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Once upon a twilight dream, Pauline on her mountain, Trump in his crumbling park, Selling futures spun from dust, Memories woven into golden lies. "Oh, Pauline!" Trump bellows, His mane catching the wind of a machine, "The future, my dear—let it be the past, When I was ten, when all obeyed, An age of obedient nostalgia!" Pauline nods, Eyes fixed on ghosts of kangaroos and BBQs, "Yes, Donald, back before thought, Before questions tangled the air, When everything made sense." The crowds cheered, Not for futures or cities in the sky, But for the comfort of knowing Their choices would be made for them. A philosopher, forgotten in the crowd, Whispers to the wind, "But what if the future Is not the past reborn, What if it’s more?" Hanson squints at the words, "New paths? The old ones are enough, Laid out, smooth like a road map."Trump grins, his eyes hungry, "A future beyond nostalgia? They don’t want that—they want To feel good about yesterday. Believe me, no one sells the past Like I do." The philosopher fades, His truth swallowed by cheers. Hanson and Trump, architects of time, Raise their fists to the crowd, And claim the future, wrapped In the blanket of a memory that never was. Yet somewhere, beneath the noise, A whisper lingers, "What if the future could be more Than a polished lie, More than the past, Resurrected for a world afraid to dream?" But the whisper is lost, As they sell tomorrow— A past that never really was. FSF

Architects of a past future.

Ah, free speech,the wild bouquet of our radical freedom,the great existential puzzle piecewe hold up to the light,as if speech itself were not absurd enough. To speak or not to speak—that’s never really the question.It’s always to speak,to hurl our words like confettiinto the wind of the world's indifference,to hear them scatterinto the void we have all come to love. And what of shouting “fire” in the theater,the heads snapping to attention,the chaos unfurling like a flag in a storm?Of course, you could do it,because we can do anything—isn’t that what freedom is?But in the aftermath,as people tumble like dominoes,you are left with that old companion,the one Sartre always warned us about:responsibility.You’ll feel it settle on your shoulderslike a long winter coatyou forgot to take off at the door. Then, there’s disinformation—that fever dream of the Internet,where Bill Gates has become your digital tailorand the reptilian overlordsslither into your Twitter feed.The moon is a giant paper lantern,hung up by the hands of conspirators,and somewhere out there,an election is stolen by shadows. It’s all absurd, of course,but somehow essential,because in our lies,we remember we are free—that we can still paintthe empty canvas of the worldwith whatever feverish brushstrokes we choose,filling the silencebefore it fills us. Ah yes, the silence—that yawning mouth of censorship,hovering like a guillotine over our words,ready to sever the thin threadof chaos we cling to.Better a world of babbling foolsthan one where no sound is heard,for silence is death,and in death, we cannot rage. So let them speak,the lunatics, the conspiracy theorists,the ones who twist the truthlike a balloon animal at a carnival.Let them have their say,for in their voices,we hear the faint echo of our own. And when the censors come,let us rage,let us shout until our throats burn,even though we know,in the end,nothing answers back—nothing ever does.FSF

Bless the lies

As I stroll through the morning mist, My feet squelch in blue Crocs, Adorned with 'jibbitz,' a tribute to my daughter, And a silent middle finger to the world, That dares to dictate my steps.I embrace contrariness down to my bones, Each squelch, a meditative mantra, Drawing me inward to a place of reflection. Here, a thought takes root— I am guilty. Guilty of the Good I didn’t do. No future deeds can cleanse the past. Guilty of not going that extra mile, Of not handing the homeless man that lazy $20, Of letting micro wrongs slip by unchallenged, Of not giving more to the community That cradles my existence. Guilty of withholding deliberate gratitude, Of not always being kind, Or generous, Or empathetic. And in this reflective dawn, I vow to be a bloody delight, To every soul I meet in the days to come. But can one truly live up to one’s philosophy? Or is it just another squelch in the muck?

