nobodies

they were milling around over there somewhere,
had been a while, having showered and dressed
and fought in the car on the expressway on the way there,
on the expressway there.

one of them, foreigner in a world of foreigners,
came over to us and explained that they were all milling
around over there somewhere and talking, and we
quietly agreed.

parlour, parliament, parlous.

gathering myself in arms and microplastics i knew then that it fell to me to be just this particular nobody, to be overlooked and attended to in just this particular way, by the people milling around over there somewhere, we are now all nobody in a never before seen way, on a never before seen expressway, we have never before seen such nobodies, nor therefore such meanings for the word nobody, new meanings have been invented for the word nobody, it is as if new sounds were invented for a#, we have done this, we are doing this, by the building of new agglomerations of such scale that they dwarf their members in a wholly new and unforeseen way, and reinvent them as overlooked and attended to nobodies in a wholly new and unforeseen way, who all speak different languages in different time zones after the veritably world-historical achievement of the unification of their languages and time zones, and who all ignore and attend to one another and feel ignored and attended to in a way never before seen or felt, these reticulated megacities are all made of banished people, personae non gratae, banished not from another place, theres no such thing, but into this place by time, we are all extruded and dead before we die in a never before seen way, coltrane explained it in meditations, we are banished into these cities and sapped fields and forests and we all know this intimately even if we avoid announcing at all costs what is a veritable commonplace, an absent commonplace, common-non-place, comnonplace, we are become vanishing, and our vanishing spurs us on to unforeseen heights of creation and exploitation, enslavement and devotion, generosity and anguished self-involvement, xenophobia practised by banished foreigners and conformity and endeavour and invention and hurt, promotions and revenge and hunting for leases that our names might be printed on and overworking even though there is no god to serve, upgrading our electronic devices before our neighbours can afford to, purchasing visibility and being so relieved that giant dossiers are secretly kept on our every move by massive state apparatuses and private enterprises competing amongst each other for our favour, we gush at our passports and IDs with our very own photos and names on them, photos we feign shame over, we powder and fawn over them, they tell us we are us, that we have a face to go with the name and a name to go with the face, state name and state face, state word and state referent, that we are not nothing, like all the other nobodies, which helps, we wont be liquidated as an undifferentiated semi-human mass but as who we really authentically are, as people, as nobodies in the form of trevor and debbie and michael and kerry and yulia and sergei,

but i dont say my name, it is for the other nobodies to ignore and attend to, i say i, and as i say it i sink into its well of vanishing and personhood and liquidating and the nobodyness of all of you and me, thats the only reason i keep saying it and saying it, reminding you and me that you are nobody and that i am nobody, that we are nobodies, that the people all milling around over there somewhere are nobody, that the other people milling around over there somewhere, who are being ripped off and scammed and garrotted by the first lot, are nobody. it’s ok, don’t worry. put your flag down, stop screaming, put your weapon down, take off your balaclava and insignia and your business suit and let me give you a hug before we play a round of nukem.

look at the mess of tree branches and the little birdies zapping about, look at the expressway roaring and all the people fighting on their way to being part of a group somewhere and the cooling towers and clearing houses and the people choking who cant afford to live at a safe distance from the plant, look, if you can, you can! into the countless eyes of the arachnid, look at your countless reflections and your skew silence and your bifurcating and repairing time, your fission and fusion time, in the countless eyes of the arachnid, quick, see the rushing countless layers of your nobodydom flash on its black marble surfaces before it is eaten by its lover or countless swarming babies. dont you see? we can do anything, we are anything.

lets move on then, lets move on to become movement itself.

we are movement itself.

now were we to just tweak this particular poem ever so delicately and slightly, here, use the vise, then we could cut the pensions of 70 000 instructors, and go from there.

hello? hello. im up in the starwell.