Muggy night
full of beer and street barbeque
full of significant glances from little miss china
full of want
full of promise
full of stammers of “i dont normally do this”
full of wispered reasurences
full of knowing glances from the cabbie
full of anticipation at the gate
filled with disbelief as her hand squeezes my arse
filled with shock as she bolts back to the cab with my wallet
filled with mocking laughter from the cab as it speeds of
fool.
Bustling rain falling
on streets for generations–
seven million feet
Two Old Oranges
Sam Beardmore and Barry Greer sat on a wooden bench in central park. Both men were to the far right of their lives, or right around all the bends, depending whether life is line or circle shaped.
Both men had lived, for the most part, rather successfully, and as they sat together this Sunday afternoon their conversation gave the audience (of sparrows and gardens and anyone else interested enough to listen) an idea of the conclusions obtained from two long and mostly happy lives.
“You know Sam, all these years I’ve never mastered the art of eating an orange.”
Sam looked at the orange juice dripping down Barry’s wiry grey beard and didn’t hesitate to agree. He expertly and smugly unpeeled his own fruit and ate it with all the grace of his twisted ballerina mouth.
The men sat and relished the fresh citrus bursts of the afternoon.
“Turkeys, now there’s a thought.”
The men pondered turkeys, with their strange gobble necks and awkward strides.
“Got attacked by a turkey once” Sam remarked, “I still have the scar.” Sam pulled down the cuff of his tattered suit and showed his friend the small mark still visible amidst the wrinkle-scape of his hands.
Mesmerised by the past, the men considered their various battles with turkeys, rowing oars, lawns, referees, tents, mobile phones, and spaghetti.
“Table cloths are definitely a woman’s business”. Barry announced with what gusto remained in his wheezy lungs. “There are many activities in a women’s realm and table cloths are definitely one of them.” Barry liked to repeat statements in a different order for dramatic effect.
Sam nodded knowingly. “If I could give you a roll of paper towel for every time I’ve slept on the couch for not respecting my woman’s business, why you’d have a brick house!”
Barry paused thoughtfully. By now his thoughts had turned dreamily to women. He had always admired and respected the strangest species on earth, but the admiration had been, for most of his life, from a distance. He was like an observer at an art gallery who would tell you the painting symbolised the death of the environment, or Christ or feminine sexuality, when clearly it was a still-life of a duck entitled “Still Life of a Duck”. Nevertheless Barry considered himself an expert on the feminine soul and to everyone’s great surprise, in his late twenties he had managed to tame one of great beauty. Mischa was a free spirit and many men had lusted after her. No-one really understood her attraction to the awkward and odd-looking young Barry. But Mischa had been a compassionate soul, and always prided herself on caring for the less fortunate. In relation to other men, Barry fit this category. Mischa had passed years ago, but Barry still talked to her, and slept beside her, and asked her what he should wear each day.
“Sam ol Sam” he chuckled, “to know a woman.”
Sam, who had ‘known’ many women, couldn’t help but think Barry had said this with a giant question mark rather than a statement of authority, and so just nodded and smiled smugly at all the ways he had known women and Barry probably hadn’t. In a small display of revenge (for Mischa was one of the few women he had never known) Sam remembered the 24th July, 1953.
“Remember the fundraising dance back at college, Barry? When the whole room started copying my bend-and roll move. The ladies loved it, a whole room of people rolling around on the floor.”
Without a glance to the left, Sam could see the wrinkles on Barry’s face seethe and contort into the unholy angles of someone who’s been reminded of a moment of irreversible ego-injury caused by the very person who brought up the memory. The corpse of an orange in Barry’s hands noticed too and juice-blood trickled down his withered fingers.
He started calmly.
“Sam, your memory’s gone grey my friend. I’ve told you before but you seem to keep forgetting. That afternoon at your place, we were dancing around and I showed YOU the bend-and roll.”
Sam feigned astonishment. At the same point he always did for this never-ending debate.
