1. Insomnia

Oh baby, I know you can’t sleep
It’s 2.55 am and you’ve got work tomorrow
Don’t worry
You can still smell the fried chicken you ate for lunch
And there’s not enough milk for breakfast tomorrow
Not entirely sure what to wear
No dog food either
Too much unresolved action
Too much left undone
It’s time to sleep and dream of being famous
Dream of fancy parties and glamorous inner city living
Witty conversation and television interviews
Biographies and the holiday home on the Queensland coast
It’s 3am and you still can’t sleep
Don’t worry baby, you’ve got work tomorrow

2. Dreaming

The sheets should be changed, but instead they carry the comforting fragrance of the self
The air is cool and still and stark, a night bird’s song drags my soul out, through my back and out the window, into the air and across the darkened sky
Dreaming is what we do when we are not happy with the world
The contented do not dream
I dream that I fly over all of humanity and I feel them beneath me, billions of electric cells, each one dreaming of a better world
Because in my dreams, people aren’t satisfied with the cruelty of our world
The night bird’s song releases me, and the great electric sea recedes into the darkness
and I am swept up in the gentle grace of rest.

3. Morning

The alarm glares at me, and I glare back.
I have been visited by the late night possum, the one who comes along in our rest and shits within our mouths as we sleep.
Strong coffee and toothpaste are a partial cure, time will fix the rest.
No amount of hot water will give you back the vigor of youth, but each morning you will try.
There is no milk, someone got to it before you could. Again.
An abundance of fried chicken from the night before sits like a snake about to strike at your digestive tract.
Close the fridge.
There is coffee enough at work, and pulling on a shirt that you have neglected to iron, you lie to yourself and say “It’s a cotton poly blend, the wrinkles will fall right out”.
They do not.
You begin the march into the bright glare of a new day.

4. Children

They run because they are free,
Like the howling wind they gust about the playground gathering leaves and paper and empty wrappers,
They are wild eyed dervishes caring not for the past or the future, and we lumber through them like ancient stones, and like the wind they shall wear us down,
We shall be made smooth and bright by the process, we know this and we do not regret it, some welcome it with open ancient arms,
The wind is untamed, unlike our dancing dust devils, a bell and then music; each gale sorts itself and breezes into their allocated rooms to carry on their turbulent way.

5. Meetings

Leave nothing to chance, leave nothing to chance, leave nothing to chance.
Have you checked it? Have you signed it? Have you put it in the pigeon hole?
Late meeting, important meeting, another meeting.
How late? Very late! Always late, like the phantom pregnancy of progress.
Things to resolve, suggest, vote upon and recommend.
People to meet, stakeholders, humans, important people, squeaky wheels, insufferable prats who get voted onto these things again and again and again.
What is it we do again? Besides the process? Must consult, must include, even if it means no one wins, because then everyone wins, or something.
The night bird is calling, the night bird is calling, the night bird is here.

6. Homeward

“Go home love.”
A fellow soldier smiles at the mirrored wounds of a long day.
Silence is the intruder now, space is conspicuous by its presence.
You undo your path and walk on home,
You are still surprised to discover your house has not burnt down, your house will never burn down, but that doesn’t stop you from suspecting that the instant you lay eyes upon your home, that you will gaze upon charred ruins.
We have been known to catastrophise.
The light is low and the house is still.
An ancient deaf dog does not stir, you watch her breathe to make sure she’s alive.
Silence for her, and space for you.
Day old fried chicken for you both.

7. The apparition of rest

An unmade bed opens its arms like a slutty lover
Wrinkled sheets and stains of sweat and misguided pudding
The wasps of thought raid the hive of sleep
No honey for the restless
A fevered fit in the darkness that makes you turn against yourself, finding no comfort in your disheveled lover’s arms
Eyes rolling back in sockets that will not rest or dream
A million daylight wasps driving back the gentle night
There is naught to do ‘cept wait
The night bird is calling, the night bird is calling, the night bird is here.

When you die, you will still be hungry.
Isn’t that a bitch?
A death like circles and rocks and gravity.

