You know black holes aren’t real, right? They’re not a fake- they might “exist”, but they aren’t real. Never has one pressed down upon me or anyone I know- until it happened to me recently.

I’d bungled together dinner, mostly rice and pasta sauce, and walked, with a cautious hand out towards the back door towards the out-house. I thought to myself ‘there’s going to be a black hole in the doorway’. And there it was, a perfectly clear mirror of black. No infantesimal sucking vacuum of gravity, no crushing void, it was a lake top at midnight on a cloudy night time evening. A deep pool. I turned around quickly soon realising. I had anticipated the black whole, like a soothsayer, fortune teller clairvoyant, I anticipated- projecting into the moments from now future. Back peddling, I walked back to the kitchen and decided to doodle on my phone. I took a picture a minute later and sent it to my brother and sister through shared group chat. They didn’t respond, but I figured they were both ok after I saw that they had seen it too. I hesitated going out to the out-house. My bladder was terrible and my toes were squirming. I’ve noticed that my brain changes when I eat sugar or need to go to the bathroom or skip breakfast and have a black coffee. Psychotic. Clear in mind, seemingly, bug scrambled in action. It all competes; I walk into the laundry that links the buildings somewhat, I see the clear pool, like an opal, surprising, final and in my way. I tap my foot and rock on my heels and go back to my phone. “Black holes”, I look them up. Nothing. Only theory, nothing to work with or use. I consider climbing out the kitchen window, strange because the lounge window is lower to the ground and bigger- the front door is an obvious option which comes to me last. I walk to the door, past the lounge room, past the t.v. I stop. I back peddle and go to turn it on, the screen gently mirrors my setting if it was monochrome and covered in dust. ABC turns on, the channel it was on when I last turned it off, RAGE maybe, followed by a high pitched squealing that nobody complains about, black holes are everywhere the reporter is saying. I knew this, feeling that somehow they were always there, if you look around and feel enough they are there, staring right back at you. One in each eye, rents of uncanny peace. Hitler had one extracted from his heart after his mother died. They are made up of atoms, the same as you and me but pressed in such a way that they can never open. That’s why they most commonly appear in your eyes, your heart and the doorways between the kitchen and the out-house.

I walked out again, knowing that by the time I had explained it, taken a photo and checked on the news, that it would have moved on. The whole idea, once pointed out tends to wink from existence. Are they real? Absolutely not, that’s why I see them everywhere. Each doorway, candles (looked at from above), the handkerchief cupped in the hand of a coughing tuberculosis patient, the Chertsey Inkpot of Shakespeare and TNT. There is no explosion with dynamite, it’s a reaction between two neighbours open their doors into one-abother’s path. Parity disruptions, and boom. Hard to explain outside of comic book strips. But that’s black holes. I knew it would be gone, I explained to myself, the more I thought about it and shared how it was, the more it waned- clear as fresh laid tar. Fabric knitting in on itself, closing over on itself, wrapping and shrinking, soaking up and fading like the love child of a broken television and a dusty raisin. Wishless as the first star, and tragic as the last- gone until forgotten, only to be remembered.

A clap on the back was all her got as the Barman passed him on the way to the bar. Kelly’s was a beer garden, the regular haunt for the regulars of inner city Hobart. Not that it was or wasn’t a city. The locals called it town, they called the Barman ‘Barman’ even if they didn’t know that it was his last name. The Batman’s’ were a large percentage of the township just outside Cambridge. A large family with a happy father that worked as an engineering consultant at the Zinc Works. “A terrific occupation” he’d said right up until the day he passed, falling through some old grating, 72feet above one of the main smelting tanks. He’d fallen, broken his arm in the way down, bouncing off the lip of the tank comically and landing heaving like a dropped candle. Crumpling into his yellow hard hat with an ‘oof’.

The noise we all end with? Oof, or something as similar. Nonsense.

The fire went out in his eyes and that was it. The Barman family? Still there-

Tables full, kind hearted mother with a broken visage, remarried a single colleague of his she met at the funeral. Barman never forgave the corcumstance, he worked in bars now, seeing the works, “the worst of people really” he’d say.

