A Skin Too Few

There’s a girl on the beach about my age, we’re in the dark along the foreshore she’s holding onto bushel of seaweed. We’re in close proximity and there is an obvious anxiety between us. I try to break this invisible fourth wall.

“It smells like rum.” The statement makes no sense, I know, but it’s the first thing that came to my mind.

“What does?”

“The Seaweed.” She laughs,

“Really?”

“Yes of course, what can you smell?”

“I don’t know.” She pauses and brings her hand closer to her nose.

“Lollies.”

“Really?  I definitely smell rum”

“Someone once told me seaweed doesn’t have a smell, not until it bakes in the morning sun. Maybe you smell what you want to smell. I want lollies and you want rum.”

“I can believe that.”

“Although, I’d have to admit you must be a bit of an alcho if you can smell rum in seaweed.”

“I’m actually quite cadbury. But then again, that’s never held me back before. So in a lot of ways, I guess you’re right.”

“I really am. What are you doing here?”

“I’m meant to be meeting my friends at this entrance to the beach we’re having a bon fire. But I don’t see them.”

“Maybe they tricked you; make you come all this way to have a drink but now you can’t because they aren’t coming.”

“If been cadbury didn’t hold me back from being an alcoholic. Let me assure you, being lonely isn’t going to either.” She laughs a little at my self depreciation. I smile at her and she returns the favour.

“I’m sure they’re coming soon would you like to join us in making this bon fire, I’m sure I could even pry my lips from the rum bottle to offer you a little. Only a little mind you.”

“Oh.” She says.

“I was just going for a quick walk; I should get back to my boyfriend at the caravan park.”

“Ah okay.” I want to yell out for her name, but on the beach without the moon, her figure is already shrouding into the dark. Then she yells back cheekishly.

“Have fun drinking alone.” I know the barb and resent it, but she was probably only trying to relieve her guilty conscious by hurting me.

I walk along the beach. At first I start in the soft sand closer to the dune, the walking doesn’t tire me, but the sand sticks and makes large depressions in which I have to escape. I move down closer to the water’s edge and although now the meaningless struggle is easier; it leaves less of an imprint. I’m freer, but I lament, my experience seems poorer for it.

All Revolutions are Impossible, until they happen, then they become inevitable.

-Trotsky (?)

At Ric’s on the 26th

I’m in a bar off Ann Street,

I realise heaven inside an empty raw sugar packet,

It’s on the floor of the mosh pit

Into it I project infinite dissolutions of reality and a folding perception,

Then embracing my minds ability to reach the abstract

I detach from the worthlessness of being,

Become a stray dog,

In the presence of its coterie,

This urbane winter rattles a cough in their skeletal lungs,

Protruding ribs moaning for affection

I try and reconnect but all the jacks are switched off.

Fuck it, I’ll fake it,

Then go home.

A Beach

Two men, old friends, sitting in chairs on the dunes overlooking a beach. This place is a bookend for them, a retreat from their lives back home. With a single apercu they’d seem as tired journey men and yet distinct solitary figures.

In the night the ocean is sanguine and nonchalantly crumbles at the dune before retreating. The sycophantic moonlight casts a naïve sight into the depths of the ocean. A mourning wind always relentless on an open beach embodies the finite sand, casting any poor wanders footsteps in doubt. The space is desolate. The space is desolate, echoing around the men and although they cannot grasp a sight of each other in the dark; one barest whisper breathes out.

“The beach…”

“What about it?”

“It’s always changing and yet it always stays the same.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean just that- it’s always changing but staying the same.”

Sam Harvey

Syrian Crisis

Please Donate to the Syrian Refugee Crisis Here.

The Dream

I had three dreams last night, I can’t remember the first two but I vividly remember the third.

X was at a concert I believe Y was playing (before I fell asleep last night I was lamenting how X was going to see Y at Z but I wasn’t) we met in the car park next to her station wagon. We talked for a little bit and then she popped open the boot of her car.

On the floor of the car to the left was a record player and X played some old records. The quality was astounding. She started talking to me about how the analogue sound was far superior or closer to the real sound of the band then that of digital. She also told me that all of her records were special remastered editions off the master tape recordings.

I smoothly mentioned that I had The Beatles Abbey Road Remastered Master Tape Edition on vinyl at home. We then lay down in the back of her station wagon and listened to more records; I eventually reached across and held her hand. After some time we decided to drive back to her place- I drove the car.

We took a strange route to her house, we went through the bush and for the first time in my life I could appreciate the beauty of Australian Paper Bark and Gum trees, there was a kookaburra flying through the bone white forest. We passed an old rusting shed all the while I delicately held her hand.

Eventually we reached an incline and came back into suburbia arriving at her house. At this point the dream began to deteriorate a Chinese man was with us in the back seat I’d in fact driven him home as well and after dropping him and X off he invited me in.

I looked outside his window and opposite was my home across the river; I was in one of the Woolsheds in Teneriffe. I left the Chinese man on the excuse to get myself a glass of water; I was in fact trying to find X. She was in her room, she asked me if knew my way to the Citycat- I did. I don’t recall if we kissed each other goodbye or not but the dream ended here.

I know three things for certain; the first is that X doesn’t hold any romantic feelings towards me or anyone for that regard. The second is that I don’t have any feelings for her- It was just a dream that’s all. The third is that in that dream I’d felt happiness I’d forgotten.

The Exhibitionist

Sam Harvey

You’ve forced me into this-

I’m a voyeur into the catastrophe that is your life.

Stop parading around the open window,

I don’t want to be involved; you are not my friend.

I should not have to close my blinds-

The view from my window is as much mine as it is yours.

I’ve seen you crying- I do not care,

I’ve seen you vomit in the bathroom- it’s pity in me,

I’ve seen the men you display- I shrug at their heartlessness,

You’ll scream and say I’m calloused.

You’re starved for love, I know that-

I can see it.

The hunger to be held unconditionally,

And although my heart wishes to reach through this pane

You’d chew on my love and suck out my soul.