Brendan Mackie

Gravity

middle of my stomach, still asleep, caffeine not working, no breakfast sorta feeling,
staring down a well, sc-sc-screaming down hearing only echoes bounce up while
wishes, coins and tears dr-drip down without a sound.
It's like: sudden calculation of all the variables and the constants in your
life and seeing that everything adds to nothing, not people, not thoughts,
not even numbers.
A windswept sunny day feeling.
A too tired, eyes closed can't get to sleep have to stay up sorta feeling.
Keep keep walking or else you won't stop keep on walking now, one foot is
raised then lands in front of the other it's no effort needed, it's no thought
spent, it's all just simple mathematics, just gravity.
It's this sudden burst of scared, know i'm gonna puke, writing with stolen
pen and stolen paper sorta feeling.
It's like: keep keep on going, the pen's path is walking across the page,
no thought involved. It's just the pen falling down: gravity, gravity, gravity
It's like having to get out of bed in the morning right away or else you'll
be late for (work, school, boss/teacher yelling, late for nothing 'cause you're
a bludger all lying in bed like it's summer vacation. You're late for rules,
late for reality, late for discipline, late for handcuffs and chains made
of money and tele-television)
It's drinking a cup of tea then puking sorta feeling.
The world cannot work in perfect harmony sorta feeling.
Stare down a cliff and feel the ground pull surround you, you feel the pull
of so much mass just needing to be near you, you're staring down a cliff and
feel
gr-
gr-
gravity pull you down.
It's like:
can't stop because the end is just beginning for everything else,
can't stop because we're all just gonna die someday and we are nothing but
ants milling, dancing, vibrating, consuming. Eat, eat
it's like: eat eat eat you must. you must draw the world into your belly.
All matter joins together it's a simple fact of gravity.
It's like a tree grows up out of the ground and stays, erect, defying the
smooth sphere of the earth until it dies and the laws of physical reality
(gravity) pull it back down.
It's like you hold a ball and drop it just to watch it fall.
It's like you raise yourself out of bed each morning only to fall asleep again
at night every day until one day you fall asleep and can never get back up.
It's inevitable.
It's like one moment I'm up and can't see the ground but I'm sure soon I'll
have to come crashing back down because it's just density calling me.
Don't worry about me anymore,
it's just gravity. It's just gravity,
pushing me down,
into the warmth of my bed
the silence of my head.

