I LOLLED ON A LILLIPAD

I lolled on a lillipad in perfect peace. I was naked and the feeling of the green wet lillipad against my back and butt, and the hot yellow sun beaming down upon my frontal nudity was an exquisite combination. Being shrunken down to a tiny size by my father, who had then had to admit his accidentally doing so to his wife, had been a blessing in disguise. I felt I had gained a whole new perspective on life, and though there was a lingering sense of paranoia in the back of my mind that a frog might leap onto me at any moment, that too would be a new experience.

DON'T LET ME GO

Don't let me go, because I might not stop falling and even if this creek bed looks only 100 metres down and it seems death is fortchcoming and inevita=ble, I might just fall through and past it all and into a void and then you'll never stop hearing me screaming, and then you'll be at the supermarket checkout and the lady will ask, "cash or card?" and you'll keep saying "What?" because you can't hear for my screams that haunt you.

DRAMBUIE LIPS THEY CALLED ME

Drambuie lips they called me, it was dripping off them all the time. This sweet liqueur I poured wantonly down my throat and all over my lips, dripping off like fine brown crystals, hitting the concrete and making it sweet and wooozy. Sometimes if I dripped enough the concrete would wrench itself from the ground and stumble over to the park bench with me. It's heavy, cracking arm around my shoulder, slurring into my ear it's pledges of friendship and willingness to crush anybody who spoke poorly of me.

BLACK AND WHITE GARFIELD CAME OUT OF THE PAGES

Black and white Garfield came out of the pages of the comic book and onto my coffee table. At first he was the tiny size of the comic strip square, but over a matter of minutes, while flickering and groaning horrifically, he blew up to the size of a large cat. He continued to make unearthly noises, while thought bubbles appeared above his head filled with crude, shaky lettering. "Where am I? What happening? Wheregyoiunng? Aarggyundsu?" His eyes looked at me pleadingly. I was backed against the wall in horror and had no idea what to do. My childhgood dreams had come horrifically true.

I SLIPPED INTO A STATE OF DELIRIOUS INFANTILISM

I slipped into a state of delirious infantilism at the supermarket checkout, rolling on the floor and making goo goo gaga soiunds. My state was so believeable that despite my adult frame and clothing the other patrons and staff truly believed I was an abandoned child. Nobody quite knew what to do with themselves besides frown and say "so sad, so sad". Eventually the police took me away and when I came to I was living in a foster home in Glenrowan and enrolled in Grade 6. That had been quite a fugue state. Things seemed to be going quite well in this new life, I had a best friend name Barry and I seeemd to be quite good at table tennis. I'd need to have a Big M and think about whether I carried on or tried to return to the ruins of my old life in Coburg.

THE FRENCH WAITER ASKED IF I WOULD LIKE A CHICKEN GOUJON

The french waiter asked if I would like a chicken goujon. I was struck dumb by the weighty beauty of the word. I glazed over in rapture, softly repeating the word goujon over and over. "Yes, Monsieur", the waiter said, getting a little testy. "Would you like one?" I could faintly recognize that someone was speaking to me in my human body life, but at this point I was far away in a deep crreamy place in which the word goujon surrounded me and tickled all my five senses seductively, even seeming to massage a hitherto unknown sixth sense with it's majestic power. Without doubt they would soon have my body wrapped in a straitjacket and hauled off to the funny farm. I hoped they would serve some kind of Goujon there on fridays.

IN CIRCUMSTANCES OF EXTREME GUNGE

In circumstances of extreme gunge, one must go beyond the tools of washing liquid and sponge. Employment of fire, porcupines, shouting drill sargeants, alluring cartoon vamps (to lure the gunge away from it's current surface) are necessary. Psychological warfare in the battle against gunge is questionable, some claim success but truly scientific studies have never been carried out. In extreme cases it is recommended that one burn one's house down, relocate the ashes into a deep mine shaft, dig up the soil underneath for at least 17 feet and replace it with soil surreptitiously relocated from an Amish community, and have an emmisary from each religion wander around the edges of the property, dripping holy water or sage smoke or whatever substance is their go-to. One must take care to have these different religious emissaries rotating the property at a slightly different orbit so as not to have them crash into each other as they walk and mumble and burn sage.

