Category: Imaginary Cities: PC Bangs (page 6 of 8)

City of riotous dance halls and movies that never end. I’m driving down an expressway lined with newly-planted palm trees in a hire car, the rental on which never seems to end. The harbour twinkles in the sunset and I never end. On the radio, they’ve jacked into 1979 and it’s terminal and it never ends. The road is a smooth macadam and the traffic islands are painted black and white and all the signs point to exits that never end. Red dust flies from the kerbside and I’m drinking from a bottle of water that never ends. You’re in the passenger seat, we’re on our first date and we laugh at something so hard it never ends. I’m pushing the button that rolls down the window and it never ends. The breeze never ends. The sunset never ends. We drive to the lagoon and get out and swim and it never ends. Our kiss never ends. I pull out the rubber band holding your hair back and it never ends. The look in your eyes as you lower your sunglasses never ends either. We dance a long, slow dance and spin in a circle that (obviously) never ends. My sweat never ends. Your lips never end. Our visas will never expire. The song of the crickets never ends though I wish it would. We fashion a bed out of sand on the beach and the scraping of the sand against our skin never ends. It’s neverending. The sky never ends. The stars never end. The comets never end. I draw constellations on your skin and they never end. You smile and it feels like the world should never have to end. Your legs never end. My training never ends. The juice never ends. The friction never ends. The cries never end. We turn into animals and run helter-skelter down the beach, crashing into waves that never end. Your breasts are moons that never end. My flame is a fire that never goes out. Your touch never ends. The climax never ends. The plot, in disarray, tries to find a way not to end. The untangling of limbs never ends. The separation never ends. The goodbyes never end. When you’ve endlessly left the loneliness never ends. The flight never ends. The letters you send me never end. Our reunion plans never end. The sickness never ends. The radio is still playing that song we knew would never end. The ending never ends. You never end. You never will. You never. You.

City of incompatible systems, apocalyptic notations and superannuated evangelists. City of identical bookstores and foreigners prowling carpark stoops for keys, wallets, hearts. City of rude one-word email responses and grumpy old men found while randomly searching catalogues for grumpy old men. Shafts full of planetary sump oil tempt the one-legged. I hope at least one grumpy old man falls in. City of embassies surrounded by swarms of well-wishers, or could they be sharks? Lapel pins point to obvious associations, while calling cards call from card tables set up beside the road. City of club sandwiches and cafe mocha with whipped cream, impossibly thin straws and sickly sweet liqueur flavouring. City of protest placards lined up as if this were a science convention and these the entrants in the poster competition. Images of mutilation and gangrene. City of fabled demonstrations and stampedes at stadiums built for fleeting competitions and transparent profits. City of crooners with impeccable haircuts and night visors. City if tiny date stamps on books acting as security in case of random back gropings. Ogre of a city. Peach schnapps on demand, massage parlours discreet and plaintive. The sound of baseballs hitting metal bats: this I do not care to recall. Portrait junkies line up outside the sneaky booths for one last shot at immortality, or celluloid. Vanity protruding from the anus. For all this I am somehow walking home in this city. Large cars cannon down laneways designed for two men walking abreast, honking self-importantly as passers-by bow. The persimmon tree seductively sheds its skin, leaving orange globules like lanterns on shaky limbs. The alley where the crazy man stands and shouts at two mangy dogs. The hanok tile houses squatting close to the earth. There is no need for metaphorical examination of these kinds of shutter-photographs. Plastic bags belching rubbish. Operations manuals discarded in favour of more capital, fresh staff. I threw out your business card, despite your offer of employment and exclusive use of a fax machine. The way you drank that small bottle of yoghurt disgusted me. I remain wary outside saunas. I have been tempted to kick that stray cat in the street. Something tells me no one would try to stop me.

