amwriting

The colour of light

Lightning breaks in the night sky

the white light alien to the yellow light of the sun

That lightning exists in other parts of the universe

makes me think of the unbelievable existence of life on this world.

She was perfect for him

and they showed it on instagram

and then she left him.

The speed with which she changed her facebook status from in a relationship

to single

hurt him more than he thought it could.

He went to work, he told himself it would be a new start

but it was empty for a while

then he sat out and watched the lightning and the night sky light up

and it reminded him that lightning occurs all across this world.

It was a train ticket out of his home town and the start of something new.

Coming Home

Broken at 9 pm, glass shards on the road crunch underfoot. 

I worked late, walking home.

Seeing the streets with new eyes;

Single mother sitting on the front door step with baby

A man delivers brochures to houses

Another brings out the bin. 

A man walks a white dog, a cat leaps a fence and turns on a sensor light.

Someone backs a truck onto their front lawn

And a yellow moon rises above the houses.

A terrible valley filled with houses

A helicopter lands at the airport

The hospital’s yellow lights and strange smell.

My feet feel tired 

I wish I lived in a beach village.

Work again tomorrow, looking forward to retirement and death. 

Thursday’s rain

HI, this is a short story I wrote for a competition. Happy for feedback if you would like to send me some.

2420 Words

Subjective, Tom thought, it’s all subjective. The work is not so bad. The greasy lane behind the café would begin to stink in heavy rain. The drains would fill, and the cold would eat through his fingers until they ached. Tom finished cleaning out the bins. He had hosed them out into the gutters. The fat that came out didn’t run down the drains; it congealed on the cement and formed a fatty coating. The path here was now slippery and dangerous. It had been raining for four days, and Tom worked as a handyman for a few shops on Dean Street. Today he had cleaned the café and stocked the fridges. He worked from 5 to 10 every morning. The job allowed him the rest of the day to work on his other projects and look after Hannah. He wanted to start a business, but it was hard with Hannah being so unwell. 

At ten past ten, Tom walked down Dean Street, stopping in the newsagent to buy a lottery ticket. He could buy the ticket on his phone, but he preferred to walk into the shop. The newsagent was empty. The smell of newspapers and magazines struck him, and he stood a moment to smell the print. An old man stood behind the counter. Tom searched his pockets. He noticed as he stood in the heat of the shop that his clothes were wet to his skin. A scrunched-up piece of paper came out of his right pocket with something written on it. These were the numbers Hannah had given him last night. Tom squinted at the numbers, some of them had become smudged, but he could make them out. 

Tom took his ticket form to the desk and handed it to the man.

“Twelve dollars fifty,” the man said.

Tom handed the exact change. 

A ticket was spat out of a machine, and the old man placed it on the desk.

Tom stood back from the counter, found his wallet and carefully folded the ticket into the space where cash should have been kept. He looked at the old man one more time and then stepped out onto the street. The rain was heavy, and the gutters were filling up. Tom headed towards the Botanic Gardens, crossed a flooded culvert, and ducked across the road into a brick house with an overgrown garden.

The house was quiet and dark. Tom took his boots off and pulled off his thick black socks. His feet were cold and black from the wool. He took off his belt, wallet and keys and set them on a hat stand, then stripped naked and put his clothes in the laundry. 

“Tom?” a voice called. 

“Yes, Hannah, it’s me,” he answered. “I just need a shower.”

Hannah was lying in bed, propped up with three fat pillows. Her black hair clung to her pale face. Her dark eyes smiled when she saw Tom come into the bedroom. Tom had been dating Hannah for four years. They had once spoken of getting married, but Hannah had become so unwell in the last twelve months that they had stopped discussing that plan.

“How was your morning?” she asked.

“Wet. But I got all the work done on time. Did the doctor call?”
“Not yet.”
“Do you need me to get any medicine?”
“Yes, I’ll need you to go to the pharmacy later if you can.”
“How are you feeling?”
“The headache is still there. It’s bad today.”
Hannah had been diagnosed with a brain tumour. The doctors had cut it out, but it had returned. She refused further surgery, and chemotherapy had made her very sick. Tom looked at her pretty face.

Hannah patted the bed, and Tom sat next to her. 

“Do you remember our holiday to Perth?” she asked him. “I wish we were there now. I’d shout you lunch on Cottesloe Beach.”

“That was a nice day. I preferred Freo, though.”

