MARTIAN

A catalogue of devices for manipulating a fugal moment

I will avenge them, one day. Signal further misadventures with woad-painted warriors from the distant past, a workaday story of lovelessness. There was even a plot to send a posse of stout Englishmen to kidnap the composer and drag him back to London, ‘where he fucking belonged’. The simplicity of this piece gives the performer the opportunity to express her own sense of estrangement: a turning off, a change of direction away from an origin. In the eighteenth century I was mostly figurative. Origin is painstaking misapplication.

The ox on the roof

Our resident saint is patron of liars, thieves and outsiders. Species were arranged according to the pattern of their past beliefs: a creeping habit across barren-ground, an army of goons and their replicants — the serfs are demanding messianic air strikes, state-sanctioned solitude, grenades in every slingshot at the out-of-town shopping mall.

                        He is now being lowered inside the luminescent orange shell (‘catalyser’ we dubbed it after another taxing day at the lab). I consulted my Frankenstein notes: amortization applies in the case of intangible assets, in the sense transfer land to a corporation in mortmain: soulcraft, virtual tundra.

                        Origin is literally running in opposite directions. A woman disappeared, but that’s just the first act of an unfolding catastrophe.

One adamantine opaque rock is composed of silica — chalcedony — with an amorphous or microscopically fine-grained texture. (Art thou with no breath remaining?) Time feels as though it is passing rather swiftly today, on other days imperceptibly slowly. The surrounding objects are all speaking at once — the rest is merely the act of writing everything down: first we had the people kneel beside the water, grunting and rocking back and forth, then hissing vowels and then syllables and finally words. I am still trying to figure out how to weigh my own head.

                        Neither of us holds the monopoly of fuck. A number of mythical people lived in perpetual mist and darkness near the parcel depot of the dead, i.e. yet another metaphysical shitstorm. Autochthonous means native to the place where it was found (the Anschluss sealed the fate of my own homeland). Ever since that time I have invested heavily in derivatives on hedge-fund terror cells.

That is why he is forever falling into crevasses, cracks in the earth and deep, deep canyons. O look, now he’s confined in a sealed box! (She is in effect being asked to dig her husband’s grave.) By this I simply mean many notes to one syllable.

                        ‘Who will mask unwho?’

                        Sometimes your segues and non-sequiturs are glib — right here, past the rain, with malicious coughing, a golden green light permeating all the outside objects.

                        Every police station had an appointed officer whose job was to decide whether or not something was art. I had brought along a tungsten flare for safe keeping; the orangutang could not have known it was involved in a fight to the death.

It has been said that passersby tore the elder brother’s corpse apart and ate him following the assassination. One member of the mob swallowed an eyeball, others claim he was transformed into shoes. Only three of the statues that were built during that century survive; they are behind the window under the stairs. This is the least they could have done for a man who was butchered and consumed by his own citizenry.

Disaster, year one: assassination of the brothers Wanwit

During what is referred to as your annus horribilis the republic was permanently under siege, the people benighted. The only side to the disaster which could be looked upon as a good thing was the opportunity it afforded to vomit up the past. At the winter solstice, Wanwit the Younger was severely wounded by a knife-wielding assassin as fire spread to engulf the tar-encrusted shingle beach; some of us had dug a pit. Other accounts suggest this scene took place elsewhere, with the climax inside a burning windmill at the crest of a steep hill. Torch-wielding villagers rocked back and forth, quite demented at the base of this fragile wooden structure. One eyewitness said the scene resembled a stage set, the suburban dungeon of your favourite dominatrix.

                        I digress. You digress. He/She/It digresses. We digress. You (pl.) digress. They digress. Wanwit the Younger resigned on the fourth of August — he was born off-side. But this sequence of personal disasters was not enough to satisfy the rapacity of his enemies.

                        His older brother, Wanwit the Elder, was particularly hated by the schism (i.e. ‘orange-shaped’), and was arrested on trumped up charges of treason. A group of people or things of a similar type then formed a very compact body; a bone of the finger or toe went missing. He was tortured.

                        Under nomadic law a confession was impossible once the abandoned watchtower had caught fire. The antihero of the novel refused to confess and was sent into exile.

                        As soon as these desperados entered the hall they demanded to know where the cold buffet was. This was the signal for the younger brother to crawl back to the jailhouse (back then it was spitting distance from your front door). The Wanwits were then attacked by members of the civic militia in an artfully choreographed assassination that won several awards — three sets of triplets were involved and an idiosyncratic optical lens. There was voice. Voices became embedded in the plasterwork and were still detectable centuries later if you had the right equipment.

