The Ebony Warrior

And so it came to pass - the valiant soldier drew his last breath, having fought so bravely for not only the past year, but his entire life.

Victims of cancer are often said to have “lost their battle”, but in your case to say such a thing would denigrate your very existence and flail wildly at the loincloth of truth and decency without simulated foreplay beforehand, nor a crisp Travellers' Cheque to breed enthusiasm.

In much the same manner as the seminal Walter White, your illness never truncated your rapier persona, nor ravaged your ethereal beauty.

You remained your own man - beholden to none; unique; the devil in black.

As I joyously observed you blossoming from an ungainly ball of curiosity into a lean thrill-machine, you transcended societal norms of pet/owner subservience, teaching me how to love something far beyond that of self, and thus stimulating oft-neglected parts of my own fabric - engendering reflection and subsequent change for the better before I had even grasped such concepts.

In my earliest memories of our time, your generosity of spirit was already plain for all to see.

Strangers were anything but as you made yourself available to all of them - your burgeoning handsomeness no barrier to these great-unwashed as time after time you welcomed their caresses and reciprocated with unadulterated affection.

I for one will never forget our earliest times together, feeling your profound warmth as you nestled against my leg when we collectively retired of an evening.

0300 awakenings I shall forever treasure, each time repositioning myself without ever waking you as you dreamt in your infancy, your face the very essence of tranquility.

Impromptu wrestling matches became nightly events in our first months together, my hands bearing the fine scars of honourable battle with great frequency.

Even though you were outsized, you were never outmatched as your cunning and agility left me recoiling many-a-time from your razored teeth and manic claws.

Respect quickly grew between us, and you became a source of great pride - a hairy son, even - but I never once discounted you as a possession or trophy, because in truth you were, and still remain so much more than that to me.

Before I had grasped your development, suddenly as if from nowhere you had become a young man - your desire for adventure growing by the day as hanging from the curtains and screen-door provided diminishing satisfaction and the primal call of the outdoors manifested in wanton gazing from the windowpane for extended periods.

I returned from my daily misadventures to find your smouldering eyes piercing me from your perch as I prepared to enter our communal shack, knowing that it was time to allow your rightful passage.

Your grandmother noted as such, having spoken to you on many afternoons as she gardened and humoured the voices.

“He wants to be outside, Stafu” she said.

Standing as a father-by-proxy watching these first tentative steps around the yard was an honour, basking in the shared warmth of the sunshine engulfing your immaculate coat, and thrilling by association in the exciting aromas of the various plants surrounding you as your senses ran wild.

Like all great beings, timidity was rapidly replaced by a boldness as I observed your taming of the great tree before you as though it were nothing more than a shrub to catch your potent urine; a new perch for you to whimsically observe this world from.

In truth, you were always one step ahead, if not more, such was your intuition, and I will always remember the inaugural occasion when I left you to your own devious devices, returning later in the day to implore you to return to me, only to be silently mocked by your indomitable form as you patronised me from the rooftop well into the night.

I begged, I scowled - but to no avail, for you had become autonomous.

Regretfully, I retired for a few hours, rejoicing when I awoke to find you sitting at the door awaiting my forgiveness - something you never once needed to ask for.

You returned to me, inhaled your morning meal and joined me in blissful dozing - something that was to define your elegant economy-of-being until the fat lady crooned like so many other departed geniuses.

Our first year together passed expediently, my life enriched by your every moment and alarming metamorphosis from cherub to mini-panther.

It may have been transcribed previously by some utter lunatic on this very page, but the comfort you provided when a beautiful young man perished by his own hand cannot be adequately summarised with these words, nor a Jpeg, nor even the most lurid link to a scheiße site, for the simple act of sitting with you of an evening, daring even to cradle you at times provided untold relief at such a confusing and difficult time.

Thanking you is not enough, for I fear I may not ever be able to truly demonstrate what your life and friendship meant to me, however I am determined to try, even if I merely tattoo my favourite limited-edition anal beads with your charcoal likeness.

Reports of your initial illness devastated me when you were but 1 year into this life, having observed your lethargy after being left bloodied and beaten in an ambush-bumming by another jealous and vindictive feline, hence seeking medical intervention to revive you, rather than begging that which does not exist for assistance.

Your durability now beyond doubt, you somehow slammed death’s door back in her grim face and recovered with unbelievable speed.

I too felt the shudder of the entire suburb deep within my waters as you returned to devour it.

Your mother was immediately enraptured by your charms, inexplicably returning to your father after the initial Rohypnol-courtage, perhaps if only to experience the honour of meeting you, and better-yet gaining your friendship - a commodity that cannot possibly be valued by even the most cutthroat of capitalists.

As the finest of things, your brand merely grew as the months and years elapsed - an indelible mark had been etched across the very soul of all whom came to know and appreciate you.

You were, and shall remain a throwback to easier times - an innocence lost almost entirely in this austerity.

Visions of you fill my being merely days after your passing, spanning the breadth of your radiant green eyes as you sat in the fresh air each afternoon; your paw resting gently on your mother’s hand as you both slept of an evening; battling you late at night in futile attempts to capture and feed you, skinning knees and self-esteem as you evaded my desperate lunges.

Above all I will remember your power to render language obsolete when we held each other’s gaze for an age - my existence validated as you saw me not as flesh and bone, but as an equal.

Oversexed Afro/Italian-Americans and hauntingly-beautiful shaven Irish women may have beaten my musings by two-decades or more, but truly nothing compares to you, and in all probability never will.

You, my boy, are a once-in-a-lifetime friend and a love I will never experience again.

Irrespective of what you felt in your final days, please know that the treatments you endured were approved only as a means of extending your time here and not borne of selfishness, even if your last month was a downward-spiral and I saw in your eyes that you needed to leave.

Questions will forever remain regarding the decisions your mother and I made throughout your illness - most without objective answers - but in time I hope that they will prove to have been just.

When you died, a part of your mother and I did so simultaneously, never to be replenished by the finest alcohols nor tobaccos, but in time we will be left with only smiles and gratitude for the overwhelming privilege of your company.

I have long-dismissed the notion of heaven, but now find myself hoping more than ever that such a thing exists, for the prospect of my early doom no longer horrifies me knowing that we may be reunited.

You will greet me in a field, once more in your prime where I will chase you until you submit to my desperation in pity, allowing me to cradle you in my arms again and caress your divine pouch.

Rest now, and rest well you handsome devil - please know that you will be missed beyond compare xx

The Ecstasy of Iron

The vibrant mid-afternoon air molests my plump lips, snaking gently through the narrow opening in the window frame.
Inertia tangoes with my buttock-jellies as I sway atop a vinyl pew, my destination fast-materialising as this life changes irrevocably.


A cacophony of tattoos, scowls and heinous scars masquerading as rehabilitative flesh surrounds me, simultaneously dreading and developing strategies to combat the iron hell that awaits us all.

On that day, the finality of a gavel violently meeting the charred block beneath was as enthralling as the warmth of my pulsing blood gushing into my erectile tissues, stiffening the most lurid of my flesh with rude irrigation.

Fresh within my palate remained the thrillingly diverse flavours of the 84 men whom had succumbed to my dystopian love over the preceding months, and brewery-fresh in my mind remained their multilingual screams.

I often wonder whether it was always my intention to be incarcerated and removed from the society I preyed upon at will, and whether that fateful night merely served as the precursor to avenging my own loneliness which had manifested in trawling the various concubines of this town, amassing pathological trophies the envy of the irredeemably ill and those that aspire to such depths only to remain as avatars on Internet Forums forevermore.