My Generation

I see my generation like a flock of flustered mutton,
following questionless the parade of white wool and black hoofs in front of
them, the crowd behind,
taking step step step each hoof falling on well walked earth.
I've seen our rebellion talked about in the boardrooms of marketers, I've
seen our rage focus-grouped and dissected at the top of perfect white office
buildings, I've seen our freedom imprisoned underneath a CD case and suffocated
in shrink wrap.
I've seen books go yellow and unread.
I've seen the brilliant minds too scared to make a sound, light bright and
burn their brilliance. I've seen us hiding in corners, crying. I've seen us
huddling in school chairs, bad postured, uninspired, and then I've seen us
with our friends, bored.
I've walked the path that was made for me and I'm enraged because now that
I am so far down it I cannot turn back I find that I am not really meant for
this path, for any path.
I have seen my freedom sold for comfort.
I've seen me beaten with books so I would study, I've cried days for my future
years ahead.
I was first unpopular and diligent, then I thought I'd be popular and was
lazy, now I am alone and hopeless.
I have seen the television
and I've heard it tell me how to live.
I've seen people packed unwilling into school; I've seen us squirm with such
contact with each other. I have seen the kingdom of heaven in designer brand
labels humming Tool revolutionary, shedding money, sweat and time over manufactured,
packaged revolt.
I have seen flourecents flicker, and in them dreams.
I have been pounded into a mould and I haven't fit. And I've curled myself
into a ball so I could fit. I've starved myself. I have purged vomit from
my system with alcohol, I've slit my wrists and bled myself but I've never
fit. And I am meant to believe that this is my fault.
I've had friends and I've had nothing. I've had lovers and I've had nothing.
And in that nothing I have watched television.
I have seen numinous beauty, I have seen god at a party once, high on some
chemical poison, I have seen angels bathing in yellow street lights and I
have seen the bible scratched onto desks, spraypainted, written on a tear
of forgotten paper.
I have seen hell and it is in high school.
I have seen demons walking on the street acting like people. Jealous, the
people start to act like them.
I've sneaked into centerlink with a booklet under my arm and shrinked to the
photocopiers amid junkies and the lazy and I've copied lines of poetry there
instead of my resume and they kicked me out. I've snuk back in again and they've
kicked me out. I've had friends sneak in for me and somehow, they too were
kicked out.
I've lied and said that I have crossed our nation's capital.
I have hated the ones who loved me and the ones I've loved have looked upon
me like a distraction, an annoying bug, have judged me to be but a bag of
flesh devoid of feelings.
I have fallen in love like Romeo and Juliet, my love escaping boyfriend, parents
and police to be in my arms. We have been alone, always but always together.
And I was sure that was love and the world was right and that nothing could
ever be wrong again. But then Juliet realized I too was not like her and that
it was never love.
I have cried.
I have cried in Woden. I have cried in Tuggeranong. I have cried in civic.
I have cried crashed on the floor of my school. I have cried on an airplane.
I have cried in Fadden, in Downer, in Hacket. I have cried on my way home
from Hope street. I have cried as I struggle to sink into sleep.
I see the same things day after day after day after day and I want to scream
and break everyone out except that I have nothing to scream and no voice to
scream with.
I have read Ginsburg to girls I loved in coffeeshops.
I have spread poetry to the fools who need it the most.
I have bought drugs with charity money, got high going hungry.
I've watched 14-year old girls snort speed off of a mirror in an unlit room
on New Year's eve in some flats high in public housing.
I have been in civic, my one refuge. And then I have seen civic poisoned by
my once perfect love.
I have screamed on the radio but no one's listened.
I have e-mailed love to girls with too much.
I have seen my time dwindle, dwindle away, hiding from the pain that rocks
my body.
My decisions have all been made, my bags packed, my world cut short because
of stupid life.
I have tried to slit my wrists.
I have screamed to everyone how this is not the way but no one's listened
because it's so simple. It is the way.
I have been tired and slept on sofas, on benches, on the floor.
I hated life then loved it.
I have been shown that friendship is one great lie.
And then I have searched the streets for friendship as if it were a magic
bullet that could kill all my problems that my loneliness would be filled,
that I would know what to say and what to do and what to feel like besides
this
and then I spit in the faces of my friends because they are nothing.
So I trap myself inside, working, marking, filling my brain.
I have learned more in three days with my people in Newcastle than I have
in an entire year of school.
I have learnt more from books than I have from television.
I have leant more from friends than I have from parents.
So I write it all down.
I see the tip of a blur of my pen dash across the page, taking breaths and
leaps and scratching, scrawling. I see white paper poisoned by a point of
flowing black.
And that's all I see.
I see my generation, lined up like cattle, waiting, waiting to die.

Beveridge, Judith
Bleakley, Kathleen
Boyd, Allan
Brennan, Michael
Burns, Joanne
Cameron, Lainie
Cassidy, Bonnie
Chang, Jessica
Clarke, John
Cooke, Stuart
Crane, Michael
Dechian, Sonja
Doran, Ben
Doupe, Juliana
Drewitt, Andy
Dyson, Mia
Elson, Gerard
Ferney, Liam
Garrard, Phillipa
Gibian, Jane
Greagen, Clint
Hawkins, Brian
Hickey, Kelly-Lee
Hier, Michael
Higgs, Ashley
Jelfs, Bradley
Jenkins, Gareth
Johnson, Heather Taylor
Jones, Jill
Kefala, Antigone
Keily, Tom
Knox, Elena
Locke, Kate
Lowe, Justin
Mackie, Brendan
Mann, Paddy
Messiah, Eytan
Minter, Peter
Mitchell, Paul
Morganics
Narkiewicz, Katrine
Nicholson, Anna Kerdijk
Nixon, Jenni
Oliver, Stephen
Paine, Juliet
Prater, David
Purchess, Andew
Robbins, Rachel
Scott, Ryan
Smart, Steve
Sinclair, Tim
Sometimes, Alicia
Stavanger, David
Stuart, James
Tsaloumas, Dimitris
Walter, Lesley
Webster, Ben
West, John
Westbury, Deb
Wicks, Les
Winch, Ben