Vanity.

I’m am lousy with it. Utterly rife I tell you.And I fucking adore it.

Could this be the start of something good? Could this be,I shake to think,some kind of love?

Take care of the investment and the stocks shall rise.

All I know is that it is a damn sight better than the sackcloth and ashes caper that I have been Lady Mc Beth-ing my way though over the last insufferable fucking year and a bit.

(Song for the last sentence “Teenage Kicks” by The Undertones.Loud.)

Now that I have lost the first 14 pounds of the miserable 20 that I am arduously beating from my fabulously boned frame,every reflective surface knows my number and calls sweetly to me as I saunter by,my name sounding clit-tickling profane when hissed from the shadows ( ….baby,honey,sweet thang.Oh mama you wanna spend some slow sweet time? Mmmm-Mm! Girl,you know I just hate to see you go but I  just love to watch you leave…) My eternal studded belt sliding lower on my sinewy hips by the day.I sweet talk my body and thank it by way of care for retaining its militant muscle memory.

2012.I figure its got to be great for a fringe dwelling whack job like myself. The world is meant to end. Darwin yawns,scratches his ass and presses the big red button in heaven and I end up,post apocalypse, fishing with bobby pins and dental floss while living in a cave and tending the ornery herd of goats that I have thoughtfully named after a plethora of deceased rock gods.(“Brian Jones! Don’t eat that can!!” ) Sounds like heaven right there.At night the sky glows distant and hot as the cities burn to the ground,a Bruegel vision of hell.

Cha,cha,cha.

I accidentally spent my rent money at Chanel last Thursday.I don’t know how.It just ,well, happened.

So now I have the cashmere skin of a well heeled Manhattan snot,a bottle of Allure that begged to come home with me and a grumpy landlord.

Never mind.

Bending my corpse to my reinstated iron will.Kissing a photocopied picture of Sir Henry Rollins on the way out my door to terrorise all my beloved shirt lifters at the gym. Treating myself like a science experiment.Amazed that it,being my body, still talks to me and  even more amazed that I have now been writing White-trash for a tumultuous sonic powered well traveled decade.My,I was a serious young thing.I seem to be getting younger as I get older.Let them eat brioche. Re-reading is as embarrassing as your mother pulling out baby pictures when you bring someone home for the first time so I avoid it and forge forward.

Ten fucking years.Who would have thunk it?

And there were all my school reports saying that I couldn’t stick with anything! Pft. A pox upon them, the pooch screwing ,philistine gob shites.

As the year of the cad slow bleeds from the calendars pages and pools rank on the floor ,I find myself reshaping and realigning.”Run you fat fuck!” elegantly scrawled in MAC Russian Red lipstick across the salvaged 1950’s mirror that lords over my product packed altar of a dressing table.

I stretch for hours in my dancers woollen warm up gear, my joints yodel pain arias , my face looks like a wet tomato on the verge of a coronary and my back is long and panelled with plates of muscle due to the bazillion plies I do daily with wrist weights on .I stand tall but that is also due to the  new 15cm very foxy buckle bedecked wooden heeled boots that I accidentally purchased last week.I don’t know how this keeps happening to me? Oh wait,yes I do.Thanks to my weekend folly as the door doyenne du jour ,I now get shoes for half price due to a charming  petite brunette by the name of Tia. My shoe angel.I knew that they had to exist.

How does this arrangement work you ask?

She gets in for free and I get her staff discount.Everybody wins.

Peachy non?

I woke up with an empty red-bull can wedged under my fatigued thigh.The breakfast of champions.With the amount that I imbibe I must have the wings of a 747.My room is a delta of blue tins.I am so louche,I throw the cans hither and yon like Henry the eighth flinging chicken legs and great mauled joints of mutton from the banquet table to the dogs and servants huddled dirty and starving on the floor below. I still believe in my heart of hearts that someone should clean up after me so that I can devote even more of my time to doing nothing but what ever it is that I want to do.Or plotting my wardrobe choices.I wonder what I am going to wear on New Years Eve at the club.I am thinking a lot of leg action and the aforementioned half price shoes of doom.Thank Elvis for small mercies,at least the trains will be running round the clock so I will be able to get gone toot- sweet once the killing floor has been swept clear for another year.

