001

Despite what all linguists have said, you have to agger

That the goodest English

Is the identity of our physical forms

 

Or that it is banal between lovers but it is not that

 

 

002

It is pretentious / 煩膠

To begin a poem with quotes

By Mei-mei Berssenbrugge or Anne Carson

 

 

003

“Why not? They’re serious poets”

Because 認真就輸了

 

 

004

回帶 : The goodest English

(According to Anagram Genius)

Is delights on egos

 

 

005

Now that we have laid the foundation

That poetry is about playfulness

Let’s move forward

 

“Agger”

 

 

006

Since June, two hordes of beasts

Are in conflict with each other

 

One accusing the other, “You’ve made a living seam”

While the other defends, “That’s a living sail”

 

 

007

中出 is what seems to be a solution

A middle exit a neutral exit a potential of witness and intent

 

 

008

(A group of 左膠 is nodding)

 

 

009

Yet, neutrality is not a compromise

The former is a disguise for one’s missing

Bells of shame, whereas

 

Compromise is very much like seeing

Remorse reflected in a shop’s window

And exposing yourself from an affair that way

 

 

010

Aren’t you worried

“No”

Aren’t you worried about those guys

“No”

Aren’t you worried that those guys came but had to sit alone

“Yes”

 

 

011

Companionship is comforting

As applesauce (fact-checked)

 

 

012

Though my arms my butt my guts

Are not J-able as those of the 巴打

On the front line

 

May they still take notice of me and my requests

 

 

013

Teach me HTML

Teach me how to sleep

 

Through the nights that have stopped

Their wrangle about rationality as they used to

 

 

014

To justify my hehe FF, allow me to bring in Bruce Lee

 

 

015

Who has once said, “If nothing within you stays

Rigid, outward things will disclose themselves”

 

And “water can flow or it can crash”

(So, #bewater, my friend)

 

 

016

One of those quotes is suspiciously homosocial

 

As in quote J

As in J cut

As in cut done

As in done done

 

 

017

When a narrative ends, be the hacksaw

Or hacksaw-ready

 

 

018

Not all water wants to drown. The plain one just wants to spill

 

 

019

The city’s walls and streets will soon grow

Immune to bullets invented and not

啪啪啪啪啪啪啪啪啪啪啪啪啪啪啪啪

 

 

020

Take a voluble selfie with someone’s spinal ink

The episodic work not only consciously plays with code-switching, but is also written with and out of internet Chinese slangs popular among Cantonese-speaking crowds in Hong Kong today. Most of the slangs are originated from two internet forums, namely GOLDEN​(高登) and LIHKG​(連登), which (especially the latter) play a significant role in the discussion on recent socio-political happenings in the city. Such slangs immediately become another form of “mystic code,” once they are extracted from their original contexts (often related to local and global popular cultures) and reapplied to suit the users’ needs. To use these slangs is a way to place a marker on one’s identity by excluding those who do seemingly and literally understand every word, but are unable to decipher the meaning because of difference in class, generation, or lacking internet literacy and the right cultural capital.

 

Notes on the slangs:

001 agger: originally the last name of Daniel Agger, a Danish footballer from the Liverpool Footfoot Club. Internet forum users adopted the word (by error at first, but with intention later) as a mutated form of agree. Goodest: an alternative, though ungrammatical, form of best, often used ironically to mock someone’s low English proficiency.

002​ 煩膠: a term coined and commonly used on GOLDEN, often referring to mean or ill-intended acts to provoke or cause annoyance. The term literally means “annoying plastic” in Chinese.

003​ 認真就輸了: originally from a novella of the same title by a Mainland Chinese author, in which characters use the phrase to describe transient romance. The phrase literally means “You lose when you’re serious about it” in Chinese.

004​ 回帶​: an internet term referring to the act of reposting old news as if it was new. The term literally means “rewind” in Chinese.

007​ 中出: originated in Japanese straight pornography, the term refers to the act of ejaculating inside the woman’s body. It was later used by internet forum users to mean irresponsible acts or decisions that cause trouble to others. Despite the term’s sexual denotation, it has been used numerous times in Hong Kong’s pro-China newspapers as an abbreviation of The Hong Kong Chinese Importers’ & Exporters’ Association. The term literally means “middle exit” in Chinese.

008​ 左膠: leftard. The term literally means “left plastic” in Chinese.

012​ J​: short for jer, which, in Cantonese, refers to the male penis. The alphabet’s part of speech varies in its colloquial usage. It can be a verb, a noun or an adjective. When used as a verb, it means “masturbating over (something/ someone)” or, metaphorically, “showing intense admiration towards (something/ someone).” 巴打: a Cantonese homophonic translation of the English word brother, which refers to male internet forum users.

013​ HTML: an abbreviation of How To Make Love.

014​ hehe: a popular term on GOLDEN since 2013, referring to gay issues or individuals. FF: short for fantasy; inspired by the video game Final Fantasy.

016​ yx: a unique GOLDEN syntactical form that subverts traditional use of Chinese subject-verb collocation, which adopts the xy-structure (where x is a verb and y is a noun). The Chinese word “” literally means already.

019​ 啪啪啪: an onomatopoeia originally referring to applause, but was later adopted by Hong Kong internet users as a metonymy for sexual intercourse.

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