“Then we had that nice trip down to Margaret River,” Hannah turned her head and looked out the window. “That culvert looks like it will flood over if this rain doesn’t stop.”

Hannah had won the lottery a few years ago, and it had been enough to buy the house and have a holiday in Perth.

They had been homeless before that.

“My mum called this morning,” Hannah said, turning back to look at him. “Did you buy that lottery ticket?”

“Yes.”
“Did you use the numbers I gave you?”
“Yes, of course.”

“More numbers have come to me. Run, get a piece of paper.”
Tom jumped off the bed and brought back a pencil and a notebook.

Hannah pushed her head back into the pillows, and her eyes rolled up into her head. Tom watched silently. 

“I heard the voice again this morning. It gave me the numbers five, seven, eighteen, twenty-four, thirty-three, and forty. Record those numbers. Then twelve, one, twenty-two, thirty, thirty-eight, nineteen….” Hannah went on until she had given him twelve sets of six numbers. She coughed and then sat up straight. She couldn’t lie down to sleep any more; she could not breathe well unless she was propped up. 

“Make sure you buy that ticket.”

“Which draw?”
“Today’s.”
“I just bought a ticket for today’s draw.”
“Buy a second one, just for this week. These numbers have come to me so clearly; they must be right. The voice is so clear.”

“OK.”
“My mum called this morning. She is going well. She’s living in Campbelltown with her partner now. They moved into a new house out there. They were lucky to find a place to rent.”

“How is Russel treating your mum?”
“Better now. He hasn’t done anything since the cops were called. They’ve moved to start afresh; their old house brought back too many bad memories.”

“It was easier on the streets than the time we spent living with them.”
Hannah smiled, “He was just going through a bad time. Mum says he’s improved. My prescription is in my side drawer. If you could grab that today when you go into town.”
“Yep.”
“Have you been thinking about your business?” 

“I have. I saw some perfect empty shops up near the cinema.”

“Good area. Busy.”
“Expensive. High rents.”
“But I know you like it up near the railway station.”
“I think it’s a good part of Dean Street.”
“Are you still thinking about opening a cake shop?”
“Yeah. Cakes and bread.” 

She nodded and then winced as a pain shook through her head. 

The prescription was a bottle of tablets. The chemist held it up and asked Tom if he had used these before. Tom nodded. They were strong. 

“You only need one a day,” the chemist said. 

Tom nodded. The smell of the chemist was a strong sour smell—a smell of medicine and syrup. Tom put the medication in his pocket, paid, and then slipped out a side door. He stood in the parking lot behind the newsagent. He didn’t have any money to buy another lottery ticket. He looked at the numbers Hannah had given him. He just couldn’t afford it. He put the numbers back in his pocket. 

Tom walked up to the railway station and sat on the platform for an hour to think. The rain fell across the tracks and poured off the verandah in streams. A passenger train came and stopped. People rushed onto the platform and boarded, but only a handful exited the train—some young people with backpacks and a few older people with suitcases. One or two sat on the platform and watched the train leave. 

Then, with surprising speed, the grey clouds parted, the rain stopped, and the sun came out. Suddenly, the day was bright. Tom saw this as a sign. He stood up, felt the medicine in his pocket, and headed home. 

Hannah was in bed still when Tom arrived. She was asleep. She was propped up on pillows with her chin forward on her chest. He knew this would be a painful way to sleep. He thought about moving her head, but he had done this before and woken her. She needed the rest, so he left her alone. He put the medicine on the table next to her bed and watched her for a moment longer. 

It was evening when she woke. He heard her cry out in pain. Tom put his book on the kitchen table and went to see her. She was holding her neck. 

“Are you ok?” he asked. 

“My neck,” she said. “I must have hurt it while I slept.”

“I picked up your medicine.”
“Thanks. Did you get that lottery ticket?”

“No, I didn’t have the money.”

She looked at him. Her eyes were red but now took on a furious look. “You should have bought that ticket! What time is it?” Hannah looked at her clock radio, and it was nearly six. “It’s Thursday. The newsagent should still be open. Run up there and get that ticket. Those numbers came to me as clear as your voice.” Hannah, wincing with pain, leaned to her bedside table, opened the drawer and took out a twenty-dollar note and beckoned Tom with it. He came across to the bed.

“I can’t,” he said.

