Notes from the devils conga line.

The Razor Bird

My anger lifts me up, my rage gives me wings,
and my hate makes me powerful, vengeful and
wise.

Being the creature that I am now, I can’t imagine
the thing that I was.

Cause rage is now my craze, I have become an air
creature, my thoughts fly, my words cut.

I am the razor bird.

My fingers tap, my feet stomp, my eyes flash, my
hair flows, I am a whispered word, a shard, a bird.

I cut the world into two juxtaposing nodes, I’m not a
teacher, I’m the lotus eater, I stab, I cut, I wound and
feed.

I never ever bleed.

My hand writes, my words all spite, I’m not a healer,
I’m a meat eater, I lie, I cheat, I hurt everyone one I meet.

I’m the barbwire beak that strips the corpse’s meat, a bird
that has to eat.

I’m the drug taker, and the mythmaker.

So when the veins don’t pulse and when the heart beat lines,
my lungs breath will inhale your death. I’ll smoke and
I’ll joke.

And with my razor feet I’ll seize the sorry grief, a bird
whose wings cut deep.

I’m the whispered word.

A very nasty, spiteful curse that rages in an avian verse, too
terse to shake, too sly to die, I’ll hit you in your blindest side.

Shadow cloaked, I’m whispered in serrated jokes, I still adorn
sharp-feathered hopes, and the final thing your eye’s might scope!

Totally evil, theatrically absurd! I’m a deadly sharp Razor Bird.

Sammy Dawg

Sammy Dawg, he is ma homie, the tats
he has they tell a story.

Around his back there flows a storm sea,
the ships it casts upon Dawg’s shoulders
are there devoured by blue monsters.

Yes Sammy Dawg ma one and only, his arms
are long and lean and bony, the eye there
has a weary journey on roads track marked and
hoary, on them lives a different story.

O Sammy Dawg ma wounded brother, I’m here
for you and no other, on you is inked the pure
redeemer, he walks across an ocean torso and
there he finds a lot and more so.

“What up ma Dawg!” I feel like saying, but Sammy
Dawg is just not playing, but a story still his tats are
saying, in vivid hues but they’re decaying.

Sammy Dawg he was ma homie, his fists are clenched,
his eyes are lonely; his colors speak with death’s
engravings, “I am a World!” His skins proclaiming.

Sammy Dawg’s, one last mention is written there for my
attention, words that state his new found station, a book
of skin for all the nations.

Now words have failed him, the pictures tell: ma Sammy
Dawg won’t burn in hell.

Hiram and the Water Nymphs. Part One.

‘Passed the wide expanse, beyond the Grey dogs howl, lays the pool that Hylas found.’
I first read those words when I was 13 years old; I’d opened a great tin chest my father had brought home and discovered that it was full of books.

‘Don’t get too attached to those books Jay-boy, they’re going to the second hand dealers tomorrow’ said my ruddy faced father, looking incongruous sipping tea from one of mum’s best bone china cups in his giant hairy fist.

She’ll love him using those! I thought to myself.

‘Can I keep one book dad?’ I’d pleaded.
‘Well okay just one, this is going to be a nice little earner my son! I can’t believe what some people throw out!’ He went out to the back yard dunny grabbing a newspaper off the lounge.

Back in those days my dad was unemployed and being an enterprising man, he’d managed to scrape enough money together to buy himself an old tip truck. He’d placed an advertisement in the local paper, which read: “Hiram. D. Acron & Son Rubbish Removals.”

When I’d first read that advertisement in the “Courier”, I’d been more then a little miffed. Not at the fact that dad had yet again wasted more money on one of his schemes, but that it was apparent I’d be roped in to work with him when I wasn’t at school. The “& Son” part of it confirmed that well enough, I knew my old man!

But it had come good for dad that time, the local councils were very strict about the sort of junk they were prepared to pick up and mum was getting calls all day long booking small jobs for dad and his truck. And dad loved his old truck!
He even had a nickname for it: “Hercules” he called it and he reckoned it was the strongest little truck in the whole wide world!

