Wednesday 16 January 2008

Lost Cities

They would worship that golden disc for hours yet none understood its significance. No-one knew what it now meant, nor what it had meant to millions before them.
The amp buzzed and then clicked. It was then kicked and sounds spewed forth, fuzzing and fizzing to an almost visible degree. Strings split and skins cracked. A guitar came down upon a wooden floor and splintered. Seemingly moved by its re-union with its long lost cousin it sobbed, and its cries echoed throughout the auditorium, passing without friction between the ears of the breathless throng. Some screamed, some applauded, others lost their tears to the thirsty sloping floor. All were open-mouthed.
The damned and dishevelled ambled from their pedestal, their devices of aural torture drooping lifelessly from their arms or lying bleeding on the sweat swept stage.
The lure of the suburbs; a dog called Lydia and a wife named Lucky. Such a fly might entice the more common of fish, but it wasn’t sparkly enough to catch a pike’s eye. It was too real, there wasn’t enough lead weight on the line, and besides, most pike prefer bottom feeding.
So the phenomenon rolled on, much like the grey coach that passed through centres of culture in a haze of abomination. The fish would peer from their bowl every now and then to blink at landmarks before swimming in circles some more, their nine second memories doubling those of the angelic fry who cradled their furry image hourly via the plastic dish cemented cockle-like to the rocks they lived under.
How long the phenomenal golden light blazed it is difficult to remember. No doubt it flared and flashed for what seemed like years, but those years become but seconds to the Ray-Banned world. That brilliant energy tore through creation like at Nagasaki, and few survived. When the burning stopped we were ready to ride the pain to freedom, providing insanity grasped us meekly, but we could not escape the fall-out.
Some all but melted in the immediate wake of the atomic tide, while the unlucky lived out their days in cancer-ridden remorse. The nuclear winds sent us apart and it was upon one such draught that I was carried to this studio to face the twisted praise of an unoriginal elite who considered me their god. I had to hold aloft that shield which never rusted and was rarely dusted and explain its obvious power.
There was a reason that they failed to understand its purpose. That was of course the fact that it clearly did not have one. So I made this known to the natives with voice of thunder and lightning gaze. Thus I broke the disc asunder and cast it down before their fearful eyes.
Their sun had died and I feasted on their cries amidst the dawning darkness as one screamed: “Cut to commercial!”

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