Lets just hope that I don’t up and beat someone to death with the broom before the clock strikes midnight.

I have now resided in my green grotto of a room since the eternally blighted month of September and I still have not unpacked all my belongings.What I have done is gone online and perused firearms.Did you know that you can get a Hello Kitty .45 with a Yankee speed grip? Keep that in mind for my birthday.

Homicide.If I could do it? and get away with it? C’mon,you know that I would.I bet that you would too.Saint Peter would snigger at the new arrivals “So,it says here that you were shot with a pink gun?” The book keeping angles titter behind him….As my late night bus chock-o-block full of illegal immigrants,slack skinned twitching tweekers and deodorant dodging shift workers trundles up the hill I smile as I see the marquee for the Bankstown gun shop appear like a concrete push in the right direction.I feel like Mohammad arriving at the mountain.I plan all my massacres in slow motion and the soundtrack is phenomenal.

I have stopped chowing down on my poor fingernails and my hair looks like it should be heading to San Francisco circa 1967 to hang at a love-in.(“Pst! Wanna score?..got some mescaline that will let you ride the snake chica….) I find myself channeling Georges Marciano’s Guess Jeans advertising campaigns when it comes to starlet-style make up,big bambi “Oh Daddy!” come -hither -and -fuck -my -fillings -out eyes and wholesome cleavage and Anita Pallenberg in her hotter -than- hell slayday for pretty much everything else at this point.Even if my fags are the only ones appreciating my finely crafted efforts vocally with much hand waiving and squealing ,its doing wonders for my well being and bludgeoned self esteem. So yeah,my wild locks are so long that they tickle the crack of my tight high stepping ass.My big blue eyes see all.Can I also mention that my thighs no longer touch? That my six pack ( Not the Black flag kind,the stomach kind) has made a very welcome re- appeance?

Dangerous.This feeling good again caper.And about fucking time! Being admired as I strut around doing a heap of sweet fuck all in my small life. Dude opened the door at the gym for me last night.One of the pink mafia but still.I am not invisible any more and it makes me giddy.Intoxicating. Gangsters with great hair,heavy tans,chiclet capped teeth and outrageous cars tell me I am looking good and then ask for training tips while eying off the storm-trooper lines running from my lower abs deep  into the waist of my jeans.So naturally I exhale and flex ever so slightly as I lay out fables of many,many sets with weighted ankles suspended in the roman chair followed by more high kicks that a Rockettes matinee at Radio City Music Hall.I preen on a subtle and low level because I fucking well can and because I worked my ass off to get back to where I am meant to be.And I am only halfway there.Now,what was I saying about dangerous?

I am feeling the best I have felt in ages.

I think that this is the good kind of vanity. Fuck it,if life doesn’t come equipped with a cheer squad ? I am a DIY punk baby from way back and I am calling in a Mexican wave to herald my salty return from the broken badlands.Ticker tape made from moot ,lie filled love letters rain down on my amazon head and I wink and wave at my insecurities held at bay by the neon yellow barricades and Tom of Finland cops who line my triumphant route back to where I am ment to be.

But it can go in iron grey and sad directions at the slightest memory.Which sadly reminds one of the other,the  bad kind of vanity.The one that leaves you martyred on the the jagged rocks of co-dependance,draped in rotten rags of regret. The bad kind was what got my fool head  thinking that I could save someone who didn’t want to be saved. That kind of sad shit is just pure pissed off poison to the marrow,rotten to the root.

