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<h3>The Forge</h3>The first rule was simple: fit in or die. Not die in the Shakespeare sense. Die in the corridor. Die in the pause after your name. Die under the stare of older boys who had mistaken puberty for rank and wore authority like a rash.I arrived small. That is where these stories begin. Small blazer, small trunk, small voice, name stitched into shirts by hands not mine, the smell of home folded into everything for about three days, until the dormitory got to it with sweat, floor polish, wet towels and the democracy of other people’s socks.The place was the eighties, which meant bad carpet, brown furniture, a television that glowed like a state religion, and adults who looked as if they had been issued by a department no one much trusted.The boarding house master drank. Not with flair. Just enough to make discipline come in and out of focus. The matron believed in Panadol the way monks believed in relics. Broken leg, fever, concussion, plague, she would study you with bureaucratic pity and slide two tablets across the counter as though pain were largely a matter of attitude.Then there was Willamina. Cook, quartermaster, stern keeper of the Sunday night catastrophe. She could produce a meal that made hunger question its vocation. Mash rose from her kitchen with the adhesive properties of light industry. Boys threw it at the dining hall ceiling and a week later it still hung there like a weather system refusing to move on. The meat had a tired look. The gravy carried old grievances. You ate because youth can digest almost anything, including policy.Morning began with porridge, which arrived not as food but as a sentence. Grey, steaming, inevitable. You swallowed it under portraits of men who had probably called hardship character while someone else buttered their toast.Then the sprint to the showers. That was its own theology. Move early or be baptised in cold water sharp enough to make a tenor of you. A hundred boys learning velocity, towel over shoulder, soap in hand, running not towards cleanliness so much as away from the Antarctic.The seniors had rites for our improvement. Hold encyclopaedias in the corridor until your arms shook with knowledge. Scrub the black marks off the gym floor until your knees understood obedience. Write out pages from the dictionary as if English itself were the instrument of reform. Gargle soap. Gargle shampoo. Say thank you. Tradition, they called it. The nation has always loved a cruel thing once it has been repeated.You learned quickly. That is the boast and the wound. You learned when laughter was camouflage. You learned to keep your face from volunteering. You learned that the room was a weather map and weakness travelled fast. You learned that a nickname could be a crown, a knife, or both by lunch.No one kept his Christian name for long. A stumble, a haircut, one bad afternoon, and the school rebaptised you for years.There was the tyranny of the telephone. One line, too many boys, a queue of homesickness dressed as patience. You waited with coins in your palm while the house listened sideways. No privacy. No mercy. Just your mother’s voice arriving thin through static, and twenty boys behind you hearing every word, still reaching back.Study happened somewhere in theory. In memory there are books, yes, but more often bells, bruises, the smell of liniment, the racket before lights-out, the scrape of chairs, the low parliament of boys negotiating status with insults, fists, borrowed cigarettes and improbable lies. Education was in there somewhere, but the school was better at making reflexes.Sport ruled. There was always some oval, some whistle, some larger boy bearing down with evangelical purpose. You learned to tackle or to simulate it well. You learned to rise quickly because visible pain drew commentary. You learned that loyalty among boys rarely arrived in language fit for greeting cards. It came as a shove into line, a hand on the back, a punch thrown on your behalf, a silence kept.Sneaking out after lights-out with shoes in hand and hearts carrying on, over a fence, down a path, towards the beach or a party or simply away. Smoking behind walls that knew our names. Drinking whatever could be found, which in those years was often warm, terrible, and accepted without philosophical complaint.The beach was another country. Sand in the cuffs, rank washed out to salt, boys again for an hour, before the bell took us back.And then Countdown with Molly Meldrum, songs happening to other people, modernity in the wrong room.Years passed with that steady pressure. No single grand event. Just repetition, which is the old craftsman. Porridge. Coffee. Too much coffee. Cold showers missed by seconds. Mash on the ceiling. Panadol for everything short of decapitation. Nicknames shouted across the quadrangle. Gym floors. Dictionaries. Encyclopaedias. Smoke. Salt. Sport. A master half-cut and a house half-raised by boys.And the small one changed. Not all at once. That would have been theatrical. He changed by inches. Learned the pecking order of any room. Learned to joke before being judged. Learned to carry hunger, noise, boredom, pain. Learned that belonging was costly and paid up anyway. Learned that adults were mostly guessing. Learned that tribe could be tenderness in work boots, or cruelty with your arm around a shoulder. Learned to keep moving.By the final year the blazer fit. The voice had dropped into place. The phone no longer owned him. He could drink bad coffee black, spot false authority at twenty paces, take the cold water without opera, read danger, read bluff, read sorrow in the set of another boy’s mouth and leave it alone unless invited. He had methods now. That is what the place gave. Not wisdom. Methods.So call it what it was. Not heaven. Not hell. A forge. A long hot room of rules and accidents, older boys and stale gravy, porridge and punishment, salt air and small mercies, where a child went in labelled and tender and came out tempered in the image available.No verdict. No lesson pinned like a ribbon. Only this: the steel remembers the fire, even after it has learned to look like a knife.<h3>F.S.F.</h3>