Countless nights of soft kisses and brutal killings – often within moments – passed by in a kaleidoscopic-blur.
Night after innumerable night I sat expectantly at the Harbinger of Sweat Sports Bar, patiently awaiting an unknowing incursion from a bold and curious Lothario whom had been seduced by my deadly lullaby, remaining but another distant admirer until my pheromones and glazed-thigh oasis bonded with 18 standard drinks and thus hastened their approach.

The uncanny predictability of human nature reduced the formalities of meeting each object of dispassion to a connect-the-dot pastiche, devoid of any insight beyond trivialities uttered as a foil for the trouser-tango each was to experience for the last time.
There I sat, patiently absorbing the most monotonous details of their cellophane lives, shifting my posture slightly at times to expose a previously-concealed portion of golden skin, allowing briefly my tongue to reveal its sensuality as it wet my upper-lip with not so much suggestion as hot demand.

“You make me hard, boy - but I ain’t no queer” was the most frequent call-to-arms, usually uttered but minutes before the suggestion that we take a walk around a nearby recreation park as my victims invariably found me at turns mysterious, eloquent and physically overwhelming and sought to decipher precisely why social-conditioning and conservative rearing battled unspeakable desire as an angel and devil on each shoulder – the howls of both growing with every atrial flutter.

As we walked, the evening became my audience as I further disarmed each successive companion with fabricated tales of high-tea with A-Listers, exfoliation weekends and sports-car blitzkriegs along the Iberian Coast, when in truth I had my own 40-hour working drudgery, rent and utilities, and of course intra-family tedium to tend to.

I was the everyman, and thus I feasted at a buffet which provided neither thrills nor a specials-board.

Nearly every encounter progressed in the same manner; tonight’s lover-boy seizing upon my deliberate pause with extended eye contact as the intended invitation, moving in close with a powerful hand immediately thrust between my irreproachable thighs as a convulsing tongue plunged without restraint into my liqueur-accented mouth in one fell-swoop.

Primal lust quickly took hold as time after time I yielded to the sexual frenzy - fuelled by confusion and India Pale Ale - without delay finding myself pressed against a bench or tree, hot breath now in my ear as stiff flesh entered me with the subtlety and forethought of a burning sermon.

Having parachuted into the most dangerous concubines of the Amazon in my youth, armed with nothing more than a smile and my own sickness, I had become unstoppable of anus and the wilds quickly came to learn servitude.
Snake after vicious snake came at me – oftentimes in unsporting ambush – however they all experienced the same warrior’s fate, which consisted of an epic battle in a clearing, and culminated in a forward, back, forward punch fatality and one-way voyage into the rippling abyss of my colon.

Victory became flawless; I became an insatiable main battle tank.

Each bar-serpent I encountered never once warranted this honour, instead feeling their meat pulped unceremoniously in a karmic moment, before asphyxiating helplessly between my unreasonably toned thighs – their muffled screams stimulating that which dare not be given credence.

The same rose-tinted aftermath confronted me as I turned in each instance to collect various anatomical trinkets for storage in a jar of formaldehyde; the calm of death concealed by the twisted expressions etched on each face, suggesting both unparallelled pleasure and terror.

The thrill of each trophy allied perfectly to the incompetence of the constabulary, enabling my reign of unsheathed terror to continue unabated for an aeon, my frequent patronage and direct links with each victim dismissed in light of a god-fearing existence and impeccable manners.

And then, from the mists of dissatisfaction he rode on the vinyl wings of unfathomable want from my subconscious into my very being.

Saturday began as any other, again I found myself casting wanton shadows onto the walls as I enveloped the bar, awaiting any and all incursions against my dignity with the poise of a gilded bear trap.
But something was different; amiss, even.

I waited an age, utilising each seductive trick in my armoury, however each prospective Romeo would not yield unto the spell.

And then I saw him.

Abstract machismo clashed volcanically with a dignity honed through trials; a most unreasonable pairing, and a severe danger to any remnant heterosexuality.

In the most uncomplicated terms, I needed him inside me - stat.

As we conversed, the 90 degree angle between us became a geometric harpoon, drawing me surreptitiously into this very different sting.
His hand brushed my cheek as he disciplined a recalcitrant hair with a firm stroke that revealed his tremendous strength and resolve, leaving me utterly defenceless, and when last drinks were called it was I who seized the opportunity to stride with this behemoth en route to a grudging execution.

The humid night air filled my nostrils headily, whispering unspeakable possibilities in quivering tongues, yet these hopes were dashed as the chill of steel abruptly cascaded around my wrists and I thus found myself on my knees before this hulking giver-of-laws.

Flashing lights and the roar of frenzied sirens fisted the night air as my captor fixated me with a juxtaposed oppression and lament, his eyes imbued with both satisfaction for having both protected and served an unappreciative public, and yet solemn with realisation that we were not to copulate; my flesh thus remaining an unripened fruit, not once plucked from the lowest branch.

As I lay thighs-asunder in the holding cell some time later, a sensation most foreign entered my stream of conscience without even a figurative balaclava to conceal its true intentions.
Remorse washed over me for the first time in decades, having evaded the noose of my personal qualities for so long with the sudden realisation that Mr Right, and not Mr Right Now had evaded me probably forever.
The opportunity to both consummate and converse with an equal now torn unexpectedly from my fabric, I drifted into slumber uneasily, with a bitter taste borne of oral thrush and profound disappointment coating my flaccid tongue.

Justice was served in diametric opposition to that of the continental breakfasts I had once enjoyed, my guilt laid bare as I stood before the glorified toupe whom was to cast me unceremoniously into a cage.
Having declined legal aid, there I stood before mahogany and disapproval as an autonomous organism, rhetoric bubbling in my veins as I disrobed this miscreant with a brief summation - "Can you not appreciate that I did it for the LOLs?"

Our vehicle now halts with an almighty jolt as we arrive at this grey fortress.
Barbed wire crowns the perimeter, and my mind races with improper thoughts of impaled testicles crafting satay sticks where no well-adjusted soul could surmise such a thing nor operate the inevitable franchise restaurants profitably.

Guard towers jut into the sky around the perimeter, with a huge undulating block forming the centrepiece, its exacting lines a precursor for the discipline that lay in wait.

Home is what you make it, and Feng Shui is no longer merely my milk bar pornographer and tobacconist. Innocence is lost.

These thought carriages, however, are derailed by 3 words.
"Get out, cunts".

Our corrections officer now seeks to offset years of submissive behaviour enforced by his wife in the foulest manner, however we rise as one in good grace and begin the treacherous walk along broken cement into the jaws of this collective, the warmth of the sun on my neck contrasting with the sudden chill of institutional cold slapping me silly as I enter the holding area, the gravity of the moment reducing some of my unwanted brethren to puerile tears already, as others silently contemplate their prospects of survival, not to mention Cable TV packages.

A figure appears before us, clad in an inappropriately expensive suit and sporting a recent scar which runs from her left earlobe majestically along her upper lip, ascending suddenly at a 90 degree angle through her eye-patch, terminating at her receding hairline.
This, I surmise, is a woman to love.

"You are pigs; I am the blade, offal sack, oil and fry-pan. My rules are the oregano and novelty-breasted apron" she commenced, "you will abide or you will come to know my small-intestine".
A stern, yet pantomime expression materialises upon her porcelain mask as she concludes - "You may call me Ma'am".

And with that succinct introduction she pivots with both the grace of a ballerina and menace of a Sherman Tank, her gait purely business with not a hint of pleasure.

