Dream

And I can't get it out of my head, even though it's in my brain's created voice that doesn't quite sound like yours. You're screaming "You're a liar, you're a liar" at yourself to no one, but I think I can see who you're talking to.

And how your eyes bulged when you realised I was still there, you'd think I was a piece of meat. Or a car crash. How you looked like Nathan.

The cicadas have dulled over this short Spring. At first it was so loud, I'd wake up to their raving, I'd see them scattered all over the place. Numerous times did I have legs, wings and crazed eyes smack into my face. Yet recently, I can't hear them over my head phone. I see them, legs twitching, belly up on my parents driveway. Throwing them out with the water used to clean cars, drowned and floating in the soap suds. There is no amount of cleaning I can do to erase the thought.

I just want to hide in the sky, with all the breathing, living cicadas. But I feel I'm belly up. I don't wanna be belly up.

I feel overwhelmed.

I just need to swallow.

Pie counter dog man.

This evening I served a man so drunk, he had to hold onto the counter as he attempted to speak (he swayed so violently that I began to feel queasy myself). He pulled a sticky ten dollar note from his pocket and bought a melted Cornetto (our freezer is broken) and a pie. He then proceeded to unwrap his pie on the counter, dropping the wrapping on the floor. His next request was tomato sauce. I think. Anyway, I gave it to him. He dispensed it onto one finger, and proceeded to smear it on what he intended to be the top of the pie. In reality, it crossed into the realms of mostly the sides of the pastry and on the bench itself. He leaned toward the bench as if he was going to be sick, asked for me to call a cab, and with my back turned, began eating the pie (like a rabid dog) without the use of hands from the counter. As I turned around, his dentures promptly fell out and he stuffed them, uncased into his dirty, sticky top pocket. 

He spent the next three minutes scooping his pie from the bench, ambling to the door and being sick into the front garden.

We shall fight them on the beaches.

I am not going to lie to you,

or to anyone.

I am scared.

I am glad that I do not have asthma.

My car is loaded with instruments,

jewellry, photographs and my mother's wedding dress.

I have a gut feeling.

And it's making me feel ill.

I can't concentrate. 

I am standing on a death trap and we will not close.

We will go down fighting in the end. 

My boss is Winston Churchill and I have never resented the Commonwealth more.

"Get your British Petroleum here!"

I feel as if every bird has flown,

all the trucks have gone,

and I am standing alone,

behind the counter,

waiting for the heat to set in.

The Big Smoke.

At the beginning of this evening, I would have told you that the feeling that was consuming me was 'displacement'. That I was waiting for this fire to whirl up around me and make all the things I hold with determinedly rigid hands crumble. My dad has told me that the house is a death trap. My mother is sending me messages from South America, asking me to locate pearls, and tax documents, and that photo of Uncle Peter that made him look really well just before he carked it. You'd find me sitting on the leather couch of a friend's lounge room (I board here permanently, but home is just not a word I can use), and a blaring of orc-slaying and Sean Bean death scenes provided little distraction. The street lights brightened the outside so you could mistake it for mid afternoon, trapping the light in with the smoke. I haven't seen stars in four days.

I received a message from a friend who asked me how I was. And not the 'Hi, Good Evening and Welcome to Kmart Katoomba, we are making the evening announcement that our store is preparing to close in ten minutes time. Come to the register late, and I won't even make eye-contact with you when I ask you how YOU are.' He sent me an email, and retreated into the darkness of wherever he stays now (I assume it's dark, as there would be nothing to trap in the lights down there in the city). And the big smoke doesn't seem so dense, but I still have all the light.

Snapshot.

I am currently sitting at the computer in my parents house listening to hardstyle and cicadas. My shin is itchy but I am attempting not to scratch it. I have particularly weak willpower. I am planning possible Korean food for dinner. I am staring at a man's face who says he's from Austin, and says that he knows famous people, but I am unsure whether to believe him. There is a cheese knife, a broken phone and a canvas of Nixon & Churchill's faces next to me as I type. British history and dreams of someone making tea for me.