Some love should come with a paste on warning from the surgeon general just like they slap on the cigarette’s packets.But instead of the usual graphic pictures of rotting gangrenous feet and lungs it would show a tear stained fat chick inhaling a mountain of Mounds bars,food stains Picasso-ing down the front of her XX-L tee shirt and sending obsessives texts till 2am.Some days my bones still ache with fading worry,my mail unanswered,my mighty love unaccepted and unreturned…..But onward Dark Horse,I must call a spade a shovel at this point or all will be abandoned and lost and that is not an option. I don’t want my hopeless hopes bolstered anymore.I don’t want to be lied to anymore and I am done with lying to myself when it comes to the fickle follies of my hard heart.

Some people man,just because they don’t want you doesn’t mean that they will let you go.Calls from far away places on the road and you slip back into the language of you ,the shorthand of speech gilded by the  years of your shared history.You save around about,I don’t know,say two thousand messages on your phone because even when it was bad it was yours.Do not listen to Jeff Buckley in low light,avoid certain numbers dripping in 12 string virtuosity from Pink Floyd and all will remain ever tenuous but eminently doable.And that is all I ask for..

Maybe.

I used to cry all the time thinking that the saddest boy that I have ever known would not see the Hollywood sign again until he is 55.

But people,if you give then even half a chance, can just grind down all the good left in you.Down,down,down to a fine powder and snort it off a non porous surface right before your very own disbelieving eyes as you sag on your knees,stunned by their cruelty and drained by their greed.I have a stack of cool vinyl and stuff that I was hording for him.His string lipped,bitter harridan intercepts his mail so I guess that it can just collect dust in the corner next to my bass. Back to Sodom and Gomorrah by the sea and he won’t talk to me.I lose my failed forever yet again to a more terrifying big picture that demands total supplication and devotion to the death.

Old habits,I am coming to believe do not die hard at all,they just get harder.

All the promises and such fed to me ,dripping dirty on a transatlantic sticky spoon turn to ashes on my talented tongue. You wanna know a thing? Want to dig on the conclusion that I have finally arrived at  with the help of a few amazing people and a whole grip of pelvis pounding dirty Rock and Roll?

Brace yourself….

I am far to hot and vital not to mention way to smart to be someones midlife crisis angst outlet that gets dropped like a hot potato for a cheap brittle high and a haggard whore every time a tour ends.

Its fascinating to watch self immolation as long as it is from a distance.You don’t want to lose your bangs and eyebrows in the inferno.”Safety first kids!” says Smokey the bear. We all watch because in one way or another we have all been rejected by the human torch there,so now we observe as impassively as we are able and try not to let it eat away at us .This is a noble idea and a hard practice.My self esteem looks like a burn victim,piebald patched ,candy apple red raw and shiny with scars. But alive.

My flat-line has got the hiccups.A pulse.

Desperate people need running partners when they are going down the shitter,no fool wants to fall alone.Makes me think of Robert Stone’s line in “Dog Soldiers.”I’ve been waiting my whole like to fuck up like this”. It takes a lot longer than you think to hit bottom and then it runs in levels much like Mr Alighieri’s inferno.It delights in showing you how much worse it can get and trust me on this,it does.You court disaster for long enough and before you know it she moves in and doesn’t  pay rent,blows your fiendish friends for eight-balls and a fist-full of clean rigs while you are at the store stocking up on Top Ramen and sells all your vinyl for heroin . Charming. Miss me much?

You know what they say ,”You got’s dance with the one that brung you” (…annnnnd one-two-three-two-two-three….) And it? Your whole sordid self inflicted life? Brace yourself as it becomes a tweek fueled version of the depression dance off in “They shoot horses,don’t they?”.

A parody,a stereotype.The stars granite beneath my tired Hollywood converse of around about the region of a million dusty desert dry miles and I held on to something that wanted me to do no such thing.I was a diversion,a hope that faded,a warm hole,a toy to dismantle.These fucking cowboys,pft,they tell me that they have got away with “It” whatever “It” is.What did you win dear? I am ever so curious to know what the sweep-stake of stupid prize is.

