Make-Believe & Beyond

                            Signs

I knew the situation was hopeless

when the second thing she said to me

was, “What’s your sign?”

My sign.

Maybe she –

or one of her friends –

had stuck a ‘kick-me’ sign on my bum

when I wasn’t looking.

These things happen sometimes.

But maybe not.

Maybe I was supposed to have one of those

‘Hi! My Name Is’ signs stuck to my shirt pocket

with my name written on its blank space in marker,

but somehow nobody told me and I’m the odd one out.

Or maybe I wrote ‘Dick’ on it and stuck it to my flies.

But maybe not.

By the way, the sign I like the best,

in the abstract,

is ‘No U Turn’

a nice metaphor, eh?

but I don’t think that was what she meant, either.

I think she’s a birthday bigot,

and, like all bigotry,

I think that’s ugly, evil, and stupid.

Y’know, I bet she doesn’t care what I think, though.

She doesn’t have to.

All she has to do is know my sign.

She didn’t know it right then when she asked,

but no matter when my birthday is,

I’m just not her cup of tea.

Make my sign the one that says, “Exit.”

           Metaphysics

Sometimes it really pisses off

the child in me

that things that aren’t real

– magic, water sprites,

telepathy, matter transmitters,

and so forth – 

really aren’t,

but at least sometimes music

or psychoactive substances

or sleep

allow me to imagine

that they are.

        The Molecules

The molecules

inside my nervous system

dance,

and that dance is me

and what I have to contribute

to the universal soul.

In three weeks

all the molecules

in my nervous system

will be different ones,

the half-lives of molecules

being what they are,

but the dance

will be the same,

only incorporating three more weeks

of experiences.

      Sex and the Occult

I attended a séance once

when I was twenty years old,

having the day before

had sex with the young woman

who was acting the medium.

The séance, of course,

was a load of crap,

and I never had sex with her again.

A couple of years later

I had, for a few months,

the fortune to be the toy boy

of an ex-nun more than twice my age.

She paid some big-woo Hollywood astrologer

an obscene amount of money

to do my chart.

Its relation to reality

was on-target somewhat less often

than if its pronouncements,

which were mostly vague, anyway,

had been made completely at random.

        The Luck of the Draw

I can’t respect the intellect

of people who confidently assert

that there’s no such thing as luck,

luck being the unforeseen

random consequences

of billions and billions of causal factors

beyond anybody’s control.

Even attempts to control events,

being the cumulative

random consequences

of billions and billions of causal factors

beyond anybody’s control,

are really the result of luck as well.

The ludicrous fantasy

that things have been intended,

or were Meant To Be,

can be amusing at times,

but taken seriously is stupid and ugly –

something for stupid and ugly people.

       Sceptical Agnosticism & the Soul

I consider myself to be agnostic rather than atheist,

although the concept of the abrahamic god

is clearly ridiculous and pathetically childish,

in addition to being contradictory, anthropocentric,

contrary to empirical reality, and just plain ugly.

My problem with mainstream atheism

is its uncritical dismissal of the concept of the soul,

which seems to me to be an abandoning of scepticism.

Sure, it’s possible, even likely,

that when the circulatory system

stops feeding oxygen to the nervous system

that the energy in the nervous system

simply converts into potential energy

and loses all its data patterns.

It seems to me, however, that it’s also possible

that the nervous system’s patterned energy –

which could possibly exist as electromagnetic waves;

no one knows for certain –

could escape into the atmosphere, or even space,

retaining some of its data.

We don’t have the technology to test this hypothesis.

We can’t see television or wireless broadband

or other types of electronic waves

as they travel through the air

without the appropriate instruments, either,

and neuroscience technology is still in its infancy,

basically just tracking the flow of blood in the brain.

It seems like a maybe-maybe-not situation to me.

      Dream Magic

Air like dream magic

bloats the pale twilight

cool winds make people

think about gods.

I stay in my unit

where the air’s more consistent

and my loneliness seems

less acute but more hard.

You said that you’d see me

when I needed that and also

knew, as you did too,

that you were most unlikely

to return.

Despite the dream magic,

I know that the gods

are people’s creations,

like flower arrangements

and marzipan-frosted cakes,

but rarely so benign.

The night’s darkness softly closes

over the innocence of dusk,

caressing daylight’s hardness,

hiding banalities;

the raucousness from elsewhere

in the suburb and city

stirs up the spirits

in their godlike nastiness,

then subsides into the

air like dream magic.

Family Values

                        Normal?

My daddy was a helluva guy.

When I was growing up

in the late 1940s and early 1950s

he was the only GP in a small town

and did house calls, even at night.

