Uber ride #1
Black old man in a blue hoodie
Humming noises
Blissfully
Sounds of a piano
Classical music
Majestic music for a busy high road
An orchestra full of power
Trapped in a tiny speaker
Fingers imitating
Movements of a keyboard
The threepenny opera
An entrance shifts feelings
Jaw is clenched
Full body, muscle tension
I’m counting
White, white, white, white
Desperate search for another other
Old oak tables
Who wants a tea? Anybody want a tea?
Where are you all from?
Oh — he meant
where we traveled from
Old white socialists acting woke
All I see is cracking wood and history books
BRITISH
Whiteness is filling up the room
But me
In a constant in-between
Alone here — not alone in this city
Dust powdered velvet curtains
Colonial images, each step, toward the silver screen
Imperial paintings of colonisers decorate the hallways of so-called-socialists
German film — sounds like hitler
A memory unlocked
What did you think of the film?
A question asked to non-Others
‘But we do show a film next week with the first
ALL BLACK CAST'
The old man avoids eye contact
Optional Are X
If you wear this you are A
If you do that you are X
If you don’t do this you aren’t A
Questioning this might mean you’re X
Not being A can’t be X
If you’re like X you must be like A
Who decides what’s A X
And who’s not X A
Uber ride #2
58 minutes
Enclosed in a car unknown to me
Salvia moving a rubbery ball from left to right
Producing nauseating noises
And grunts leaving a stuffed nose mouth
58 minutes
With a stranger I will never see again
Moving by the row of brick houses, stomping legs
Bexley notes
Messy man bun
Striped baseball cap
Mod style bomber jacket (but fake)
Hoodie and cap
Rain coat hood
Polo beanie
Air max 95
'My wife she’s going to be polish
And she’s going to be ready
Ha —— ha'
Itchy eye, he rubs and watches the sea of dirty asphalt
Staring ahead onto a golden glistening road
One lick and you will be sick to death
Vague bodies flying forwards
Then backwards
Hysteric Glamour
A text followed by hysterical laughter
Emotions coming to a high that caught her in delirium
The web of bodies and interconnected histories bringing her to a fall
Her usual calm face coughing up tears
While performing her body to herself
Laughter about the absurdity of others
And the absurdity of herself