My admiration is violated by the tannoy.
"Number 493-781, present to cubicle 3"

I approach the gormless shape behind the perspex window, receiving at once precisely each mandated item on the correctional checklist, my mind racing as I examine the toothbrush in my hand, the handle enhanced by beaded rubber and as thick as the milkshakes of my formative years which prepared my taste-buds for the sweet boy-nectar that was to follow.

A sneaky foot assaults both buttocks suddenly as I am enticed into a small room.
I display tremendous initiative in removing my clothes with grace and lightning speed in good faith that whatever awaits me is worth my trouble.

Words pierce the gloom - "You may now remove your.... oh".

I am pleased to hear the sharp hiss of water, and to feel the chastening force of this elemental delight slapping my nude form with ferocity as I render this delousing a party.
My nipples stiffen, my breathing becomes shallow and suddenly I am happy again, contorting my limbs into several suggestive positions, receiving an improvised enema as this pressurised H20 thrills my evacuation zone, yielding unmentionable smiles.

The delicious torrent subsides, as does my dilation. A zip ascends once more from the shadows, appraising this performance with moist applause - the very least this symphony of grace and testosterone warrants.

I march to my cell in a deflated convoy, waving to the ruffians baying within their own slice of heaven en route, many yelling unrepeatable things at odds with their repressed desire to be held firmly with male biceps and nurtured by groin-follicles, all of which compels the turgid niblets beneath my cloths.

A large tattooed man greets me chastely at the door as I alight at my new abode, his sweat hanging in air already swimming with faeces, countless ejaculations and curiosity.

Suddenly its bloated mouth comes alive.
"My name is Gorgazzano, and you now belong to me", he says in an overcompensating tone that belies his imposing physical stature and litany of tattoos.

One on his forehead helpfully suggests that I as a spectator to his charms enjoy direct prostate-stimulation from other men.
Enchanté.

Before I can make sense of the transaction that has just occurred, his sweaty hand is wrapped like a vice around my throat and my back is against the cell wall as if he had read my mind.
"Did you fucking hear me, boy?" he bellows into my now smirking face.

Our eyes now lock as my fingers twist around his supple scrotum, seizing violently on the firm nubs within and we gently descend to the linoleum floor together, his blood-curdling screams subsiding into a pathetic whimper as I abruptly release his burst gonads and kiss him tenderly on the mouth.
I then assist him onto the bottom bunk, a fresh warmth now etched on my face as he enters the foetal position and gently sobs, his scrotum undoubtedly swelling with blood and semen, and now a mass of burst vessels, shredded nerves and shame.

I pause to urinate on the back of his head and thus mark my territory as animal lore dictates, when I am rudely interrupted by the intercom.
"All prisoners, please report to Communal Room 3 for meals"

We reconvene in a central position and follow the starched derriere of a nubile young guard, all the time wondering whether he feels my eyes incinerating his chaps.

The newly-indoctrinated Miss Gorgazzano is dragged off into the opposite end of the hall having lost the ability to walk without the suffocating pain of a thousand knives, assuring solitude tonight.

A great white hall greets us, with stainless-steel benches in exacting rows in front of a servery.
I am partitioned into a small group of 3 other inmates, 2 of which are so gripped by the weight of their situation that they stare blankly at the sterile canvas beneath them.
Thankfully, the third member of our group - a lithe yet dangerous looking young man with damaged teeth and a hook-nose elects to break the ice, which by the second resembles the Antarctic more and more.

"Faggot, you're gonna get me some extra today, understand? We ain't having no quarrel right now, cos I'll choke you out, bitch".

I nod calmly, welcoming the extra attention and riveting wordplay, hoping that at last a rapport had been established with another human being for the first time since my entrapment.

An assortment of cornbreads, peas, carrots and gravy greets us as we shuffle along this melancholy conveyor, and I oblige in filling my plate with each morsel I can scavenge.

My new friend and I sit together across from our non-verbal companions - one of whom has has lost control of his bladder with impressive volume - when my chum decides to elbow me briskly in the face.
The tender heat of my own plasma comforts me as my nose voices its displeasure, dumping copper essence into my mouth and thus altering my stream of conscious.

The delicious wet of my own bloodstream permeates my nostrils as my assailant fixates me with an expectant gaze, awaiting a sign of weakness.

"Don't make me fucking tell you again, boy. You're really goddamn testing me; now, hand me them grits before I lose my temper".

I turn 45 degrees, my incandescent eyes alive to his demand.

My tongue cleans my teeth of the rouge carnival, and I deliver a precisely angled crushing stomp to his left achilles-tendon, savouring the sweet voluminous crack as it ruptures.
The next sequence plays out in slow-motion as he falls grimacing in unmeasurable pain to clasp the debilitated area, and as his head passes my navel I deliver one swift chop to his throat, crushing his windpipe immediately and assuring his respectful discretion.

He rolls around helplessly in abject silence before the entire cast of this Shakespearean tragi-comedy, pulverised beyond all reason.
Mercifully, guards appear and drag him along the floor undoubtedly to the infirmary where months of embarrassment and rehabilitation await; my search for camaraderie begins anew.

Hope springs briefly in the eyes of my table-mates, whom are now emboldened by this happening.
"It's going to be OK", I tell them, stroking my immaculate chin with a new vigour, knowing acutely that they are but sperm-receptacles-cum-punching-bags as the dawn approaches.

I survive the remainder of this reconstituted meal, pausing at the last bite to ponder where this day may veer to next, when our Warden appears again - this time in a leather-fedora, her reapplied foundation merely accentuating the scar I had come to love, but not to know intimately.

"You worms all have an hour to exercise, three times per week. Your first session is today, do not fuck this up."
"I am watching", she added, and again she was gone having gazed not once in my direction. She had become a matriarch, and I her disciple.

Our procession once more gathers momentum as we lope from the eatery into a long passage, terminating eventually at the peeling facade of a red iron door.
The sun overwhelms my eyes briefly as we pass through this gateway, before us all is a great expanse of patchy asphalt with a small grassed area and a brick perimeter.

Cliques quickly disperse to their zones, leaving me alone beneath a raging sky; liberty hanging above as a diorama to an infant, both heartening and desperately unattainable.

The random din of conversation fills the air, isolating me as a separate entity within this discount jigsaw puzzle.
I stroll to the sole patch of grass, ironically lush in such a disparate locale.

I remove my standard-issue shirt, sighing immediately as the sun embraces my turgid skin, providing humanising warmth and carcinomas promptly.

My spine becomes concave as my quadriceps stiffen, each sinew elongating as my pelvis-party begins.
A waterless synchronised-swimming routine begins, my legs gyrating as if manipulated by an octopus gripped by Parkinson's, each exaggerated movement delivering a keen thumb to the sphincter of humility.

An abrupt silence validates my gyroscopic mastery as a crowd gathers, each zippered fly in the 160 degree visual field now protruding, as hands clash in dissonant applause.
I perch upon my elbows and gaze expectantly at the others, only to hear a disapproving voice.
"That was the gayest shit ever, man", one says.

Nanoseconds pass, my blink concludes, and he too begins applauding, this time with flamboyant vigour.

The tannoy derails any prospects of genuflection and bukkake as an announcement regales - "493-781, report to the Warden's Office immediately".

Howls of disappointment batter the air as I am dragged to my feet by guards with the subtlety of a shower of cinder blocks, hands gripping my already-enraptured buttocks with impunity.

The shrill friction of my shoes becomes white noise en route to this stronghold; an enticing uncertainty fills my veins as we approach this Draconian outpost, a hospital-blanc and single-windowed booth.

