Monday, October 02, 2006

Panic in the Streets

In silence blue at solitude’s gate with my head held high despite all evidence to the contrary.
Contrary am I.
I am stalled by substandard sliding doors that obstruct incompetently before opening onto uninspiring emptiness:

You call this a Mall?

Clone commerce limited choice children’s books read by adults who buy best-seller bias marked for a reading age of thirteen-and-one-third.
Lucky-land Junk food in the lottery lifestyle chromium sushi overpriced free-base coffee air conditioned horror for slow moving escalator brings me down while none would climb in defiance of convention
Threadbare fashion for pseudo stylish jackbooted sheep-in-wolves-clothing-store riot control for closing down sale that’ll fall apart in three day’s time.
Cash cluttered wholesale packed downmarket overpriced pasteurised homogenised homophobic hardware; the colour of money only whiter than white.
I leave in disgust the madman muttering

And out onto the streets of pirate municipality:

Where my Jay-walking-contrarian frown is ignored by the oblivious shallow water feeders distracted by all that bright coloured retail regalia.
There will be no spitting no grafitti no skateboard nose-picking or walking against the trickle of pedestrian reality if only anyone could be bothered to protest such anarchic behavior.
Noisy exhaust echo plywood façade for capitalist wet dreams and megalomaniac mayors.
Small-town big-shots drive over-inflated egos to cardboard cut-out ipod soundtrack with Calvinist lips puckered around moral vacuum and foxtrot fellatio. Bump. Grind. Insurance policy policing and volunteer fire fighting fire with fire. Zero tolerance for that which cannot be measured in dollars and cents.

And lifting the days of the long winter passing above rising water line and revisionist blinkers; between paranoid bunkers and neurotic bankers I see the signs scrawled there in the corners of eyes – available reading for everyone to see if they were but to look and if they weren’t so semiotically illiterate:
A church wall teeters on the brink of tomorrow with acres of free land to hasten its fall.
Real estate fascists scour vulnerable postage stamps for signs of redevelopment potential and profit in the circle of life.
A discarded carton where a cannibal gull pecks at chicken remains and a cannabis party of dispossessed gather to drink in the day enclosed and invisible in a fold of public space - they are the only ones to notice my passing; the only live wires in a town with no soul; they laugh at my expression; a newcomer to the edge.

The war is elsewhere and we are not to blame - we hold the moral high ground but refuse to employ it - afraid of the future regretting the past with nostalgic tears welling.
Children laugh in our faces and question our judgement (understandably)

6 comments:

Chandira said...

That was great! I'll be sure to stop by HERE again.. Thanks for a break from the plastic world.
You just described my typical lunch break in the mall near our office. Eek!

Yodood said...

I'll see your gummy bearly delicious dollup of Luck-land junk food and raise you a cute out fit of prewashed fatigues taken directly off of a banana split republic freedom at half-off fighter. You definitely wallowed in the thing-a-thon with this one. Well done.

Garth said...

'wallowed in the thing-a-thon' love it! sounds vaguely Barbarella-ish.

littlebitofsonshine said...

I have read this 2 times now maybe 3 and each time i read it i was to cry with the truth .People wonder why children and teens have lost respect maybe that see what we dont and now its just a matter of time.

Rancho Perros Bravos said...

Decaying world, falling so far from where it could have been, so few eyes to see it going. Everything feeling so wrong in a world gone wrong.

Anonymous said...

"Real estate fascists scour vulnerable postage stamps for signs of redevelopment potential and profit in the circle of life."

I love that! On the money dude!

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