#1728 - welcome back to the Temple of Mammon

 

1728

5.296

23.x.24

welcome back to the Temple of Mammon

observing as a ghost may, on the 33 to Fai Chi Kei

 

我們都是資本主義的奴隸

women dou shi zibenzhuli de nuli

 

 

smogrise and smogset

vanity sayeth

 

steel and glass

otherwise as of the temples of old

 

come to worship the power, the fear  

the little dollar and the large

the dollars in between

they are changing them in the temple

the hand is quicker than the eye

 

here are the hubcaps to polish

there’s other magic

 

to those who have will be given

 

the boarded up day

the year queued out

out front some Silver Shadows

 

it’s like an intelligence test

 

bridges thrown over

mud salt

a tightening sun

our old familiar

 

come to the top of the bridge

where the city’s far down

in the mirror

 

intention!

 

there’s harbouring

and thus these bridges

always one more

 

unknown ships at ancient ply

they pour out

 

it surprises you to be here

how this is quite safe

in a poem

 

casino shines like a cigarette tip

in the mind of the dying

 

it’s all the same loom

 

who casts these up

makes name for bold

 

we all must bow as ever

 

and welcome!

 

this steady stone

our eruption stroke

 

overdriven towards beyond

the cliff commanded

 

frantic inscription

 

Lukfook Jewellery

Escuola Portuguesa survives

Chow Tai Fook

where the Bank of America

still CCB

 

woman with the cat in sunglasses t-shirt climbs on

 

on San Ma Lou

over Leal Senado

a huge inflatable creature looms cute

the conversation with themselves continues

 

a traffic standstill for powdered milk

for formula!

 

all these eyes suspicious

 

and so we’ve all become

as biblical

 

vain smog

 

old rot, my friend

roof of weed straight out of the gutter

 

like the whole town slid on a skin to splat here

 

ripe banana

 

there’s something for us each

dizzy just getting on with

and sweat for it

 

on the side of one

they’ve inscribed a tree

it shines that we may remember

 

I used to think abomination

but now I see

one temple’s as another much

 

all will earn the righteous wrath

of the unseen

of whimper loss

 

a wheel of tangle fumes turns on

 

the animal survives it

 

I’ve lost those streets once mine

decayed to gossip now

slower than they ever were

 

today around the Inner Harbour

I heard no mahjong shuffle

the magic was all spent there

 

the clocks are long gone from the shops

are air conditioned now

 

not the least risk of hunger

but way way past the use-by

it’s the ghost lingers

just as was

 

there’s the old ache to be here

here’s the old ache to be gone

and you remember

 

it was always faster to walk