Sometimes people threw out stuff that dad could sell to second hand dealers, that was why he’d brought home that old tin chest full of books.

I opened its lid again, I knew I didn’t have much time before dad came back to sit in his chair and watch the tele.
When he come back I knew I’d be evicted from the lounge for making a racket, even breathing too loudly while dad was watching television was construed as racket in his universe.

The chest was full to the rim with books of all kinds, some of them were old textbooks others crime novels mixed with Mills and Boon and a few old cook books.
I was despairing of finding anything that would interest my ardent 13-year-old mind when I came across a comic book.
It was in a shortbread tin right at the bottom of the trunk, I opened the lid and there it was, Classics Illustrated “Jason and the Argonauts!”

On the cover Jason did battle with bloke in armour wearing a golden helmet, I took the comic out and flicked through it, ‘this one’s a keeper’ I thought.
But that wasn’t the only thing in the biscuit tin, there was also small dog-eared Ancient Greek / English Dictionary.

There was also an old leather folder that was so moldy I chucked it in the bin but in it were a print and a parchment with funny writing on it. There was an illustration on the parchment of a dog howling at the full moon with a ship near an island drawn with lines and symbols all around it.

The note was written in what I took to be Greek and someone had translated the caption under the dog drawing and written it in pencil along with a phonetic version of the original Greek text.

The other drawing or rather print was of a bunch of Sheila’s with their tits out in a pond and a bloke was leaning over it that looked like a bit like Victor Mature. He had a water jug in his hand and the girls in the pond were going the grope on him, lucky bastard my dad would have said!

The caption underneath read John William Waterhouse - Hylas and the Nymphs 1896; it was then that I heard dad trundling down the hall. So I chucked it all back in the tin and nicked off to my bedroom with all of my treasures under my arm before he got there.

It was only a few minutes later that I heard mum pounding through the front door and I knew that I only had an hour or so before tea to read my new comic and study the treasures in my biscuit tin.

This was the first time I’d read Jason and the Argonauts and even in this graphic abridged version my mind was transported to the mythical Bronze Age! And for almost an hour my bed became the bridge of the Argo.

In my imagination I was Jason! With the lovely Medea standing next to me sailing home victorious with the Golden Fleece on my shoulders. The Classics Illustrated didn’t go into too much detail like the fact that Jason eventually betrayed Medea and she kills their children in revenge. Such things were not fit topics for comic books of that era.

I learned in later years that Greek hero’s always seemed to come to a sticky end, but 13 years olds from working class families generally had a black and white view of the world and I was no exception. Jason beat the baddies and got the girl THAT was cool.

I finished the comic and scanned the advertisements intrigued with the idea of owning a giant glow in the dark skeleton; I tossed the comic to one side and looked at the mythical nudie picture. I knew mum would confiscate it and I’d get a smack on the head if she ever found it.


Tiring of looking at it I thumbed through the ancient Greek dictionary disinterestedly and finally picked up the parchment with the strange writing on it.

The pictogram for that’s what it was, although at that age I didn’t know what the proper name for it was, dominated the page. The dog howled at the moon and the ship, ‘The Argo’, I realized was anchored near the island.

Someone, probably the person who last owned the chest had tried to use the dictionary to translate some of the strange writing. It was written in pencil under the main caption near the pictogram. In English it read as I said before ‘Passed the wide expanse, beyond the Grey dogs howl, lays the pool that Hylas found.’

Under it was some funny sounding words written in English letters but they were Greek words, obviously a phonetic translation of the same caption. At the time I didn’t know what ‘phonetic’ meant but I got the idea of what they were.

I tried to pronounce the written words but couldn’t get my tongue around them and gave up, I heard mum yelling that tea was ready and she was giving dad a hard time because he was too slow leaving the tele to come to the table.

That was one of mum’s strictest rules everyone ate at the dinner table, ‘we eat together like a family, not like a bunch of savages crouched around the television!’ was one of her favorite sayings.
I sometimes wondered back then how come we never saw savages camped around televisions in National Geographic magazines or on these nature shows? But then mums had their own logic and to mention such things only got you a clip on the ear for being a smart-ass.