“Don’t be stupid. Those are the winning numbers. Take it.”
“Do you want anything else? A magazine?”
“No, I don’t need anything. I have a lot of books I’ll never get through. When I bought all those books, I thought I had a lot of time; it feels funny to hold a book and know you’ll never get the time to read it even if you started now. Go and get that ticket. I want it. The lottery is drawn at eight; you have to hurry.”

Tom stepped out of the house and stood for a moment in the cold air. There was no more rain. The sky was clear. A bright red colour fell across the town as the sun went down. He walked to the newsagent. It was open until 7:30. The ticket was spat out of the machine, and the old man handed it to Tom. It was warm from being freshly printed. It felt nice. He put it in his wallet next to the other one. 

It was a beautiful evening, but it had turned dark now. The street lights came on, people filled the restaurants, and music played from a pub across the road.

Hannah was sitting on the side of her bed when Tom came in. She was wearing a white nighty with blue flowers. She looked frail and thin. Her bones stuck out of her pale skin. Her skin was white like delicate china. She turned and looked at him. Her spine came through her back in a line of little lumps. 

“Did you get the numbers?” she asked. 

“Yes, I got them.”
“Good.” She seemed heavily relieved. “What time is it?” she asked.

“It’s seven-thirty.”

Hannah moved slowly; her head seemed too heavy for her to hold it still, so she nodded constantly. Her words were slurred. It gave all the signs of a bad night of pain ahead.

“Not long to go,” she said. “Then we can have a life change. I won the lottery before. Did you know that?”
“Yes,” he said. “We went to Perth.”

She smiled as she remembered. “Yes, that was a nice trip. I won that money on a scratch ticket.”

“Yes.”
“We had nowhere to live before that, did we?”
“No. We stayed a while at your mum’s and then in your friend’s house.”
“Yes. He was my ex-boyfriend. Did you know that?”
“No,” Tom answered. 

Hannah stared off into the distance. 

“Tom, I’ve left this house to my mother in my will.”

“You have?”
“Yes. I made that will years ago. I never changed it.”

Tom said nothing. They had bought the house when they were first together. He had never thought she saw it as hers alone. 

“Can you help me back into bed? I want to lie down.”
Tom came around and helped her back into bed. She was bird-light. He put her carefully back on the pillows and pulled the covers up as if she were a sick child. He noticed the bottle of pills he had bought her. The lid was off, and the bottle was empty. 

“Quick, put the TeeVee on for the lottery draw.”
Tom turned the television on and ensured it was on the correct channel. 

“Write the numbers down, Tom.”

The draw came on. Coloured balls flew about a plastic sphere. Tom took the numbers down. He glanced at Hannah, and she had her eyes half-closed, and she was smiling at him. 

The six numbers and two supplementary were flashed across the screen. Hannah read the numbers aloud and nodded as if they were all familiar. 

Tom stood up and went to the writing desk, and turned on the lamp. He took the two tickets out of his wallet, and then with a pencil, he circled the winning numbers when he found them. When he was finished, there were quite a few on the tickets, but no more than two or three in any line. Only one line was different. One line had four numbers circled out of the six. He looked at it for a moment. 

“That’s quite the win,” Hannah said quietly. “Twenty million. What will you do with that money?” 

“We can go back to Perth.”
“No, Tasmania this time,” Hannah said.

“OK.” Tom looked at the ticket again.

“Well, show me!”

Tom took his pencil and circled the last remaining numbers on the line with four winners. He circled the numbers in such a way that the original numbers could not be read anymore. 

“Yes, here’s the winner,” he said and handed her the ticket. 

“I knew it. I knew it,” Hannah repeated and held the ticket carefully. “You’ll never run out of money with this.”

They both sat in the room quietly while a movie came on the screen. 

Hannah asked for a drink of water and if he could turn the heater on. Tom went to the kitchen to fetch a glass. He came back in and put the water on Hannah’s table. He turned the heater on in the corner of the room.

Then he came back to give Hannah the drink. She was asleep. He touched her. She was dead.

He gave her two hours’ head-start and then called the ambulance. 

Summer Swimming

We would go swimming on summer afternoons
We were so thin and fit
Walking on those baked sidewalks of cement and red dirt
We would cut through the city streets carrying our towels.

The Saturday afternoons were ours alone
We had a special key and could enter the closed pool
We would swim and watch the sunset
The magpies, at peace, in the huge trees by the fence.