“Oh no, Barry. I think YOUR memory is going. That afternoon I remember you doing some kind of roll, but it was NOTHING like what I did in the evening. There was certainly no bend.”
“Yes! There was Sam. I distinctly remember. I remember how I was worried about my pants splitting because of the bend. And I remember grass stains because of the roll.”
“Your pants were always too tight.”
“At least I could fit into them”.
Sam, despite his attractiveness to women, had indeed carried unwanted body fat for a decent chunk of his life, and felt his moth-eaten anger rise at this betrayal. He chose to ignore the remark and concentrate on firing the most effective cannon once again.
“I remember it like it was yesterday: waiting for the perfect moment, climbing onto the stage, diving off. The crowd, a circle around me. Bend. Roll. Bend. Roll. They started chanting it, cheering for me. Then suddenly, everyone was doing it. Mischa and all her pretty friends, in their dresses, rolling around on the floor, oh remember that.”
As Barry’s age had rusted, so too had the metal cage meant for controlling his emotions. Keeping calm and mature for one retort was enough. Barry’s bones creaked as they were rapidly forced out of their seat.
“I’ll show you the bend and roll!”
Barry’s bones continued to be whipped into a position reserved for two activities they hadn’t participated in for a few years now. But the rest of his body ignored their groans as it dived onto the ground and…
Didn’t move.
“All right there Barry?”
“Well then. I’m sure neither of us can do this anymore.”
“Let’s see about that.”
Sam jumped into action and performed the contentious bend before assuming rolling position. On the ground he was able to roll, if you could call it roll. It was more a series of still-shots, a stuttery progression through the various degrees of one complete roll. Turn. Stop. Turn. Stop.
Panting and exhausted he lay on his back, about a metre from where Barry lay. They stared up to the afternoon sky, the sun sinking behind their heads.
‘The Bend and Roll was mine Sam.”
“No, it wasn’t Barry.”
Time for an Unearthed update.
Our group dissolved temporarily (like jelly crystals) as each of us took some time to focus on lifestuff. We have now regrouped (like jelly) and I’m happy to report, appear as quite the colourful and happily wobbly entity . The expected, but tragic day came, when our foreign wordsmith Aran Ward Sell, had to return home, as people with homes do, after his year-long exchange. This was a blow to our team but thankfully the wonders of intergalactic communication will let the fun continue. Jet has also unexpectedly Jetted off to a faraway land, in pursuit of his ah… lady interests (I’m sure there’s other reasons but I never got to see him! Correct me if you see this Jet) but he is also keen to continue with unearthed.
We had our first unnoficial reunion last night and have acquired two brand new, amazingly talented and good-looking members. Ian Hannan and his extraordinary hair (and poetic abilities) and Belinda McCulloch, whos myriad of talents cannot be defined in type and who is currently in search of a house with a hole in the roof for her latest film. I’m currently waiting for mine to cave in to assist her.
We had an inspiring conversation involving *leopard slugs, *plankton (spider can be a form of plankton, did you KNOW) and sleepovers, as well as discussing the next direction for us as a writing group. Last semester we worked to themes and met regularly. We now want to focus on workshopping our individual projects, but also hope to come up with a themed project in September.
Keep an eye out for our new work!
*Both of these conversations were initiated by the fabulous Megan Navarro. How would we live without her.
x Rach
hope this works.
any feedback would be apreciated.
Anything you submit, hear back from or tricks and tips, post as a comment (:
Inspired by “Howl” by Allen Ginsberg. http://www.wussu.com/poems/agh.htm
This is a work-in-progress and needs huge amounts of editing. Ginsberg’s howl is amazing and I’m enraptured by the sophistication of his rant- mine is simplistic and not at all comparable, but nevertheless inspired by. I’m hoping to work on this one for a while. Also, I apologise for the terrible formatting. I’m not techno-savvy, I’m other forms of savvy. and ego :p
Animals in cages ride fast the highway
a hungry zoo ignoring the by-fray
where the nethered are tethered
sending hate-mail to the feathered
and the furred with their bags
and the scaled with their tags
sending gold coin donations
to the African flags and the “not worthy as I” rags
there’s a mirror on our face when it should be at the base
of the tree of life and all things nice, to see with x-ray vision
a collective’s bad decision
the ignorance of an instant packaged bliss
the fabric fake- cheap remake
of a rich man’s play ground. Where the slide travels up and the ladder takes off.
