The dogs are in the park no more. Their pissings stopped. It’s a sad day for the earth. That accomplishment. Fuck. For the love of grass. Drought ensues.
Bowling up Broadway and the ice cream sellers ain’t smiling. Their taps are dry. I ask Karif what about milk and he says that’s not the problem he needs the piss to water it down. Else it ain’t viable. (Sometimes he says piss other times urine). The rest agree. I’m starting to go off ice cream. But it’s a living. Stew’s heard a rumour they’re going to build a desalination plant on the Hudson. I nod seriously at his nonsense. Like this doggone administration couldn’t organise a piss up in a brewery.
I’m going Uptown and Tina lunges out the window. She’s in tattoos and needs major liquid. It’s costing her a fortune in bottled water mostly Perrier. There’s nothing cheaper she says it’s all commandeered by the NYPD. They need it for their water polo team. Pigs. Piss. It kinda makes sense.
Mooching on there’s Jerome telling me more nonsense they’re going to build a dam. Dam what? They better have something to dam. Right now it’s 88 and it’s Feb and I need ice. Since this happened, I always see the colour. I bet you anything most people never see it. Only now you start to. If there was any ice. But there ain’t. It’s all gone with the dogs.
I work around the desert of Central Park and I’m parched. (You can get arrested for just trying to look in through the security fence these days). There’s a kinda buzz in the air on 110 St. People are hawking stuff outside the subway. Turns out it’s contraband. They’re selling it in those dialysis bags you get in hospitals. It smells like piss but Lisa’s sure it’s blood from jaundice patients. Makes sense. Who’s gonna sell their own piss anyway everyone’s drinking it.
Mamdani’s up for reelection and it’s all piss talk. Piss and more piss. But can the man win back trust? Don’t bet on it. This scandal is already costing him dear. He should’ve toned down all the multicultural gab. He says he was played. Yeah. Well. If you’re gonna import dogs, then best do your due diligence. Like they’re sending 25 million dogs over on container boats and what are you saying hygiene don’t enter your mind? 25 million dogs from India. Including a batch from Serbia. Now rabies is a thing. In New York. Fuck.
But it don’t stop there. They’ve got these reserves where they put most of the dogs not even in the state. Fine. But what are they feeding them? Turns out bottled water. Why bother with dogs in the first place? Why not cut out the middle animal and give people the real thing? If Coke’s banned, then let’s drink piss. This is where Mamdani loses me. Because according to this genius it’s more organic with the dogs. I don’t know anyone who even knows what that means. (Rumour is it’s because the bottled water isn’t proper bottled water it’s contaminated dogs piss. Organic genius).
Anyway, it’s nothing compared to this latest scandal. Mamdani already admits there’s this glitch in the supply chain being his fancy way of saying people are drinking poison piss. It’s on him. But rumour now is the dogs aren’t bona fide fidos from the reserves. (Not like they were healthy there). Now we’re hearing this piece of work Mamdani is involved in a black-market ring importing dogs from Mexico. Cheaper that way and more humane. There’s this cartoon doing the rounds where two dogs are in the hold of a slave ship. One tells the other he hopes when he gets to America, he can drink his own piss and the other reminds him he’s only a dog. I don’t think it’s racist.
We’re all on the hustle these days. Everyone’s at it. Swapping a bit of piss on the side for some bottled water (which is illegal). The new stuff is from Southeast Asia and the winning brand is True Drink followed closely by Anti/Piss. Then the rumours start to flow that it’s not the real deal and is dogs piss after all. So what? Well mostly it’s fine but since the poison piss scandal people are asking if the bottled piss is rabies free. We can all put up with the odd dose of dysentery or typhoid. But rabies is different. Even if you can’t catch it from liquids, I don’t buy True Drink or Anti/Piss. I prefer to be safe and drink my own piss. Problem is there’s never enough and I’m always parched.
There’s these new gadgets available. They can tap groundwater. That’s a joke. Scientists say you need a kilometre of hose to reach the first trace of liquid. And how much of it is water anyway?
I think I’ll end my days upstate. They got rivers up there. They got clean water. No brand. No piss. Pure. Clean. Water. If you filter out the rumours that is. Since they started all the cattle farming most of the rivers are supposed to be infected. Not with piss. With shit. Makes sense. Life’s a crock of shit and then you die.
Jason Barker is failing better
Featured image: Melt”. An art performance by Noémie Lafrance at the Salt Pile, 74 Pike Slip at South Street, under the Manhattan Bridge in September 2010. Photo courtesy of Black & White Project Space.