I CLEANED MY GLASSES

I cleaned my glasses and now I could see so well it was disturbing. I looked at my lover, layed naked on the bed seductively, and couldn't help but have my vision zoom directly into her pores, through the epidermis and past the many layers like some geology graph into the swimming mass of organs and fluids until I was inside her liver feeling the dark red quiet inside, only the faint sound of blood pulsing to interrupt the pure stillness. It was quite meditative. I felt this was the most serene moment of calm i'd had in years. "Hey, what the hell's wrong with you?" she snapped. "I'm naked over here!"

THERE HAVE BEEN MANY THINGS I COULD NOT KEEP

There have been many things I could not keep. Friends, lovers, secrets, promises, records, my food down, myself from falling apart, my mind open, an eye on that dog, my mouth closed, me eyes off of you. There will be many more things I will not be able to keep. But I keep the precious little jewel encased flames that represent them in a special wooden box inside a private chamber. It is very full in there but there is plenty of room for more.

A PINCHY CRAB

A pinchy crab pinched me on the toe and I liked it. "Do that again", I said. The crab was not used to people enjoying it's pinches and got a little creeped out. It looked at me in a weird way with it's tiny beady black eyes. I gave it the almost teary pleading look that said "Please, I haven't been touched that way in so long, and that's just the way i need to be touched." The crab was an ornery molluscy hard shelled bastard, but inside it was full of it's own secret needs and desires and could feel where I was coming from. We had a beady eye to eye stare off for a couple of minutes and then it gave me another good one before scurrying away into it's shame hole.

I RETREATED FROM THE PARTY

I retreated from the party and hid under a bed. Gradually the raucous noise became louder and the sounds of carousing turned into the sounds of arguing, then armed insurrection, war, bloody struggle, and then silence. I emerged to find a landscape completely free of tress, houses, street signs, buildings, dogs, cars and anthills. The only structure to be seen was the bed under which I had been hiding. I considered this to be the sign of a very good party host.

A BEAR LAYS ON IT'S BACK

A bear lays on it's back and stares up at the stars and dreams of eating something other than Alaskan Salmon. It senses, somewhere down in it's bear bones, it's bear pores, along the length of every bear hair, that somewhere beyond this remote wilderness there are pic-a-nic baskets filled with suprising tastes and textures. Somehere deep in his bear DNA, he can load up a set of colour film slides, and click through them. In one he is scaring off the picnickers, in the next he is peeling back the red and white checked covering on the wicker basket, in the next he is shoveling strange foodstuffs into his maw, and in the last he lays dazed in the forest.

UNDER THE STREETLAMP

Under the streetlamp, doo-wop vocaleers blend their harmony and make it soar to the heavens. Under the ground underneath the streetlamp, radioactive C.H.U.D.s blend their radioctive harmony into a thrilling, caustic mix. Under the C.H.U.D.s, the layers of gyprock, gold and magma blend their dark rumblings into a sound that is very metal. Under the metal magma-wop group, the molten core of the earth issues a low rumble, in harmony only with itself.

SOMETIMES YOU HAVE TO CRY

Sometimes you have to cry until all the fluids have left your body and you are a dried up husk mummy, and then very slowly drink 1000 glasses of water and let the liquids seep back into all your organs and pores, revitalizing you back to a new living human who has expunged things and learned something in the process. Perhaps all the great mummies of Egypt were just having a really sad time and cried so much that they pushed it too far and couldn't even reach for that first glass of water to make the journey back. Perhaps if we pour a thousand glasses of water into their dried up husks they will re-animate and tell us their tales of heartbreak and loss and learning.