Cirrus@Austlit

'Hello. Glad you could make it. I gather you are like me and have at least once said to yourself, "I could kill so and so," but didn't act on it for some reason to do with right and wrong. Don't worry you have come to the right place. Haven't you wondered more than once what it would be like to watch someone die? I can tell you it's not like in the movies where people die instantly from say a bullet. In real life people convulse for a few minutes and try to breathe but can only make gurgling sounds as they swallow their own blood. Don't start getting squeamish on me now. All the blood and the gore is a means to an end. Don't feel sorry for your victim. Feel angry because you have to clean up all the blood afterwards when removing the evidence. There is no such thing as a clean murder. There is always a mess. Even if you choose poison over guns, chances are that your victim will vomit everywhere and if you stab someone especially from behind you will scare the hell out of them and most likely they will piss or shit themselves...' (Publication abstract)

'Leonard Cohen had just died and Phil and I were wounded, as were a million true believers, especially me with a cut on my eye and Leonard would have liked this prose piece because it has his name in it and he was my second hero next to Bob Dylan who thousands of writers hate for winning the Nobel Prize, ignoring the millions of writers inspired by the Bobster and I was wounded by a man in suit and a panama hat who has his own hero in Walter White from breaking bad and the man...'  (Publication abstract)

Angelina has flown to Sydney to meet Sam, a man she's considering dating. At the airport, she meets Stephen, a man with Down syndrome, and his carer Gary. They ask her about her self-harm scars; she asks them about Stephen's condition. When Sam appears, he immediately insults Stephen. Angelina rejects him and stays at the airport to watch planes with Stephen.

In this memoir, the author describes his beginnings as a young poet and how he struggled with discrimination and mental institutions before being diagnosed with schizophrenia. He is excluded from the Melbourne poetry scene, but still considers himself as having grown up in the literary world.