments with the patience of voids, they were bait, and the fish heads waiting below in the cool depths took the old men’s poached remains in a frenzy of artificial intelligence and ingestion. Many centuries later, after evolution had played its tainted parlour games - three fish walked from the ocean on slimy legs one murderous day and immediately assumed control; they were not interested in a book of any sort.