the subordinate cause

On Saturday nights
We take photos in the car park
Capturing the dark
Within the lens
The light
Within our eyes
We mix ourselves with grunge and underground
We pretend, for moments
That we are alive
Like the static of cocaine
And the drone of ecstasy
That awakens our senses
(But our sense… ?)
Within the car park

It is 11:55
It is raining
It is empty
It is post-rugby game
The city is melting
The lights running down the shoulders of the road
It is smudged
Each building blurred against the sky
This is the city
While outside it rains
This is the night which we photograph
In the car park

Back and forward
Erase the melting
Erase the smudge
Screech, squeak
And clarity forms
On my windscreen

And like the pores of our skins
We visit cigarettes
And conjure up thoughts of alcoholism
And visions of being trashed
And stoned
And deep fried chips
From the BK across the road
This is how we were taught
It’s how we’re bred
This is who we are
Underground
In the car park

And who else are we?
Mostly, we are music
We are rhythm
We are disease
We are garbage
We are black
We are in gutters
We are stars
We are crooked frames
We are chemicals
In our lungs
In the darkroom
On the film
In our veins
We are the coolness of dusk
We are jackets and beer cans
No-one knows who we are
We cannot be researched
We are indefinable
But we are NOT defiance
As some may think
We do not deviate
We are not a minority.
We are the norm.

There is a culture down here
In the car park
It’s our earthly hell
These photos, our proof
But it is our rapture also
It is a place we retreat
It is innocent
It is brushing criminalism
It is not far from the police
At 441 Somewhere Street
They probably have video cameras down here
It’s probably locked
We probably climbed the gates

Our hair is jagged with heat
Our eyes are shadowed in smoky greys
Our lips exhale grey puffs of smoke
Our jeans are cast to our skin, our eyes to the ground
There is a figure in the corner
Who we invite with our eyelids
He knows the deal
He knows we are untouchable
We know he can touch us however he likes
We invite what repulses us
We live in parallel worlds
The space is surreal down here
There are no vehicles
It is an uninhabited shell
The remnants of daily life
In a matter of hours, minutes

This space transforms
Into ours
No papers are signed
It is an unspoken declaration
Which we decide
This is what it’s all about
This car park

The shutter click echoes
Faint
Distant
Immediate
Hollow
Sharp
It fills the space
It sounds square shaped
Much like the cold concrete
With its cracks
And lines
Splattered paint and graffiti
And horizontal yellow
A picture which resembles a skeleton in a chair
Is tagged near the entrance by officials
By members of the public
Who know better than us

So what is authority?
It is us
We are the authority

Until those who call themselves the authority show up.
It’s all about being humble
You see
We don’t announce ourselves as such
We just are

And even when they shove us into their cars
And remove our apparatus from us
And check it for deviance
And take us to those cages
They call justice
And barricade us in
To fight with ourselves…

We are still the authority.
In this city,
In the car park
We are the authority


It is an unspoken law,
and the law knows this.