She would swim and dive in the cool blue water
I would grunt and struggle to complete my twenty laps
We would walk home in the evening redness
She would sing softly a tune about summer

That one summer, I wanted it to last forever
The Weekend evenings
We would also, sometimes, go at five am on weekdays
The water unbelievably cold, and we unbelievably tired.

It ended. We parted
As Autumn came, I would go bike riding and running
She preferred the gym and yoga
The swimming was something we would do again, but alone.

Harbour Street

Where I used to live
In a room in the corner of an old brick building
The streets would stretch out in all directions
Some winding down beside the river, some disappearing through horse lanes
One stopped at a rock cliff
The last one ending at the harbour.

A man lived in a building opposite, and he would dress up each day
Winter or summer, In a thick coat
And head down to the water to fish
His wife would wait for him
She would clean the house
Talk to the neighbours
Go out sometimes on her own.

They had lived in that house for fifty-eight years.
She had a stroke one winter afternoon
The man would only fish once a week, then
He had to stay home and look after her
He grew thinner
I never saw her again

One night, at midnight,
There was a funny smell like toast being burned and burned
Then the street filled with smoke
And there were sirens and fire trucks stuffed into that old street
So nothing could move; even the hoses had a hard time getting out
An electric blanket had smouldered into flame and killed them both

Seafresh Laundry, 31 Beckworth Street

Sarah worked in the laundry,

She worked hard

Her hands red, and back sore

She wore the uniform, a blue dress

Twice divorced, kids in the Catholic school

She never had enough money, even with the Sunday shift. 

Henry drove and unloaded the trucks

A lady’s man, he took to Sarah 

And pursued her, winning her eventually. 

Henry never could value things correctly

And his days of breaking and lying were far from over.

Sarah had a recurring dream

Where she was on holiday 

In a beach resort where she was swimming in the sea,

Her foot caught in rocks, the ocean rising

She could not breathe, and choking she would wake. 

Henry saw her do this twice

And eating breakfast with her kids in the last morning 

He sneered at the daughter and asked her what she wanted to do in life

The daughter looked down at the table and did not speak.

Henry set his eye to find new pastures.

Sarah pushed the load into the dryer

And wondered where things went wrong

And that surely they would improve.

Steam rose from the top of the vent

And out a window into the cold day

Bronze lions

The lights of the street flickered in yellow and red, Maisie pulled her jumper down over her hands and looked at the red lights above the buildings. She always felt relaxed and sleepy when she saw a red light; she remembered the rooms she used to stay in when the streets were too cold. A bar heater would be turned on, and it would glow on the wall. It stayed red all night. The girls would struggle to get a bunk nearer to that heater. Tracy came and sat beside her, and they both spent a moment looking at the bronze lions that flanked the steps of the library.

“Tony told me that if he could flog those lions, they’d be worth a mint,” Tracy said. “Do ya have a smoke?”

“A smokes worth a dollar, but I have one for you,” Maisie answered, pulling two cigarettes out of a wrapper that once held a hamburger. A little bit of red sauce stained the paper of one of the smokes and Maisie saw this. She wondered if it would burn ok or if it’d taste different. She held the stained one back for herself and gave Tracy the other. “Smoking,” Maisie said as she handed the girl the cigarette, “Kills 480,000 people in the US each year.”

“God, I hope I’m one,” Tracy laughed.

“So when’s Tony gonna do it?”
“Do what?”
“Steal them lions?”
“They weigh too much to carry off.”
Maisie lit her cigarette and then lit the other. They both took a deep breath of the smoke.

A working man coming past stopped and looked at Maisie. “How old are you?”
“Old enough,” she answered.

“You should be in school.”

“I’ve graduated with a degree in minding.”
“Minding what?”
“Minding my own fucking business.” The girls began to laugh; the man said a few more things before walking off, but they ignored him. Just as he was speaking the morning sun came over the copper roof of the library and lit the square. The street lights, still aglow, would soon be off.

“I love this time of the morning,” Maisie whispered.

“I hate it; all the creeps are out. Early morning is the worst time.”

“Where’d you sleep last night?”

“I worked, I did a few jobs. I’ve not slept yet. Where’d you?”
“I stayed at Carla’s place.”
“Was her boyfriend home?”
“No, I wouldn’t be there if he was.”
They sat silently for a moment as a flock of pigeons gathered by the statue of T. S. Eliot.

