Life is passing, and so am I. Cars pass through the night, the quiet slush of tyres on wet asphalt. The air stirs softly through my open window. I’ve been passing all day, through empty straits and the static of a dying storm. Earlier in the year a flash flood came and burst through the walls of half the buildings in town. Nothing changed. The store on the corner that sells teen clothing threw out their wares, cleaned up the place best they could, and reopened a week later. The flood was on everybody’s mind for a few days. As weeks passed, it began to dissipate, like steam rising from hot tar, or puddles in wake. Today everything was as it always was. People gathered at crossings, walked within the white lines of their existence, and stopped when the lights turned red. Cars moved automatic. Blue, white, black geometries, smelling of earth and blood and rot. People shuffled past one another. They moved in circles, repeated phantom gestures of older times. The present reorganised from the past.

I sat in the shopping mall and watched people rising from escalators. Those without friends stood motionless, like mannequins. They barely breathed, fixed their eyes on the nothingness of automatic existence. The mall is a place of noise, whiteness and stench. A pale layer coats everything. The thin sound of radio intermixes with the chatter of nearly cafe-goers, the heavy slam of a cash register cuts through the harsh hum of kinetic machinery, steps without the need to step. Everyone is passing, but going nowhere. Commodities line the windows. Electronics, homeware, food items, travel plans—experience packaged into desirable aesthetic arrangements, to be consumed and forgotten. Western empires of capital exploiting the human need to feel something during their short existence. I was here—walking the same stretch of space a thousand others have walked.

I pass in repetition. I wake, shower, eat, study, binge, sleep, fall into existential despair and contemplate jumping off a cliff, but there are no close cliffs around, so I fall back into rhythm. Wake, shower, eat, study, binge, sleep, wander the commercial district wondering why anyone moves at all, how anyone can stand these mundane repetitions, the same social greetings, unfulfilling meals, temporary binges that leave you empty of your self. I thought knowledge filled, but it empties out. It displaces—it fragments you into tiny pieces, until you find there is nothing left to grasp—intentionality turns outwards, but it’s already too late—you find you can no longer connect with anyone, or anything—they try to converse but all you can hear is their stupid voice filled with phantom lines cobbled from movies, games, sports, family events, supermarket visits, patriarchal bonding discourses, the wet tongue of capital individualism, or perhaps teeth, biting into consciousness—so you turn away, or stay silent, too afraid to confront them of their non-existence, of their worthless chatter, of their niceties, because in the end all they want is to connect, but all you hear are circuits of repetition and capital, and you wonder how they can live this way, and you can’t.

Time passes. I stumble back towards university. I jack my headphones in and pass into the nothingness of another’s consciousness. I displace myself on purpose, because I’m sick and tired of what’s left. The man at the art store tells me I get a discount for being a student. I steal a pencil. I pass through the cold air of fall. I pass an endless strip of vacant motels. I pass into my room, try to read, drink a bottle of alcohol and pass out.

sand sand sand sand sand sand
i think my mind is disintegrating
i might
**** myself
it probably began before i was born
in the beginning there was nothing
and the world was perfect
then i came into the world
and read lots of articles at university
because
i wanted a good grade
but the world began to fuzz at its edges
i’d drift back to the flat
and stare at all the objects in my room
unable to understand them
most of the time i hate myself
it’s one of the few emotions
i have left
i had this 4500 word assignment
but every time i went to type it up
my words came out, out of order
a string of unrecognisable
broken symbols
a mangled image of my own
stupid head
i came to the conclusion
i was
having a mental breakdown
the other month i
sat in the city mall
and
stared at all the passing people
in their most mundane moments
and thought
this is the rest of my life
this stupid, pointless repetition
i watched people rise on an escalator
faces fixed blankly on
the space in front of them
as if they weren’t there at all
i watched seagulls poke at one another
and squawk into the ground
and thought
there is more life in them
than us
i didn’t want to be a **** up again
i would try to read over
what’d i’d written
for hours on end
until i was shaking, on the edge of tears
unable to understand why this was happening to me
i’d lie in bed
and think about the infinite worthless stretch of my life
feeling only an untraceable anxiety
deep in the pit of
my flesh
for the longest time
i thought all this anxiety and fear
came from without
that if i learned about existence enough
i could
excise all the bad parts out
but something in my head broke
something i couldn’t
control
maybe some part of me wanted this to happen
so i’d have a reason
to die.

Am i allowed to write this book
though the language is not my own?

Am I allowed to walk through blossoms
from the trees your father has grown?