Nothing in this world can quench your thirst. Or the next world (So you can fuck off with your god bothering nonsense and enjoy the cold, the dark, the silence you tossers). I’d tell you that you’re like a circle, except you’d think I was making a crack about your weight. I’m not, but you’d still make that unimpressed face that people make when you try to share a dream and they realise that they’ve stepped in dog shit as the cosmic scales immediately compensate for real human interaction. Circles.

I was never very good at sympathy.

Do you ever wish you could go back?
You were ignorant there too; the future was a mysterious then as it is now. Time is cruellest on our faces and most forgiving on our memories. You said that once.
You can’t live in the now either, it’s all fear, tragedy and mundane desire
Do you wish you could rush forward? Diving but never falling. You didn’t say that, but I bet you would have if you had thought of it.

I wish that things would end, cleanly, like stories, or TV shows or poems with a beginning, middle and end.
But all things repeat. Rhymes, TV shows, seasons, history.
Can you name me a thing that doesn’t repeat?
Circles?
Rocks?
Gravity?
Snow flakes and arseholes?

I could live around my life. Could I? Could I live my life a few feet away from my body? Maybe that’s not living; maybe it’s not even existing. You are like a rock. Hard and sharp. You said that once, or maybe I did. Or maybe it was Stacey, that girl you knew who always got drunk at parties and looked like she would cry if only she could summon up a half decent reason, but her life is bland and dull. Neither hot nor cold.

You know… Stacey. Medium height, bad skin, ok teeth. Well, not bad-bad skin. Comparatively bad skin. Maybe you stoned your ugly friends.

I’m joking. Don’t make that face. Please.

What is unique anyway? Not people. Have you ever been in shopping centre and realised that they’re all the same? Same small lives and consumer spending habits. We’ve profiled you from your spending on your crazy cash card and, for your convenience of course, decided that you might be interested in the upcoming special offers on the following items:

Circles
Rocks
Gravity

Act now! They won’t last! For a limited time! You need it! We need you! Happiness is impossible to acquire! You must chase it! Now! Now! Now! Just look how absorbent it is! Dry away those tears of boredom. For three easy payments of a focus group determined price we will promise you happiness for the fleeting instant you receive our over packaged semi-recyclable parcel (included in the price of postage and handling) and you will look into the face of god and find it plastic and cheap.

I know you’re tired.

I’m tired too.

Remember that time we went out for breakfast and it was sunny and everyone was out and about? It was early but so crowded. You looked at me and said
“I’m suffering”
I pretended not to know what you meant, but I did.
I am without hunger and I suffer.
Suffer.
It gnaws at me and weighs me down.
Gravity.

We are not suffering; we are merely weighed down by a burden that we can not release. Purpose is the last hunger, but you can’t buy a purpose. You can substitute with a job or children or the minutes of the regional orchid fancier and breeder association (First division). Acid for your soul. Or a relationship. You could substitute a relationship.

“What doesn’t kill me will make me stronger” you didn’t say that, or me. It was Nietzsche.
Nietzsche! Not Stacey!
You’re not even listening. Yes he was a tosser too. No I never read any of his stuff. Did you? I’m pretty sure it was Nietzsche. We’re agreed on that at least. I suspect he was never actually bothered by gravity. Lifted up on the wings of a vague feeling of intellectual superiority, until he flew too close to the sun, only to have his wings melt; and come crashing down as a badly translated quotation.

Consigned to mugs and stickers and small signs to put up in the office kitchenette “Wash your own dishes, Nietzsche doesn’t work here”. The kind you find in discount stores that sell crap you never want. Those shops where you feel vaguely aware that you believe that the bad karma of sweat shop production is bound to seep into the products and then leak their misery out into your home or workplace like a drum of toxic psychic energy. You could always go around to the new age shops and buy some pretty crystals though, to shed your karmic weight.

So this is how our hope ends.
Circles, rocks, gravity
Circles, rocks, gravity
Circles, rocks, and gravity
Not with a bang but a discount.