For the happy man! - Collected writings DEPRESSION: Ed Atkins

channels. Purposeless. The stuff I knew (knew?) was ash-grey
and reeked of something petrochemical, truffley.
Can you smell that?
Particles of that forbearer of death filling your lungs like spores,
disseminating its abyssal inversions. Your body, thumbed inside
out!
A little like papier-mâché made exclusively from egg cartons.
Daubed over a balloon, dried, the balloon popped, a primitive
mask remains. Would you be alright if I gave you the task of
painting it? Only I’m all thumbs.
Tufts of the cadaver’s hair snagged on the barbed wire lining
the road, path, whatever. It used to have a full head of hair. An
abundance of hair. A fucking thick black slug of hair hanging
LIKE A SLUG, pendulous down the neck. Now, its almost entirely
gone. Now, we can see that perverted fontanelle, can’t we?
What’s left of the hair is greyed and fluffed or tough and pubic;
either way absolutely repulsive. Not like yours.
The cadaver’s whistling now. But like a kettle, not like a father.
Though kettles and fathers are connected in many, many ways.
The cadaver’s skin is blistering. Or is blistered. I hadn’t noticed
before. How are your feet?
A pair of forearms, slashed with shiny calligraphic burns,
caused by either reaching into the oven and just grazing a
scalding bar of a shelf – or with the iron, somehow. Maybe
while doing the cuffs.
How long, do you think, before we’ll take the clothes to the
charity shop? Charity shops are spilling over with dead people’s