From The Editors Issue 8: December 2011 You might have noticed that this issue is a little different to usual. That’s right, we’ve shrunken ourselves down to become an A5 ‘zine! It’s win-win for everyone, really; it makes it consider- ably easier on our poor wallets (yes, that’s right; our wallets - no funding here except our own!) and means it’s not quite as cumbersome for you to carry around, either. It also makes us stand out a little, and hey, any exposure is good exposure! Don’t make us eat those words. All of us here at Underground hope you’ve had a fantastic 2011, and of course we hope you have an even better 2012! We’ve got great big plans for 2012, and we all hope you’re a part of it. The Blind Will Hear It Coming, The Deaf Will See Its Shroud The blind will hear it coming, The dog will bite the hand that feeds, And the deaf will see its shroud; The mother spurn the young; The lame will feel the earthquake Each will seek to kill his foes As its feet fall on the ground. Before their stones are slung. The wise will know its nature, Death will make its visage known, And the quick will run away; Plague will take its lot; The blessed will be risen, War will pick the owners While the damned will have to stay. Of what’s not begun to rot. The frightened will be bargained with, And all who die will rise again, The pious, overcome; To stumble through the day. The unrepentant will be left For Heaven’s gates have shut at last; To scheme, and think they’ve won. The damned are here to stay. The voyeurs will be stricken blind, The politicians mute; Those who once knew certainty Will stand irresolute. Tom is a writer of literally no renown, his works unread by most and unpublished to the letter. He continues to lie in wait for a moment in which opportunity and inspiration come together to catapult him into commercial and critical acclaim. Till then, he lives in Perth in the general vicinity of his girlfriend. Lockjaw and Rabies and Bananas This is what it feels like. Like a rubber band squeezing your heart and your mind, pulling them together, forcing them to move, to collide at such high speeds that they will surely explode. It feels like elastic pressure so strong that you can’t fight back. And you shout at your thoughts to stop thinking. You think of your failures. That you’ll never make it to the moon, and you’ll never be good at Algebra, and if you got teta- nus you probably wouldn’t know it until your jaw locked shut, and then what would you do with all those words you hadn’t yet spoken? You’d have to swallow them, and where would they go? After all, you’re trying to lose weight. The last thing you need are more things to swallow. Unless your jaw is locked shut, in which case you would probably welcome whatever sort of calories you could find - even empty ones. And for a second, all of that worked. You were distracted. And then it comes rushing back: the panic, the palpitations, the muscle jumping under your eye. Jumping rope un- der your left eye. Remember when you saw the family in the park trying to do Double Dutch? Remember how the mother and father and son and daughter all stood, ready to jump together, but the mother just couldn’t lift her feet high enough off the ground. And the father kept turning around and saying it was okay, although the look on his face said something quite and altogether different? And there, it worked again. Distracted. And the panic hits you like a semi. Your mind thinks, where am I going to go? And it hits the wall of I Don’t Know, and so your mind picks up the thought again and hurls it against the wall over and over and over until, if you don’t think of something else, the thought will burst out of your mind and you’ll be sitting in a chair at your desk with lockjaw and a hole in your head and a twitching eye. So you think about rabies. Rabies? Remember when you were little and you had an in- flatable pool? Remember when you went outside one day and there were raccoon prints in the bottom of the pool? Because they always wash their food, your mother said, raccoons are very clean. But never go near them. They carry rabies. And for some reason, you thought of a raccoon carefully cleaning a banana in your inflatable pool. Where are you going to go? I Don’t Know. Where are you going to go? I Don’t Know. Where are you going to go? I Don’t Know. Bananas. Bananas are on your diet. And you push your chair away from your desk and will your eye to stop playing Double Dutch because you think you might be going crazy and you had better go eat the banana before you step on a rusty nail and your jaw locks shut and you’re forced to swallow your words. It’s Not Equal Iniquitous life is breaking me again And they live in an 8 bedroom mansion The system I cannot face Made from children’s skulls Capitalism is a disgrace How can they not give in Slavery for a home As the youth do in despair Yet better than an African starvation And take their lives Or a Chinese abduction They are far too rich I’m left alone with an American suicide And most too poor Our needs are never met Yet I can bear it now This horror they create of mass drunkenness So I write Ignorance to what we do in our silly jobs And the good people And we are forced into it The ones that help No choices The nurses All to die one day The community workers And pass on our wealth Thirty something years of service If we have any All for a modest home And CEO’s sip virgin’s blood As a forest nears its end THIS TIME IN UNDERGROUND... The Blind Will Hear It Coming 1 Poetry Lockjaw and Rabies and Bananas 2 Prose It’s Not Equal 3 Poetry Sprung 4 - 5 Poetry Obsidian Skyline 6 - 11 Prose Untitled 11 Poetry Made in the Amazons, Not in China 12 - 15 Prose Corky 16 - 19 Prose Ocean 20 Poetry Sprung At war, pretty vacant Pinned down at my station I am transfixed by the wood grain The veneer Betwixt mouse & knuckle… Then notice the time And then the date – Time on the wall, Date on the cascading desk calendar – The daily quote etched below the numerical It’s Sigmund Freud: “Flowers are restful to look at. They have Neither emotions nor conflicts.” This makes me think of DH Lawrence’s Bavarian Gentians & almost simultaneously of a blue plastic shopping bag Caught in a ghost gum I saw on my break In the New World car-park. It is Spring! And I am infected at root With ennui. Unlike Freud & his Bavarian Gentians... Hang on, isn’t that DH Lawrence? Whomever Unlike those last century types I do not a) have a special relationship with flowers b) feel the subcutaneous sap rising in interconnectedness I have no strange communion it seems With flower, tree, beast, nature. They yield no essence to me & yet…what do I see? Only the new material century consumptive way – The fatal mark of the human ego – That now knows better! Yet still without fourth thought Let alone second Inserts electronic towers on top of sand dunes Ravaging melaleuca & fragile tuart And polluting in total The deeper life of place?? Ostensibly, insanely So we can enjoy better connection!? My complacent part in this – The complicit ego – That thinks & perceives & writes only Of this very serious loss Perhaps the greatest loss possible?? Of the real disconnect that's occurring And of a plastic shopping bag In a supermarket car-park Stuck in a friggin’ tree!? I feel nothing…really. I do nothing. I am alone but I fear Not in this regard. Perceptions blocked It’s back to the date, the clock And time to knock off Another day, another dollar! Tomorrow’s quote (again from last century): “There is no such thing as society” Hi fucking ho! Obsidian Skyline Ocean ripples pass over cold, olive skin. Bubbles float at the surface—the sun’s glow is dulled from the darkened blue stream. He’s drowning, he knows. Clenching contin- ues to punish his lungs, hungry for breath. His hands push against the glassy fold of water holding him down, but the force is too strong. A scream escapes his lips, but no one can hear him. Beep, beep, beep, beep… He punches through. Gasping for air. He’s free. He’s alive. He’s won. Beep, beep, beep, beep… Kez snapped his eyes open and his entire body jerked skywards from where he lay in bed. His eyes scanned over the room, dark except for a few white rays of sun- light tattooing the walls in strips. He ran his hands over his face, damp sweat dotting his forehead; black strands of hair adhered uncomfortably. His feet sunk into the carpet as he began to stand, balance becoming a daily issue.