The Forge

The God of Small Teeth The bowl is empty.He is there before the kettle, white on the lino, waiting by the chipped blue dish.I am half-awake, bare-legged, looking past him to the phone lit on the bench, the mug by the sink, the unopened day.He sits. One paw tucked. Tail around his feet. A blink slow and judicial.I leave him there a second past mercy.Then the nip at the calf: neat, bloodless, percise.I turn. He is already at the cupboard.So I take down the bag and let the dry food fall. It hits the bowl like gravel on enamel.He lowers his head. The kettle starts up. The fridge keeps humming. Light gathers at the window over the sink.On my leg two pale marks fade with the light.Tomorrow he will be there again, white on the lino, waiting by the dish.F.S.F

The God of Small Teeth

Kitchen air, soap and heat, sweetness that means the Human has forgiven the kettle for being a kettle.A paving stone, cold as a coin.The Slug is halfway across it, a soft parcel of insistence, writing his sentence in silver. He has no pen and no one asked him.The Cat steps out. Not running, arriving. A blade with whiskers.The Grasshopper lands beside the Slug like punctuation with knees. “Morning, slime.” He says it kindly, the way kings say peasant. “I am going to be somewhere else,” he announces, as if distance were a rumour he could deny.The yard tightens without moving.“Danger,” says the Slug.“Danger is a bedtime story,” the Grasshopper replies, “for creatures who cannot jump. Race you. To the hedge. First to reach shade wins the right to be insufferable.”“I do not want that right,” says the Slug.“You get it anyway,” says the Grasshopper,&nbsp; “One, two.” He jumps on two.The Slug begins. Not heroically. Not quickly. Just forward, as if forward is a virtue and not merely a direction with costs.The Cat turns its head.The Grasshopper hears it late, because he is busy bragging. “Oh,” he says, “that is the slayer.”“Yes,” says the Slug, very calm for a creature made of wet.The Grasshopper becomes green lightning, a sequence of clean mistakes. Pot rim. Birdbath lip. Grass, too bright in daylight, too open for philosophy. The Cat follows by solving. Claws into leaves, a pounce that misses by the width of luck, and the Grasshopper laughs, breathless, delighted to be noticed.“Did you see that,” he shouts, as if the world is a theatre and death is a critic.The back door opens. A rectangle of indoor light falls across the yard. “Winston,” the Human calls, “come in. Do not bring anything in. Last time you brought in half a snake and acted like I should clap.”The Cat pauses. Duty tugs the murderer by the collar.The Slug moves.He finds the seam of shade under the hedge, cool earth, damp that feels like pardon.The Grasshopper arrives too, in a final flamboyant bounce, eyes wide, wings twitching with victory. “I made it,” he says. “I won.” The Cat, offended by schedules, pads back inside. The Human goes on believing the yard is his.The Grasshopper climbs a small stone and turns his survival into a speech. “Let it be known I outpaced death itself.” The Slug watches him inflate into legend.“If you insist,” says the Slug, “try making your speech under something heavy.”“Why would I hide,” says the Grasshopper, “I am the winner.”Above them the hedge shifts. Not leaf, not branch.A shadow detaches from the morning sky and becomes a bird.It drops like a thrown knife, silent until the last instant when the air tears into a thin scream.The Grasshopper turns. His celebration is cut mid syllable.Impact, wet crack, red mist, stippling the hedge leaves, insultingly pretty.His legs kick, still performing, still trying to argue the outcome with enthusiasm.The beak punches down, again, again, a clerk stamping forms.His abdomen opens. Something pale and glistening spills out.The bird eats first the part that matters.The Slug holds still and does not negotiate.The bird glances at him, black button eye, weighing effort against reward.Then it returns to the warm work, because winners are more tender.Tear, wet cloth sound, a short dragging up into leaves.Green fragments fall like confetti from the wrong party.In the open yard the Human makes coffee and thinks of nothing.Inside, the Cat curls innocent as a pillow.Above, the bird wipes its beak on a branch leaving a smear of red like a signature.The Slug travels deeper into shade, writing his quiet line, no brag, no leap, no speech.Only the slow, shining proof of continuing.F.S.F.

