I

 

Tonite I walked out of my beige shoebox, retina-burnt eyes blinking red like EXIT—

walked out of my desk lit like interrogation cell! five years of life on retainer! a body held in escrow!

past corridors & ceilings & tiles whispering deadlines deadlines in the voice of my dying mother!

past posters screaming MINDFULNESS! WELLBEING! a jury-rigged morality stapled to the drywall of the Tomb!

O this Gothic cathedral of bureaucracy! where saints are xeroxed in triplicate and filed in Hell!

past Barry Drive & the arterial Avenue—streets rinsed in LED pallor under a dead TV-screen sky!

CCTV blinking like little sexless gods masturbating to our meaningless motions!

past bins fat with refuse of thought! glass office edifices with smashed teeth grinning!

past scooters bleeding battery acid on the curb like shot horses in a forgotten Western!

past cafés funded by banks that eat morals for breakfast and shit compliance at high noon!

I crossed on the green man—hurry—mechanical Mashiach! Even He controls me!

& in that flicker-traffic light’s hesitation—

I saw the bricks breathe! I saw the concrete cathedral’s slow return to sand!

I saw trauma-time dilate like waste in the vein, a slow syringe of now-now-now!

Then a bus groan past wrapped in the face of a HOT-SHOT LAWYER™:

MERCY-AT-SALE! NO WIN NO FEE! AS-IS! T&CS APPLY & DENY! SUBJECT TO CHANGE!

YOU WAIVE—NO, WE RESERVE—THE RIGHT TO FEEL—THE RIGHT TO BE—

Even He controls me!

Oṃ—the bus’s roar is mantra! Āḥ—the lawyer’s grin is mudra!

Hūṃ—even this body, these retina burnt by screens—a rental! a skandha-shell!

& I laughed: the green man’s signal was never freedom—

only the universe winking at itself through my cell-block window!

 

II

 

I walked past the chemist with barred windows selling Sleep in tiny plastic bottles!

past the Bottle-O selling Oblivion like a manic suburban religion!

past speakeasies cram-full of penitents confessing their slave-wages into pints!

past the kebab shop spinning its greasy helix of death & hunger!

& the pavement glittered with glass, gum, gilt-edged Guarantees,

& old geezers wheezing laughter at the Void’s good joke, their teeth stained with tobacco & time!

I was thinking—thinking—

about the blood spilled out from the crack of dawn’s cold egg:

thinking—is this city angelic yet? When will you be angelic?

When will you take off your brutalist clothes of concrete? Your brassiere of Police Tape?

When will you be worthy of your million dead stars?

 

III

 

And then—

A boy stepped close

white sneakers impossibly white

arm slid friendly around my neck a noose of silk—

for half a second I thought queer grace or beatific embrace—

then pressure sudden & surgical, bone on bone,

& knuckle or metal or the very Idea of Metal

pressed against my skull where Whitman sang,

& other hands arrived—young, practiced, bored as clerks—

took my arms, & I went down,

& as I went down, the breath was all—please breathe—

then Oṃ rose unbidden from the spine’s old knowing,

a syllable older than trauma, older than property,

Āḥ—the pressure on my throat—the throat’s own answer!

Hūṃ—the knuckle at my skull—the skull’s own thunder!

& I saw these hands are reaching for themselves

through the bad dream of separation!

These hungry faces are my face reflected 

Oṃ Āḥ Hūṃ—the sound of two hands clapping, then one hand taking,

then no hands, only touching, only the suchness of being touched!

“What’ve you got?”

“Nothing,” I said—

& meant:

nothing liquid,

nothing solid,

nothing leveraged,

nothing that compounds interest in the Bank of Heaven.

Only this body! this breath! this headache of Stars!

They sifted my pockets with sacramental care—

one checked my watch—cheap but ticking eternal seconds!

another tracing my ankle—knot of old bone where I traded flight for this fall!

my wallet screamed its guts out:

ID—this self I’ve been composing! this face molten from the heat of study!

bank card hollowed by Rent—the Great Mammon! 

library pass folded & refolded—prayer for quiet! 

polaroid of the ex—maybe now she is happy! 

a folded note quoting Whitman—I am large, I contain multitudes—

apparently non-transferable,

nothing worth taking but the taking itself.

 

IV

 

& as they melted back into the city’s white noise & bloodstream

I saw them clearly for a moment—no muggers, no thieves,

but hungry ghosts throats pinprick-thin, bellies swollen with wanting,

circling the neon gutor of the 24-hour convenience store.

They grasp at wallets that empty as they touch.

O you pretas of the pavement! When will your thirst be quenched?

When will you see that what you reach for

is already reaching back—

open-handed, empty-handed,

the only hand there is?

I lay there briefly feeling the dirt, the grammar of grime,

feeling time dilate in all its wasteful glory, frantic jazz sax solo in the skull!

I stood up, walked home addressing the city in the second person singular:

America or your offshore subsidiary! Why are your libraries full of tears?

Why do you teach us Justice by day and Procedure by night?

Why do your statues stare blind while your children steal my shoes?

Why are you sexless and mute when the wind howls through your canyon streets?

I am talking to myself again.

& still—still—a tender Oṃ leaked through the halo ego-hole sung in my skull!

still I smiled a bloody toothless smile, a Ginsberg Moloch-grin on the curb of the world!

& joy filled my heart like a bad joke from God, a cosmic giggle!

Where are we going, Whitman? I walk and the city walks in me!

I am the glass, the gum, the geezers, the cop, the thief!

I am large, I contain multitudes—& they are rioting in the parliament of my chest!

I sing to the boy with white sneakers! to the ex smiling in her Eden!

to the thought of dying unleveraged! to the hot-shot lawyer on the bus!

to the bin fat with refuse! to the unblinking CCTV God!

& I do not stop. I RESERVE THE RIGHT TO BE UNBORN.

I COMPOUND INTEREST IN THE BANK OF EMPTINESS.

I AM A HEADACHE OF STARS.

& for the boy with white-sneakers—may he find what he sought.

& for the ex smiling in her Eden—may her happiness be unconditioned.

& for the thought of dying unleveraged—may all beings die so free.

& for the hot-shot lawyer on the bus—may he argue his own case for awakening.

& for the bin fat with refuse—may it be the universe vomiting forth worlds.

& for the unblinking CCTV god—may its single eye at last look inward.

& for me, walking home, ankle bruised, watch gone, heart absurdly full—may I be a headache for all Buddhas,

a pebble in the shoe of every Bodhisattva,

a street-level nuisance to liberation itself—

Because where else is Nirvana but here, 

in the belly of the beast?

 

Canberra, 2026 / On the Street, forever in its belly.