Imaginary Cities | PC Bangs

City of dictator beige and magic honey. City of forbidden city kisses. City of pedals, of monument-scrapers. Torn away, postcards of atomic revenge from the wreckage of timecodes for the lonely or the plain-old bugged. I yearn for a simple light. Swollen on a gland, mimicking bubble machines in the air. The pressure makes my ears pop, and some gaseous liquid escapes. Capital punishment city. High up on a spire of desperado gumption, I look down and see hard-core. Deep within the bowels of the supermarket, a stock-taker contemplates her emergency scanner and gives up counting down the nanoseconds. Out on the floor, her colleagues scramble to mop up a mysterious slick of kerosene. Who's that peddler of cheapskate delights? Someone should buy him a dream mattress. We practice riding in carts on jelly plasma, then snack on midnight and dried fish. I look up and all I see is glass squares animated by a malaria-yellow flourescent light. We all look tougher with our shaved heads. We'r...

Turning upon the incendiary maple, coming down on an avenue of triumph. Hitting the kerbs with my new street sweepers, modelling my hips on the alpha nerd. Lips close tight on immediate gum. I've got a fistful of angry bleeps. Hiding noxious jugs under op-shop jackets, entrance to the club is a necessary bore. Fake mist spat out of faker speakers. Monkeys climb stacks to bellow injustice. Here in the city of Fero it's icy. Just ask the cab driver before you pass out. Melodious treacle sets the temperature bleating. Anarchy core is a pre-made fact. Turbo boosters propelling windshields into unobjecting masses of turgid rap. Tear out the postcodes, summon my raptors. Edible shrimp plastic anoraks. Sickening blows over dinner swap meets. Candy blossoms on the faraway streets. Include your numbers in all correspondece. Mine are 34, 4566 and 711. Call me. I'm out. Some serious error occurred deep in my mind-wipe and I'm currently cynical as to the make-up of glass. He threw ...

City of hunger and dirty palms. City of manicured lawns and torn shirtsleeves. Evening yawns, the comforting sound of soccer commentary like little grains of rice on a tin roof. City of red meat patties and yellow potato pancakes. City of invisible beggars. City of cigarette survivors and pitiful shrouds. Well-to-do media students shoot movies of fictitious street vendors pulling barrows and wearing ghost masks. Oblivious, the city's sprawl of empty threats swirls around them. They are in the eye of the western dream. Strange scruffy bums viewed through full-length mirrors terrify the burgeoning fraud classes. Beneath the unnecessary expressway overpass, girls in short skirts wait for pre-destined but still unknown tricks. Eternity is a flattened cardboard box in the gutter. Birds with jagged blue wings like fighter planes. Fighter planes like the ones that flew over the opening ceremony. Text messages alert the stone throwers of the likelihood of a demonstration. Embassies issue a...

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 dan...

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 imp...

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...

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. C...