The Slug and the Grasshopper

Dust motes hung in the midday glare, a barrel rim baking in it, one man in the dirt wearing light like an old shirt. Breath slow as river stones that have forgotten the river. A shadow arrived before its owner. Hooves worried the ground into haze, spears clinked, bronze helmets took the horizon, rows of men sweating, rigid. The king at the centre bent down, polished, practised. Ask anything. Empires wait on your word. The man in the dust squinted at the heat. Move, he said, plain as thirst. You are blocking my sunlight. A hush went through the ranks. A boot scraped. A hand tightened on a hilt. Behind the king, a clerk held ink ready, trained for provinces, brides, gods. He waited. Then wrote, slowly, Sunlight. F.S.F.

Sunlight's Shadow

I am The Entrepreneur’s Dream. Not a costume for cameras. Not a poster. Not a pitch.I am a live wire in your ribcage. The kiss and the cliff. The map you draw while falling. Hope with dirty hands. Love with an invoice. A future I carry like contraband. A secret you whisper back because the world is loud with “no”. I do not start with permission. I start with obsession. The thought that will not behave. The thought that taps you at 2:11 a.m. like it owns your sleep.One small unfair advantage. One crack in the wall. Zero to one, that first illegal spark.Not copy. Not clone. Not safe. A strange little monopoly of meaning. A new door in a wall everyone stopped looking at. A future dragged into daylight by my teeth.I fall in love with the chase, not the applause. The mad romance of making a thing exist from nerve and notebooks, from a calendar that never sleeps. I am also the hard thing. The hard thing about hard things.The call I rehearse and still get wrong. The meeting where my voice performs. The night I stare at payroll like it is a judge, and feel the verdict gathering. Wartime mind. No easy answers, only consequences.I cut a plan to save a people. I cut a person to save a plan. Fluorescent lighting. A cheap chair. A face trying not to crack. My mouth saying words that do not feel like my mouth. Then I walk outside and the sun is rude. Cars pass. Birds keep singing. The world continues like it did not hear me.That is the horror. How normal it all looks after you cross a line you cannot uncross. Some days I am a hero in my own movie. Investors nodding, my name in bold, someone else’s deck quoting my words. I think I can bend time. I think I can bend the world.Then the floor drops out. Bank balance becomes a wound. You carry it into every room. People can smell it on you.The inbox becomes a mouth. Every subject line, another tooth.The product breaks. The partner ghosts. Promises evaporate mid-sentence.And my chest turns to concrete. Not metaphor. Concrete. Breathing becomes a negotiation.I learn a cruel arithmetic, not of money, of self. How fast the mind ties worth to outcome. How a “no” can sound like “you are nothing”. And still. Still I get up.Not because I am fearless. Because something in me refuses to die just because it hurts. We do not ask permission. We do not worship ceilings. We build. We break. We learn. Then build again. I live where you keep your people close. Believers who lend you their spine when yours is shaking.Guides who give you a tool, not a slogan. Proof, those scarred ones who kept going, so you can say, if they survived, I can.We become comrades. We trade sleep for progress. We trade fear for a handshake. We make family out of strangers.And yes, it can get ugly. The transactional itch. The ROI reflex. The moment you catch yourself measuring a human being like a line item. We do not ask permission. We do not worship ceilings. We build. We break. We learn. Then build again. Here is the truth. There is a moment after the war-room language where you meet yourself in a mirror and you do not recognise the eyes.You think you are building a future. But you are also building a person. And if you build the wrong person, the company wins and you still lose. So I write it. Not as virtue. As a restraint.On the mirror. On the day my voice scared me. On the day I realised I could become a machine that wears my face.Be kind. Be kind. Be kind. Not because it is pretty. Because love is the only thing that keeps this from turning feral.Love for the team. Love for the craft. Love for the kid I used to be who wanted to make something real, before I learned to measure everything. When the ceiling is gone and the sky feels empty, when the win tastes like metal, when the loss tastes like shame, remember this:We are not here to be safe. We are here to be alive. To sprint at the future with our whole voice. To make a door where there was only wall. We do not ask permission. We do not worship ceilings. We build. We break. We bleed. We learn. Then build again, together.You cannot unknow this freedom once you have tasted it. I am The Entrepreneur’s Dream. Risk and refuge. The loud yes inside your quiet doubt. The adventure that costs everything and gives you back your name.<h3>F.S.F. Fail. Stand. Forge.</h3>

