Bad//Dreems

Dear Don,

There’s too much pressure hunching over me. I feel possessed. A teeth grinding cataclysm. Like a dying man, febrile and wrestling with the bed sheets. Lust, flesh, Yahweh, the New Boys and a southern cross tatt. Doubly unfortunate and doomed from the start.

Drifting through the months and years. A lonely lighthouse keeper, peering through the winter half light. Brightness above, like a distant memory.

There’s no more place such a hopeless existence is justified. South of Heaven, where the hills hem you in against the ocean. From the Grinch Dog’s over the Grange Jett you look out at the world. But you’re really just looking west over the shallow ditch to Curramulka.

“Curry”, Yorke Peninsula. Scrub and dust. Brown’s beach and the Bluff. Brown snakes in the dump in the paddock inside the old washing machines and kids’ toys. Knowledge Corner. An old Springsteen tape in the header. Barley rolling away into the distance. Dreams mangled round a Commodore chassis on the Port Vincent Road. A stubby holder rolling on the bitumen in the breeze.

Love over Gold on the drive to the city. Saturday morning parking fines. Searching the playground for Robbie P. Tinsel burning in the heat. Down North East Road to Paradise. The Jarman Brothers. Grenville Dietrich. Red and white victory. Panther Park. Through the ghost gums down to the log by the creek. The ‘Flats, the Reynella Wine Flies and a ’76 premiership.

He could play. They called him Mr Magic. Springs. Steel springs. Hurl me down the track. Footy platitudes. Coodaben a champion.

“Let’s see you do it.”

He pissed it up against the wall of course.

The 182 from Prospect to King Will. One tram back and forth from the plexiglass mountain at Glenelg. Neil “Knuckles” Kerley. They did a deal for car factories and the 10 pound poms and tore up the other tracks in the fifties. Donny Dustan’s and his pink safari suit. The Rome of the South. The Festival State

They smuggled the cheap meat from the hospital under North Terrace in a secret tunnel and sold it to the toffs in Ayre’s house. In the eighties the State Bank went bust and then Kennet stole the Grand Prix. Now they’re building a new hospital next to the old gaol on the stinking toxic railcard.

At least Peter Caven kicked the Roo Boys arse.

You can circumnavigate the place by evil. From the scrub at Truro to the Kuitpo forest. Glenelg Beach to Snowtown. Brompton to Kilburn and back again. The city of Churches. The Mall’s Balls to the Uni footbridge. The Beaumonts. Rhiannon Barreau. Bevan Spencer. Dr Duncan. The Satin Man. Heaven is just a place inside my head.

Are you coming to the Maid for pressos? A few off the pine? Friday night and five pills deep. Hung for half the week again. Repeat. The little orange light next to the petrol gauge, shit everywhere and dirt on my boots. Evenings on the porch smoking, drinking, sniffing. Wine. Nicotine. Duloxetine. Sertraline.

I’m beating round the bush again. I’m a broken piece of meat. Stuck here with my limp dick in my hand. A slab on the heap.

I look down into the mire. You’re a pillar of salt and I’m a pillar of fire. Something bigger and better gnaws at the back of my head. I hear them coming.

I’d do anything for you. To be alone with you. To die alone with you

I’d do anything.

To keep the dogs at bay.


Your mate,


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