imaginary cities: mendi --

City of dread, of shanties and loam. In a police state jacked on lonely clubs and bullet time, some streetwalkers trip the line, busting the bleeding hearts and painting skyscrapers red. The tenements by the disused stream are no longer reliably dangerous. Shadows swoop on crumbs of maize and shoot arrows into corporate plans but it's all dead-beat, thrashed. Like the screech of Babylon in tremble bars, or the criss-cross of pseudo-mazes infesting the low town. Clamps on all my wheels, buttons on my bread. Time for more sugar. Anytime I might. Seeds and straw, beige monotones and super action. Walking the world into the ground. Plastic bags over plastic plates, on which plastic food is served using plastic implements. A small bowl of soup and three white plastic cakes in a sea of blood-red sauce from a plastic container. Plastic shoes of all stripes, boxes of plastic biscuits. Smashing into plastic signs, drunk as midnight on Jongno-gil. The barbituate of loneliness. Self-doubting keyboard shields, grimaces from graveyard shifters. Down an alley, well ... what? I could hear that crooning even in my sleep. A small disturbance in the mystery room. It is a street. Clean machine warehouses. Crazed mimics. The poverty of dogs. City of dry-cleaning gases emitted in the early snow hours. This does not escape your attention. The yellow of mustard, the orange of tarpaulins, the green of soju glass, the sandy-white of fortune tellers. Roasted potatoes like crumbly eggs, served in sevens. Batons and barricades. Each mobile unit connected to the next, the water cannon. Log-off time. Fake plants and dead saplings. Shame meals. Booby-traps and curfews. Ideal of a dub soundtrack. Hello? What are you doing? He hangs his head, arms outstretched. His companion sleeps next to a small plastic basket containing three coins and one fluttering note. They call this jazz. For once I hear nothing.