I am thrust through the plywood door, alighting delicately upon a leather bench before the lady of my platonic dreams.

"You absolute fucking cunt", she says before I have adequately fixated her with my hollow eyes, "yes, I noticed you the very moment you strolled in here and transported these filthy convicts to a place of leisure. My authority is now forfeit, you complete and utter fuck-face".

I wipe her ballistic saliva from my brow, gripped by the impeccable side-part in her slick hair, her leathers now as the torso of a god.
Her eyes absorb my smile.

"In truth, there is nothing I love more than sweltering cunt, and you have become the conduit, sparing me from the lust of these deplorable scrotums. You have allowed me to flourish without threat of lust for you are now the glory-hole".

I feel at ease, immediately accepting this improvised Knighthood.
Our chairs align, our faces meet, our delectable hair finally unites as one entity as I smell her seasoned breath for the first of what I hope will be many times.
My face at last nestles in the small of her neck, Eau Du Femme of absolutely no description infiltrates my nostrils.

We disengage unceremoniously, the fine veins in her cornea assuring our bond.
"Get the fuck out", she intones.

Shower time now approaches, our harem now regroups in Bathroom 4, our guard having debriefed us exactingly.
Soap will remain on chains in principle, but practice makes perfect as so many war-criminals will contend.

Lavender-imbued steam invades my nostrils, my crisp nudity now enclosed in a field of undulating buttocks. Some are speckled, others resemble first-harvest, an alarming number bare stretch-marks - all scream my name.

Pretty boys elect not to acknowledge the predator in their midst, slapping each others' posteriors as a physical manifestation of ironic banter.
I purse my saturated lips in a display of petulance, when I am interrupted by the bulging, nude pre-morbid form of a muscular beast of a man.

Introductions become a triviality, and one-way street instantly.

"I run this joint, corn-hole. You will take what I'm going to give you, and you will enjoy it. Kneel before me now".

His goatee is earnest, his slick mane a vineyard, his tattooed biceps a road map of assumed supremacy.

I slowly drop to my knees as the others disperse, completely aware of what is to ensue.
A twitching charcoal truncheon greets me, apparently aware of my prowess despite the unknown quantity that is my suck-hole.
A dazzling array of pumping veins entwine the shaft; it is time.

My lips envelop his now quivering meat as a monsoon smashing a coastal town, the essence of budget soap battling valiantly against the almighty dick-cheese accosting my senses.
His groans of bliss intensify as my lips pass back and forth along his insubstantial penile highway, his tortured cream but moments away when I plunge 3 fingers without warning into his oddly obliging colon, pincing his g-spot in the luckiest of dips.

He collapses as a rag-doll biffed from a couch, smashing his head with a sickening thud on the tiles.
His neck is obviously deformed, the vertebrae strive for different coordinates as his throbbing penis erupts, spewing molten reproduction into the roaring drain between us.

Guards drag his pathetic husk down the corridor as inmates gasp, assuming misadventure to be his nemesis, their colossus now an also-ran; a vegetable ripped from the crisper that enabled it.

Bare chests and bright eyes surround me in the change-room, joy sprouting in the undercarriage of each towel as far as the human eye can see as I splay my moist thighs, my towel a metronomic saw along the breadth of my fresh genitals.
I hold their gaze until the sting of my eyes refracts the light, reducing them all to a hairy smear.
I have won their love.

As I lay in the tranquil surrounds of my concrete cage that evening - free at least in my profound nudity - the corners of my mouth rise of their own volition, forming a winning smile borne not of destruction, but contentment.

I'm finally home.

Why, Thank You

As the rain gently falls from just beyond my window pane, simultaneously quenching defecated soils and spritzing my melancholy, I am drawn to the words that once passed your voluptuous lips – rouge ablaze with incandescent feeling.

“Go fuck yourself”, you intoned.

Many was the night when I sat in my chambers, accompanied only by the memory of better times and the hiss of food-grade carbon dioxide rapidly dissipating in my officially-licensed tumbler, recalling in particular the affection you once held for me.

Dangerous character flaws became mere idiosyncrasies when pressed against your intoxicating bosom; the lathered and inevitably leathered maniac within thus appeased and adorned in a sequinned strait-jacket, grateful for such an opportunity.

Fragments of this life became an illustrious, enriched and meaningful whole – a previous loneliness now banished to the same void occupied by such misgivings as heterosexuality and merchant-banking, and not one moment too soon.

As I walk along the pavement that once acquiesced to the potent throng of your Italian loafers, the mild humidity in the air gently stimulates my pre-chapped lips, recalling an aeon when we strode side-by-side as leviathans of romance and symbiotic empathy; pale light now furnishing a previous utopia as the sound of passing traffic intermingles with a crisp breeze, escorting leaves and detritus on its bitter wings to a void just beyond my 32-Bit draw-distance.

Several stairs greet me as my journey nears its culmination – I clasp the steel railing as I ascend, recalling in vivid detail the evenings when we shared budget, nondescript takeout and mineral turpentine spritzed with strawberry-husks; my eager hands now grappling, reaching desperately for the serrated edge of my dinner-knife to provide a juxtaposition to the searing, and yet nimble pleasure of your spontaneous multi-digital penetration.

My door materialises before me as the gateway to solitude, and as it closes I am suddenly alone in a sea of darkness and relative silence – the mouths, rectums and poor-attitudes I have encountered across many hours and rostered-duties now at bay.

Morality and indeed decency are now banished to the moist-hell occupied by Reality-TV dropouts and evolutionary hopes pertaining to these crimes.

Emotional rescue now within sight, my satchel takes flight into a dark corner – instantly forgotten, its contents now as redundant as the peculiar discolouration on the right-corner of my upper lip, the epicentre of your violent crescendos and my proudest battle-scar.

My chamber now illuminated by the deft flick of a switch, scissors now appear in my weary hand. The blades meet and do their bidding precisely 34 times; my nudity now as real as my general disdain for bathing and the subsequent crust beneath my foreskin. A crust you once dined upon.

Sporting nipples stiffening forcefully abreast the resounding cool of both the ambiance and social-isolation, my sick mind now pulsates with the recollection of a blueprint for the evening and the reality is made flesh as I pirouette from the rags now shorn from my meat towards your portrait, hanging sensually above my Cathode Ray Tube (CRT) televisual-receptacle.

Our eyes meet as I reach for the first device in my sex-armoury – a formerly innocuous fluorescent-cylinder now bound in an amalgamation of crazy-glue and glass shards for the promise of pleasure that is not as much ribbed as it is barbed.

Your crystalline-gaze galvanises my desire, hence I now recline in my Scandinavian bucket-seat with bespoke battering-device twitching between my unsavoury fingers and leather soothing my aching want.

Canola oil is now as rare a commodity as human-decency in this house if ill-repute, thus I am obligated to lubricate the menacing shaft with my own mouth-juice prior to feeding it 3 inches per-second into my rabidly protesting rectum, expanding beyond its wildest anatomical dreams to accommodate this gift.

My legs now perpendicular to the moonlight snaking through my Venetian-Blinds, a symphony of anal torture now penetrates the silence – a rhythmic symphony akin to that of a child splashing through puddles on an Autumn afternoon.

The child we aborted. The child whom later garnished our Mojitos without detracting from the cocktail-umbrellas.

I tongue the roof of my foaming mouth as haemoglobin pools in the most fashionable shades of crimson in and around my twitching thighs, my wrist now a masterclass of oscillating-precision and the walls of my anus now freshly minced and yet not-for-resale even at a severe discount.