Guilty

I, Scott, stood in my own cage now—a Tasmanian father trapped in a twisted fever dream of performance art. My face was a map of volcanic acne, each bump a landmark of my misfortunes, each pore a crater where confidence once bloomed. They called it art here at MONA, the Museum of Old and New Art, but to me, it felt more like being ground into dust between the gears of something I couldn’t see but could feel pressing on my bones. My job? To sit. Just sit. Sit there while crowds shuffled past, blinking like sheep confused by the moon. I was a living installation now, a body sold to the idea of itself, encased in glass as though I were precious—or perhaps something that needed to be kept out of the world, quarantined. I wasn’t sure anymore. My skin, full of pus and shame, gleamed in the fluorescent light. It hurt, but not as much as the silence of the spectators, their eyes grazing me like cattle over dead grass. And let’s be honest, I was never going to win against the wall of vaginas or the electronic cow that endlessly pooed into a plexiglass tube just down the hall. Next to a pooing machine, my mere hunger paled into irrelevance. They could’ve hired anyone to sit here starving, but apparently my acne was what elevated it to art—turns out cystic embarrassment really speaks to the soul. “Starving for art!” That’s what they called it. They hired me for my presence, my aura of a man who had been eaten alive by life and spat back out onto the sidewalk. Here, I wasn’t even eating sidewalks anymore—I was devouring nothing. They gave me a corner and a clock, and I was expected to disappear. The audience thought I was deep—spiritual, even. They marveled at my "dedication," the way my ribs began to stretch beneath the skin like fingers reaching for something just out of sight. But they misunderstood it all. I wasn’t starving for art. I wasn’t starving for transcendence. I was just hungry. Hungry for something that wasn’t another smashed avo toast or the cold comfort of instant noodles in the dark. I wasn’t an artist. I was just a bloke too poor to be picky and too tired to pretend otherwise. The guards? Oh, they were a laugh. Sat there with their meat pies and sausage rolls, keeping one eye on me and the other on their phones. They weren’t worried about me sneaking a bite of something. As if I could have found anything edible in this gilded hellhole. No, they were there for the spectacle, guarding me like some ancient treasure no one understood but wanted to make sure stayed in its box. And then, as always, forty days passed. Forty days felt like a lifetime, but also like nothing at all. I was thinner now, my body a collection of raw angles, like a bad sculpture someone had abandoned halfway through. I waited for them to drag me out, to applaud the performance I didn’t understand myself. They would shove a stale sandwich in my hands and smile, thinking they’d done something profound. But the thing is, the longer I went on, the clearer it became that no one really cared. Not about me. Not about the art. The whole thing was a shadow of something grander, some deeper truth I could never touch. It was about control. About holding back from the world until you vanished into a mirage of discipline and deprivation. But was that art? Was it worth it? Was my suffering supposed to say something, or was I just the unfortunate punchline of a joke nobody told me? The crowds grew thinner. The days grew longer. Eventually, no one came at all. MONA moved on to its next curiosity. There was talk of a new exhibit—a panther, sleek and alive in ways I’d never been. They would love the panther. It would roar and they would listen. Its hunger would be real, sharp, immediate, understood. I, on the other hand, was becoming a ghost. Fading. My acne felt like the only part of me that still had a voice, each swollen pimple screaming into the void. I wanted to scream with them, but I had no words, just a hollow kind of hunger that gnawed at me, not from my stomach, but from somewhere deeper. Somewhere older. There was a past—one that felt distant now, like an old coat you suddenly realize you left on a train years ago. I knew it existed, but damned if I could remember where. Maybe it was a time when my skin was clear, my belly full, and my kids still saw me as more than just the bloke in the glass box. But that past was like fog in a rearview mirror—blurred, unreachable. One day, someone—an overseer? a manager?—noticed I hadn’t eaten in what must’ve been weeks. He leaned in, close enough that I could smell the sweat on his neck. “Why?” he asked, “Why keep going? No one cares.” I blinked at him, feeling my throat dry, my skin tightening like a drum stretched too thin. The answer was simpler than anything he could have imagined, though maybe not as poetic as they wanted. "I never found anything I liked," I whispered. And there it was—the great truth of my existence, ridiculous and tragic all at once. It wasn’t some grand artistic statement. I just never found anything worth the bite. I think he understood then, in his own way. Or maybe he didn’t. It didn’t matter. Shortly after that, I died. Or at least, I think I did. Death here in this museum felt more like an exhibit change than anything else. They swept me away without a second thought, just as they would sweep away my glass box and replace it with the panther—a living, breathing creature, full of strength and hunger, but of a different sort. It would bask in the attention I’d never craved and roar with a vitality I’d never known. The audience would come back. They’d marvel at its power, its rawness, its life. They’d forget about me—the man who sat in a cage, too lost to find a way out, too stubborn to let go of the idea that maybe, just maybe, there was something worth tasting out there. But in the end, the panther would stay. It would live. And me? I was nothing more than a whisper in the halls, a smudge on the glass where once I sat, staring into the abyss, waiting for something that never came.FSF

The Artist

The sun, a cheeky ball of fire, Wakes us up with morning's glow. It's nature's caffeine, free for all, No queues at Starbucks, what a show! Winds dance by with playful gusts, Ruffling hair and spreading cheer. It's like nature's own DJ, Mixing tunes from far and near. Rain falls down in liquid gold, Quenching thirst of field and stream. It's Earth's own sprinkler system, Keeping everything so green. Clouds float by in fluffy troops, Nature's own imagination. Kids see bunnies, grown-ups too, Sky-high entertainment station. Elements play in harmony, A concert we get to attend. Front row seats to nature's show, No ticket price, just comprehend. So praise the sun and wind and rain, And clouds that paint the blue. They're working overtime, you see, To make a better world for you. Remember folks, it's not so bad, This planet's quite a treat. We've got free light shows every day, And that's pretty hard to beat.

The Gift

I chat to a girl, She scolds me, sharp as a knife, For a grammar fopah (spelt wrong, too fast), She says, "You fool, learn to write." So I ask her, gentle as a breeze, " Given (f(x) = 2x^2 + 3x - 5), find (f(2)) " I feel her face contorting, "Don’t be a tosser, what’s that to you?" The equation's simple, clear as day, A cat on a mat, the math’s child’s play. But no, her fury rises, She spits and snarls, “Who cares about numbers? It’s letters I hurl!” She blocks me quick, no time to chat, Elitist pig, she says, "I’ll have none of that." And I, in silence, ponder the curse, Of a world where math is something much worse. Oh, how did we fall, where did we trip? Now words rule supreme, numbers just slip. But I wonder still, in the quiet of night, If the mathless know what they’re missing, Out of sight. What do we want? More math, more now! When do we want it? Now, anyhow! But I’ll sit with my numbers, My sums and my squares, And wonder if anyone, anywhere, Still cares.

F.S.F

Writing, Poems and Rants

Architects of a past future.

Bless the lies

Guilty

The Artist

The Gift

Faux pas