4 Drinks at The Old Bar

Blood, Sweat and Beers

The Pale Surgeon

Cold swamp water, like a bathtub where the diseases meet for bukkake parties.
She is splashing. Skirts low, a floundering mermaid cursed with legs, soon to be hogtied and dipped down and down again.
I can hear the mongrel kicking at the walls of her womb.
Unnatural. What is that smell? Over the sulphur burbles and fetid whispers, what wonders are fettered within this awful apparition of awkward womanhood?
Fecund and freezing.
My claws clack.
My claws clap.
My claws clack, clap and splash.
My claws glisten.
The sheers are calling, but first: a syringe.
Booming, my eyestalks achieve the pinhole focus necessary for this work.
The ants are running off my carapace in silk black rivulets, giving up tiny deaths when they don’t make it to their leaf galleons, fleeing this terrible scene.
They’ve seen it all before.
Check the bracken stirrups and mangrove cells – a sweet hell of claws and gumbo, a pot for the placenta, possibly and what to do with her skin?
The slip-off trade is good down here and I heard that old Guichard is looking for something to fuck, so maybe if I dip an old slattern into this one’s facade, well, the sonofabitch can really get to grips.
Darling, says I. Darling, you look unabashedly a’feared, what say you let your antlers hang out, I can cover where the ache forms.
She moans.
Tell me where it hurts. What if I do this?
What about this?
And this?
How about here?
And here?
She coughs twice and the viscous worms dribble like latter day ‘aints down the breasts of Saint Barbara.
Get the golden sword and prepare my sheers.
Where are the forceps? What the fuck do you mean we only have wire and cat guts?
At least tell me we have that unicorn horn I was saving.
Ah, yes.
Spirals without end and the dust walls crumble. I can hear it howling.
Harmonies.
A gentle tap on my shoulder.
I will brook no interruptions!
A second. Less gentle. My mandibles clack clatter snap.
Sir, you raise my consternation to the very ires that bale in hell!
I come apart at the joint where my tail slithers into hip level vertebrate, upper torso twisting backwards while my hard cock, still sleeved in unicorn horn and tied tight with violin strings reaches it’s opus.
His monocle has misted with the heat of rage and gloved hands want vengeance for the soiled finery, my ichor and blood mixing and matting with his fur.
Weirdly, my lower body moves of it’s own accord – drowning ants jeer at my comeuppance.
Then he pulls off my head.

4 Drinks In Newtown

Art By The Handsome James Grim

The Future Wolf

They said make it cold and you’ll start breathing, if that’s what you want to do.
They asked me if I was certain when I said yes, yes, I would like to start breathing.
They told me that it’s not good, not good to be a breathing wolf in a blue cradle.
By now I was breathing and went straight for their throats, three heads at once worrying and tearing and the sanguine ruin of the nursery screamed.
Everything reeked of terror: piss and shit and copper, burning hot engines rumbling in my gut.
The afternoon daggered my eyes while I loped from shade to shade.
I wondered if they would follow me come nightfall.
Long day, a very long day and the hills frowned about the lazy sunset, slow at it’s work, chuckling purple and orange, teasing the moon.
Headed to the river.
The rapids were rough, the drowned spirits playful and drunk on spite.
I kicked and bit and growled.
Showed tooth and claw.
On a muddy bank I found a hollow, a giant sow and six piglets.
She squealed as her neck snapped and her udders tasted of secrets.
I drowned the children.
I opened up the mother and slept.
Dreamt of home.
That night, the dead men found me, sleeping in the sow skin.
They said that they were dead and could not die.
I pulled off their hands with my teeth and tasted the future.
They said they knew me.
They said I could lead, or they would stop my breathing.
Tough choices made in the creaking darkness, witnessed by crickets and spooks.
We left before dawn and gathered the piglets about us, sad, dripping ghosts.
Their mother would not come willingly so I wore her as a cloak, shameful and heavy.
Somewhere cold and quiet, they said.
I asked them if they wanted to start breathing and they clapped their hands, laughed.
There was howling in the trees and it was not me.
These nights, they last forever and the years whirl like drunks.
At dawn, we chanced upon a dieing camp fire.
Tethered to a vast willow was a pale horse, so gaunt as to not be worth the killing.
A young woman, mayhap eighteen years old lay by the embers, covered in soot with a pair of crows suckling from her ashen breasts.
They said do it.
She tasted much as the sow and the crows corked murder at me from the eves.
They will have your eyes, said the dead men.
I bit at their cocks and bellies and spat future in the dirt.
The horse stood on it’s hind legs, ribs cracking under skin and a tremendous serpent spilled forth.
They said listen.
We talked long into the morning and the snake bit me thrice, each time letting me kiss it’s privates afterwards.
That afternoon, I slept.
I haven’t woken.

4 Drink Minimum Tour – May

Thu May 12 The Patch Wollongong, NSW w/Mother & Son + guests
Fri May 13 Producers Bar, Adelaide, SA w/ God God Dammit Dammit and Silent Duck
Sat May 14 Old Bar Melbourne, VIC w/ The Toot Toot Toots, God God Dammit Dammit and King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard
Sun May 15 Cherry Lounge Melbourne, VIC w/ God God Dammit Dammit and The Yard Apes
Thu May 19 Phoenix Canberra, ACT w/ Super Best Friends and The Rumjacks
Fri May 20 2011 The Great Northern Newcastle, NSW w/The Good Ship
Sat May 21 2011 The Vanguard Newtown, NSW w/ The Good Ship and Kira Puru & The Bruise
Fri May 27 The Loft Gold Coast QLD w/The Good Ship
Sat May 28 Ric’s Brisbane QLD w/Transvaal Diamond Syndicate.
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