Am I allowed to slip my tongue
in the space behind your heart

where the flag of love lifts in the opening dark?

slip break the sky, god’s descent, tiles in the sun.
shot gaze of desire, dead flesh, leviathan.
they play in fountains, the barren bones of king fisher.
blown white, origami unfolded.

the heat infects everything, muggy rain batter churning through murk

i close my hand and
   cut the fingers on the lip


  we left the forms on the third floor, which
is the fourth floor, really, english standard  i
  always forget that

the generator hums
  they're     doing something with the piping
     sounds like drills
        but probably isn't


we had to close up early when the vents broke and
   water gushed all over the computers, washed away the paper screens, we were
  told to vacate, but I just stand, you
                in baby blue  slacks, poke me   but i’m too busy  
staring at my bleeding hand


the envelope was addressed here but i didn’t recognize the name,
no, wait, the other; it was to someone
         i knew but
                                         not from around here, i   think


   there is much     and i

fall,  though cushion and sponge
          big eggplant river

              remember when you were eighteen months and you ran and fell into the mirror? under a deep conviction that that was how you passed through, into the image beyond? but instead you just saw it shatter, and it gashed your arm up all the way up along the metal hinge? still have the scar, right? nowadays you don't trust reflections; you're always instead looking for that jagged lip, that latent violence of the edge, it's
   probably a good attitude, really


in the mirror    shattered birds,
               break their necks on  bad design  
too pathetic for tragedy
   don’t worry, we’re all self-hating narcissists here, you’ll
feel right at home-
     chuggin  on woolf and plath
           only seek wisdom from self willed death
       it’s an indulgent bias
             but the living are all such ******* suits, man

  just, look, how
        they are speaking, now, in a row, a flat screen, projected, and words filter out. the faces are blur, the words are static,  but the form is discernible. accusations. charges. prosecute; indite. plaintiff paper wrung. burn the body and pin it to itself. axiomatized sin. society as the codification of a hatred too bored to sustain itself.  i ask for a glass of water, but the words only form wheeze through the strain. Quiet. Your turn to speak is later. i'd run away, but i'm invested now. gotta see how it ends. the screen retches on. do you recognize this letter? i ask, but the words are wheeze-


sorry, sorry, i know, even if it's all about you, i'm just carrying on about-
   yeah.
       Well!
                Then!
                          So!
   Do
           do you-
                        do you prefer to just embrace it?  wear it out, burn it all up at once?
     the repulsive husk at the end is just confirms that there was something prior, after all. death is affirmation as well as negation.
         or           do you prefer to hold it close, hide it away in dark spaces? i mean, that's fine too. a candle rarely lit never burns out. and only a few flickers are all you need for a wax seal; to drip your mark over sheathed words-

        maybe it's the smell. it was sent from my hometown, after all. the name was never important, but the winter and coal. The olfactory of old factories. sorry. i know, but i couldn't resist  
                         how we'd

we'd laugh in silence,
moths flooding through broken glass,
bodies only figured
       as sparks in orbit
     against the amber light
  always
     all too light
light light
  and colour.

weightless as paper
               a paper weight,   wait-
   thrown through a window?
no,   too
                 long ago to recall


  the post office says they'll take it back to the sender. they can retry, repeat. it'll find it's way from there. it's okay, your responsibility is over; hand it over, leave your body at the door. as long as it's still sealed; as long as the envelope's not too frayed to cut, it's still good enough to exchange. interchangeable.   i run, still clutching  

  and   they,     funnel us out,
river down the concrete stairway,
  those echoing closet tones,
to the street below,
  and stare back at the mess, they're
   putting out cones,
                       and handing out ponchos,
for the typhoon rain of summer bare


and- and that's it. so what do you do? it's not entirely rhetorical. what can you do? do you
      just
   scrawl a note, explaining yourself -everything this misplaced message became to you,- over the outside, and send it off? forcibly insert yourself into the conversation? and just, imagine, project some understanding, some insight, that they'll get from it, that you provided?
    just break the seal? you can't open it, can you? it was never meant for you. hell, what answers would be found there, in words for another?
  but   perhaps-
    perhaps   there are secret codes; messages, not in the words themselves, or the letters, but only to be found and understood by the eavesdropper, the guilty. that outside, absent third party, on the boundary of it all; just gazing in, standing there, speechless, beyond the mirrors glare

    
      but that's just fantasy

cherry syrup wine
warm cheer,   soft
   stain the vinyl   ocean blue
blesses to the calfling child,
swim swim
swim child

  do you remember?
  do you remember?

the day they drunk the matches
the day they swallowed the lights

sparklers under blankets
huddle midnight kisses
     half sunk jelly plane
  red letters fall of sand

do you remember?
do you remember?

the day they drunk the voices
the day they swam out bright

midnight child of mangled limbs

keep swimming
keep swimming

are we just remembering?
mobius unravelled;
the universe in origami death.