And yet, in spite of the erotic-Zen, something is amiss.

Legs formerly thrust at the disapproving sky now return to the earth that shunned them as I arise from the hotbed of plasma and mucus with baton still lodged firmly inside me (as many men have attempted and yet very few have survived), and I now find a rusted razor-blade between my thumb and forefinger.

Both areolas are dispatched with the diligence and elegance of Samurai. Two lemon-wedges press against the bleeding nubs as a sexual-renaissance begins anew.

A rare sting now characterises the crests of my bosom as I thrust methodically against the rug much like a pre-pubescent would pogo to the local roller-rink.

Like the rink I first met you at in 1991, which coincidentally housed the washrooms in which I tasted your AIDS for the first of many times.

And yet something is still amiss.

A discarded car-battery now enters the fray as I fashion conduits from alfoil and splay my rabid tongue between the positive and negative offshoots, my face now rippling with purpose as I continue to bask in the simultaneous raw erogenous-bliss of my forfeited colon and weeping chest.

And yet something is still amiss.

A bamboo skewer now enters my urethra tip-first, inducing an additional skerrick of rapture; minute splinters accumulate in the walls with each prod as bizarre fluids seep from the hilt, finally propelling me towards the inseminated fields I have lusted for, but which have remained cruelly out-of-reach for so long.

And yet something is STILL amiss.

The ‘last roll of the dice’ is now upon me, however I have prepared for such an eventuality.

Caked in blood and bile, and with each orifice at the very least bleeding and possibly occupied by majestic objects I now march boldly towards an amateur-guillotine comprised of 5 pulleys, fibre-wire and a brick to power it – a loving smile broadening on my cracked lips.

The device is triggered with a spin-kick and little fanfare, thusly my delighted head detaches from my reddened neck and smashes against the French-Marble, resting finally beneath your portrait.

Our eyes meet once more.

Your move. 

Finding Nero

I often sigh with relief when a conversational assailant has concluded their vile forced-niceties and either continued on their merry, capitalist way or have otherwise turned 90 to 180 degrees from the tears manifesting in my eyes as a formal smile is banished forever more; my ashen face spared from shattering under the force of its own dishonesty.

“I’m good, thanks” we say, stifling the molten disgust within and thus neglecting to both itemise and indeed verbalise our very own 99 problems, of which a bitch may be 97 or none depending on the degree of societal liberty one has been granted and whether the refrigerator is stocked sufficiently with gelatinous goods and something caustic to wash it all down with.

Quite where this “black dog” materialises from remains a mystery, as does the legitimacy of its genuine-leather collar.

A melodic, subversive tune is now emanating from your SoundBlaster-16 as I tell you that we have all been affected by suicide at some point.

It matters not whether you crawled from the charcoaled bowels of your crack-häus through swathes of cadavers and snacks to discover that Kurt was now the tortured conductor of the choir-invisible, not to mention finding Aunt Beryl swinging from her garter after another Bingo defeat, or being accosted by the grim tale of Uncle Gus who elected to have an ibuprofen-soufflé followed by a nap crowned by a plastic shroud rather than facing the paedophilia charges. Again.

Outside of the fortuitous 1% life is a merciless, grinding, awful cunt at the best of times and simply unbearable for the rest of it – anyone who states otherwise is either a liar or a lunatic-at-large, both of which are preferable to meeting this horror at two-paces with the most vulnerable portion of your colon exposed.

Before the diversionary release of budget Cabernet Sauvignon was readily attainable, I often found myself romanticising the notion of taking my own life on a sunny afternoon before the ogre whom spat me from his scrotal-bag arrived home, and obviously only upon cessation of another mandatory 16:00 screening of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.

Many times I wandered into the jaws of the suburban garage acting as the forgotten cock-ring of my place of residence; a desire to forego the inevitable disappointment of another day ablaze in my juvenile mind.

The handgun that allegedly didn’t exist in bespoke ogre’s military-trunk now made flesh in my young hand, my youthful mind began to race; bullets pre-packaged like death-candy imploring me to ingest but one with ballistic force.

Many was the time I would stare into the infinite black of its iron-eye whilst my index finger gently straddled the trigger; one brief twitch away from an eternal sleep that would never be pillaged by a Top 100 FM Radio wake-up call at 7:29 am ever again.

The mental permutations that enter one’s mind in considering such actions range from the devastating to the ridiculous; an imagination folding upon itself as the impossibility of visualising entry into an eternal silent void becomes more and more pronounced by the moment – a myopic minds’-eye.

Visions of remorseful peers and family members laced my daydreams; novel compliments cascading from profoundly lamenting mouths as tears flowed in lieu of the senseless agony of it all.

My beautified corpse hence set to remain in the thrall of a fresh-faced slumber forevermore.

Suicide is often said to be the coward’s way out, however a certain grit and resolve must be required to undertake this final absolution due to the deep stigma and crushing finality associated with even attempting such an act – whether mired in faith, morality or experience – let alone not achieving this objective and hence living out the rest of your days entrenched in patronisation and pity from those who now view you merely as a basket-case or project-child.

Luciano was a precocious boy – vibrant, cheeky, wonderfully peculiar and obscenely irreverent at all times; the very antithesis of traditional societal views related to mental-illness and seemingly devoid of notable self-harm indicators.

Our first union occurred at a suburban tram-stop one afternoon – my status as the new boy all too obvious to this slick, wild-faced lothario who exuded fierce confidence and whom welcomed me into his burgeoning life; a profound generosity of spirit manifested for the first of many times, although this was obviously unappreciated at this juncture.

Over the years I grew to value you as a “good-time” boy; always the life of the party and the epicentre of entertainment to a throng of admiring peers, the likes of whom would never admit to your incandescent value, but rather ridicule you as a lout and loud-mouth when in actuality you were the rarest and most beautiful of things – a character. I was one such penis.

Introspection remained as foreign a concept as regular bathing and the flavour of female mouths to this teen-microbe, and yet I was acutely aware of the difficulties you had faced throughout your young life.

Your parents divorced when you were but a young boy, which unfortunately complicated your home life; the absence of your older brother greatly exacerbated your mother’s stifling dependence on you to fulfil the role as both companion and confidant, draining your energies greatly in the process.

I knew of the difficulties you experienced with your father, both in his physical and emotional absence at crucial junctures, in addition to his unwillingness to assist with your future ambitions of designing your own fashion apparel which hurt you far more than you ever could display to any of us.

Life disappointed you greatly, Luciano.

10:00 – 18:00 at the corporate clothing store you worked at did not satisfy you on any level, although you maintained a brave persona for the most part.

Young women were an ever-present in your life, and it finally seemed that you had found someone to commit to, although the chasm between the relationship you spoke of and that which materialised before us appeared to be far greater than you would divulge.

Your mind was always elsewhere, revelling in better times in a much better place – namely the country of your birth, Italy, and not suburban Australia which grew more and more ugly, grey and disparate by the moment.

Like many others, I viewed your charming insecurities through the prism of juvenility, never once considering that these may have been fuelled by great internal anguish and deep disaffection with the world around you.

Tales of leaving this hell-hole, bolting a spoiler onto your automobile and your intended future conquests were readily dismissed and decried behind your back without any though whatsoever as to their origin and the future implications of such things, but revisiting these artefacts brings me violently to the realisation that I failed you as a friend.

Saturday 12/08/2006 began as any other for the vast majority of the barnacles encrusted upon this irrevocably marooned hull.

