#011/100 Revelation

all night i shuffle in the game of chance
the flames will bend & sweep
the watery forest, unlocked
by a stamp, prophecy
& blind faith.

#010/100 Ablation

May 30, 2011

the stones float across the shore in unison--

when the surf chases & the orange light

turns black, my homeless friends travel

in thin air & circular motions--

the end is in my hand until 

I lose sight of my love

for the stones. 

#009/100 Blinds

#008/100 Smoke

May 29, 2011

He would smoke and smoke and smoke until his lungs are in stitches. They would hurt--tenderly--while he savors the shortness of breath. Every inch of his body would sing its delirious songs like burgeoning fireworks--they would crack and splinter over his swirling eyes. What joy!

Another man would inhale and exhale with circular arm motions as if he was exercising to the national anthem at the flag-raising ceremony. Like the sports fanatic in the university dorm who ran 2000km in a green tracksuit around the sports ground at dawn, every morning without fail. Through the windows he looked like a phantom of optimism, multiplying his selves between running, jumping and stretching his legs by the fences. Those long and thin legs, so smugly clad in green, were early morning strikes the other freshmen could not take. Life was not to be wasted away in such discipline and conviction! Let those fanatics with great mission crawl their way back to life, if they pleased. 

Back in those days he still had the look of the frontman of an up-and-coming rock band, the one that promised to be the great revolution of post-rock-cum-shoegazing scene. Which meant blow jobs at the backseat and a girl sticking her head out of the window to spit. But it was over the morning when he woke up with blood on his pillowcase, his gum inflamed by marathon pot smoking and whiskey and pussy sucking, or just that giant fall from grace he had foreseen. The degenerate in him taking over when he woke up to see--everyone in the apartment had left, the drummer, the lead guitarist, the bassist, the whores squatting and vomiting by the backdoor of the club that they had rescued from the night. 

Now he only smokes cigarettes because he can't be fucked to get anything else. But even cigarettes are getting too expensive. He doesn't get those pictures of rotting foot and skin and skeleton on the packaging either. Who gives a fuck when we would all end up like that, anyway? He would smoke and smoke and smoke and get himself in stitches. 

Inspired by Day 3 - stitching and story - by Eryn Gilchrist. 

#007/100 Toys

May 27, 2011

The puppet in a bird mask sits down at the make-shift table. His limbs crack and his red head gleans against the psychedelic wallpaper, the blueprint for someone else's bad dream. But he does not know it--he has no idea that it is Sunday brunch from Hell, sent down to the stage he shares with Bearhead the figurine. A rubber feast of cake and steak and lettuce for the non-initiates, founded objects with no tomorrow, not even today.

The clockfire burns down their throats while they stuff themselves, push it down their hollow bodies. They thought they would eat and be merry. They both have their hands in their mouths and they cannot stop. They do not know that they are toys, or why tears are streaming down their faces from the agony of their bodies splitting open. Shattered, cold, abandoned. The last pieces of them lay like trash on the stage. Nobody wants them, not anymore.

Inspired by 'Brunch Haiku' and 'Still Life With Woodpecker' by Emily Ayres. 

#006/100 Violet

May 26, 2011

For Rob & Joyce Baker

She is a child of the ocean--the salty water runs through her veins, savory in its coolness, as she floats from home to the crossroads where lost souls meet and kiss. Up the slope to her artists' bar in violet light and jazz music, a soiled Canadian flag waving goodbye to memories of green yard and slashed youth. Her husband from a foreign land, a torn man taunting his own loss, his passion running dry between dirty martinis, musicians on a make-shift stage and the dryness of his skin. Oh, how the guitar weeps.

It all crumbles like ashes at 4am as he stands outside the glass doors, waiting for the bartender to put the chairs away--everyone must go. When all is bare and abandoned, he will go home and breathe. Breathe the hot and thinning air in his walled space. The night's veil will desert him before he touches it, holds it to his skin for a mock respite. It will soon be light.

She never leaves. She never stays behind the bar, where people reach out and shout for a sense of security. Everybody thinks they could own her for a minute if she makes their drinks--if they get their hands on the one who offers refuge, a moment of happiness away from home. They can love and laugh and cry. She does not give a damn. She is off to the ocean. 

