Ambition

winners and losers
rich and poor
failure and success
ugly and beautiful
Is there any place in the world where these basic human conditions are not relevant?
I want to be there.
Imagine how different life would be
if they really meant nothing to us.

smokin' guns

There was no guide book that came with the kind of life I chose to live.
There have been hedonists and the decadent.
And there have been the decadent hedonists.
I did roll up at the crossroads but the weird thing was
I changed my mind at the last minute,
just said -
No.
Sorry.
I changed my mind.
Fuck your deal, oh devilish one.

I walked off.

And here I am 25 years later at the end of the party
Feeling like the one guy left standing after the gunfight in the cemetary.
as the smoke clears he blinks and discovers,
he is alive.
It doesnt seem fair.
but who's complaining.

It's disgraceful.

How in gods' name
does one grow old gracefully?

After all I have been through now

After all I have been through now,
I am surprised to find my arm stuttering across the page.
Words. Experience. Don’t seem to come.
Nothing appears to want to write itself.
I am not sure there is anything left to explore.
I have seen sunsets and sights, canyons, rivers, creatures of all kinds, flowers of all colours, oceans of all size, mountains, deserts, rains and ravines.
I am not bored. This is not what I am saying.
I have had queens and princesses, whores and sirens, wailers and screamers, fighters and biters, virgins, vampires, vermin, vixens and tramps.
I mean, what is left?
It is not that I tire of these things.
Just uncertain that there is much else to conquer. Nought that I wish to at least.
Darkness begins to draw close, on my last day of freedom.
You can not run forever, so they tell me.

A piano plays gently in a coffee bar at the station.
I could have stayed out there, in the wilds.
It is just that I heard another calling, calling me back.
The piano tells me credits are about to roll on some b&w movie.
I guess that’s how the story plays out for me this time.
Loneliness used to break me, but solitude was ok once private thoughts became my closest friends.
I’ll probably spend the rest of my days in moments like this;
Train station cafes.
Looking back with melancholy and forward with a non-committal air.
Knowing nothing will ever amount to much.
And once a year, in places like this the world over, they play Christmas carols
Just to remind lonely souls how long it has been.
Beautiful women walk by.
And I realise.
That in a world full of steel, rock, concrete and death.
They are my only source of hope.

There is no feeling quite like it.

There is no feeling quite like it.
You have no place to stay, your nearest friend is a thousand miles away.
You are in a city you don’t know. It is late and all the cheap hotels are booked.
You are left facing a night on the streets.
You know you wont sleep much.
You’ll spend the night fearful of people, or the law, and thinking about how your life came to this.
It was supposed to be fun, wasn’t it?
Your bank account has nearly run dry.
And it is raining.
It cuts a groove in your personality, a welt of an experience that will heal over tomorrow when you board the 6am train and escape this madness.
But.
It will never fully heal.
You’ll feel it there sometimes.
A dull throb, not altogether numb.
A little painful.
And you’ll be reminded of those times that lightly litter the story of your existence.
Nights spent on the streets.
In various anonymous towns.
Invariably feeling sorry for yourself.
Always alone.
Wondering how you got there and quietly praying,
that when dawn light comes,
it will be the last time you ever have to face a night like that again.

On nights like these...

She found me browsing a bookstand in Federation Square.
There was nothing significant about that,
but I knew at once there was something different about her.
My trouble was I had been away from home, alone for so long, just out of contact, I had forgotten what normal was. I was in a time and place where everything seemed strange.
I watched her as she walked. I was trying to work it out, what it was.
I just couldn’t put my finger on it.
She was beautiful.
She was in black and white, I mean, as I recollect her now it could be a movie. Yea, she’s gonna be a star. I could see that.
(Of course I wouldn’t guarantee it, Death has a funny way of touching the most beautiful long before their time.)
I could see something in her. She was like glass; you could see through but in doing so, you missed everything that was there.
She was good, and yet she didn’t know it. People are at their most perfect then.
I could have fallen in love with her easy.
I was enchanted and aware of every movement in her.
Her heart and mind. I could hear them beat.
I listened in.
Stared into her eye.
She didn’t break my gaze, she had guts, I liked that.
It wasn’t lust that drove me. It never really is anymore.
Why take the body when you can revel in things of the soul; I was bathing in her light.
But she wasn’t ready. Not for the likes of me. Not yet. Hell, maybe never.
It didn’t matter.
In this life we are only ever passing through.
She said; ‘Hello, I think we recognise each other, don’t we?’
I smiled and looked away.
Sipping my vodka tonic through a straw, a view out over the lights of yet another city.
Two stars alone in a rooftop night.
As trams rolled by in the streets below.
On nights like these you could almost believe that a good soul could make it.

People walk by the street outside

People walk by the street outside.
Rain drips so endlessly it could be England, but it isn’t.
I have been alive these past months in a way I had forgotten;
Passion rekindled, lust for life, fires re-lit.
That energy with which I used to burn through the world has been back upon me.
Flames lick around my shoulders
where my wings could be.
It is slowing now,
gently coming to a stop.
Soon I’ll step back into the world of men.
Where I belong? No. Where only a part of me belongs.

I tasted freedom for a while. Solitary. Distant. I was gone.
40 days and nights.
It wasn’t a time of peace, it was War.
Battles. Struggle. Survive.
There is blood on my hand.
A gold ring glitters on the little finger of my left, anchor and snake etched into it.
I wonder about my family. Wonder about each one all the way back.
Some little piece of all of them etched into my being.
Things I don’t know about, cant fathom, yet are.
My soul tempered in an altogether different fire.

People walk by the street outside.
Rain drips so endlessly it could be England, but it isn’t.
I am here again, arrived back into the world of men.
There is blood on my hand, and purpose in my heart.
I pull my collar up about my neck and step out to walk among them.