EXPECTANT TOPOGRAPHIES
Ode to Anthroposenses

Tiago Torres Campos

There is a place in the making at the end of the city
In the direction from where the northern wind blows
After the desolation of failed capitalism
Next to the brute force of ruthless rationalism

Please keep out!, they ask, no, demand of you
The water is deep and dangerous and non-compliant
The scrub is wild and poisonous, like a mad fairy-tale
No steps, no ramp, no rail, no scale

Expectant, multi-scalar topographies
Where the cracked asphalt suddenly stops
And the rich textures of the reactive ground
Unleash not music, just ultrasound

No finders keepers
No losers weepers

Follow the hidden trail
Walk past the worm-like electric cables
Shallow waters reflecting the passing atmosphere
Fumes and chemicals from the northern hemisphere

Stand up and smell the port
It stinks of oil, sweat, casual sex and booze,
American Beauty recreated with a dog poo bag
My kingdom for this pretty weird flag

Big machines ruminate slowly at the water’s edge
Creating holograms of lilac, violet and blue
Three aircrafts fly fast above my head
Sprinkling fairy dust with electromagnetic infrared

Talk the talk
Walk the walk

Swarm with the fat pigeons
In parametric, wind-defying waves
Watch them swallow GMO globalisation
Around the flour mill in all-natural deterioration

Dive with the greasy seagulls
In mesmerizing, water-synchronized swirls
Fishing the already-poisoned but still-alive trout
Trapped in the liquid hysteria of touristic shout

Undulate with the so-rare bumble bees
In drug-addict, kaleidoscopic fly
They’re here not for the pretty flowers on steroids
But for a breath of fresh air in the open voids

Safe bind
Safe find

Chase the grey patterns of the wind
For they organise the weeds, the seeds, the deeds
Along the rigs and cracks carved on the rubble in piles
A world in formation in a couple of square miles

Concavities and convexities alternate in transgender
Mutation is the only rule, what keeps it spinning
Capacity, fertility, productivity, diversity
Uncertainty, affinity and poly-dispersity

Watch how nature reproduces old mythology
The thistle, the clover, the sage, the wild garlic
Mosses and lichens did not yet arrive
Tall trees too, given enough time, will thrive

If you can't beat 'em
join 'em

Can you think like methane
Creeping up from underground burrows
And escaping out of complex body parts
Like long-lasting, embarrassing farts?

Can you feel like a landfill
Or a de-territorialized pile of stones,
A eutrophic stagnant little pond
A chemical reaction, an ionized bond?

Can you reassemble like real-estate bubbles
Or communicate like grassland rhizomes?
Solid hyperobjects that will melt into air
Bureaucratic, phased-space, everywhere, anywhere

If it ain't broke,
Don't fix it.

Judge it not
Condescend it not

Accuse it not
Pity it not

Rationalize it not
Commodify it not

Buy it not
Sell it not

Romanticize it not
Modernize it not

Naturalize it not
Anthropomorphize it not

Set it free
Let it be