And then what happened?

Verse 4 – The City Is Sold

I.

It was last year’s top destination

Travel guide trendy, diamond rough

Abandoned fronts house pop-up stores and

We campaign for the rights of small bars.

I missed the festival again.

The Latec building is rebuilt into apartments

And across the road, the Largest

KFC in the Southern Hemisphere, mostly glass and painted steel.

And this, this. THIS IS NOT ART.


 

II.

It was so close, and what a story it’d make –

Beat the Germans in the football, and beat

Austerity in the voting booths.

But the numbers fell short. The numbers are always

Falling short. And everything is numbers.

You’ve got to make them up somehow

Pile them high to staunch the wound.

You don’t like it? Take a number.

Βασανιζομαι.


 

III.

It was only this September

Finally sold off to developers

The banks will build hotels and it’s just one more

Street in this city, correctly labelled.

I found their small website, asking everyone

To stave off the end with their bank accounts

Save the moment. HOW LONG IS NOW?

Give us one last push, a gasp, grasping –

They’ve stopped writing since it happened.

Verse 2 – The City Stirs

I.

They started a festival

They called it THIS IS NOT ART

The Latec building mouldered, but now

Its tower no longer warned unwary wanderers;

It buzzed like neon shouting, saying

“Come! Explore the corners where the weirdlings hide, and see

What we’ve been hiding all these years,”

Dust lifted on the streets

And began to dance.


 

II.

They showed me the murals where

The boy was gunned down in the streets of Exarcheia

Setting the city on fire, only three years before,

And the embers were never quite doused.

A man muffled my camera, suspicious of police

In the garden they’d wrested from the city

Intended for a parking lot

Festooned with colour

And written small, βασανιζομαι.


 

III.

They claimed it after the Mauerfall

A brave new age and a bloodless chaos

It had been a place of pain and purgatory, but now

It filled with artists

A city ecstatic in this moment –

HOW LONG IS NOW?

You should have seen it then, they say

In its heyday, it housed the Zeitgeist

And we were living an infinity.

Verse 1 – The City Speaks In Its Own Voice

I.

I grew up in the shadow of ten-foot high letters

Plastered on the flaking shell

Of the empty Latec building at the edge of town

That said:

THIS IS NOT ART

And marked the entrance

To the dereliction of a failed city centre;

Paint-smoked windows and For Sale signs forming the bunting

Along a parade ground of unpaid rent.



II.

I first walked the streets of Athens in the heat of a summer delayed,

Through the fading light as dusk fell.

My German visa brought only friendly remarks from

Airport officials, customs officers

But on the winter walls beneath new “WE BUY GOLD” stores

Was scrawled βασανιζομαι.

They told me it meant suffering

And one girl collected photos of them

Until her phone was stolen.


 

III.

I was in Tacheles the night before they closed the garden

My camera grasping last glances at artworks

Before they were seized by the morning

By the Polizei

By the need for Legitimacy

And the face on the wall asked:

HOW LONG IS NOW?

And everyone knew that it wasn’t very long

But maybe forever.

So the next few posts are going to be a series that I recently submitted for uni… and it’s poetry. GUYS. DON’T FREAK OUT. Poetry is not always terrible and boring! 

These particular bits of poetry are about three different cities that are very important to me - Newcastle (Australia), Athens and Berlin - and how a piece of graffiti in each of those cities tells the story of how it’s changed in recent years.

I submitted it to my teacher under the title “The Words of the City” but I don’t really like it, it was more a WIP placeholder than anything… But there are four verses, and each verse has its own title, and I like those so I’ll leave them in place. 

(EDIT: Pronunciation guide, for reference - βασανίζομαι = va-sa-NI-zo-me) 

P.S. Thanks to the ever-talented and awesome Ele for her help in editing these, and to Miki and Lisa for reading them and making sure they didn’t suck.

16. The Suburbs (continued)


But I forgot to ask.

[The Suburbs Project, finally complete!] 

15. Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)


Someday I will do this. Or maybe not. Maybe it’s just enough to have dreamt it.

[The Suburbs Project] 

14. Sprawl (Flatland)


One of my favourite trees in the world (and my window in the background).

[The Suburbs Project] 

13. We Used To Wait


I write more letters since I went away - while I was there, and since I came back, too. I’ve found you write different things in different mediums; you tell different stories in letters than you might tell via the internet or over the phone. I love snail mail, there’s something so much more special about having something solid which you can shape and hold and touch travel from one place to another.

[The Suburbs Project] 

12. Deep Blue


These days, I live more than half my life through tiny screens. It’s amazing how tiny screens can hold so much of the world.

[The Suburbs Project] 

11. Wasted Hours


The bus stop near the Altes Rathaus is peculiarly full of people who dislike having their photo taken while boarding a bus.

[The Suburbs Project] 

10. Month of May


It seems almost too appropriate that May 2011 was one of the most eventful and drama-filled month of my life to date. Hijinks, shenanigans, betrayals, victories, scandals, reconciliations, clandestine happenings, you name it we’ve got it. Also we had a lot of picnics.

[The Suburbs Project] 

9. Suburban War


In a few short weeks, coffee times became my favourite part of every day. 

[The Suburbs Project] 

8. Half Light II (No Celebration)


When the first frost hit the town, I went walking in the woods above my house.

[The Suburbs Project] 

7. Half Light I


My beloved Studentendorf. 

[The Suburbs Project] 

6. City With No Children


Okay so this one is only *really* understandable if you know that I didn’t… really… drink very much before going to Germany, and that this changed quiiiite significantly once I got there, and that a lot of people have been giving me flak about it ever since. Not about the drinking, so much as the “we told you so” of my previous sobriety. 

[The Suburbs Project]