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

450You, standing DUMBSTRUCK in a bedroom,
one guileless hand thrust down your
[...].
1200A solitary presence – fecund, mobile, agitated
– stood swaying slightly in the yawning
ear-pop absence left by the disappearance of
all of these fantastical objects.
1986I understand your allegiance to – or supplication
to – or your powerlessness against –
the impervious patron saint of ballistics and
kidnappings.
1986 BCOther than your gormless figure, a conspicuous
absence of life here. No plants, for example;
no evidence of a pet; not a single wilted
flower, no darkened petal curling on the rug.
Most worrying, not a single cobweb.
200,000Still:
the sweet, cloying smell of overripe
bouquets whipped out of your sleeve speaks
of an end in itself, doesn’t it? Silk flowers
soaked in cheap perfume to overawe those
bass notes of dead skin, moulting, paperbacks
and stale bread; also very much an effort
to cheer us all up. So, thank you for that.
A simple conjuration – the manufacturing
of a presence – to counter all this excessive
dispersal, disappearance – absence. Something
like an hourglass turning, troping, perpetually
– only filled with powdered glass.
The powdered glass and plasma of a shopping-centre’s
worth of touchscreen tech, ro-