Mum’s voice was starting to get that edge to it and I knew the next thing would be threats like, ‘Don’t you make me have to come up there!’ So I tossed all the items back into the shortbread tin and flung it on top of the wardrobe, I wasn’t going to risk mum coming up here and finding that nudie picture.

I hurried down stairs and still beat dad to the table, dad trudged in with a great deal of dignity for a man dressed in a stained boiler suit.
‘Stop making cats bums Doris! We’re both here now aren’t we?’ She just groaned and slapped mashed potato on to the plates.

After dinner I had to do my homework on the kitchen table, this was one of mum’s new rules. One she’d instituted after they’d got a bad report card from school. She’d watch me and check what I’d done afterwards, there was no escape!

So I finished my homework, I hated maths! I watched some tele and went to bed, the next day I went to school and life continued unchanged except that dads rubbish removal business dried up after a couple of years.
‘Too many other guys doing it now, not worth it anymore’ he’d said sadly but he still kept his tip truck. Even though we were short of money at the time.

He finally found a job as a green keeper for the local council, ‘wouldn’t have got it if I hadn’t had old Hercules. Owning my own truck clinched it for me!’ he’d said at the time patting the bonnet affectionately.

And so things stabilized for my family, dad would have his drink before bed every night and mum would sneak out to the housie every Thursday and when asked she would always say she was going to the dressmakers. I never questioned why she was going to the dressmakers at 6:30 at night and never seemed come home with any new dresses.

Entwined

When I held you, whilst you
slept, you used to entwine
your legs with mine and I
felt your breath.

Your breasts against my
chest, you’d awaken and
reach for it.

Dream like, in the almost
morning light you’d grind
and roll.

Inside you, I’d lose
myself in a land of skin,
and travel roads that
led to damp and musky
realms.

And as dawn's glow climbed
the wall, you climbed me,
and we fell together, backs
arched, blood let, teeth clenched,
all tears wept.

Then you lit the candle;
you leaned across my arm.
Your breast sliding against
my cheek.

Your hair was a cascade
that framed your eyes.

The thought of you grips me
now. My mind taken away
by that look that drank me
in.

And always when I dream you’re
there: legs entwined, held
in my arms, reaching for it.

Ruddiger Pew

Ruddiger Pew is just
like you; he counts them
all out two by two.

And when there’s only two
more left, he adds them to
the one that’s next.

And when he measures he
checks them twice, he licks
his lips and wipes the knife.

He drains the blood and wraps
the bone; he fits them in their
future homes.

And he dresses his raiment’s
fair; he bites the tongues
and wears the hair.

And in the basement he bricks
them in, he carves the corpses
as he wears the skins

He combs his crop and dons he’s
hat; he grabs his hooks and pats
the cat.

Tonight’s the night. The darks
so drear, the moon has gone but
Ruddigers here!

He waits one hour but when it’s
time, he reads their thoughts
and slits their lies.

Yes Ruddiger Pew is just like you,
and lives at number 32, he’s small
and meek, but hardly weak, a friendly
chap who gives kids sweets.

His hooks glint brightly and with
hands blood red he drags them all
to his slaughter shed.

And then he sprinkles them all in
lime; yes it’s Ruddigers feeding
time.

Cubicle in my Soul

My body ached, my head hurt! I’d just woken up at 3:30am and the phone was ringing.
The incandescent bulb blinded me and strange colours spun around for a few seconds.
I stumbled over to the phone, scooping it up; my tone was not pleasant.
‘Cory?’ A voice I recognized answered.

The slightly slurred voice continued, ‘I’m dying.’ I groaned inwardly.

I knew from bitter past experience that Miyoko would go to great extremes of behavior in order to get what she wanted, and I presumed that what she wanted right now was me.

‘How are you dying?’ I asked. She didn’t answer; there were some cryptic rattling noises over the phone. ‘Miyoko you there?’