It’s a long labour you know,giving birth to the end.They push and push till they tear the perineum of your patience clean in two.You are exhausted ( “Keep sewing” you tell the Doctor doing the embroidery on your catastrophe of a cunt “Just leave me a hole to pee out of “. You cry big barren sobs and hit the button that they have so thoughtfully provided for you to self administer the nectar of the gods into your hungry veins. Demerol for dinner and you fly away)

A perverse breech birth feet first and flailing with anger from the get go.

( the nurses wanted to let this one sleep itself to death….)

To find out who they could be in the lack of their self-inflicted shit storm? Ha! You must be kidding me! All that does is send them even further down.Courage is a rare thing and not to be found here. Get higher to get lower.Shake appeal right? Like The Stooges threw down.

Chicken shit.

Me and my jaunty bright orange toenails,rapier sharp wit and kissable mouth are flying solo through the shitty non-summer.I buy outrageous  perfume,weighted wantonly with jasmine and patchouli, hot off junkie fences sporting  big open sores on their faces from picking out the invisible bugs. I eat like an finicky nine year old but I smell like ten speed ,white walled tyred trouble. The heavy bottles clog the surface of my black glass topped dressing table and my scent soaked dreams.I drink nothing but tepid tap-water and Red-bull.My skin is smooth and calm,it gratefully sucks up the almond oil that I lavish on it straight out of the piping hot shower.My machine runs on sashimi and teen-aged longing.

My machine runs on select memory and dreams.Lost hotel room loops and scant stolen hours.On the possibility of possibility.On suede,gold Rolex’s and hot Vegas air.It drifts on the memory of the corona of light that surrounded the Chevalier’s head like a halo as he coaxed us higher with his guitar,a star.On salt and cinnamon flooded air.On superstition and Cherio’s book of numbers.I am the black cat bone and the spilled salt.The scar in my mouth a train-wreck of soft pink beging like James Brown sweating though his mohair suit bathed triumphant  in the blistering footlights at The Apollo.

“Please,please,please,please” it moans..

My machine running at all is reason enough to light the white candles for protection,to prolong the gift and give great thanks for its magnificent reinstatement.To give gratitude frequently to the greater forces both above and below.Powder’s burnt to delta gods and swamp saints. I reconnect with all that I thought I had lost.Fingernails and hair offered to an ever greedy flame and precise chalk circles.

Tell me? Did you forget what you were fucking with child?

Red candles for love.Pink for desire.Black for…..

Is it vanity to wonder if I am thought of in secret? If I am wanted even for a split second? My knees buckle and my fat lipped mouth floods with saliva at the prospect but I harbour very few allusions.Mama didn’t raise no fool and contrary to what one may think I am not as dumb as I look.I know where all the bodies are buried ,I am the map,my instinct the compass.Wish that I had the energy,impetus or better still ,the red hot inspiration to get my flirt on but some things are always going to come up roses nowhere but in my imagination.

I will still write songs to people who don’t even know I am alive.Who touch me and don’t even know it.

Laz had his birthday shindig  a few days ago which I missed.But as I gave him a well written card I don’t feel so bad.Plastic bags full of rubbery magic mushrooms and gallons of red wine in his terrifying  ill lit horror house lording on the edge of the too hip enclave of shitty Newtown.I won’t hear from him for a while I do believe and Elvis only knows what state he will be in when I do.Why am I picturing Dennis Hopper in Apocalypse Now?

I am hanging for this year to be done and dusted.Only days to go now and I am rubbing my hands like a Shylock.How I have paid and paid and paid.I must be responsible for some part of a far away Brazilian rain forest being defoliated with the amount of notebooks that I have filled this year with amoral crap and bell-tower talk downs.( Hand me the bullhorn,we have to get this crazy cunt down from there …..”Put down the gun Michele,no one wants to hurt you…” *click-clank* …”FUCK YOU PIG! COME GET ME!!!!!” ) A few good songs snuck  into the mix so its not too shabby all in all.

