Black Nights Full of Shining Buses

All other cities are not as my city. With its richness of tones, its hands across the ancient city walls, my city stands as a beacon for all the other cities that can only gaze (enviously, sadly, despairingly) to(wards) my city’s (majesty). They remain still, those other cities, stuck fast and dumb.

Other cities are not as I like them: they are not as per the perfect and mysterious grid of my city which is only understood as a grid by itself, by its own impenetrable, alien consciousness. To the city’s people this unseen grid is perceived as a random collection of (splashes) going one way and lots of ways, no studied paths, no straight lines nor concrete flats, no arrows pointing, no (certainties) of (reach).

Other cities are: analyse, discuss. From each city, maps, tour guides and paper shouts. Such as may be and, well, those other cities include:

1. The Black City of Raging Death.
You don’t want to go there.

2. The Flowing City of Pungent Gowns and Wisps of Life.
You don’t want to go there either. Full of fortune tellers and crystal pissers.

3. Waterville on The Water.
Good for ducks and swimmers.

4. Nottingham.
Ah, Nottingham. It sold me life back then. Where I grew up. Thus Nottingham of Old Radford, Harold Road. Gone now (demolished in the purge of slum demolition). I cannot go back, even if I wanted to. Street corners and small snatches of Matchbox cars in the fireplace. A prostitute’s house across the road, rubber johnnies in her bin, Holme Terrace. Mrs Atwal buying our coathangers, sixpence for two. The balance between low pavements and high walls. There’s flight down there, from this attic window, the older boys on the barrier in front of Player’s iron gates, doing impressions and telling lies about Superman’s powers of growth: Richard Bacon a snob and a bully with nothing to support his imagined superiority. His impressions of: I heard that, pardon.

5. Cuntford.
Full of cunts.

6. The City in the Sky Where Dreams Are Dreamed.
Cloud-based, ethereal, population of twelve thousand million. Two girls for every boy.

7. Tinkerville.
Folks, they say, just can't get enough of Tinkerville. This 1950s style city is jazzed up with the real scene and the hot fresh atmosphere goes along great with the warm friendly people. It's a comfortable place for living and for laughing – and, best of all, the pressure on your purse is minimal. The directions are as follows: as you are exited eastbound on T-009, taking the business loop into the city centre, make sure you don’t miss the appetite pleasing, belly-filling, put-a-smile-on-your-face attitude that makes Tinkerville such a hit with loons, crones and dumbos. Affordable for the entire family, Tinkerville boasts terrific amenities and the full works. If you are stupid, in a hurry, or just want to enjoy a great standard of all-American living, check out Tinkerville today!

8. Bosso Novo.
Its splendours are manifold, manifested through (surfing and dive-boarding) little cars and houses. Lilliputians live there.

9. Classroom.
In the city of Classroom there is a saying that, applied specifically (and always) to the current mayor (regardless of whoever he may be – and he is always a he) applies equally, also, to every other Classroom citizen (regardless of age, gender, race, colour, height, weight, shoe size, number of fingers, number of toes, language, eye colour, hair colour, hair thickness, hair straightness, hair length, hair style, hair smell and hair lip). The saying goes like this: Whomsoever behold the eye of the visitor also soever welcomes that visitor into his home as if they were a friend to themselves, their neighbours and their city-zens.

10. Rodstew.
Nothing to do on hot afternoons except to sit down and write lines.

11. The City That Never Sleeps.
You will need Pro-Plus. And piles of cash.

12. Wartness.
Built in homage to Terne Banks, the creator of the Wartness Method, whereby the wart is sanded down (until it bleeds) and then coated with a liberal amount of Superglue or somesuch. Amenities in this most modern of modern cities include waterboat rafting, lifterpulling and the sensual stroking of cocks - i.e. cock-stroking.

13. Romanfort.
In the daytime, the olden time city of Romanfort has baths, central heating and aquaducts. In the night time it is overrun by rats, cold fish and battalions of marching viaducts, marching, marching, ever onwards in despair.

14. Leicester.
Down the road from Nottingham.

15. Birmingham.
Down the road from Nottingham.

16. Derby.
Down the road from Nottingham.

17. Sheffield.
Up the road from Nottingham.

18. Cavity.
Full of steam and caustic surfaces, devoid of visible life. Cavity breathes on its own and, though inundated with potential, has explosive and destructive tendencies. It is teeming, as Dan Zuewski notes, with corrosive incipience. That is, it is beginning to rot.

19. Mini-London.
A smaller version of London.

20. Alt-New York.
An alternative version of New York.

21. Blindspot.
The men in Blindspot are slobbering pinheads. The women are the same. You could cut the harmony with a switchblade.

22. Tazundiz.
The rats that once plagued this city’s streets have all but disappeared, thanks to the rat-killing expertise of the two giant electronic cats that patrol the streets at night, killing the rats that once plagued this city’s streets. Hurrah for those cats!

23. Beautane By The Sea.
Ah, the city on the coast, all those cliffs, sticks of rock and seagulls. You can smell it in the air, the difference of Beautane which, not content with being merely beautiful, transcends all those arguments about art and love and the lovers who dwell at the bottom of the sea. Lifeboats are no good to them. Beautane is, of course – with its crashing waves, salt and dramatic skyline – a beacon to poets who, drawn as moths to the literal fact of Beautane’s stately lighthouse (like a huge fucking barber’s pole) flame, wander the city in many states of distress, orating loudly, crying out for the hand of the divine they know doesn’t exist. But creeping in the dark, fish and chips in hand, these bovines are, at the least, aware of the lack of the emergent metaphysic within the root structure of this city by the sea. Or, rather, are fatally not aware of it.

24. Grand Central Staish.
The illumination from the caroming caravans passing ‘neath – those shining buses – light up the already bright faces of, yes, the little children, hands clasped tight inside their grandparents’ hands. Within this city, the very old and the very young are privileged. At both ends they govern, in one particular way and another particular way, meeting, it is hoped, somewhere in the middle. And those people in the middle, neither young nor old, are kept in cattle trucks – those shining buses - fed through iron bars, transported from the very ends of the city to the other very ends. Until they reach the day when they too reach their very old states. There is, of course, no going back for them.

25. City-X.
Interplanetary communication reveals the lengths this city will go to.