Mexel eats a rice cracker. Tony gestures for one with squiggly fingers across the decking. Mexel throws one like a frisbee. It is instantly picked up by the wind and carried over the neighbours fence. Tony doesn’t look up from his four-piece hammer drill set. The garden’s lawn is patching yellow vanilla in the weeks since rain. Mexel has mixed the plain, caramel, and salt ‘n’ vinegar rice crackers in the same tube. Tony stays out of them this way. He doesn’t have the psyche for that kind of Russian roulette. The backyard hangs open at the bottom, spilling out into the local park behind the house. Mexel watches the baby swings alternate like pistons in the distance. Tony basks in the clicky precision as he assembles his drill like a sniper rifle. The back fence had mysteriously burned down in the night. They blame each other. Mexel blames the cheap flammable paint Tony bought at the carboot by the train tracks. Tony blames the swarms of butts Mexel flicks as catherine wheels from his top window past 11. They both know that only one of them cares enough to fix it.
Still Green Waves
Every muscle aches, ones I didn’t know I had Beams across each palm where the bare handle sunk in I flipped out at the machine, barged it past points it seized Pushed and threw my might against it’s primitive, stubborn controls The grass outside is a mess You can’t say it’s not cut But you can’t say it’s better The miniature meadow with warm hued flowers bobbing on still green waves Tall weeds, made grand amongst their peers Shed their stigma, they aren’t ashamed here Grasshoppers in camouflage and lost ladybirds An eyeless striped caterpillar climbs to the peak of a bowing blade Curls up to the sky, extending to stretch, basking in the sunlight I cut it all down Not cleanly, not gracefully Arduous and ugly, thrashing and hacking I only hope this gave them all time to flee To feel the rumble of the end and take one last look at their home To feel lucky to have absorbed some measly beauty in such a short life It will grow back soon enough for me, a creaking pain to tend to But for them it will never exist again
Quit Vision 