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

As in,
‘this may be how the sea actually is somewhere’
– awful, certainly.
across the bayou,
And – well – patios and decking installed right
all the way over the Hellespont to choke the Styx.
Once upon a time, dams were built to raise the level
or divert the flow or power the town; now there is a concerted
attempt to repeal the whole sorry business.
Of control, which is how we arrive at flatness and the
listless removal of feature. Or ‘erasure’.
(And the barman who
proudly declares to you that he does not exist;
that he has no passport, no birth certificate, no bank
account;
that he sleeps at the feet of the brown chesterfield beside
the jukebox;
that applied all his own tattoos – those on his left arm
markedly better than those on his right; all of which by now
looking like some sort of terminal tree mould. And his derelic-