Birds shat and chirped with gay abandon, nuclear-families smiled in unison at the breakfast table as talkback radio padded-out the ambience of their sickening love, and I thusly dozed happily in my filthy bed – the aroma of pizza, budget lager and countless vigorous masturbations hanging in the stagnant air of my dormitory from the night before.

I am awoken suddenly by two familiar young men at my door, although they are as peculiar to me as the Mormons I barbecued on Saturday last due to the conspicuous absence of Prime-Meridian hours displayed on my clock-radio.

“What the fluff do they want?” grunts my multi-addled brain.

“Luch killed himself” are the first words I hear as the door opens, and these are met with an awkward smile and a request for elaboration due to the fact that April 1 is now somewhere in the ether and there is nothing funny about mornings unless they signify the end of a 68-hour crack-binge.

The young man before me explains that Luciano has taken his own life via automobile-asphyxiation the night before, and I am reduced to staring helplessly at the cement before me for what seems like an eternity before we agree to reconvene later that day.

My hazed state thankfully allows me to pass out once more for a few hours until the true horror of the day kicks me square in the mouth and I begin to liaise with a close friend and several other acquaintances, including visiting one such acquaintance at his place of employment with this news to which this action was deemed the ‘growing of balls’, not to mention one other whom made the sage observation that “Luch killed himself; that’s pretty bad”.

Thanks. For. That.

Mensa awaits.

The coming days are a toxic mixture of despair, confusion and speculation as we all ponder whether we bore mention in your suicide-note; the most devastating experience being a collective visit to your mother’s place with countless others and having nothing more to say than “I’m sorry” before scurrying away like a crab on meth.

The realisation of ones’ own mortality is the most technical roundhouse of all, and my very own split my hideous face at your viewing.

There you lay, an artificial calm etched on your face with trinkets from your brief life surrounding you in your coffin that offered absolutely no insight into your humanity or struggle.

Hollywood itself can only offer so much insight into tragedy before Adam Sandler forces his next piece of shit into the most malleable section of your oesophagus until this is joined by bespoke piece of shit’s sequel and you suffocate on the foul taste of cash, hence I was ill-prepared for this situation.

As I gazed down on you, gripped by the realisation that this was to be the last moment we shared, I desperately attempted to verbalise something meaningful as I gently stroked your hair, but could only grunt a trite platitude thanking you for being my chum.

A cold wooden pew cradled my posterior shortly thereafter whilst token guests stared blankly at token photographs from your time here, and then suddenly I found myself on the street with cigarette in hand watching you vanish forever in the caboose of a hearse – our relationship now consigned to memory and your bronzed body consigned to dust.

Reflecting on all of this several years later, I am further sickened by the revelation that I never truly knew you, and this blade is plunged further into my heart in reliving the fact that we weren't on speaking terms when you exited, stage left, due to a petty grievance.

As ever, so much is left unsaid, and so many regrets remain as I have relived countless scenarios in your company, wondering if different courses of action may have either prolonged or truncated your well-being along with those of others.

I will remain forever thankful for one particular evening when we did truly connect, if only upon this one occasion.

A typically boozy night concluded with you sitting shotgun in my 80’s wreck as I whisked you home like so many nights previous, although your usual braggadocio and mirth was curiously replaced by a solemn vulnerability as you discussed some of your worldly troubles, including the ruminations of an unusual intra-sexual experience that had left you feeling conflicted when in actuality it should have spiced your young life.

This was but one mysterious aspect of your composition as a person, and a secret you kept closely guarded much like the revelation that you were taking Anti-Depressants and were, by extension, in the midst of receiving counselling for considerable time which was all veiled by your exuberant persona.

Perspective is oftentimes a great ally in times of despair, hence I am always drawn to my own mother’s saying that one must always have something – ANYTHING – to look forward to in this sweltering fiend of a life, however minute.

It matters not if the tyre-factory binned you two weeks before Christmas, Bill – the football’s on tonight, there’s a sixer chilling in the fridge, your wife  is off to play Craps with Bethlyn, Shana and Kristy having left a pot-roast in the oven for you, and Wayne will be rapping on your chamber door at 1800 hours precisely.

Oh, you have cancer, Todd? Yeah, that does eat several bags of dicks, however think of all of the exciting drugs you’ll have access to, plus the fact that you can finally do what you like including quitting that god-awful job at long last and finally – FLUFFING FINALLY – telling every single amoeba that has caused you grief exactly how you feel about them without any reprisals whatsoever.

I’m sorry to hear that your girlfriend has been cheating on you with the buff lifeguard, Jose. I’m not sorry, however, about the masses of free-time you now have at your disposal, nor the sheer opportunity now thrust upon you to meet actual people, elope to another state/country/enclave, write that novel told from the perspective of your throbbing penis and what it means in socio-economic terms; not to mention the infinite LOL’s you can rejoice in when bespoke harlot miscarries Mr Buff’s bogan child, or otherwise fails in every other regard whilst you continue to blossom like the cheeky flower you are.

You had so much potential, Luciano.

If only you had elected to have a double Jack Daniel’s, or a seismic masturbation on that fateful night instead of reclining in your Toyota for one last time, you could now be one of the pricks we are subjected to on a reality-television programme, a greased back-up dancer for any popstar-du jour assaulting our ears and touring the world, or perhaps a cravat-wearing artiste frowning upon us all and our Philistine-ways, pausing only briefly to readjust your money-clip and sigh elegantly.

I saw you once in a dream – you were absolutely gorgeous and as happy as I prefer to remember you.

Our eyes met for what felt like an age, until finally I uttered “I’m sorry”.

A sweet smile spread across your luminous face, and I awoke to a serene morning; an intangible calm within.

Should I have this opportunity again, I will not dare to ask “why?”, nor “whom?” nor “how?” – I will simply embrace you and hope that I never wake again xx

‘Straya – The Myth, The Malaise, The Mirror

I often gaze upon my own anaemic skin and wonder how I came to be here, and indeed whether the premature-ejaculation that whisked me into the nightmares of so many was to be more effectively utilised in flavouring a pervert’s frappe, or even extinguishing the diminutive fires of a gutter-bound Zigaretten lest thine progeny wrap its filthy lips around its posterior en route to the first of many addictions.

Self-revulsion is an important component in the fabric of ones’ existence, fulfilling its duties herein as the violent harbinger of mortifying introspection and thus comparison with the other mammals absorbing your Vitamin D and depleting your ozone with methane-payloads at near-Bush Jr. levels.

Recounting this most absurd being as the bastard child of a weaponised cactus, the next misstep in this 496-step plan is of course to wallow in the acrid aroma of the scorched earth inclusively before, around and within my every indent : ‘Straya (nee Van Diemen’s Land and the malignant mass attached to it), and naturally its enclosed meat-pit comprised of every gutter-snipe whom escaped both incarceration and the ravages of both physical and moral hygiene.

I am acutely aware of your status as a “good global-citizen” and your classic tenure as an easily-patronised provincial backwater; the unassuming, inoffensive boy at the rear of this insidiously decaying classroom.

The truth is that I see you, ‘Straya.

Yes, I did notice the dense tattoo of the Southern Cross on your pasty shoulder – your patriotism and masculinity palpable indeed.

Yes, I have seen your bloated ‘Strayan sedan snorting along with its Detroit-sourced engine and transmission, and numerous other “foreign” components including the airbag that promises to spare the least stupid part of your face when that pole leaps out at you – an irony sadly lost on you and the hubris coursing through your veins.

Oh yes, I have been in the very thrall of the beating of your meaty fists against your pale chest as you recount “true-blue” sporting victories, cheap conquests and the cultured sensation of “chinning” that bloke down the Pokies in true “larrikin” spirit.