Of course he was the town’s public-health officer

and a member of the volunteer fire department.

He also played viola in a symphony orchestra in the nearby city

and took oil-painting lessons

from an African-American artist,

who later became the first such

to break through in the art biz.

Sometimes he even had time to joke around with me,

which were maybe the best times of my life,

or watch sports with me on TV – once that became possible.

Perhaps most importantly, though,

he was my only protector

from the almost-constant

emotional and psychological abuse

that my self-centred, megalomaniacal, totally insensitive

control-freak virago of a mother directed my way,

and was even sometimes able to protect me

from my relentlessly malicious bully of an older brother,

although that bullying usually happened when he wasn’t around.

Then, when I was nine and he was 46,

he died of a heart attack.

The rest of my childhood

and my adolescence

was far from a piece of cake.

I’d have to be a dolt

to wonder why

I’m so fucked up.

                  Mumsie & Paul

My mother

was a control freak and a megalomaniac.

My mother

was totally self-absorbed and insensitive,

obsessed with obtaining

immediate ego gratification

with a cold-blooded and blindered focus.

My mother found enormous delight

in one-upping and humiliating people

and in putting people down.

My mother

was incapable of kindness.

My mother

aggressively asserted

that every one of her personal taste preferences,

however accidental, random, or whimsical,

was a universally superior value,

and that anyone who didn’t share any one of them,

or who had a preference for one she didn’t share,

was inferior and deserving of mockery and ridicule.

My mother

respected only power

and never let me have any

or even begin to think that I could.

My mother

treated me like shit.

My older brother

took after my mother

in many nasty ways,

and added a few destructive abuse techniques

of his own.

Unlike her reptilian unawareness

of anything but her immediate objectives,

he abused me with gleeful malice

and made it clear that in his opinion

what she was doing to me was hilariously funny.

         More Unavoidable Ignorance

I wonder how my daddy

perceived and conceptualised the phenomenon

of his wife being consistently and inexplicably

horrid and abusive to his innocent, adorably cute –

I have the photos –

post-toddler younger son,

and of how, despite him telling her repeatedly

to let me have peace,

she persisted in tormenting me.

Since he died young, though,

I’ll never know.

        Not Exactly Nostalgia

I learnt early,

from when I was about three onward,

that when my older male sibling –

the word brother having connotations

that don’t apply –

was developing his chops

for his a life-long malicious joy

in putting down and humiliating others

by bullying me relentlessly,

if I went to my mother for help

she would scold me

and make unfair accusations,

such as that I stayed up nights

thinking up ways to aggravate her.

After all, she bullied me relentlessly, too,

thereby indicating to her other son

that I was fair game.

   Gentle Upbringing and Finer Sentiments

It started when I was little,

the dichotomy of me and what I do.

My mother and my so-called brother

made it clear that I,

myself,

was less than shit,

but that what I did had value

if it was useful to them,

entertained them,

or made them look good.

My mother in particular

considered me to be

little more than a thing she owned,

and did so

until she dissolved into dementia.

How could I choose one

from thousands of salient examples of this?

I felt nothing,

one way or the other,

when the abusive old sheila

finally died.

         The Dorsey Brothers

It was when I was about five or six.

My older sibling

had engaged in some act

of outrageous bullying,

tormenting me,

right in front of our mother.

The maternal unit

responded by telling my crying face

that it was normal for brothers to fight,

that it had always been that way,

citing Cain and Abel –

about whom I’d heard –

and the Dorsey brothers –

about whom I hadn’t.

This, she indicated,

made it okay.

My problem with that was

that I was two years younger than he was,

which meant that our fights,

although perhaps normal,

were always

nasty experiences

for me.

Since he took enormous delight

in picking them

all I could do

was to avoid him

as much as I could.

Still do.

               Hattie’s Whorehouse

I must’ve been maybe six or seven

when my mother left my daddy.

He’d just returned home after a few days away

at a general practitioners’ convention.

I remember sitting somewhere

and listening, uncomprehending, to the shouting,

then staying well out of the way

as my mother stormed up the stairs, packed a suitcase,

then stormed back down and out the door.

My daddy explained to my older brother Paul and me

that Mommy was going to be staying in a hotel for a while.

That was okay with me.

Some time later the phone rang.

After a brief conversation

he called us to him and told us

that she’d forgotten her toothbrush

and was returning to get it,

and that when she got home we were to beg her to stay.

I remember sorta cowering at the top of the stairs

while Paul did the begging,

and of course she stayed.

I don’t recall feeling anything at all, one way or another,

except maybe confused.

Her suitcase had still been in the car.

