Palpable be the stench. A wretchedness, enthusiastically vile, wallowing in its own filth. The crowd gathers and the dust of the amphitheatre comports to another standard Wednesday. Out come the judges, a line of all the elder statesmen. The townsmen are led, of course, by the hair of their guts, cartin' beers a few too many. Settle down now, children, it's only that boring. You're in a small town after all.
Lose the skin and bones and the hip replacements. Lose the sessions in the hyperbaric chamber. Forget the slim improvements off junking on steroids to improve performance (when you have no genitals, you lose the drag). Races and paces, times and places are set now with the pit crew lining up with prosthetic cases.
Stocktake sales, after Christmas purges, or just any other day is the perfect time to trim lard off the gut barge while adding a little to the wardrobe or even the living room set. Some people steal for necessity. Others for nefarious means of employment. Few see the opportunity to smother two flightless birds with one new suede jacket now 100% off and looking trim.
Hold an eighth and pause a pace of pieces for the year, month and day of today. 8 August 2008. Gregorian mind.
Round and round the neck they go.
Sweat plies a lucid transcript of evaporation on the neck. Grime carving a niche underneath the fingernails as the pressure of life gets the better of two halves. One for the west, one for the south. Both in dire need of winning the fight over the last can of water. Where that can lies, however, remains to be seen.
Clumps of sand in the mouth taste bad when the hand scoops up from the dirt underfoot. Veritable switch and change leaves a poor and sour feeling on the tongue. As dry and as arid as the back of the hands. All too swollen from swatting flies from the backsides of others.
Take a night and watch it take a few more in return. Dusk to dawn and that's the business of the race, of the game with no name and no players bearing faces distinguishable from the anguish and the longing wish. Run with it and watch from the far side of the smoking bush. Where they all find the small red berries that leaves the far end ruminating with smoke of its own.
Law and order and to them, it's nothing but the criminals intent on carving up a scene of their own. Rough shod over the banks of the dry river lines, feet taking up the clay with foot prints to make tracks back and forth. Drop a case of doubt and there is never more a chance on turning back.
Rain on, rain on, got the frog stomping going on. Drowning in the marsh, head deep in despair and regret, the little one looks for a peace outside the silencing of peers. Where it's only a matter of time before the click and thud. Head deep into the marsh, to drown the sounds around.
On the end of the night of the New South Wales State Poetry Slam Final, one Geoff Lemon, from the below blue borders of Victoria, jumps away winner supreme over the poetry night's cream.
When the dust has cleared before the headache and the rank sushi has ceased its churning after spending the night fighting with sweet Asahi, certain truths are painfully obvious: TAB was once again the clear winner in today's Big Race.
Off the foot of a controversially awarded penalty in the dying seconds of the Australia V Italy match, the Socceroos bandwagon has found its tare now thousands lighter. Far from the heavy days following a win of their qualifying face off against Uruguay for entry into the World Cup.