In fact, dear ‘Straya, I see you everywhere.

I see you concussed on countless suburban pavements on Friday night as two others just like you scowl and prepare to arbitrarily end your existence with boots manufactured for  $0.13 in some hell-hole outsourced by another "fair-dinkum" ‘Strayan company amidst the throng of acoustic-rock and belated sirens.

I see your suburban enclaves and the filth strewn across your lawn; I see you at the local shopping centre with your 17-year-old de-facto and your 3 children on a Tuesday afternoon; I see you in tabloid newspapers and on social networking sites venting your prejudices, obviously formed by your forebears and peers, and yet ingrained in your mind forever with no dissection or analysis; I see the glazed expression on your face when you are confronted with change, difference of opinion or creed or in fact any other alternative to that which you continue to believe defines you.

Most distressingly, ‘Straya, I see you in the mirror – my sinews ablaze with the knowledge that we are as inseparable as any other disease at the molecular level.

Being the product and ultimately by-product of one of your typical households - and most importantly the calcified remnants of a hollow afterbirth upon your cold linoleum - I am thrilled to half-mast in recounting unto you that I don’t identify with you at all in spite of our verbatim aesthetic and what you expect of me by my very birth-right.

This sick shell of mine belongs to you, and frankly you are welcome to it. The congealed marrow within, however, will drift in your ether forever more until such a time as your own egoism and myopia consumes you in entirety.

You are but a name, a flight-of-fancy for the thick; an out-dated ideal that grows increasingly irrelevant as your crust hardens and the few remaining survivors of your perpetual lobotomy awaken to this fact.

Dearest ‘Straya, I can see your scars and no amount of foundation will ever conceal them.

I saw you on that beach in December 2005; I saw you baying as one misguided, embarrassing entity raging against fellow ‘Strayans who had, and continue to have an equal claim to the soil their assailants most certainly did not sprout from – a contemporary lynch-mob fuelled by a pathetic hatred steeped in the notion that their status as immigrants was less pronounced, whilst Charles Darwin injected another ounce into his cornea from whichever nirvana his genius warranted.

I have seen, and continue to see how you disregard and marginalise your indigenous population, reinforcing historical stereotypes and incorporating double-standards and scathing stigmas to ensure that this status-quo is maintained and the down-beaten remain as such.

I still see you clinging desperately to your false deities and historical comforts and ignoring the ever-escalating death-rattle permeating the deafening silence in place of your accountability, but this is to be your Waterloo (and not in the multi-platinum Scandinavian sense).

You embarrass us all, ‘Straya - now brush your tooth and go to bed.

Love, and Other Tumours

“What is Love”?

This very question was posed by the visionary philosopher Haddaway en route to purchasing yet another yacht and the ensuing harem that was to feature at the numerous parties herewith; the dark lyrical undercurrent contained within the electronic throng dissipating simultaneously with armpit nectars beneath the neons of many a discotheque.

My very own Smash Hits ‘92 Compact Disc Record served as the vehicle for such existential probing, albeit from beneath a veil of surface imperfections that served to distort its message even further.

Our own early definitions of love are likely to consist of the confected nonsense peddled by studio executives keen to placate the masses and monopolise the share-market, manifesting in the form of inoffensive boy-meets-girl pap, with entertainment vices as the chief syringe thrusting at our collective jugular from the moment we detach from the breasts we will never gain nourishment from again.

It is only too easy to launch thine lobes into this lucrative abyss, in spite of the fact that mum (mom) and dad (dad) speak only in screams these days, have separate rooms and utilise your naïve shell as a conduit with which to communicate with each other in a display of passive-aggression unseen since the halcyon days of… actually, every day in our working lives.

And yet this flagrant saturation gathers apace - your mind now rendered a sieve being bombarded by Polaroids of grinning nuclear-families; John Sands greeting cards italicised to within an inch of decency proclaiming the most unreasonably saccharine prose, not to mention popular radio assaulting your defences with Boy Band filth masquerading as aural good-times (no, not the thing you do with your mouth).

It is, therefore, no wonder that we alight upon our adolescence mired in expectation and longing; an alleged soul-mate but one LOL/"Like"/gym-tense away and as an inevitable as the misery of another day.

Juvenile love, and, more correctly - lust - is the most awkward of all – a cacophony of desperate tongues, quivering hands and breathy platitudes sourced primarily from the most unthanked of role-models and supervisors: Television.

It is upon this tainted throne that we first allow the carcinogenic talons of commitment to inflict the first of many incisions upon our form, believing this to be the resting place of our ambitions until Brianna elopes with the captain of the Football/Mahjong/Croquet team – never to bat an eyelid in our direction again as we are simply “too nice” or something equally disquieting.

The hurt and embarrassment of such a termination can be felt for many moons, especially amidst the inescapable “banter” from supposed chums who are equally unaware that their very own Latitia is on the very cusp of experimenting with her "BFF" Caprice having finally tired of the overwhelming body-odour and violent tongue-bashings they have been victims of.

Perhaps the fortunate do walk among us, assimilating somehow with the most rarefied of creatures – one who can relate and hence one who is relatable.

It is often bellowed that opposites attract, however this is perplexing outside of the realm of quantum-physics and that of but one of many Scandinavian gifts - Lego.

In fact, an alleged trope of monogamous-bliss is that the less one has in common with another, the better; two immovable objects flung against each other violently and left to make good on the initial energy expended, however involuntary.

And yet popular music still speaks to us in tongues, coiled with the promise of easy prey whom prefer to focus only on the fleeting fickleness and not the deep chill of reality.

That love song never spoke of the eternal winter left behind after the initial warmth of unfamiliarity and adventure; the dulcet tones wafting from your FM crevice hiding the truth that dare not speak its name.

That ode to love never verbalised the evenings of piercing silence that followed another tenuous argument, nor the tears shed in private at having wasted not only days or weeks or even months, but rather years on a lost cause; an abandoned lot to call your very own.

“You Are The Wind Beneath My Wings” is of course infinitely more marketable than “You Are the Dull Ache at the Base of My Brain-Stem”, even if the latter would come to define the bulk of your tenure at the prickled wheel of this sinking vessel.

“I Will Aways Love You” will naturally appease the stake-holders to a far greater extent than “Who Are You, and What Have You Done With My Lover?”, even though the latter will more accurately depict the metamorphosis of a treasure to a terror.

Once more the almighty Dollar/Rupee/Kronor and its omnipresent brethren lays the foundation and lulls the unwary into a sense of emotional-cringe, even though the protagonists’ target (or antagonist, ultimately) is but an equally-scarred organism with similar pitfalls and insecurities, and is, in actuality, not the raven-haired, lingerie-clad messiah from the Dokken video upon which to typify your humanity and deal in absolutes unto.

Belief is fuelled in the abovementioned throughout ones’ formative years, and once this is ruthlessly exposed as the turd floating on the surface of this de-chlorinated pool nobody has cared to acknowledge or even sanitise, it is all-too-easy to flounce into the protracted arms of despair.

However, this need not be the atomic mass of the serrated steel currently aerating your veins, nor the fibre-optic cable facilitating your autoerotic-asphyxiation, for there is meaning amidst the illin’.

Great comfort can be had in knowing that one will almost certainly never actually meet their perfect match, nor travel to the Belarusian village they currently inhabit with extensions of their already-extended families, and nor will they ever truly obtain that which will satisfy the darkest of desires.

As with all intangibles, it is the agony of uncertainty and discontent that renders one fresh-of-face and facade and hence brimming with enthusiasm to face the next roasting at the hands of the peculiar sentient-being blackening the doorway and later refusing to change the channel.