Now you might think I was being nasty but I had good reason to be as you’ll find out.

‘I took some pills!’ she slurred. I heard a bottle smash and she hung up.

‘S**t!’ I snarled and the dog looked at me quizzically.

‘That girl’s a train wreak!’ I thought, ‘and she’s keeps back!’ Miyoko was a wayward Japanese princess, her parents were rich business people, but Miyoko their eldest daughter didn’t fit the image of the dutiful Zaibatsu Plutocrat’s daughter.

She’d flunked out of University, and seemed incapable to working or even keeping a coherent thought in her head for longer then five minutes.

She'd caused her family a great deal of embarrassment through her sexual compulsivity and her embarrassing choices over the years of her adolescence. And seemed to get even worse after she entered her early twenties.

Her sexual, alcoholic and narcotic misadventures formed there own archive in a litany of rehab clinics and her final performance proved too much for her long suffering family.

Shed been found unconscious in a club run by the Yamaguchi-Gumi a Yakusa group from Kobe. Apparently her boy friend Koichi who was a gang member had brought her to a Mexican theme restaurant and called “The Tequila Mockingbird” where Miyoko as far as her parents were concerned went too far.

She'd matched Koichi shot for shot with tequila slammers after which they’d retired drunkenly to a back room, he’d emerged sometime later going to the bathroom to repair himself, he’d snorted some cocaine on the sink and left the club, His role in our story done.

Other gang members and sleazy guests at the bar had then gone into the back room to have sex with Miyoko, and after several hours an ambulance was called when it had become apparent the Miyoko had taken an overdose.

She was carried her out to the accompaniment of the all Japanese Mariachi band, the ambulance sped her away not just to hospital and another parentally funded adventure in rehab but this time to a new life.

Her parents used their influence to cover up this fiasco and after rehab, shed basically been banished, her parents the respectable Mr. and Ms Toda of Osaka bathhouse fame bought her an expensive house in an affluent suburb is Sydney Australia, far enough away to avoid further embarrassment, but still close enough so they could keep tabs on her.

I’d first met Miyoko, when I’d gone to a party with my friend Jeri, Jeri was a little older then me, a woman friend I’d known for years but shed gravitated to a guy we both knew at the party called Peter who she’d fancied for a long time.

And I’d been left there to my own devises; I only knew a few of the people there apart from Peter and Jeri.

That’s when I first noticed Miyoko, her hair was partly blue and pink, shoulder length done up in postmodernist punk style, she was slightly drunk and she pushed her way through the crowd grasped me around the neck and said in perfect unaccented English ‘I want to dance’.

But her idea of dancing involved gabbing me around the neck and pulling me around the room and since no one else was dancing I felt a bit embarrassed, she was wearing a light cotton dress that was two sizes too small for her from which her breasts were constantly in danger of pooping out of.

Even in her obviously drunken state she still looked sexy and I’d never been with a Japanese girl before.

'Womp!' I felt the impact and everything went black for a second, I saw a star, reeled back shaking my head to clear my vision.

There was a large man who was little shorter and broader then I with spiky blond hair and a torn tee shirt on. He was swinging a full ice bucket towards my head for a second shot.

The girl had fallen to floor when he’d hit me and she was yelling something at him, he aimed a kick at her and she screamed and tried to drive away.

The punk guy missed her and then threw metal bucket at me. I bumped into someone trying to avoid being hit again, I balled my fist and struck his with a right jab in the nose, he stepped back with his with his nose obviously broken.

I felt someone grab my arm! I pulled away thinking that Mr. Punk might have buddies here, but it was Jeri with Peter, shouting something about getting out of there because I’d just punched the dudes brother who’s party this was.

We rushed out of the place, Jeri and Peter scrambled into his car, and I jumped into mine, it was then that I noticed that the Japanese girl had jumped into the passenger seat next to me.

I didn’t say anything, I just started the car and drove away from that place as fast as I could, I imagined that I could hear police sirens in the distance but I was just being paranoid.

