Listlessly queuing up Stylo by Gorillaz then sighing at nothing in particular
(ennui poem)
All the old places cannot hold their
magic / groundlessly, I revisit anyway.
I’ve been a ghost cause I wanted to
remain still in the beauty of this quiet.
Hito Steyerl proposes we all suffer
From affectations of rootlessness /
But what good did knowledge ever do?
Tapping on* a satin desire for the sensorial,
Light gazebo with tapered steel, a lone pine
Staying put, poetics of nowhere becoming
places where I would waltz slow home from,
destroyed by the mundane / Away from the
Accelerated city constructions…..superstore
with metro vintage glow and those soil ramps
that possess the bodies of boys not knowing,
Hauled over on an evangelical type’o BMX
track / now, lie soil silicone and gripping...
The UNSW kids know nothing of this place.
Sorry for geo-narcissism - I’m a millennial!
In alienation there’s no new friends, just
buses all rush, old voices I thought would
remain popular leave / It is deceitful, this
irrationality I readily experience, soaked in
They/them relativities in concrete, ready to
offer those…same old circumference goals.
Will my soul make much of gentrification?
Like a physio touching a tight knotted neck,
I press upon pain in hopes of releasing a
secret, unlock my psyche, manoeuvre it
within history / can I prove that I was ever
Really here? My plan is: imagine anything,
Fight the reflex to feel grey mythologies,
Prepare my own funeral in my own head,
knead rigorously into boredom so that
liberation will flow. Somehow….only many
ribbons tied in moderation keep you free,
Accommodate the body so it sits properly,
Nostalgia, honestly? is an elaborate gag.
Take it careful / Depth didn’t come from wincing
But something lost can orient once again,
tread into this marxist project I find myself
backstroking in, eternally looking outward,
Reaching across empty spaces so that I
Might find my people in ephemeral time.
*Refers to the arbitrary process of swiping one’s metro card when boarding a bus - in Adelaide does not require a tap-off.