Sister city of the radiant golden hair. Pleasant chit-chat at a water fountain, long pregnant silences between sips from cans. The massive bandages of sympathy and sound. Concourses where the grass has been cordoned off. Traces of shampoo in the air, mottled with perfume-laden leaves. Sharp shoes and tiny foot stockings. Chapbooks devoured like supper, moonlight over the steamy library of passionate renewals and overdue loveletters. Hair that takes off, like a flock of raven stalks. Clothes that fly off, like a sheet being thrown over a line. A line of poetry expressed from the mouth, like a ray of sunlight through the thrown-open window of my ear. A sound shoots from the pavement, like a lock of hair attached to a turning head. Heart-beats, sun showers and lilies. These apostrophe petals from the dim eclipse of yesterday. Feelings that hide behind sunglasses in the rain. Rain like a shroud of sorrow over the moon. Sisters catching the bus home from school. Shadows catching the sisters as they walk through the underpass. Late notes tucked in pockets, lunch a dim memory. Soup ladles, bus routes and instant messages from the world. Cast away, the small slivers of almonds pepper the landscape. Tiny pots filled with water and aloe vera. A large green bottle of aloe shards, drinkable. Bicycles that make me cry of an evening. Curtains across the open seas of windows, glowing with an interior light of meaning. Some healf-remembered words, as I stumbled home through the cold, dark wind. Sesame seeds beneath half-chewed fingernails. The strange looks of dim-wits who see only a foreigner walking a local girl home. The radiant hopes of appointments, dulled by the necessities of artful conversation. How conversations flow or are damned by false lulls, sinister interruptions. Silla dynasty dramas and romance novels, walking hand in hand through the scorched heat of a citizen’s park. Splashing, exhausted, into a pool of algae and carp, because no one was there to catch me when I fell.

City of warm breaths and gentle men. City of pencilled notes begging forgiveness, expressing praise and cementing friendship. City of shared liquor. I met a man who told me his name and with that simple act declared his genuine sincerity. We walked by the river and talked aimlessly, covering neutral ground just as easily as the more rocky paths. Later we met for dinner and discovered common threads, some secrets and one tale of infinite sadness. City of affection. Students who bow to their teachers and teachers who put their students at ease. Laughter in the gambling halls; quiet words of sympathy in the everlasting streets. City of cotton, whose twigs can draw blood but whose flowers are harvested to manufacture handkerchiefs, soft towels and bed sheets. City of polite propositions and thoughtful refusals. Judgements remain infrequent. Fruit sellers wander through the day, loudspeakers transmitting recordings of their most secret desires. City of crumpled faces and wet exclamations. Cries of recognition. On the newspaper wall, fresh sheets nominating today’s dead, or tomorrow’s resurrection. Inquiries continue into the whereabouts of the boy whose parents were found drowned in a wild stream. Groups of men who walk for miles in search of stray flowers, a perfect drum. Can you hear the old drunk singing to the turtle rooftops? Bring me strong spices and a small mat on which to sleep. Bring me a different season each day. You can take this television away. I prefer the human broadcasts, updated with each heart’s beat. A city whose name means subterfuge but whose bodies, even in sleep, reach out for another’s hand. City with no directions. Parades of retired soldiers, rubbing shoulders with mischievous youths who will never know war. City of spittle and pissing against stone walls. City of sad guitars and tearful melodies, known to everyone. City of piano accordion players wearing imperial soldiers’ helmets. City of strangers about to become friends for life. A city no one living in my home town has ever heard of, nor ever will.

First published in Snorkel #3, April 2006.

City of miniature cities, laid out on lawns like picnic lunches, skyscrapers made from sweetstuffs, syringes for telecommunications towers, lights blinking away the loneliness of miniature people gazing up at the stars. City of landing strips and vertical automobile repositories filled with carcasses of crashes long extinct, shards of steel bone and empty rearview mirrors. City of horror and hope, ocean and shore. White with chalk, the streets dream of empire. Strange mists roll in from the sea, making navigation difficult. The new transport craft are rumoured to be arriving soon, their saltwater power supply offering emancipation from the manacles of gasoline. Refineries shoot fumes into the darkness, their miniature workers like specks of dust around cooling tank rims, fuel vats. City of museums dedicated to the excesses of human foolishness. City of demilitarized zones and school zones. Shopping ceases during the annual demonstration season. It is no longer safe to walk without riot-proof gear. Your movements are being summarised for Monday morning’s briefing session. Expect a transcript in the mail. Suffer fools gladly, for they shall inherit your tax burden. Socialism is an occasion of public drunkenness, renegade pitchers filled with the blood of small berry trees. Soon the time for our departure will also arrive. I expectorate gladly, shadowing my chosen mark, while another tails my family. Cheap gore, two dollar techno blares. In an underground bar full of old-fashioned LPs, fashionistas while away the hours. These songs are familiar to you but the words remain hidden beyond drink. They all have names like “Feminism”, “Rampant” and “Waterfall”. Our invasion soundtrack continues overhead, spy planes contributing to the drone, this faint metallic whirr of today. Emptiness is an emoticon, a symbol sent via cellphone, arriving not at its intended destination but the end of the mechanical life cycle. Evem machines must reproduce. In the planned obsolescence of the human condition, breathe freely even when the gases penetrate your senses. Adjust the plastic mask designed for self-suffocation and peer out through the orange agent. Await the final outcome.

First published in Softblow (Singapore), June 2006.