Martin Langford - NICE, SMOOTH

Nice smooth walls.
And nice smooth tables.
Nice smooth walkways and nice smooth roads.

Nice smooth views:
no garbage, no smokestacks, no mud.

And no smear of dead bird.

Nice smooth bodies.
No pimples. No hairs and no fat.
No arseholes or elbows. No knees.

Nice stories.
No gaps in the tale between midnight and late.

Nice smooth transitions –
from nappy to potty;
from party to wedding;
from infants to high school to work to retirement to sleep.

Nice diction.
No flaws in the grammar.
No awkward self-concepts.
No friction from other world-views.

No doubts about endings.

No frowns about what Grandma said.

No trojans.
No cracks in the glass.
No uncolonisable viewpoints.
No wastelands. No liminal subjects.
No sumps where the version-in-common dissolves in the dark.

No missiles. No suicide bombs.
No child’s charcoal skull at the foot of the bed when you wake.

No leopards. No brown snakes. No ticks.
No aunts who spend Christmas dishevelled.
No damp, farting poodles.
No tumours. No gobbets of blood.
No suffering.
No pain, full stop.
No raw meat. No eros. No birth and no death.

Just a seamless immersion in signage.
With a broad range of interesting options –
and the chance to review and adjust.

Just a calm and ubiquitous breast of decision and sequence.
A tideline of brightly-lit foyers and pre-scripted chit-chat,
easing away, into dusk, where the solved meets the sea.
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