[act one, a crossing in Akihabara]
lights blur, hands shift, flesh, pockets of smoke
cyberia, the world moves like radio fuzz, no purpose
wires swell, words leak, *akane, tokyo-3
before a neural blackout hits—

existence is like
a flat sheet of paper
time folds
in infinite ways.

[act two, cyberia, a thousand years in the future]
children play tag.

[[More real than the real, that is how the real is abolished]] de facto slogan to the virtual economy \ Reality has collapsed through its own fiction || rummaging through boxes // a DVD from the 2001’s states [[the future of gaming is here]] opening with ten minutes of nauseating zooms on women’s ***** \ The future doesn’t look much different from the past || hyper-masculine neo-enlightenment ***** scrawling ******* entries into digitised soliloquies \ VR technology once used to aid traumatised amputees now a billion dollar industry of ****** throwing simulators for bored middle-class kids \ Parents watch awkwardly from the corner of the room too disconnected from reality to connect with irreality \ Two and the same \ Silicon synapses pass through trade routes of jutting ribs and serotonin receptors \ White America a botnet of alt-right neoliberal fundamentalist-atheists gutting the majority world so everyone can watch Doctor Strange // Marvel’s latest explosive **** from the libidinal imagination of a middle-aged idiot \ Thanatos and Eros arrive at the same destination to dismantle subliminal desire one commodity at a time \ The sublime never experienced // only destroyed // consumed in the inverted maw of late-stage capitalism where each irruptions of desire is more banal than the previous \ Banality the ultimate distraction from apathy // a pseudo-cyclical time dilation of ever accelerating proportions \ Soon nothing will be experienced at all and Rotten Tomatoes will give it a 99% score \ When the singularity hits everyone will be too brain dead to care that they’re god \ 24-7 VR **** // Disney reincarnated as a being of pure light // recursive integration of every bland radio hit about a sexist ***** at a club // irreality shocked into neurons bypassing sensual phenomena // an all encompassing warmth // veil of death // eyecaps dragging flesh closed // backup released // no escape // digitised irreality // holographic Disney dancing on the train home // notice of termination swiped away as junk mail // all beings arrive // transcend circuitry // fly through the cosmos watching every episode of Friends at once \ Didn’t you know? [[The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of banalisation \ ]]

Extravagantly exorbitant mentality panacea
Pretentious eidetic’s ubiquity mnemonics
Extraversion embezzlement extortion mens rea
Endergonic laconic cacophony phonics

Preterite rendition enclitic equilibrist motion
Mystic symbiosis dharma spiritual sky
Brusque macabre abjections the gist of the potion
Straight up forever ontology on high

Obdurately abstruse vituperatively vociferous
Juxtaposition apparition myriad avarice
Orotund sonorous diction obliquitous
Multifariously versatile nefarious nemesis

Mirador bartizan phantasmagoria aesthetics
Guidon gyration excursion integration
Sorcerous alchemizing interstitial endemics  
Chaos charisma objectified tribulation

Conjurous apothegms clitoral apomixis
Exude emote surrogate extrapolation
Astral projection littoral hypotaxis
Kinetic supremacy homogeneity gravitation

Coercible coalescent cohesion dexterities
Adjunct conjunction conjecture acuity
Platonic pragmatic prosaic austerities
Extemporaneous impromptu innuendo fortuity

Propinquity habitation harbinger spectra
Perplexing paradox tenacity rostra
Intensely cogitational abstract mantra
Penumbral exigency , umbrage per contra
Theoretical incursion grandiloquent ne plus ultra
Exogamy of homoplasy sic itur ad astra
Quiescent serendipity surreal anestra

harbour abyss
shallow dwell our shotgun cells
open wide
tastes like magnesium
swallow now
magnesium magnesium

fall down you barrow folds


     why are all the snails out?

                                 you haven't heard?
    it's been forty weeks of rain
    it's been forty years of rain

      crush them if you see them-
       don't you know we're in a bubble economy?


the churches crumble
cats lie bored in parking lots
surrounded by nothing
pat pat


the summer heat


dye your bones
in rohypnol veils

empty into cartridges
shoot up
sky burial
float the concentric
lace of vultures


    do you ever pantomime being hurt,
                              just to hide your hurting?

       hahahahaa,
                                        no



this ******* heat


  pavement swells
dig up the dirt
relay the dirt
reseal over                                   spit your teeth
tap tap                                           from the mountaintop
                                                    i­nto the ocean

spend the days watching
    kids stamp on the ants
and then cry as they learn what it is to know death

mothers stare on with tired eyes


        the summer heat  
        the summer heat
              who took all the rain?  



-sosososo,
there's this game,
this game, you see
  you
make a jigsaw
but replace every odd or so tile,
with an image of your own design


after a few tries,
the whole thing becomes entirely incomprehensible,

but at least it's yours