the blood is too much like dense air - or is the air dense with blood?
i could ask the flies, and they'd say,
"it's blood and shit." they know it.

dozens come to feed on it
the bellied legs,
the flat air conched with death.

in the airlock of regret
the airlock of sadness
the trapped breathing
the airlock of yes

how will i ever cope with what has happened?
how will i ever cope with the way things went?

there is this hole called Why
that is no grave.

He was a well-paid thirty-four year old managaement consultant, but he still lived with his parents, and tacitly acquiesced in letting them buy the household groceries, and do the domestic chores. But he donated a hefty wedge of his earnings to charities, and he did not trouble to tax deduct these donations.

In the garden he found her dentures, clamped onto the tree, on a low branch, where she had seemingly bitten into it and lodged them. It was like eve had not been satisfied with the apple but had wanted more, more, and had been punished with this extraction, as the hand is cut off a thief.

he felt his mother watching him with that expression morbid and intent.
he turned and she was there looking out of him, her stained mouth eager, pouched tight. she had finished her mulberries and soon she would be trying to get out at the back door to get at the tree again.
she had removed her dentures.

Ten there was the one about the prostitute, which ended with the punchline "and one for luck."

He rested, the first day. Just sitting on the back verandah, surveying the stumps, with the saw across his lap, and his palms resting lightly on the heavy blade. He rested most of the second day as well, inside with old newspapers, and crumbling paperback novels, locking the heat out as best he could, but in the afternoon he descended the three steps from the verandah and wandered around among the stumps where they were strewn, trying to guess which one he would decide on, having no idea, showing no preference yet. He tried to imagine them cast on a flood - the way they would float (if they floated) - the way they would turn on the tides (if they did not sink).
It was so dry. The ghost-gum lay like crazed bone. The gully gum pachydermal, brittly ruched, brickled. The ironbark slumped dark, sullen - blackarmoured.
None looked seaworthy.
He stood, arkless and without ocean, surveying the dry miles unrelieved by rain...