I pulled into a dark side street, and the Japanese girl started to cry, she slid over on the bench seat of my Ford F100 and ignoring her boyfriends blood that had splashed on me buried her face in my chest.

I held her because I didn’t know what else to do, you might say I was conflicted at that point, I didn’t want to take her back to my place because my father was staying with me. And I thought she was trouble, but s**t did she look sexy sitting there sobbing in her little white linen dress.

It all seems a little bit too theatrical to me now but I’m not a good judge of these things in the heat of the moment, she must be in shock I guessed but I didn’t know her very well then.

Finally shed cried herself out and I asked her name?

‘Miyoko’ she said and I told her ‘My name’s Cory.’

She answered ‘Yes I know Jeri told me’ she said.

‘You know Jeri?’ I said surprised.

Miyoko nodded, ‘Yes she was my English teacher when I first came to Australia.’

Jeri was an ESL teacher (English as a second language), ‘Jeri told you to come and talk to me?’ I asked, Miyoko nodded, but I thought that guy was your boyfriend!’

She shrugged ‘He was okay at first but he was mean, but I told him to piss off when he followed me into the bathroom and tried to grab me.
Luckily the door wasn’t locked and someone else walked in and I ran away, I thought he’d given up.’ She licked her bottom lip, which I then noticed was split.

‘You’re okay?’ I asked which was a bit rich with me looking like I’d just walked out of a slaughterhouse. She nodded ‘I’m alright.’

It took me half and hour to drive to her place, it was about 2:30am when I walked her up the path to the door of the house with ivy covered brick walls.

Crickets were chirping and there was a genteel atmosphere about the place that seemed at odds with the buxom Japanese girl in a soiled white linen dress, silver sandals and techno hair and the tall Scandinavian type guy in baggy jeans, Nike’s and a blood covered cotton shirt that had just climbed out of a redneck looking black pickup truck.

She unlocked the door, stood on her toes over and kissed me softly.

‘Are you sure you’re alright?’ I asked her.

‘Yes, thank you’ was all she said.

‘Good night then Miyoko’, she gave me an appreciative look or that’s what I took it to be then, smiled and closed the door.

I walked back to my car, thinking ‘s**t I didn’t get her phone number’ I’ll have to ask Jeri I thought.
I was still a little pumped with adrenaline from the attack and a bit nervy.

Now you might wonder why I didn’t go in with her, because I could have done that thinking back on that night, but my intuition was troubling me about this woman, and I’d learned from previous experience that some people are just lighting rods for trouble.

I liked her! Or you might say I was in lust with the idea of her just then, but I had a 6th sense that anyone who got too involved with Miyoko always ended up bloody like this, I’d just met her and look at me.

Two weeks went past and there were no obvious consequences from the fight at the party, the few people who actually knew me that were there were keeping their mouths shut.
And I found out from someone that the Punk guy I’d hit was heavy drug user and shy of the Police.

I’d only thought about Miyoko, a few times in those weeks, when I got a call from Jeri. She told me that Miyoko was having a birthday a party and wanted me to go, by that time the violence of our first meeting had died down a bit in my mind.

I thought about it for a minute and then said, ‘yes I’ll be there,’ and I hung up.

There was a full moon out as I drove across the bridge toward Crow’s Nest on Sydney’s north side, I parked up the street from her house, there was a warm breeze off the harbour and I could hear voices and laughter wafting out from the house behind the ivy covered brick wall.

I brushed my hair back with my fingers and dug out the antique silver ring I’d put it the glove box.
It was one of the rings my grandmother had in stock when she was selling jewelry at Paddy’s markets, I thought it might appeal to Miyoko because the motif was of a Japanese Peony.

I walked up the path I remembered and rang the doorbell, Miyoko answered the door, and she took my breath way with the way she looked!
She wore dark velvet Burberry dress with vents that showed tantalizing glimpses of creamy flesh down her hips, she also had on ornately patterned silk stockings and black velvet stilettos that matched her dress, her hair was uncolored, black with...