so....the cops come with buzzing radios youre done welcome to countrified Australia youre not normal reefed up by collar through barbed wire fence sister who calls you less than normal or a poofter running through a swamp drinking straight whisky run down like a slave in the field woman shouts out what are you doing to him

Another pandemic, this time in 2030. People were just calling it pando now, and it was unlike other viruses as infection was fierce, and instead of the sick being treated they were coralled into internment camps to die. But something else occured, something unexpected, a sub race started to evolve. They were known as trolls those that survived pando, their features becoming twisted with unexplainable flattened noses, and elongation of the ears. Scientists, upon examining subjects found DNA unexplicably altered, with this new virus, like something out of Brothers Grimm fairytales.

Standing in a police cell with a muddy gap through a perspex wall, after being arrested in my house with

a cop that sniffed a bourbon bottle, like I did something wrong in the middle of ringing my sister

and turn around, with handcuffs behind my back were put on so tight they cut off circulation

then like an animal I was put in a divvy van years ago, asking over and over if they could loosen the handcuffs

though still now I have nerve damage even now, and when they took the handcuffs it was fucking heaven

as I looked at a muddy gap behind a police cell, thinking why was it there?and was this all there was?

because I rang my sister telling her I was going to commit suicide, I don’t blame her she was trying to preserve a life

this is called the gap, the gap between police cells.

I was a kid and believed the night held monsters, purely because of the inky dark and my father

said there is nothing in the dark son, its the same as the day, and took me around an old weatherboard

house we lived in by fields, and we walked through shadows, with him saying dont be afraid

there is nothing that can hurt you, and i believed him that the night was no different from day

and growing up i learned different, that monsters do exist in stygian blackness, only the human kind

and for instance some homeless know it, and sleep high at night for things lurk in the dim.

Before higher learning, before that, Highschool and memories of a guy called Roger, who did ballet

and because of that he was called faggot, poofter, because blokes dont do ballet at Monbulk High

and if you do.....if you do you get surrounded on the footy field by thirty kids, like wasps on meat

and me in Year 7, smaller, younger than most, looking through higher shoulders, and theres Roger and a guy

fisting it out, blood for blood, and bloodied noses, and thing is Roger started winning and the crowd, such as it was

the fuckers, started spitting on him, this is the memory, and me cheering for him, and he won the fight i swear

and he was strong against all that, and they say sticks and bones dont break your bones but words

will never hurt you, but other things do, and Roger? who knows? but at least someone remembers as gutsy.

It was not a classroom, it was something to pick meat off, and the prey was us six years old

and Mrs Davies made a dunce cap especially, and had a bar of soap in her drawer to threaten us with

in case we swore, and she would intone BOLD CHILD, as she held her ruler, but she wouldnt go that far, oh no

but i wore the cap out of cardboard faced into the corner, and stand there through lunchtime too

because i didnt know a maths question, and dont you go to the toilet, dont you dare you BOLD CHILD

and i think it broke my heart.

In the cold morning of a Dandenong day, i wait for the foreman, shivering, cold in my bones

and i watch so many men in factories with fog drifting in, and theres the job, in a concrete pit

with welders flashing across metal bones, and the humanity comes to call, with people in a job

and life comes to call, with fields, and sun, and rivers, and times better spent than working for a richer man.

Beth threw the flowers on the grave in the rain that sang like needles on her skin and she did not feel a thing

rewind and it was a date, a stupid date, and Mark was here now, below, like a dimmed light angel that she lost

New York was where people reinvented themselves, and Beths guess was Mark had not always been a stockbroker

dinner, talk, laughs and smiles, walking along a street, and then the circuit cut in a dark piece of urban grave

this...thing....emerged from a sallow indent and confronted them, pointing a knife at Beth, and she stepped back

give me your money bitch, this animal said in a snarl that formed words, and Mark had simply said to this attacker, in his tailored suit, and tailored shoes

you want to dance?, pulling a blade, and holding the knife down like in the movies Beth had seen and

Mark, lovely Mark waved the knife back and forth like someone practiced, my God Beth had thought

the attacker grinned and came at Mark in a sweep with his knife, and Mark stepped back but not fast enough

and like a razor the knife sliced his shirt open, and a deep red bloomed on the cotton and Mark looked down in shock

before with an upward sweep Mark had swept back and caught the throat of this thing that attacked them

before falling to the concrete, saying to Beth im sorry, while the freak out of the dark died choking

and Beth had asked Marks Mom, many times, where he had learnt to fight with a knife, at the funeral, and other times

but Marks mom would just look confused at the question, so Beth gave up eventually and tried to move on

though his grave called on Valentines Day, because the man had saved her life.

Tasmanian Oak and Huon Pine leech into the creek, creating tannin coloured water like tea

over the oldest convict bridge in Australia, and dont you know, it was a little towns claim to fame

and crayfish a foot long, the Cradle Mountain rock that was called The Fingerprint of God by a naturalist

you know in a decrepit old house a ghost stood and looked at me on the way, my car hissing like snakes

and a curving road, down to a little town with a cemetery on a hill, laid down dead fisherman lost at sea

as i met a black haired girl in the morning, and walked and talked about life, and places lived, things done

and i sketched a place at Mole Creek, and charcoal imitated trickling water in a drawing done in dimming light.

This man used to control two draught horses walking behind a plough, one in each arm in a summer drought

This man fought like hell and cried at the drop of a hat the same, could sing like an Irish angel, and dance like the devil

This man asked me to roll smokes for him when i was a kid, and got his quarter, such as it was

This man was so small in the coffin, and when we carried him, he was so light, and i couldnt touch him,he was beyond what i knew

This man, i loved this man, my grandfather, he was a man and perhaps that is enough.