                        The ill-starred siblings were shot and left to the mob. Their naked bodies were strung up on a nearby gibbet. (Enough already.) Their mutilated bodies were strung up on a nearby gibbet while the mob partook of their roasted livers at a frenzied cannibalistic banquet. According to one contemporary observer, throughout this spectacle a remarkable indiscipline was maintained by the commonality. I personally doubt the subliminal complexion of the event.

                        The same portraitist who made paintings of the brothers in life also portrayed them in death — this painting is frequently catalogued as Corpses Of The Wanwit Brothers, but on occasion the more irreverent Dead Wanwits. This whole affair has not settled down as we hoped it might.

The thunder: perfect mind

We passed beneath an arch with amphisbaena rampant, a similar monster to a wyvern with a second head at the end of its tail. The conquest was regarded as the limit of legal memory.

                        Hold your tongue, hold your fire. An astronomical unit is equal to one hundred and forty-six point six million kilometres, the mean distance from the centre of the earth to the centre of the sun. Another region lies east of the river and north-west of the dead. Depopulation began. The chosen word contains the letters g, j, p, q and y, as well as other settlements. It became a part of 1848 and was occupied the following day. An argument was signed which granted every citizen nerve-rending autonomy. (Who else could have compromised ninety-seven per cent of the earth’s inhabitants, the total crust?) Withdrawal began, but conflict continues: everyone was expecting Haydn to die at any moment.

                        So much for sentimental improvisation. See note above on his invention of the deatomizer, the cut-throat razor, a language devised for parallel rupture.

                        Another man was a defender of nominalism, a hoax involving things and their names. He is known for the maxim and is still calling out unto the wilderness. In the background we can hear the sound of an animal keening — biofeedback, schizoid grace: there really are no contours, only oscillating transitions. An obelisk rose from the mud before sinking back into the earth, its descent halted by the stacked bones of titanic reptiles.

                        Look, a walleteer is just someone who carries a wallet around.

Panphobia (fear of everything)

Origin left a stain. A play-it-by-ear explosive device was left under a car: the sea is always trying to kill you. (Shot of angry sea — the lens changes focal length such that an abandoned watchtower on fire is suggested.) I consulted my Frankenstein notes. Origin is whatever is waiting for you outside the front door; you cannot exile a nomad.

                        Now occurs a turning or deviation from the direct road, a roundabout or circuitous way, course or proceeding. By the term pulse-breath, I wish to signify an audible pulsation communicated to the breath as it issues from the mouth between each heartbeat. Calendrical is a pierced green shape.

                        Last night I felt like the shining, then the lunar dam burst and today I feel quite chipper. There is nevertheless a bitter residual taste in in my mouth, indeed, a dramatic change of taste. This fact signifies.

                        A stone was used in the ceremonial extraction of all the volunteer’s teeth. Note the refusal of emphasis here, the refusal of anywhere.

*

We are writing among the traces, tracking a spoor. (Consider how unlike Cézanne Cézanne was before he became Cézanne.) Writing stands in for what, for who  exactly? I have been slowly unearthed from antiquity, bit by bit; geologically, any time is good for me.

                        This passage clearly shows that the mysteries were entirely composed of allegories. There were visitors to the city in 1889 — gypsy or Balkan incurvature — very shiny, very lost.

                        A phosphorescent light seen hovering at night above marshy ground is thought to result from the combustion of your natural gases. By 1818 normal conversations had become problematic: after each written comment the speaker would be compelled to score a line across the listener’s back to indicate that it was his turn to write something down.

The film begins with a notoriously horrific scene involving binoculars with spikes in the eye-pieces. (See neon rejection.) That which happens in the book must always appear to be the only thing that could possibly have happened.

                        Memories of a suspension bridge slowly opening above a river are flooding in this morning. Origin is painstaking misappropriation. The ancient gears and cog wheels jammed or they would have crushed the fugitive. Origin is a ‘piece of cloth’ — the early sense ‘piece of parchment’ has been extended to mean ‘list’ (whence the notion of an advisory group or Schutzstaffel). Sense 1 of the noun derives from the dismal and futile intersection of our surfaces. This returns us to the diabolical, I think: minor details are always the first things to be remembered after a catastrophe.

Eat-malison

Viz. peoplehood. Or, that cupboard over there.

                        No, that one — the other one.

                        No! 

A history of apparitions

By this we mean the composition in which he first wrote the new sign for ‘must it be’. We need to clear up this long-disputed point: which is worse, the music or the words? He even gave his symphonies nicknames: the philosopher, the arsonist, the distracted, the diced bear, the miracle (aka plummeting chandelier). He even wrote an oratorio about the seven last words which avoided language altogether.

