All over the horizon.
We are gaining on a portal.
And there, squat, obtuse, terrifying.
Cluttered, innocent, ticks another city.
A bubble glow diluting the night.

"It's not film noir but film...".

Existential cinema slinks into a billboard hand, cradling our whispers, hopes, confessions, orders and wrong numbers.
It's sweet and soft, a great source of Vitamin C.
Orang is Malay for person.
Natrium to Nitron and onto Sodanum which was hoped cures headaches.
It is also numbered 11.
Hunchback Bill and his bitter legions of old men in dusty bowler hats.
Their most favoured day is a 12.
The robes of hungry-looking men with shaved optimistic heads.
For about seven hundred years geoluhread.
In nanometres 620-585.
It is secondary.
Agent of the mind spread over six million acres.
In treating mental illnesses it has apparently proved itself effective.
Cheap airline travel that fuels fears of this planet over-warming.
A revolution in the Ukraine were the leading man was feared poisoned by the Opposition.
An excess could express confusion, tiredness and pessimism.
Traffic lights' pregnant moments; do I stay, do I go, do I wait, will I chance it?
255, 160, 0 or 0, 89, 255, 0.
Contrasted with the sky, preventing our lives inextricably colliding.
The second chakra that is also the pelvic area.

I ate an orange for breakfast.

Feeling sorry for the Minotaur...

because shE (she/he) is alone in their car over there. Waiting for the lights. Head is bowed and occasionally glancing upwards, maybe in time with a song on the radio. Do people still listen to car radios? We did for a while last year, because we had no cassette tapes to listen to but then we got a new car and we can listen to CD's. Although it's tiresome having to bundle CD's back and forth between the car and the weekly shopping.

I've started listening to detuned AM radio. It sounds like 3 or 4 stations, served up together. An ear sandwich whilst I wait in that purgatorial testing booth of shopping centre car parks.

I watch the shoppers pushing trolleys laid down with the same goods in different wrappings. No one seems to notice me but when they do, there's a brief hesitation. A look that asks why and how, I could be sitting there. Just like Buck Turgidson, throwing his arms to the big board. I see them throwing up mental limbs to the shopping plaza, "Why aren't you in there? There's nothing out here! You came here to go in there! What's wrong?" A moment implausible and pleading. I like to hold that glance until they flinch away. Glowering in some towering mental realm or just too beat to care.

Car parks will form the oasis of the 21 century. We will only see mirages beyond here. Hanging gardens, jeweled veils, people in dreams with their heads aflame. Flotation tanks or bubbles minus boy. I can see others tucked down in back seats. They're watching TV screens or else sleeping. Mostly kids. Are they acclimatising to the outside world as I'm withdrawing? No, I'm only waiting and now wishing the Minotaur would get out of their car.

"Minotaur, Minotaur, let down your..." I whisper alone, through radio haze.

"Those lights, they are broken and besides we need to undress. Y'know by now that they were wrong, to lock you away in that labyrinth. Learn to forget, forget forgetting. Wear out the tapestry aside"

I pull up the sails on the car and we pass each other as so often before. No rehearsal parlour.

Next year is your 10000th anniversary.

Minotaur, oh sweet Minotaur. Why the shopping plaza strapped to your back?

Watching the Winter Olympics is a certifiably unrewarding experience.

I'm not gonna start saying that the Summer fares any better but it just strikes me that some of these "sports" as the IOC deems them, are really pushing the limits of actual physical exertion.
Okay, yes, I concede there are some possible contenders for what might be thought of as something where the use of a shower afterwards would be considered advisable.

Downhill skiing. Fine, yes, this seems like a sport. Anyone in in that much of a hurry, must be sporting something?

Ski jump. Pee bump. Though to avoid being called a hypocrite it is included here. Yes, I too used to dress as Superman (I at least had the decency to wear a cape) and propel my hapless cadaver of icy precipices. Although alcohol was usually pre-consumed?

Cross-country skiing. They seem to be making an effort and ski-lifts only ever go uphill.

Ice-skating. Purely for the outfits and high-impact (himp?) lip-gloss. Call me old-fashioned but men wearing facial glitter always gets my vote as a sporting event. Not to mention that that ice is probably really cold. No, really.

Anyway, that's as far as I concede. As for the rest,

Bob-sleigh? Sorry. You're a grown man lying on a tray hurtling down a slippery hill that you and your mates prepared by pouring some water on the night before. Albeit, in a wonderfully slippery way. If this is a sport then so is meditating.

Snowboarding? This will only gain my verification as a sporting endeavor if the contents of their i-pods are also listed for judging on uber-dooper playlist merit. Indigenous folk music, of course scoring very highly.

Biathlon? Exactly.

Curling? And where do we find this "curling". I have watched. I have waited. I have consulted with the great Oracle of Delphi. The curling is missing. A dope testing scandal is surely imminent.

And all the rest? Pfff, why bother...

All joking aside, I do think this raises wider, more pertinent issues though. If international sport is truly war without killing people (somewhat paraphrased from somewhere I know not), is there a process for drawing up treaties in the midst of the aftermath? Somewhat akin to the Treaty of Versailles, the Treaty of Tordesillas or perhaps the Treaty of Allahabad, that carves up the losers share of locker space; running tracks; corner flags; water bottles and the like. And if so, why is this event not suitably televised?

And what of the nations that don't compete? Should they be considered "rogue states"? Hell-bent on bringing about the downfall and complete destruction of anyone wearing Nike running shoes and wishing to collect a lump of rare metal for this feat?

Methinks now is surely the time therefore to launch a pre-emptive Olympian crusade into the heart of those who will not sport!

They won't be expecting it and the Winter Olympics is terribly drab anyway...

Just think of the ratings!

Creatures don't seem to know much about anything. Go ahead and ask them a question, or even try to exchange mere pleasantries and just see what happens. I'll be surprised if you register any sort of appropriate or definitive response. I've tried it many times myself but so far the reception has been scant to say the least. Grunts, snorts, blank stares and caws. Wriggles, scratches, hoots and roars. These are just some of the replies I have thus far encountered.

Together, they form a vast indeterminable tide of bones and blood and limbs and eyes and tendrils and feathers and gills and teeth. Alone they move around in circles. Eating, shitting, fucking and not much inclined for conversation. I have nothing against creatures in particular. I even consider some of them my friends and likewise, they in turn, probably think the same of me.

However, we move back and forth across this tide; our tiller breaking the wave. Where are their houses? Rockets? Paintings? Jackets? Benchmarks? Dolls? Spears? Holidays? You and I and us and them. We know lots of things. Right now, you can probably tell me lots of stuff I don't know and other things I do. Likewise, I can probably do the same for you. The creatures that form this tide can't. They don't seem to know much of anything.

For this reason, I am pondering why someone endeared to feed the dog onions.

Would you want to have a Yorkshire Terrier called "Mutherfucker" high on onions?

How do onions affect dogs anyway?

Can a vet enquire within.