The Entrepreneurs Dream  (A spoken word Anthem)

The carousel opens at 5:21am. Not with music. With a buzz in the mattress. A notification coughs in my hand. Good morning, champion. Your rankings have moved. I shuffle to the mirror. It lights up like a judge. My face loads. Spins. Buffers. Behind my eyes, a leaderboard scrolls. Sleep score. Income. Influence. Focus minutes. Unread messages. Tasks due. Tasks overdue. I am trapped on a carousel that pretends it is progress. A horse with a QR code. A plastic lion that whispers, Upgrade. Again. Again. Again. I win small prizes. A new badge. A tiny confetti burst. A number that ticks up like it owns me. For eight minutes I am acceptable. Then the glow dies. The brain returns it to normal like a bouncer removing a drunk from joy. The next task steps forward in a neat suit. It clears its throat. It holds out a clipboard. It smiles with teeth that are all deadlines. I refresh. I refresh like a nervous tic. Thumb down, thumb down, thumb down. As if the world is a one-armed bandit and I am due. My phone is warm. My thoughts are warmer. They pace the lounge room. They pick up old conversations and chew them into soft grey paste. I open the app that tells me how I am doing at being alive. It shows my soul as a spreadsheet with one cell that will not go green. There is always someone above me. Beaming in a kitchen lit for sale, not supper. With a calmer heart rate. With a partner who laughs on cue. I pretend it is motivation. It is comparison in gym clothes. I do not just fear the scoreboard. I love it. I love the clean cruelty of a number. I love that it never asks why. I love that it lets me turn my life into a contest I can lose on purpose and call it discipline. The carousel speeds up. The animals blur. The mirror throws my face back at me with the lights turned up. I see myself. I see a man taking score like a referee who hates the sport. There is a moment, sometimes, where the music drops out. Not silence. Just a gap in the feed. In that gap I do something inefficient. I sit on the floor. I put the phone face down. Inhale. Hold. Exhale. Air. In. Out. No lesson. No meaning. Just a body performing maintenance. My mind hates this. It tries to sell me out of it. It says, You could be improving. It says, Just one refresh. I laugh. Dry, short. Like a cough from the soul. For a minute, the carousel keeps spinning and I do not. Then the phone buzzes again. Not a task. A medal. I flip it over. The screen is glowing soft and proud. Breathing session detected. New personal best. Under that, a button. Upgrade.<h3> F.S.F.</h3>

Writing, Poems and Rants

The Forge

The God of Small Teeth

The Slug and the Grasshopper

Sunlight's Shadow

The Entrepreneurs Dream (A spoken word Anthem)

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