Lost in the Mist

The city is gone, a ghost horizon.
Pale rain falls on the balding trees - misty drops wanting to be cold enough to be snow, but not quite making it.
Honking horns of panicked drivers, steady dribble in the downpipe, and a cold that crawls in seeking bones and the stealth theft of warmth.
I guess it's winter.

Pale Moon Rises

A pale moon rises.
The sunset is dusty like Martian earth.
Parrots scream of the end of day, from trees changing their faces to autumn colours.
The air chills windows and skin.
Lacklustre night descending.
Collar up and huddled in.
I have to work soon and don't want to.
So I'll keep watching the sky, and waiting for this nothing.

All That Glimmers

The wind hits my skin.
It's not icy, but cold enough to make me shiver.
The skinny cigarette rises to my lips, flares red, and I blow the plume out, watching it quickly merge into the panorama of rooves made black and grey by night.
Streetlights glow like hopeful gems, but they don't look magical today. All I can think when I see them is that those simple shining lamps are the only thing stopping humans turning back into animals.
And that is terrifying - probably why people don't gaze at streetlights and think about them.
Our other natures are best left unknown.

I scan the footpaths, I listen. Taggers love this time of night.
But even the roads are close to empty, like everyone has a secret, of why it's not a good night to be out in the world - a secret everyone knows but me.
I wish for more cars, I wish for none. A mind trying to distract itself from itself.

At least the city looks pretty. Almost bulging with sleek fat towers, red lights dancing ominously atop. From here the skyscrapers look like dark poles of LEDs. The cloud cover sits aloft, leaving a darkness below to contrast one version of night from another, to hug around the inky monoliths like bats wings.

There is no peace here. Just night.

Cacophony on Blue

Hundreds of white wings and open beaks, a sky of shrieks, like a gaggle of middle-age women spilling out of a restaurant with a bottle of wine in their bellies: a cockatoo panorama - a sky of glittering white, circling, and all landing on one small apartment building - concrete turned white-washed, not just by feathers, but no doubt, a flock of birdshit like pale, festive baubles hanging off a grey, bald Christmas pine.

Twinkle Twinkle Little Larceny

Burned rubber fills my nostrils, and the dark night fills my eyes.
Stars. There are stars up there.
Same as in Melbourne, but crisper, more dominant in the night sky.
I'm walking, and I don't know if it's safe, even though it's not that late.
I like being out of the streetlights on a rare evening stroll - away from eyes and intentions.
Just the sound of crickets rubbing their crickety legs together in their eternal plea for sex.
They're brown and small, and at first I thought they were cockroaches.
Recognising their legs and heads, I relaxed, and even felt affection for the blighters scuttling about the lit verandah.
They were pillaging the Salvos donations.
Scumbags.
I spotted two black PVC boots - my size.
Hrmm.
"I'm glad you aren't grabbing the whipper-snipper, Miss."
It was the guy in the white cap with the backpack.
I had sensed he was dodgy when he'd walked past before, but he'd disappeared and I thought my radar was off.
But I lived in Wodonga a long time.
And here he was again, scraping the edge of some pre-smoked cigarette on a bin lip.
"You're 'right," he said, seeing he'd startled me.
"Was just looking at the whipper-snipper."
Short of his words, he reminded me of an old Yorkship pauper, meaning yeh no harrm, Miss, just eyein' my ol' eye on that whipper-snipper there...
I hadn't even spotted the garden implement - just lots of drool-encrusted kids stuff and 1990s CD racks. A selection too sad to keep, and too sad to steal.
I bid him a good evening, because we were, after all, both thieves in the night.

Have You Seen My Sausage?

I was unsuccessful in my search for my son.
I typed in "sausage dog". I typed in "mini sausage dog". I typed in "miniature dachshund". And still none of the pictures sprayed before me portrayed my son - my dream doggy.
I miss him - my four-legged little frankfurter. My cuddly, cute, borderline-stolen dog.
Where are you? I need a picture to put as the wallpaper on my phone.
The best moments of my life were holding you... the worst was waking to see you were a pillow.
I know you're somewhere out there in Google image search... my son... my furry little sausage son.

If you see the dog from my dream, please call this number:

Christmas Cont'd

The miniature plastic Christmas tree droops in the hall. 

Tinsel and baubles glint distant daylight. Dust dims its foliage.
A 40-year-old Santa clings for his life to the very peak, as if a lumberjack has just called TIMBERRRR!

If I leave it there long enough, maybe it'll merge into the tub it sits on, the boots around it - the pile of miscellaneous CBF. 

Only one person can make me put it back in its drycleaning bag, back in its box, and try to make space in the spaceless closet for it again. 
A hero. A superhuman demi-god.

Marie Kondo.