1/3/15
Fogbank cap-punctuated terawatt LED arrays—light theory from near futures, alternate worlds
Bought on speculation, pure abundance you imagine and you buy it—lights coursing up & out & through
White-red-green-blue-white-mirrorball Pudong from the Bund, golden terroir above the muck-black Huangpu
Silver scales where you go down, old fish, where the go-downs went, the docks, catfish mudflat rats, bamboo everything
Sepia-toned coolies, ladders, European and white American race enthusiasts out for a day at the track
Today’s tourism tunnel and the ’30s wallpapered Deco dummies beneath
Tibet Road, Line 1 Entrance, People’s Park overlaid on the Concession-era colonial pony oval
Until the fireworks crowd surges down the promenade, down Zhongshan Yi Lu, the street is China’s China China, same name all over China, everywhere the center, too, all the edges gathered, attending power, hoping to, polished floors, Heaven reflecting us there, and blood, too
as underground live streaming
from the Bund Sightseeing Tunnel
where up from hungry Hell or worse,
thirsty Heaven, floating sudden down
*
not yours
the blood
not yet
*
I was never there
and even if I was
I didn’t see anything
*
Nanjing Dong Lu: Forever 21, your surprise companions, they
go with you when your heart stops, Eight of Them, Immortals, riding
in Lotus, Ferrari, Maserati, Porsche, Tesla, Lamborghini, Jaguar
& Hummer
in that Floating World made
of engineers, managers, floating on
peasant vendors on trikes hauling all
below to the Sorrowful World: There, where
I enter Uniqlo
*
The Tunnel is real takes you through MAGMA and HADES to PUDONG
in SK People Movers to 2001 where one may still
believe in old futures, something Vegas fantastic
in space, even, and yet time only
travels backwards through you
who remember nothing
but the world as it was
not as it couldn’t have been
but was for your memory
speaking its wonderful
lies flash-frightened
you may smile
*
Spirit money for souls of those
departed as here rumor burns
and speculations run to cash coupons
float down from the club above
the Neocolonial balcony over the Bund
where Opium-for-silver inscribed
Ghost web headline: RELATIVES OF MISSING VICTIMS STORM HEAVEN