Paul later told me, sniggering, that the fight had been about

her finding a matchbook in Daddy’s things

from a place called Hattie’s Whorehouse.

I don’t know if he made that up,

but I imagine some out-of-town indiscretion was involved.

I didn’t know what a whorehouse was then, anyway.

Forgot her toothbrush!

Yeah, right.

               The Night My Daddy Died

The night my daddy died

I was writing a skit for my Cub Scout den,

a faux radio news story

about some bullshit incident in the bloody Bible, of all things,

when I heard my mother shout, “Jess!”

and saw her run to the phone.

The night my daddy died

I kept letting people in at the front door,

which was also the door to the waiting room

of my daddy’s GP practice at the front of the house –

the ambulance people with their useless oxygen tanks,

first one doctor in a brand-new Packard luxury car

with an outside light on the side panel

between the front and back doors,

the purpose of which I couldn’t suss out,

then other doctors, and finally the undertaker.

They all acted strangely toward me

in different ways.

The night my daddy died

each time someone arrived I flipped the switch

for the light in the new sign out front

that had my daddy’s name and office hours –

until I realised that the bulb had just burnt out.

He wasn’t going to need the sign again, anyhow.

The night my daddy died

my mother thought it would be a good idea

to send me to a neighbour’s house to sleep,

but I walked back home

in my pyjamas and bare feet to my own bed,

even though it was a cold autumn night

the night my daddy died.

The night my daddy died

I lost the only protection, however intermittent,

that I had, and I needed plenty.

The night my daddy died

I hardly understood what had happened,

and had no clue that at nine-and-a-half

whatever slim chance I might have had

to interact realistically with other people

later on

was gone.

                       The Last Thing

As soon as his eyes rolled back into his head

she abruptly cut off her snarling and shouted his name,

then ran to the phone, but it was already over,

and neither the ambulance crew with their oxygen

nor every doctor who could get there

– he’d been popular amongst his fellow GPs –

could do squat except pull long faces

and mutter shit about ‘so young.’

A few days later

I heard her say over the phone,

‘The last thing he heard was my nagging voice.’

I may have been only nine and a half,

but I understood immediately and without doubt

– and I can still hear this clearly in my memory’s ear –

that her tone expressed amazement, nothing more:

no sorrow, no regret, and certainly no remorse.

Imaginary People

                          Big Louie

I used to speculate

– and sometimes still do –

about what it would be like

to have my own personal servant

and, if I did,

what sort of servant I’d want to have.

An impeccable British gentleman’s gentleman?

(Perhaps named Chutney – or maybe Chives)

A talented and versatile chef?

A French soubrette maid in fishnet hose?

I decided long ago, however,

that it would be most useful

to have my own personal thug.

I imagine his name would be Big Louie.

Any time anybody ripped me off

or seriously pissed me off

– and how often do you have such experiences? –

I’d only have to snap my fingers

and he’d respond in his thick, stupid voice,

‘Which one, boss?’

Or maybe the milk of human kindness

would find its way into my veins,

and I’d explain to the offending party

that, ‘I don’t like violence,

unless it’s the kind they play with a bow,

but my associate, Mr Big Louie,

he’s not like that, y’know?’

It’s a soothing fantasy.

                        Peace and Prosperity

He lives in a comfortable, capacious home

on a safe, quiet, shady, street

where his children can play without supervision.

Unlike so many other Midwestern industrial towns,

the aura of secure, American comfort

is everywhere settled and undisturbed,

with no exceptions –

neither poverty nor decay have a toehold here.

His commute to the plant isn’t overly long,

the pay is comfortable,

and new orders are constantly flooding in.

The work there is steady,

has been since his grandfather worked there,

and seems unlikely to slow down

in any future he can imagine.

When he gets home from work

he can settle onto his La-Z-Boy,

an ice-cold beer on the table beside him,

the round-topped one that his father had made in his workshop,

and enjoy the TV news.

Especially the reports showing

young men wearing camouflage fatigues

in various blasted Mideastern and African

landscapes, towns, and cities

shooting at each other,

most of the boom-boom-booms and pop-pop-pops

representing the firing of bullets

that he’s had a hand in manufacturing,

creating the need for urgent re-orders

to replace them.

His wife will have a tuna casserole ready

when the news is over,

after the weather.

                        A Real Character

She was an affected old bird

fond of fogs of non-floral incense,

long, flowing feathery gowns,

and spending hours each day

utilising her toiletries

and applying her cosmetics.

Her hair gleamed.

She had a vague awareness of Celtic myths,

and was enamoured of all things she considered Grecian,

although repelled by that which was greek.

