Population of real people: not enough to make a town.

it is almost dark out.  the day is becoming foam and rolling out to sea.  the light is dimming and relocating from the sky to the streetlights.  the businessmen sleep inside their ocean view windows and hum in their subconscious to the rhythm of pacemakers.  their breath goes in and out in time to the countdown of death. 

the woman with three dreams perches herself on a corner.

her hair is in strands, like shredded newspaper glued to a wispy skinned skull.  I bet I could read of war tragedy from them. 
there is the group of seventeen year old boys that cluster together under the pretence of a gang, but other than write three letters in spray paint over wooden fences, they stand together and silently absorb each other’s heat.

a car rattles along the road and by the sound of its tyres I can discern when it passes the part of town where people eat tar for substance by the number of potholes it clunks into.

a truck follows it, roaring, grinding its metallic stomach, and from its mouth slinks plumes of grimy smoke.  it paints the sky like the stars we never see.

someone is dying in the corners.  there is a bullet stretching across the sky like lightning.  it goes through air, then it goes through flesh, then it goes through bone

then finally, through marrow.

and the soul is captured in the fissures of life, the chasms that spread like babies mouths.
never to escape or be felt again.

but there is no scream.  just the television static from a few streets away where two lovers pretend their fumbles are just tangible distractions.











blasphemy shoots through the clocks and a day turns to another.

eyes flicker languidly and shove alarms into silence.  arms stretch and try and touch the top of equator.  toes flex and gather clumps of sheets in their grip.  teeth crunch together and stifle left over words.  ears reverberate birds cacophony like sirens in a massacre.  limbs clamber over the sides of beds and either

A ) run to the bathroom and throw up
B ) get dressed.
C ) meander into the kitchen and make breakfast.

or
D ) all of the above.







on the sign:

“WELCOME TO COFFS HARBOUR”

we should change it to:

“WELCOME TO COFFS HARBOUR,
WHERE YOU CAN WATCH YOUR CHILDHOOD DIE
-REGARDLESS OF AGE”

sound like a selling point?

no,
the truth never is.






because our schools are framed by three metre fences and there’s a rumour that some guy spilt his blood last decade and never got it back.

because the rich people only come here to feel richer.

because the sixteen year old girls walk round with new people festering in their stomachs.

because our best tourist attraction is a huge plastic banana.  a 9 metres long banana.

because if you walk near bushes, odds are people are fucking right next to your feet.

because if you’re Black, if your Chinese, if you’re Asian, if you’re from the Atlantic,
you are alone.

because if you go away there’s always the risk you’ll come back.