Inspired by Kendra's 'a river runs through me and i cannot'. 

#005/100 Child

May 25, 2011

The girl child sitting at the bottom of the staircase must be a dead flower which has found her way to this refuge. A book in her hands for mock peace, for purpose suspended between flipping light switches and strangers' steps, steps like iron bars pressing against her flesh and bones. When he walks past, the girl child looks up for just a moment--her large eyes are swollen, melting in tears and grease. Then she braces herself and returns to the book. The rest of her is frizzy and pale, linen top and small toes in sandals.

She is bound to break over the course of the night, if she is to stay inside the building. One of the residents will ask why she sits alone in a place that is not her home. The question will slice her open, right then and there at the bottom of the staircase, where her grief comes pouring until it vanishes along with the last bits of her. And the book of stories written in a foreign language. The book that will make no difference to how she lives past the night.

He turns away from the girl child and goes home. What happens in this vacuum has nothing to do with him. Nothing at all.

This post refers to 'the end of the world and the beginning of everything else' by Steve Ersinghaus.

#004/100 Insurance

May 24, 2011

It unnerves him to speak on the phone—the eruptions are like the black and white keys bouncing on a piano. The movement holds no mercy and he must press himself to answer those questions. How would you like it if I draft your life's plan for you? What do you see happening in twenty, thirty years' time when you'll be the only left, in a solitude that will only end on the day you die?

'Ten per cent off if you get it for both your parents,' the insurance agent says, 'Fifteen if you sign up, too.'

There comes a loud creak at the other end of the line. The agent must be juggling the call with half a dozen folders in his hands, while he pushes through the swinging doors into the office. Does the agent ever mix up the clients' profiles: what they do, how they live, how they plan to retreat from life?

'The fees won't go up as they grow older. Not until they turn eighty-five.'

Will he even get to see his parents at that age, with the thirty cancer sticks he smokes everyday? His grandparents died in their early nineties a few years ago. His parents will outlive him, white-haired phantoms at his funeral, mourning a death that will last forever. That is how they will beat the insurance plans, by tweaking and outliving the life expectancy imposed on them.

He will be the cruel joke in the mix.

'Sure. I'll get it for everybody,' he says.

'Great!' the insurance agent says, 'Let's meet up and go over the details. What about Tuesday?'

#003/100 Skateboard

May 23, 2011

The radio host has a cyclical voice; its rise and fall remind him of his skateboarding days, when he skirted past old men and small children outside the town hall at night. When midnight struck the benches became empty and his friends turned up the music, thumping soundtrack for their rocking down the stairs, their halts and falls. The wheels screeched and it blended with their laughter, a group of teenage boys with pale skin and oversized jeans, untouched by life.

Once he almost knocked over his girlfriend at the time who was sitting by the bushes. For over an hour he had been oblivious to her presence. He spun, turned corners around the stone lions, pierced the music in his trance. His clarity was gone the instant he looked up and saw his girlfriend. She tripped and bent over, palms on the ground while she pushed to lift herself. Then she splinted and missed him crashing into the green, his skateboard sliding away to safety by the bin. 

The last glimpse he caught of her was the hem of her short skirt. It was layers of black and white nylon. 

#002/100 Dance

May 22, 2011

The smoke swirls around her, an airy dance to the cadences & the night holding its breath. Her dance is a pantomime, each move of hers breaking on the shore between them. He moves in the stillness of his heart, to watch her hair fan out & sweep the sirena into silence. She darts across the room, demi-pointe, until he feels her hair brushing against his ear.

The night will spit them out when it is over. For now he waits & dreams. In his room.

#001/100 Home

May 21, 2011

There is always a knot on the back of his neck. Stretching over a ring of cold hard iron on the verge of a car crash. The cars are only a simulacra on the road, shaking neon outside Harvey Nichols on one side and the stonewashed government house behind withering trees on Ice Street. Thousands of people have marched down this street in the post-colonial days. Days spent in cages until they burst open in outcry, to be muted and erased by the raging red. 

He does not share the fury. All day he drives, past distorted faces and false glimpses of the city, to retreat to the place where time dissolves in twilight. The smell of coffee seeping through his silver blinds and broken drones. No one else would hear the music. His home is just that--his home.