Moments in time. All passing, free of reflection. Done and decompressed, thhht. His tired eyes, skeptics thoughts, cold called for his honest perspective on life. Communicated in eyes, hands and clicks. All vibrations: voice, glinting eyes and heat. The lightness in Barman came from his back. Strong minded, but a back ‘like a tin’ or an alloy, his fathers hands he had, his mothers lean face. The holes, the gaps of a removed child. Out on his own, cold waste, old dinners and cast iron 2nd had equipments. Friday was his night to cut loose and cause chaos. Pluming people with alcohol then mopping up. Step 1, alcohol, step 2 profit was his undiscovered motto. He was a crafty conceited apple in the eye of most. A nut, resistant to the cracking. The Craik. Even sauced, slapping, with thenneighbours going at it. He was always unassailable. Free from the plight of rude and polite. No transactions, no receipts. Scrunching moments and throwing them back, like the fruit before it’s juices. Tequila!

That’s not writing, that’s just typing. Get all the pieces, string them

Together in the longest

Line you can.

Barman! Another.

My collection is not me. The pressure thought, freezes me. Don’t come in. Don’t come close. Look away- sucking my life away. Crie crie. Communicate respect integrity excellence. Uniqueness. They came in- alone again now, plus a watch and a book and a tear to each eye. Power policy, still stirs, shoes and hurt. Plans? None. Kill me I’m boring, droll drab and half dear, poor imbalance of heartless indifference. Alive or dead, a crumbling in of life. Diffuse terror, trembling eruptions of mind, bright light and spears of pain career into my every moment. Sequel to nothing. Fighting the beat, unenjoyment, fearful fellowship on my own flight. Benevolence in freindlessness. Silence over this radio zone. Specks over the bridge of time. Flecks of spit, drooling time. Sick and spittle, creative brilliance alone in the moment- everlasting as nothing is. Or is not, the knot undoing. The line or rope hanging, sticking in my throat. Poised. Ready, fickle finance, the fools hold. Pick me up, the gravity of my ills, mis-pretension of apprehending endings. Bed bound and wound around the sound of my neighbours, abuse and gall. Of all olds, the manifold soul of those sold, touching nerves, swerves add race like mace in a space or place is ace for traction attraction interbreeding and weeding, seeding is feeding and freeing states of being my lightness. Sit sit sit all day sleep all night, burn-out. Switch off. Make it work for you. This shoe: shoot your self in the head. Blast plaster with your plastered soul. Live or grow old. Crab crab cram. Crab arms and degeneration. No nation, disgust. The food in me lulls me into fits of anxious tidal waves of sick. Chunks of digestion, sensitive to the moon? Torn and tired and spilling it all out.

I look at my bank balance. It justifies me. Rendering it all. I bail my feelings.

Wouldn’t that be great.

What?

If, just if.

I drove for miles and miles. Longer than kilometres I suppose, the syllables throw you off the scent there. I drove for 16 hours, straight. Not once doubting my direction. Straight to the coast, a cliff. I didn’t even get my toes wet, all that way for a view and the threat of falling over the edge, false turns and dead-ends. All that way, straight. Only to turn my back on the breeze and the view, a lookout moment. And then I drove home. Same line, opposite way, parallel overlapping, ajascent, constant intersection. No axis, the same way. Like a yawn and a breath. All the same channel but the face of it. Changed, turned, swapped, sad normally, maniacle abd sabretoothed the next. That’s how I returned. Turned and returned- all that way, for a look.

We all have secrets. Secrets from one another, things we don’t say, say to parents, friends, loved ones. Secrets- wanna hear mine? The word: Resilience. The word: Moron. They strike me. They remind me. They hurt me. Childhood. Games. Speaking it like I knew a thing or two. Hating others, bleeding them to prove points that never scored. Only opening rents in My own heart. Hostage to my memory. Attacking. Social violence. Ransoming off my soul for the saddest reason. At the core the colours of reddish love and passion pass through arteries into every cell, constricting, poisoning and passing blood. Tightly squeezed, head spins, hills become mountains, assailed children, and all the while you nurtured me. This goblin, yellow of fear, cherubian naïveté pink, green of sick and ivy. Purple in my majesty. Departing words ” you still have time”- working at me. LOOK AT THE STARS PAT, look at the stars. Moron, resilience. I’m struck, I’m sorry, I’m sick

Movement, experience. Trauma. Ability. Disability. Scared selfish. Help me hear about how I can run. Not busy, not hollow. Being there and choosing where “there is. Where do you want to be. Who do you wants to be there for and with. Doing what? Human Doing, not human being.

