The pub had never been as full as it was on the night of the McKenzie fire. Whiskey and beer, drunk and spilled in equal measure, flowed freely to the patrons, drunk and riled in equal measure, but ever wary of the plank June kept under the premixes in case anyone got too unruly.

The first wisps of smoke barely ignited curiosity amongst the throng, as though even they were too distracted by the frivolity to bother the crowd with something so serious, but soon the wisps became a wall, pressing and pushing, as coughing and confusion spread through the patrons.

It was Dan Lewis (barely 46, the balloons hadn’t even made it to the outside bin) who first connected the pieces, through prescience (or a surreptitious headcount), and asked if anyone had seen the McKenzies; the mildly camouflaged panic amplified as it echoed from mouth to ear and off the plaster walls.

But soon the panic fell to silence, the path forward clear despite the thickening smoke. Neighbours (as they all were) avoided each other’s glances in tacit agreement: the McKenzies (neighbours in geography only) would manage, or not, as God saw fit. So windows were closed, cigarettes relighted, and drinks (despite June’s uncharacteristically unstable hand) refilled. And, as the fog of woodsmoke, tobacco and whiskey settled into the deepening night, the matter was forgotten.

June (née McKenzie) pulled up her coat as the bitter cold of near dawn settled, and she clicked the final lock on the pub’s back door. As expected, the old shed (had her father used it last, or her grandfather?) had been far enough off to allay suspicion. She wondered how long they’d burn and choke before it was too late.

The shed rasped a parched splinter into the breeze: it hit the wall and settled in the dry grass, its glow growing into a flame.

And as the murmurs of confusion turned into screams of terror, she turned away from the town that had been a neighbour only in geography and, family in arm, disappeared into the bush.

He woke each night with War in the east and Love in the west, and his heart right in the middle. For, when the Sun and Holy Ghost had long since set, the old gods were always watching.

To him, life was always in retrograde, a ceaseless cycle of recursion and reduction. Ubiquity lends itself all too readily to redundancy, just as omniscience is itself subject to ridicule and scorn. All should be sparing with their miracles.

What is majesty in a celestial court?

What is cruelty and violence at a cosmic scale?

Reality, he saw, is a quantum state: to the right, the road, to the left, the hearth, and his heart right in the middle.

Yet here we are, caught between the atoms and the stars. Through the human lens, this quantum state is a prison, not potential. In the awe of our creation, we are frozen in indecision.

He grasped at the night and fell back into the earth.

And then, one day, Death turned the scythe on herself.

And then, one day, Death turned the scythe on herself.

It had finally got too much: the sobbing, the pleading, the bribes and promises and, worst of all, the lies.

No, wait; the prayers. The prayers were much worse. What sort of vacuous marketing executive had decided to associate her with evil? It was moronic and, were she the litigious type, she’d go as far as negligent.

She had stuck through it all: the quivering lips, the screams and cries, the pleas of innocence (what was that about?). How many millennia had she trod this earth?

She thought back to when she heard only grunts and gasps of wonder.

But the last century had worn on her. Not satisfied with delaying her (and to think they had once called her Mother), they had come up with increasingly inventive ways of rendering her irrelevant.

She trod these cities, these battlegrounds, to find them already husks, hollowed out by Power and picked clean by an ever greedy Time.

And she wept for those who fell, sobbing with relief, into her arms.

So she stopped and sat. She watched the war zones grow and merge, and saw hatred and fear (more powerful than any of her viruses) spread across the earth.

And so, at last, she turned the scythe upon herself, and fell into her own arms, satisfied humanity was doing well enough without her.

Sextant

Less than a whirr, but more than a hum;

These engines sounds so different this far from home.

I set my sextant to the northern star and find myself no less lost.

Is it not wondrous that we time travel at night?

These flickering fingers of light, beckoning to us from the distant past.

I imagine myself bathed in their warmth as I wander among their barren children;

I feel the sharp nick of scarred rock, of ancient ice,

And see my terrestrial blood, alien on this surface.

Yet here I lie,

Blessed and cursed by my transience;

Servant to this universe, and master of none.

Yet here I lie,

Blessed and curse by my sentience;

Master of this universe, and servant to none.

And here I lie,

For my boldness and bravado whither in the vastness of this chaos and elegance,

And, from this scale, my fervor is seen as aimless drifting.

But still, these lights, they sing;

But still they twirl and swing in their navy gowns.

And, clothed in this night, I follow.

Townsville, 26/8/19

Horticulture/Arson

the mind is a terrible time machine;
The memories of how are so achingly present, their bitter shards colour everything.

Is is really so surprisingly that death begets death?
An eye for an eye.
Because it was not one person, but rather life, that slighted you.

You are an emotional horticulturalist,
And an arsonist.
But you always hold the match too close.

Dowse yourself.
Be careful not to miss the cheap seats.

At first, we thought they were fireworks.

We slammed our doors and windows and turned up our TVs. The few who braved the briefly illuminated chill quickly returned inside, unable to glimpse the rainbow sparks the distant booms had promised.

The strobe faded, and silence swallowed the darkness.

In the morning, the booming started again, but this time at our doors, and of familiar voices in the street. We tumbled blearily out of our homes, the familiar morning mist mingling with a foreign smoke. They threw our lives from our houses and they tore off our clothes; our secrets, strewn in the streets, illuminated in the dawn.

They cast us, naked, into our bare boxes, and left only silence.

In the evening, the booming started again, but this time slowly, methodically, crawling closer.

We closed our eyes and counted down to "me".

She is.

She is.

Her foot stops just off the footpath, as she feels her soul expanding, beyond her arms and chest and face and ears, beyond the face of her childhood, and the hands of her future frailty. It grows out of and around her, taking in the road, the cars, a boy throwing his toy cars over the fence, a dog parking at a falling leaf, a couple arguing just out of sight of the neighbours, a rosebush covered in aphids, a stubborn drop of dew hidden from the mid-morning sun.

She can taste everything that this earth once was, she can feel all it will become.

She see the scars and the beauty, hears the fire, the pain, the peace.

In this stasis, this smallest unit of time, she builds a home, she build eternity.



28/12/2015