Come what may, our faces will remain veiled, our borders will remain open or closed, and our veins will remain too close to the surface. We have run out of road, and workmen sit around, sketching plans for new walls and ditches, while concrete hardens around their stiff old boots. On a crumbling cliff edge, a man in a blue suit and a tie the colour of the setting Sun misquotes his own promises, beginning each sentence with Look or Of course; while, out to sea, cartoon pirates drink rum and train their parrots for futures on customer helplines at less than minimum wage. If we drew the dustsheets from our eyes, we’d maybe see that the road’s already cracked, littered with wrecks and roadkill; that no two maps agree on edges, and that our veins are brittle as pressed leaves. Look, there is nothing left to build. Of course, pirates are just killers in boats. We’ve been promised sunrise and we’ve been promised sight but, come what may, words are just words, and inaction speaks louder than cliffs splitting and crashing to the surface of concrete waves.
Oz Hardwick
Collage Rupert Loydell