I think without words. I speak them but they are removed from reality. My writing isn’t writing, it’s a genesis, a creation outside of my control, an order or removed signs, letters, spelled and dispelled of meaning. Devoid – the void, employed to make change, in myself and others. The cause emotion on other. Relay ability, relating, relatability, the ‘bobbing your head, nodding, knowing, sharing, appreciating and sharing of a thought. Communicating- priscus, maniac in us, meniscus, knees tremble and we wrestle with the confounding reality of our ghosts. Our nothings, bitter sweet words we waste with want for understanding. In my shoes, shared thought, mind reading, a redescovery of a path, acknowledgement for truth. Context. “Thank you bus driver”. No one wants to take the high side, organic, whored thought, fie disguise my minds eye. Feeling, “a sense”, switch off, shave, save me. Enclaves of smitten roses two in their thorns. Spitting through bloodied cheeks, pouring blood-red, reading into one another. A mix, all petals, ants and aphids looking down. Falling plaster, cracks appearing. An earthquake. The wart of our earth mother, rolling her sore shoulders and we slip down between her bosoms. Spilling out, engulfed in gizzards. A sick spillage without tide. Rasputin holds a sickle moon over her- hawk for a head, feathers plucked, out of cage. Blisters, blood and loss of her, of world of meaning.

Drawing on, mainly maimed.

Mum and misstakes.

The female bumbling fool of addicting gone wrongs. Falling on the stairs and cracking skulls. Skill less attempts at mingling. Coffee

Induced broken powder received. Spend

Spend spend. Buy things that you need- tax back, jobs jobs. Red red. Write worry, stay stuck, grow, old bored, young trauma. Face scars eyes and crows and games and boredom and purposeless fucking talking to no end.

No aim? No

Need no want, just waste and waffle and spend and fear, that it will all amount to nothing. Taking notes, pour out

Time into my skin and my job and my direction isn’t south or east or west or north. Family friends. Troubled approaches. Alone alone alone. Along,

And “it’s a good film” what the fuck? How can this stuff be so easy. Crying mums. Standard. the fear the real ness of effort and breast milk. Mild suffering. Tailored hand bags. The world crumbles- shit actors, tragic wasted want for stretching clothes. Dealing with, good child. Patience, payment, waffle, waiting, effort, walking, running, balls. Slapping, ordeal. Shame of the shackles. Test beeping- pointed pointless time with others. Happily wasted hours talking and tempting fate. Crush me with a truck if you have the fucking need. Expensive weekends- what’s the fucking point? Who pays for what? Who foots the bill? Dream and splurge. I want a computer for work, dry skin, tone, eye contact, manners, sleep, back, apples, hunger, fingers, language, time

Direction winter, sleep, slipping, leave me alone. Spend phone, keys typing, mumble jungle hopeless, share plan, spoil, coldness, vitamin, UV anytime, lunch jawline, clones, coffin nail, sipping, costly, run away, day off, direction, dabbling, hospice, familiarity, foul, foul fidget, figs, fiddle, stranger, the real danger, the warrior, the worrier, the waste, the luck of running into the wrong person, saying the wrong thing, hurting other, killers, hide away. Ovid, read, reckless. Babble, like like like like like like blah, waffle, go grim. Bang tidy, escape, loss, failure, try trial and error, pins, friendship, flake, chocolate, spittle, skittish, cold dangerous, eyes, eats skin, peeling foolish, apple cider, growing pains, lanes change exchange, job, training, positive. Save sipping, slipping, away feedback, loan

Loan, payments, behind territory espionage, well essay, wheel, westward, iceberg, torment, the loaded lever. Lisping cracks of dropped spoons, wattle, spillage, save, snuck, stupid, race. Theft and hitting. Faces frame broken bones and crushed killing steps I wish I wasn’t always stuck. DARK TEAM etc.

I miss mum. She was always there. I wonder what she’d say to me now. I have a few guesses. I’ve been thinking of her, it still makes me turn away, like a brand to the side of the face, my neck twists my head away, strangling away the pulse of my sad heart. Cutting tears in half, squeezing a separation of head and heart. Grief wells below my shoulder line, not atop it like so many, unaccounted Atlas’. My teeth may grit and grind. Loss and death upon my mind. But lessons learned are hard to burn. Farewell mum, forgive this turn. ‘Zooom’ made me think of: Kiit & Baat.