The Death of Cool. Published by Cold Lips – Ed. 3

The Death Of Cool

Gods do not need to wear gold shoes.
Shoes of disco air breathed by Nike,
shoes to be drunk in slowly
gazing through glass at night.
I would sell half of myself
in a heartbeat
to journey shod
in reflections of hope.

Cool is gone.
No more rippling surface
and forest shade
hushing us to stellar reflection,
beseaching us to
remain impartial,
outsiders on the inside,
use our brain cells,
tick ‘other’,
react,
love.

Excerpt from The Death of Cool published by Cold Lips. Please purchase a copy of Cold Lips 3 Featuring Douglas Hart here for the full poem:

https://coldlips.co.uk

 

 

 

 

 

Notes:

The concept of Hungry Ghosts exists across many forms of Buddhism. A typical Tibetan image is of tear-shaped bodied creatures with bloated stomachs and pin-like necks, in perpetual need. This is often interpreted as a paradigm for hauntings of the soul manifest as addiction, compulsions and attachments, all driven by a sense of unmet human need for love. Intense emotional needs are being expressed in an animalistic manner. Some attribution is linked to neglect of ancestors. Perhaps, more accurately it is the neglect BY our ancestors (parents) that creates this hunger, although Buddhism teaches us that our responsibility then lies in how we manage this in order to be compassionately at peace with our identities. Easier said than done.
The poem explores the concept in relation to the prevailing hunger for social media and cyber gratification, neoliberalist consumption, and, of course, beautiful shoes (fetish).

The other idea is in looking at the shift away from the cultural paradigm of Cool- which includes notions of aloof or objective intelligence, celebration of outsider-identity and originality being valued. The shift to the street word Sick, although thought to originate in skateboarder speak in California, now signifies quality within a landscape of gratuitous reproduction and is a near physiological meme. What is served by the use of a negative term as a positive qualifier? Are we all sick right now and needing to normalise or voice it? Or is this a counter- cultural reclamation of stigma? Evolutionary Language scholars will have many more ideas, but I personally mourn The Death of Cool as a signifier of the devaluing of originality.