“What are you doing today?” Tracy asked, dropping some ash from the end of her cigarette.
“I’m working at Ericson’s. They’re putting me on the register today.”
“It don’t pay much, why don’t you come with me? I made twelve ‘undred dollars last night. Here look.” Tracy opened a cloth bag studded with red and blue sequins. Greenish blue looking notes were shoved in so that they were all screwed up, there were a lot of them.

“Give us a twenty?” Maisie asked.

“Sure,” Tracy pulled a twenty dollar note out, smooth it between her fingers and passed it to the thin blonde girl. Tracy was chubby, with a beautiful face, but she would, in a few years, become fat like her mother. Deep down she was jealous of Maisie; Maisie was thin and sharp like she had been cut from stone.

Maisie put it in her pocket. “I gotta start work now,” she stood up and lifted her jumper to show her supermarket uniform underneath. Her thin legs showed prettily under her dress. She let her jumper down and then dropped her cigarette and stamped it out.

“See ya; I’ll be here tonight at five if you want to get some dinner.”

“OK, I’ll meet you here.”

Maisie smiled and climbed down the wet steps that seemed to slope back too far so that each one held a puddle of water. Maisie then skipped from a patch of sunlight to another. She looked up and noticed the lamps were all off now and the early morning sun danced in the leaves of the Kurrajong Trees. She turned back to looked at Tracy and stopped. Tony held Tracy by her arm and was violently tearing her purse away from her. Maisie felt the twenty-dollar bill in her pocket.

Young Entrepreneurs

I sat waiting to get an x-ray

In some depressing medical centre

When a thin man with long black hair walks in,

His eyes are crooked as if they are spooked

And fled to opposite sides of his skull.

He has a slimy look.

He sits near me and leans forward,

“Do you think they’ll be long? I have a meeting of the young entrepreneurs tonight,

The YEM.”

“I don’t know,” I answer.

He gives me an unhappy look

And then his eyes glance up and down, taking me in,

Sizing me up.

His crooked eyes do not seem to like what they see.

“We’ve had a lot of rain recently,” I continue.

“Yes,” he snaps and looks away.

 

A pregnant woman walks in,

A man wearing the blue uniform of a nurse follows.

They start talking.

“Will I have to wait long?” the young man interrupts.

“I don’t know,” the nurse answers and turns back to the woman.

“Only I have a YEM on tonight.”

No one speaks to the young man again,

No one likes anyone.

The long haired man walks away, probably to find someone else.

“What’s a YEM?” the woman asks the nurse.

“Young entrepreneurs,” I answer her.

 

After my x-ray, I see the young man in the street.

He is leaning on a black car,

The bumper is kept on with black masking tape.

He is yelling at someone through a phone.

There is a large sticker on the back window that reads “KORN.”

I wonder what that means.

His yelling continues as I walk away,

The day is sunny now, but it is humid,

Due to all the rain we’ve been having.

The War is a Class War

 

This war is a class war

Because he could not find a girl to love

Or a friend to greet,

Because his father left after one night in his mother,

He took a gun to school

shot at those he thought were happier

those once happy teens

dying in the halls, screaming with terror.

The boy with the gun had nothing to lose

So what could be done to stop him?

 

 

Because he saw his father lose job after job

And turn to drink

Because his father hit him

As he was hit by his father before.

Because the time the police stopped him on his way home

And he was already angry.

He pulled away and struggled and was shot.

No hero, bad enough to knock you over and rob you

But the hungry need a place at the table.

 

 

The prisons stand as warnings

Like bells in the night

Like fires licking out of windows

Each iPhone sold, each interest dollar paid

Tips the scales once more toward

That flood, which cuts down each man and woman

Regardless of wealth or colour.

 

I, who you thought drowned by God in the great flood

Have returned.

There was no room for me at the Caesars table

But there was room for me in his army

And it was there I learned to cut with knife and sword.

In the forest I see the collar on the hind

That reads ‘harm me not, for I am Caesar’s.’

But I, having seen Caesar cut down, cared no more for any life.

 

They put me to the guillotine as well

The blade took off my head, but I lived on.

I saw those who watched the executions

In their turn executed,

Now, in my age, I stand on the street of your city.

I see the gun in the hand of the man

I see the children kept from school

I see the woman with the bloody wound.

This war is not one of religion or race

It is as it has always been what it is now.

A class war.

Where one has too much

And many have too few

No number of guns can keep that door closed.

 

Check out my new novel Anvil Soul