City of sadness engines and wet kindling. The tell-tale signs of tampered seals, broken message sticks and gravity defeated. Neon diodes for restless leaves. Coming to the end of a demolished line, and realising that you’ve left your instruments at the coup. Riots raining down like spent cartridges, with no way of telling who’s abused, who’s simply rumbling. Shadowed by a mallet, mimicking the sound of grisly gums. Lights explode, revealing the weird interstices between our sweaty hands. You’re running. I’m bringing up the rear, like a goofy bear caught with his nose in honey. Sunsmiles, rapids and cantilever bridges. Did you bring the ordnance? Damn. Strapping incendiary clocks to our thighs, I wince in pain at the slightly radioactive buzz. Chills emanating from yesterday’s snow piles. A dog whose fur is the colour of dirty snow disappears amongst the garbage, urinates and then jumps out at a passing electric vehicle. Misses. Smile, you’re on planet Scar TV. Midnite rendezvous, a tattoo of the times on my wrist. You check for a pulse. It seems I’m still here. But are we? Eradicating plans and reassigning code wards. My good friend, whom I have never met, tells me of his mind colds. I wish his breath. I find footprints in the paint. Someone has been here before. The little girl bursts out of my chest and begins to sing. It’s all too much. The doors have all been ripped off their hinges. Solitude creeps. The tags have been busted, the trees have been replanted in a different arrangement, probably symmetrical when seen fromn the air. All of their branches have been drenched in fairy lights. Walking between them brings on the dizziness again. Then I’m off to the terminal. A dog barks, or is that you coughing? Specks of blood on a yellow handkerchief. Definitely interwar. Blisters with minds, socks with ammunition compartments. Sounds impossible. Bangings from the cellar. Ripples of rumour beneath the surface of a frozen pond. Turtles in the snow. Hunchback mountains. The blur of safety. Smells like veneer. Dusted with a subway smear.