Her home was a repository

for a dizzying array of crystals

and polished semiprecious lapidary ornaments,

set amongst wide expanses of lace

and fringes.

She cherished her original vinyl LP albums

by the Fairport Convention, Cat Stevens, Pentangle,

and the like.

She became irate when the neighbours’ dog

would piddle in her garden,

even though she rarely went into it herself.

She did her best to speak like the Queen,

but tended to overpronounce her words.

She frequently found cause to employ tradesmen,

whom she would refer to as

‘My plumber’ or ‘My electrician’ or ‘My gardener’,

and masturbated shamelessly and promptly

after they left.

                     Missed Siesta

The colonel, grumpy and lumpy,

attended his desk

in his military-peaked hat,

as the blades of his ceiling fan

did less to cool the air

of his jungleside command centre

that was far too far from the city

than they did to mark the seconds

until the day’s siesta.

Sweat oozed down his ribs

and made his back

and the backs of his thick thighs

stick to his uniform’s khaki military textiles.

Lean and dark and gleaming,

in camouflage fatigue pants and singlet,

his sweat integral to who he was,

Ignacio didn’t give a fuck,

not about Jesus or the virgin

or Padre Narciso’s right and wrong,

not even about Citizen Mario’s

ideology of liberation.

The colonel’s men

had tortured his father

and raped his sister.

Ignacio led the barrage

of automatic-weapon fire

from the front,

allowing himself no emotion,

but crying the whole time nonetheless.

The colonel never enjoyed

the chicken mole

his housekeeper had prepared

for his pre-siesta dinner.

                             Perfection

It wasn’t her dad who’d had the money, or not for long;

her dad had been inoffensive,

too shy and deferential to be a successful salesman,

much too much in love with books and booze.

The money had come from her dad’s brother,

a mean-spirited and predatory dickhead,

who’d scragged a fortune screwing legions of people over

before one of them shot him in the head

as he ate wild venison at a footpath table

in front of some upmarket café-style café.

Her dad, being his brother’s sole heir,

had binged on real French champagne

and fifteen-year-old Irish whisky

for three days before falling to his death down a flight of stairs.

Her mum had shot through to Australia

years before with a glib New Age huckster,

so she was her dad’s sole heir.

She tried travel, clothes, and food,

but this combination failed to satisfy her.

Fulfilment announced itself to her at last

in the way of a plasterer named Nigel

who worked on the bay windows

– as she supervised the renovation of her uncle’s 1960s mansion –

without his shirt on.

After Nigel she found no shortage

of firm-muscled young tradesmen willing to have a go

with a fleshy rich woman

who knew how to spend up a good time,

well into her old age.

People who thought it unseemly could go fuck themselves.

She couldn’t imagine improving on her situation.

                     It’s A Hell Of A World

Okay, so he’d had a sheltered upbringing,

his shoes always shined, his clothes always pressed;

he learnt to use the correct forks and spoons

and never to lift a one of them

till his mother had brought all the food to the table

and had sat down and begun eating herself;

his parents had answered his biological queries

with vague abstractions and metaphors

that he hardly understood at all,

and used the words for human emotions

without displaying examples of them for him to emulate.

He learnt to revere the daintiness and social power

of the human females in his narrow little life,

and never to say words his mother disliked.

He also learnt everything his parents’ religion had to teach

without going overboard into the religious life.

Still, once he finally entered the world,

he should have been ready

to take the inevitable surprises in stride,

and not leapt, horrified,

from his conjugal bed on his wedding night,

shouting that he wanted an annulment

just because he’d never known before

that ladies fart.

                     Proving Manhood

He was raised by an ambitious auntie

who enjoyed dominating for its own sake,

didn’t give a shit about anybody but herself,

and demanded that he do all the housework.

He had enormous ears that stuck out from his head,

was short and pudgy and awkward, shitty at sports,

and not much better at school.

He found a job locating and fetching crap

in the warehouse of some online retailer.

It wasn’t bad; he could dream his way through the days

and escape into the TV when he got home,

but he never found a girlfriend,

and the years slipped by.

He eventually answered a sex ad

and took his saved-up money

to a budget motel room,

where a dark-skinned woman – a girl, actually –

with an angry face and a South Asian accent

opened the door and took his money

without a smile and with barely a word.

Dizzy with the idea that this was It at last,

he began undressing.

She stripped quickly and lay back on the bed, scowling.

‘I won’t suck your dick,’ she said,

but you can lick me if it’ll help you.’

She clenched her teeth.

He looked at her with his entire cosmos behind his eyes

and replied, ‘If you hate it so much why do you do it?’,

then put his clothes back on

and left.