It is in this vein, and somewhere abreast the many lights of our collective dialysis-machine that we must face the greatest unspoken truth – love isn’t love at all, but please do stay for the canapés.

Ebony – A Darkness So Complete

2005 marked a year that was not merely another crazed etching on the wall of sickness posing as this pitiful existence, nor can it be hastily dismissed like much of the confetti that serves to this very day as lodging for the maniac now rummaging in your sock-drawer.

Nostalgia cannot possibly mask the ugliness of finding oneself cast in a vile pantomime as a peddler of Western Evils ™ manufactured for substantially less than fuck-all by fellow human beings dealing with issues far more diverse and profound than juvenile slop such as the hurt caused by Shaela’s identical scarf or Zayden’s new spoiler.

Days of discounts passed like so many Phenylalanine-fuelled stools; the stench of an unrequited desire to be accepted mingling with bleached polyesters and synthetic rubbers; the gentle caress of death but a balaclava and glass shard away, and yet still somewhere beyond the already-drawn curtain on this forgotten stage.

“Hollow” is a term bandied about by pubescent Screamo-philes and their illegitimate spawn upon receiving their welfare entitlements; a term so abused and sullied as to become cliché like so much of this bastardised language.

And yet a pervading emptiness can wash over a being with neither favour nor forewarning, culminating in a profound sense of loss and alienation within that invariably cannot be interpreted, much less verbalised to what remains a frothing cesspool of abrasive judgement and loathing.

Without the benefit of hindsight it is simple to mistake good-time friends and passing acquaintances as an effective barometer of your worth as a pre-fossil; the fleeting joy of congregational interaction merely masking the sore absence of a meaningful counterpoint.

Quite how you blessed my attempt at a life remains a mystery to this day, and more importantly serves as an amusing affront to both medicine and morality, not to mention serving as the intricate crushed-velvet of a dinner story to thrill the masses.

What began as a moderate throbbing within my urinary tract was later confirmed as an actual immaculate conception, and with it the opportunity to rear a minion in my own image.

As you gestated inside my urethra, my dreams became flesh and my melancholy but a footnote in the annals of a story untold, yet reinvigorated.
For months I carried you beneath my leathers, proud of you already and eager to greet you with moist kisses and ultimately the placenta you sprang from at your inaugural hazing.

Your birth was as excruciating as it was liberating – my sweaty form left heaving on the bathroom floor amidst a mound of milk-bar porn and novel strains of gonorrhoea; a previously diminutive yet intact penis now forfeit as you tore it asunder with the vigour of a precocious sprite eager to joust with this new-found life.

As I gazed down at the mass of nerves, tendons and sex-jellies that comprised my genitals for so many years – but that which now lay discarded like abattoir off-cuts in this makeshift birth-chamber – I saw you for the first time.

A most unsettling and foreign sensation washed over my now simultaneously maternal and paternal shell; could this be…. love?

The lime of your eyes was as disarming as it was endearing, the sharpness of your teeth already both a threat and a delight, your jet-black pelt shimmering with the juices of an improbable afterbirth highlighting your nubile majesty and instilling a pride previously unfelt since a provincial swimming-carnival victory against invalids.

A connection beyond that of the dial-up was quickly established as your name passed my lips for the very first time – a name so evocative in its creation and elocution that you are still praised for it to this very day – and as I clutched you to my heaving breast for this inaugural occasion I felt your brave heart beating, a heart so pure one cannot help but embrace its rhythmic throng as the tribal-throb du jour.

Well-wishers and do-gooders miraculously recalled your fathers’ existence once more throughout your formative days, and you received these frequent incursions against your innocence with the good grace instilled by a higher-power that remains unwritten and hence uncompromised and disproved, even now.

Male bonding is frequently the butt of many a joke (especially with this added innuendo), however it is fair to state that our rapport was both instant and formidable. The chill of winter evenings dissipated expediently in your company, whilst traipsing through the front door after 9 rounds with despair did not begin or end with a chardonnay-enema, but rather another warm embrace a wife could never provide – even in rare times of contentment.

Left to your own devices you forged a fierce reputation as a scaler of monolithic gardenia and the prime antagonist for many of your brethren. Battles raged long into the evenings until such a time as your insatiable libido had carved its way through the anus of many an assailant and satiety was at hand.

In spite of this exuberance you have been lusted for by many, and continue to be to this very day.

After being left shattered by the self-conducted passing of a young friend, it was you who provided much comfort as the inevitable black descended and fuelled the inevitable onset of blame and despair.

The simple elegance of your company and warmth of persona proved a robust focal-point in this time of great confusion and loathing, and this is something I will be eternally grateful for.

In many ways you have been, and still remain the man I have long aspired to be – handsome, resourceful, cunning, athletic and yet always humble and approachable to an entire spectrum of creatures from lepers to lovers, kiddies to kippers, cads to caddies and everything in-between.

The prospect of consummating with a woman is now as redundant as it is morbidly disgusting, however you have transcended your own genus and have hence evolved into the strong male presence conspicuously absent in this thorned lasso commonly referred to as meaningful existence by escaped lunatics.

It is for this reason that I idolise you and shall continue to do so until this porcine flesh disintegrates to a backdrop of cackling and sighs of relief.

Heroes rarely remain as such, either through tabloid reports of peculiar sexual leanings involving moist cabbage and/or dried crustacea, and the inevitable sausage-hiding skulduggery which always stems from the loneliness of millions, and yet ultimate enslavement unto unscrupulous producers beholden to the asinine taste of the clientele beholden to whichever synapse quivers unto the current bass-line.

Word of your ultimately terminal illness arrived only after several medical mishaps unseen since the glory days of Medieval Malpractice, serialised from never to now on BBCABCNBCHBO, which mercifully provided great relief in the form of fuelling the angst even further.

The delicious combination of words such as “poor prognosis”, “cancer” and the ever-cheeky “end-stage FIV” facilitated a triple-pike into a sea of $2.00 Shiraz; tears manifesting randomly for the first time in years to remind me that I am not as ashen as I once thought.

It is a horrible thing to be helpless, although thankfully the levels of this desperation never manifested in the clasping of hands and closing of eyes in acquiescence to an alleged microbe praised in scriptures devoid of fanciful illustrations that would maximise its appeal and thus marketability to lucrative sponges everywhere.

The intrinsic value of seeking a second-opinion cannot be understated, whether this pertains to the fluorescent rash residing on your niblets, or the purists’ market value of your vintage sport-sock portfolio.

Discussing actual treatment options as opposed to which flavour of euthanasia you are partial to was as refreshing as it was educational; on the rare occasion one has the opportunity to liaise with a human being this must be seized upon like so many disputed territories.

Living “Day-by-Day” is no longer the domain of John Rambo or his countless victims (both eviscerated by gunfire and failing stocks), but rather this is a spike I shall mount with every available orifice and I shall continue to fellate the unwary before the stubble on my liars' chin reveals either my gender or species, undeniably before the food stamps are plucked from my tentacles in the hopes of raising suitable funds for both your fashion tastes and the uppers you require.

Having pawned my crystal-ball for a new set of spinning hubcaps I cannot foretell what the inevitably apocalyptic future holds, but please know this – I love you, I cherish you, and I will do everything possible for you until I am beaten to fluff by creditors and placed in an iron-lung without a lavatory or 5.1 surround.

As Sir Wesley Snipes once remarked before delivering yet another ax-kick to the face of decency and PG-13 syndication, “Always bet on black”.