Vanity,thy name is Michele.

( ! )

Wanted.WANTED!

Oh Elvis!.Please stop watching those white pantie clad school girls wrestle on your circular bed for just a moment and hear my prayer. How I want to be wanted! Adored! Like that song by The Stone Roses.Pay attention to me! Kiss my sleek butt! And then I get to run away without being touched.Fucking teenager! What the hell is wrong with me? Where is this all coming from?? You know that shiny feeling you get when you gaze at someone who rattles your keys? Like windowpane acid and your face gets all tight and you can smell the spices that their skin spritzes out like a stoned perfume tester on minimum wage and the bold blood beneath their skin? You,know,you know! Oh God….

When all you want  is hear them say your name,roll it around on a talented tongue like thirty year old scotch.Savouring the sound of you.Feed it to you with a spit soaked kiss.

I need a cold shower and a good slap upside the head is what I need…

And I want flowers! *stamps foot* You heard me.Acres of them. Fields. But not the “Gee! I’m sorry I ruined your life ” variety.I want flowers just because I happen to be a stone cold fox with great taste in music and high heels and can tell you the only song that  AC/DC ever recorded in the key of B and more importantly,why. Goddamn it! Its not a need thing thank Elvis,for need will be the undoing of us all,I swear.Its  a ,I don’t know, kinda a  more a gamy wanton desire thingy which has reared it well coiffed head since I started training like a fucking marine again.

Desire! Well take a looky-loo at me! I thought that I was done with it but I guess that it ain’t done with me.Kinda glad to tell you the truth.Want and need .Oh brother.And hark,Saint Tina having the gall to tell me that I didn’t know the difference twixt the two.Pft. The cheek. Well, at least I am clever enough at this point in the almost abandoned game not to want to be needed.

The gnarly root of the matter at hand here is confidence.I have finally got a bit of confidence back and now I shall become utterly insufferable.In hot pants no less.Smug in leather listening to Turbo Negro all the while imagining kicking your ass effortlessly.

Fuck it,why not?

I lost my fucking mind in the jungle.I got off the boat.I didn’t even know who I was.And when I did ? Then I was made to feel by the one I entrusted with my priceless heart that I wasn’t good enough and me, like a total dumb fuck ,believed him.It was him that wasn’t good enough and wanted to make me pay for his mountain of issues while I provided the tissues.Ah! 10cc had it right ,the things we do for love in-deed.

Me and my big bad-ass brain and stuttering career in autistic punk are just Amos and Andy thank you very much.My new band is going to destroy everything in its path.I have two of the best guitar players I have ever know in my corner.Life is sweet. Fuck the naysayers and the drug fueled heart slayers.I had so many friends die this year and I will not put up with people who don’t respect their allotted time on the planet.I Think of Michelle Meldrum’s ding-a-ling,euro-trash ex husband raising the adored fruit of her womb and it makes me puke. She is gone. Skoota is gone.George,Crystal Lil,Mia? Gone,gone,gone.

You want your slow suicide? Fuck you swinging. All you self indulgent ungrateful cunts can go eat a slow roasted bowl of dick and choke.I will piss on your graves.

A thing of beauty is a joy forever said Blake and he was right. I am breathing,this shit of a year as almost done,I get whistled at from building sights,I smell amazing and I can fit into all my raunchy clothes again.That is where its at. That and Van Halen doing “Hot for teacher”, my Budweiser bikini,the book on mass murder that I am reading…I am going to suck the juice out of everything and swallow the seeds.Let a garden grow inside me.Play my guitar and sing at top volume in the shower.

And I am going to look like a tattooed wet dream while I do.

And if you don’t like it? You can fuck off.

Roast marshmallows over the raging bonfire that is fed and fueled by my widows weeds.

Thank you Elvis and Amen.