A Mad Max World
Remember when those government ads had Sid Seagull dancing to get us to slip into long sleeves, slop on the sunscreen and slap on a hat to protect us from the sun, protect us from skin cancer? That was when we went outside. We don´t do that anymore. The sun now is shrouded in a veil of grey, a membrane stretching to a horizon licked by flames that swallow both eucalypt and rain forest, belching the stench of burnt Koala fur and paw pads, foreseeing a Mad Max world fallen prey to the vagaries of this sunburnt land. Inside, the tv goes blank and the fridge stops humming. There are no government ads anymore.
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I, and my lovers
My mother’s first love broke his neck for the Weimar Republic; her second was exiled after Hitler’s demise. Long before the Velvet Revolution, we fucked in the firing line of cameras and tanks. But then a wall broken for freedom turned our passion to whimpers and drowned them in cards of sex business and videos. Is this what you wanted? cried the young man from Chemnitz. Now an old woman, I remember the peace years, the decades when we let love unravel and opted instead for online shopping. Outside, they are sharpening their axes, and striking about in word and deed. We shall rise from your ash, they scream as they tear down each post and lintel, and throw leather-bound books onto the bonfire of the frustration I, and my lovers, have sown.
Lest We Forget
In summer, Magda always has breakfast on her balcony overlooking Vienna’s St Stephan’s, and reads her home-delivered paper. She’s worked hard for the good life and now, recently retired with a good pension, she enjoys all the culture her adopted city offers: opera, concerts, coffee and Strudel at Demel’s, outside the tourist rush, of course. Magda doesn’t like to dwell on the past. It’s the here and now she loves. But the news has been heating up in the wake of the recent heatwave. They’re lying on the train tracks at Bicske, screaming “not here”. “Not here.” The words slip from the page and morph into her mind. “My home is no longer here.” It is 1956. Magda is preparing to flee. Magda stares down at the buskers on St Stephen’s square. She kneads her fingers as a solitary tear drops onto her wrinkled hand.