A fashionable rocket into a poisonous socket
To be connected to the source of advertising force
“Read all about it” “buy before you need it”
“fluffy things and sweet things and pleasurable things”
And things. Things. THINGs.
Are we happy and proud of the loot that’s been ploughed
By the weary bones of machinated drones
But a drone drones, humans don’t drone!
Humans speak and shout and cry, strong turns to weak and they wither and die.
There’s nothing wrong with plucking fruit from the branches and reaping the benefits of juicy avalanches.
But where’s the beginning of the objects for winning. Does it lie in the hands of the desperate and thin. How far should we go to leap for the win. When our reality tv spends more,
Than the majority of the world’s reality.
Big box distractions, easy satisfaction, thoughtless inaction, blanketed reaction.
Wrong isn’t contained in a thing
But a thing can be used at the wrong time, for the wrong reasons to promote wrong ideas.
A surround speaker system might make the message louder, it doesn’t make it true.
All this sitting in couches is feeding the abyss with more of the gaps, toothaches, backaches, heartaches, stomachaches of imagined bliss.
The illness-
Paralysis
Wasting time. The mind. The feet. The beat.
Stuck on Easy Street.
The sponge-minions of other opinions
our neurons are soaked with the “Daily Joke”
we take it all in, the reverberating din,
and we fail to see the powers that be are doing battle without us,
for our minds.
So we choke on the fumes of elongated plumes
of dump-yard consume.
Where the treasures and the trash are an indecipherable stash
And the code-book
Gone.
So how do we live?
And what will we achieve?
In a SIMCITY of fabricated, not created.
Shadow-enhanced, not illuminated.
Am I allowed to scream now?
I want to sing-song ding-dong that maybe we have it wrong wrong.
A distracted day might be ok, but a week down the sink and the months roll by
And the paper dreams die
Think turns to blink to stare turns to numb
Numb! The worst deadly sin
The eighth evil dwarf
Blood on the floor of a fire existence
The path of least resistance
Numb implies nothingness, dead to the somethingness
To the eyes and the cries the sighs, lies and whys
Of a people confused and abused by the strange new world.
Young is drowning your head in a well of undead.
Not the life-less but the past-life, the anti-life, the semi-life.
Misery in stealth-mode, “I’m not purposeless, I’m entertained”
It’s all good right, not need to carry on, no need to fight
Surf the flavoursome waves of the sunny days.
Why are you preaching, can’t you see we’re beaching?
Stop.
I see a problem.
The issue in question is not the direction of right or wrong.
One thing good, another thing bad- no.
It’s so many with plenty because others are sad. I can’t justify owning a lighthouse and a whitehouse and being spoiled for choice, when the majority have no voice to say to the few “all that shit makes me spew” out my guts “a kick in the nuts” because my daughters on sale for your
Real estate.
It’s a depressing monotony
That the world is the property
Of the few.
The earth shouldn’t belong to those who buy it.
Life’s not all bleak. No. “Not for me”, I say, you say, we all say.
We all? Well. The ‘we all’ is small, the bleak is big, and while this is the case
While it’s not a fair race I don’t think the contestants in front can say
I deserve more. “It’s my freedom, it’s my individual right” to have faster shoes and a jet-powered kite to heighten my flight and leave you further coughing up
My dust.
What if.
There was a shift. A lift. A sift.
And in all this junk, we found some spunky. New. Attitudes.
Like:
With privilege comes responsibility.
WHAT.
Servitude should be the cry of nobility.
WHAT.
The hands that carve the world should be careful and kind.
Not selfish and blind.
WHAT.
I will use my opportunities to give,
Not take.
HOW?
How. Yes. HOW.
Begin
With a
howl.
