Markus Slease

12:08

In Wenders’ Lisbon Story a soundman falls under the spell
of a Portuguese singer and leans back into the partially tiled
wall. The camera telescopes. Our man reads Pessoa at night
under the bedsheets and tries to ignore the buzzing fly. By
day he hops around the crumbling city recording old women,
the echoes of children in alleyways, the thunder of pigeons in
mass transit, bells of trams, the wake of departing ships, cars
on a steel bridge. The director tries to remove his contaminated
eye but there is no pure image. It’s the same drive in words. To
annihilate the beginning of the world. But the creator is always
in the way. Why make disposable junk images when you can put
your heart on magic cellulite.


13:37

chained to the emperor
the monkey commends
itself to measured claps


13:20

Strutting backwards
to the music not
trembling we’re tired
of trembling love
and hate in Post-
Communist Poland
we muss shave
our heads
to find our mind


13:39

Block 7A

road
shoved
out

&

marooned
with the patron saint
of flats

in Zory, away
from the decaying
bodies of Katowice

fine wanderings. ladies scarfed
and wiggling. children wander
to the playground.
young mothers push
their prams. there’s a rhythm
to the foreign. a new blood count. windows without
scrapers. Kielbasa cooked-up
in parked vans. here comes another
Goliath, broad & bald, skull
blazing, korVA this & that. street
of slurs. pale flashes crease
the edges.


08:50

Block 7A

the world’s colours
throb in restricted
places &
demons set the tone
shut-up
I have no braces
poly poly
you do it
with the
cavemoon
you go right
through
me
scattered in the ink-shot it means
figeting at the light so many ships
sailing heraldic sparks & shards
la belle of black coal and now the chicken
side
by side
on the
spit
with the
scrawny
fly