Karma Love Kid

I am Karma Love Kid and I couldn’t care less.

I’m going to create a stir. I’m going to make a fine mess.

What I am about to do is what you’ll never guess.

I’m going to jump on you when time slips through every shopping mall

with my Purple Cat who walks by himself.

I’m dangerous in front of mirrors. My light reflects off everything.

On a good day if I feel like it, you can catch a glimpse of me.

A split second white silent eye blinks back at you squinting in the sun.

You’ll turn your head and look twice but you won’t see anything except a flash of light.

Crossing the street can be tricky if you bump into me.

I swivel signposts just for fun.

Traffic lights change for no apparent reason.

Brakes fail and cars crash in my wake as I turn a corner.

Suspension bridges heave and creak under my dancing feet, snapping cables in groans and squeals. Drivers abandon their cars and scratch their heads, bewildered by the fact that a shopping trip will only ever be a list, on a crumpled piece of paper in a back pocket. Fire hydrants pop their valves as I pass and shoot rainbows of water into the air for all the kids to play in.

The pavement beneath my feet erupts into a river of marscapone rippling with each step I take as Purple Cat surfs along side me. Christ the Redeemer in Rio De Janeiro starts to do the Boogaloo. On Mount Rushmore USA. The faces of Presidents, Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and Roosevelt come alive and bellow out a barbershop version of the chorus from We gotta get out of this place. The Statue of Liberty offers me her torch and breaks out into a shimmy.

Rodin’s thinker in Paris stands up and yells out, I doubt therefore I think I am and stomps off for a glass of absinthe. In Sichuan, China, the Leshan Giant Buddha stands up to reach 10 stories high and marches off to Beijing to give the high up bastards a piece of her mind about what they are doing in Tibet. Purple Cat clicks a claw and the Sphinx rises up in awe shaking off all the dust of thousands of years to stretch and arch its back

I release all of the animals from the Zoo. I quickly teach many of the primates how to unscrew the bolts of their cages and by their own ingenuity close the gates behind them so that no one would immediately notice their foray into the local community and they follow my Purple Cat licking his fur into violet flames that leave trails of sparks in the air.

You’ll meet giraffes headbutting traffic lights. Chimpanzees clamouring over car windscreens hooting and screaming at the occupants. Some of our escapees gain even wider notoriety when I give them a voice of their own on a social platform. Solly and Slippy, the Sulawesi crested macaques become quite a hit with millions of online supporters calling for their right to freedom. Booking restaurant tables for a candlelit romantic vegetarian dinner. Ordering online take aways of a Plantain Bean stew for two.

And as for Lars, Lucy, Loony and Luka the runaway long tailed Lemurs stealing smartphones, tripping up postal workers on their rounds, boarding trams all over the city, on their illicit sightseeing tour to pilfer from the grocery stalls, raid the popcorn machines in cinemas and lock pick mopeds to race to the outdoor terraces to have food fights. What dexterous mischievous creatures. You won’t believe the fun they have with a Fettuccine Alfredo

Naturally we head towards the shopping mall. Cheering on the rhinos causing a terrible ruckus in a carpark jousting with SUVs. Inside mindless shoppers pause mid-stride, their faces frozen in expressions of surprise and confusion as the world around them disintegrates into a pantomime of grotesque proportions. The digital billboards with pouting trout faced models transform into winking hairy baboons on high heels.

The blank faced mannequins come alive smashing the window panes and assemble together to perform sidesplitting disco dance routines under shimmering glitter balls. Any of the security staff who approach them to halt this madness are simply tapped on the shoulder and join in step to the rhythm.

Time itself bends to my will. I am a god who is becoming. I am the becoming of a god. The emergence of my shape is you. You are the emergence of my shape. I am going to give you a voice to sing . Tumble down sceptre and crown. I am a second that can stretch into an eternity, and a minute can vanish in a blink. The clocks in all the shopping malls spin wildly, twisting their hands in a blur as they try to keep up with me and the chaos that I bring. I am a kind of prankster. A pranxtorrist! An impish sprite in the machine of this superficial world that humans have created.

My presence is a glitch. A digital fracture in the fabric of the little ones and zeroed superhighway to nowhere. I am the blip that makes you lag and crash and freeze and smash.

I am your black screen of death. When night falls, the city becomes my little playground. I make streetlights flicker and die as I pass, plunging the world into further darkness as I laugh. The moonlight sings with me and David Bowie dancing tight together.

We can feel the weakening pulse of the city, the heartbeat of its inhabitants fluttering in their troublesome sleep with promises they know they cannot keep.

But there are moments when I am more than a mere trickster. In the quiet hours before dawn, when the world is still and the air is thick with the expectations of my new day. I feel something deep within me. A yearning for something more, something tangible. I reach out my fingers brushing against the edge of dawn and I know a great reckoning is going to come.

For now, I am content to wander, to play my games and weave the web for some fun.

I walk right in through the out door as a waiter drops a tray in disbelief. An elevator comes to a grinding halt. A lost winning lottery ticket falls to my dancing feet.I hang out in airports, train stations, bus terminals, shopping malls, traffic jams and car parks. Anywhere that most deadly flaw in humanity can be found.

Time wasting.

I play with all your clocks and write poems on your subway walls.

The sound that makes the silence makes the sound that makes the silence makes the sound that makes the silence before the sound.

I busk in a U-Bahn in Berlin and jump turnstiles and trams in Antwerp.

I race through Plaza Catalunya in Barcelona and tap time in the metro of Paris.

I’m in New York, San Diego, Bahrain, Dublin, Bangkok, Tokyo, Warsaw, Budapest.

Threading different timelines from my Purple Cat’s tail of light, at the same time.

Squeezing it all into a ball into his clock for later. A time collecting clock.

I run through a tunnel under the Scheldt river singing - Silence is nothing if not listened to!

I freak out stoned teenage tourists in Schiphol goofing off on sweet pastries like fat insects. Wreaking heads and blowing minds.

Whispering a little rhyme.

It's no fun on the Autobahn.

Why travel in time when you can travel in light.

And what is the only thing that is faster than light?

My thoughts. I am building neural pathways in your mind as you read these words.