Canto Cutie - Volume 3

The Players
「 燈 光 裡 飛 馳 失 意 的 孩 子 …」
- 達 明 一 派
The neon prisms of our postcard skyline collapse, one by one. Shards of
glass fly slow-motion across the screen like blown dandelions – like children
from the 80s dispatched across different oceans. This romanticizing of our
collective fate still lights my fire, still sends me sprinting across the city
collecting old scenes, new frames.
I’m back, thirty years removed, with a blend of love and vengeance that
weaves past pedestrians on a crowded footbridge on a Saturday night, just to
confront the harbour, the hazy tops of office towers with glowing
trademarks dripping gold onto dark waters. The sky punctured by the bank’s
ghostly-white needle.
I’m back.
To endure your posing the same pose year after year, blurring the patterns of
stars that spell out the people’s hopes. To endure your misrepresentation of
us on commercial souvenirs with stiff, sexless postures like the suited civil
servants who posed for photo the day they came back to announce the sale
of integrity, the return of prosperity, the restoration of national insecurity.
The kid you should have killed in ‘89 is back, with one foot outside the cage,
taking notes on your fears and the ways you shrivel.
I have my place amongst the players. We hover an inch above the pavement,
change colours under smog and streetlamps, dance to cassette tapes that
conceal the revolution with love songs. Sometimes we flicker. Sometimes we
burn and make tight turns onto new avenues, nursing each other’s wounds,
even if only to slow the collapse. Escape remains an option tonight, while
the party continues. She’s picked a purple dress for the occasion, and I’ve
dyed the blade of my left brow pink. Exuberant, in my new-found
expression, knowing I would have risked a lot more had I lived here all my
life.
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