[Straygeek]: 656.Tk

My town is tired and faded. It's old, but age lends it no dignity. The houses are weary, for the most part, sagging at the seams. They line the dirty streets like dusty sentinals and their inhabitants look out upon the world with jaded eyes.


It's not a town for children. The boredom is deadly. We've got nothing to do, so we make our own games, and we build our own kingdoms down by the stinking muddy banks of the twisting Wairoa.


The older you get the more you hate this town, you fight, smoke, steal, you rail against this place, fuck your parents - they don't know. No one respects the cops, fuckin’ pigs, they get just as pissed as all of us; they smash their wives and babies too.

I chucked a brick through the windscreen of an abandoned car last night, I kicked out the last taillight on my way home, and I'm one of the good kids.


It's changing though, this town. The millionaires are moving in. They bring with them shiny new cars that cruise the streets like well-fed felines, sleek and slick just like the drivers. The children look like fat little lollies, in pink and ruffles and silk, while we're dressed in too-big shirts our brothers left behind, and our knees protrude from the holes in our jeans. We're not jealous, fuck no, who wants a life like that, we were happy playing in the mud.


They've shut down the Plex, our skating rink and ramps are gone. They invaded our secret places, levelled them, put a garden in its place. There's a playground now, built in the shape of a ship, it's classy as hell, got a couple of slides and swings. I walked my dog round the gardens; let him shit on the slide, fuck you.


There was no playground when I was a kid; there was a vacant section behind my house that housed the rotten hull of an abandoned dinghy. That was my playground. That was where I lost my baby teeth. My youth was spent in the dirt.

They can cut the bleeding land into fragments and build their mansions here. This town won't change as long as we remain. You can't walk down the street by yourself and not feel a watching eye. In a town like mine, you might not see the corpses but the vultures are never far away. This is the place where our dreams died, and our reality was born, to this day our lives stink of the ashes from the dreams we lost.


If I live as long as my Dad, maybe, like him, I'll forget that I ever wanted anything better than this, I'll forget I ever dreamed at all. It's not comforting, but it’s comfortable in a way, if you know what I mean. Whatever else this town may be, it's always going to be home.