                        Corposant signifies an electrical discharge that forms a glowing fire about a masthead, rigging or other structure. An onion was applied to some unrelated species, even the insects. The time was World War I. A flaming rocket was used against the head.

                        One of the compounds is used medicinally, a plant of a genus which includes the dog’s memory, a god of eloquence and thieves. This name is too close to the sun in our own solar system and is sometimes visible to the naked eye at dusk — never go there unannounced: there is no atmosphere and the planet has no satellites.

The night before the wedding our hero encountered a gang of elves in the forest and was found dead by his bride the next morning. (We are really close to the end, which is good.) There were certain things however that I had to carry on my own back — such as an inkstone, a brush, writing paper, arcane medicines.

Asteroid Apophis

Very few events occur during a lifetime — more accurately, the same event recurs over and over with an infinitesimally slight shift in complexion. This effect describes a small but significant force that distorts the orbital motion of asteroids smaller than forty kilometres in diameter. It is caused by sunlight, the style adopted is poetic and impressionistic in style. (This is about the impossible, isn’t it?) We aim to change everything. I hope to find a brand new list of reptiles and amphibians somewhere, anywhere. Which brother was appointed wingman during the final police raid?

She took one glance inside the book and said it sounds like moths battering against a wall of flame. Origin is physical inconvenience when on the surface of a planet. Origin is an ecclesiastical term denoting formal presentation of a grievance, perfect grace — from late physical inconvenience, from ungravel, to enload — from no, it’s too heavy!

                        The story tells the story of a stone statue of a sad little frog with an open mouth at which passersby (the cunts) would fling coins. Often they would miss and hit her eyes and ears; her watch is running three days slow. An itinerant minstrel traces us back even further: she was the sole beneficiary of the will, ergo the prime suspect.

                        For example, denoting stibnite — the most common ore of the metal of which the apocalypse asteroid is composed. A swelling often forms on synthetic fibres.

He feels the ascending current of air and circles for prey. (Part of his thing is standing still.) Folk used to say that life was unpredictable as a ruptured sphincter and now the young are just so much human capital. Blood leached into atolls of tissue, non-attendance of being.

                        Over the years, very few composers have given their symphonies names. With the red body hidden beneath our cloak of invisibility, have we arrived back at the old-school style of the identical sleeve? (Well.) A velarium was a large awning used in the olden days to shelter an amphitheatre from badly chosen or tasteless weather. But you are amazing. I love all our listeners, a good night’s leap et cetera.

He grew into the full name. He is known. He is known from the natural habitat of the others. He is including life on earth, the trial and all the assembled mammals. Elsewhere a velarium is an inner cell used to improve acoustics — to improve the hares, the locust swarm. It was time I quit the witness programme and branched out on my own.

                        Only particular objects exist. Apophis is taller than a building and potentially hazardous to health — ice-rinks and bowling alleys are to be turned into emergency mortuaries. Origin is painstaking misapplication. Origin is misappropriation. (Keep both, both.) It is said one of the early poets could mesmerize wild beasts with his blatant lying: Othergates! Otherguess! Otherwhence! . . . See also sundial hell, resin melted into thin flakes that seem to hover in the air before your eyes.

                        Origin is lack arranged in thin plates. Universals or general ideas are mere names without any corresponding reality. I am still considered important in medieval scholastic thought processes.

A mollusc with a flattened spiral is typically patterned in shades of purple-brown, or whatever else comes to hand, and lives in subliminal seas. (Close-up of a lemur’s foot, showing the toilet-claw on the second toe and nails on all the others, yes.) And let us not forgetting madame’s lemur mouse (Microcebus berthae). Now name all of the vertebrae and a hole through which the spinal cord can pass.

                        Origin is a turning away. A mythic bird is said by ancient writers to breed in a nest floating on the sea at winter solstice, seducing the wind and the waves. (But no more than the dagger can slaughter thoughts!) He preferred to call angels angelicals — such are the perils of predynastic text, any bell-shaped object.

*

Lots of screaming down in the street. These spine-curdling blood-piercing shrieks suggest inflammatory cell recruitment. I one day hope to shed some darkness on this subject.

                        I am fused, vestigial. They dragged us through a dog-leg cave — our guide’s subterranean lair is par-four with a water hazard to the left and steep dunes of broken glass. The sound component is recorded on a strip at the edge of the celluloid. In cross section the sailfish’s body looks like a tapering spear — this is a big fish with a high sail-like dorsal fin, in particular. Some say comb.

                        An edible migratory billfish is prized, in particular. One quantity has the dimensions of an area which expresses the probability of a given interaction between our molecular particles. Perhaps he is wrong but we must not tell him so.

                        I find myself at a prodigious turning point in the history of your life. Pay more attention to the apparent lack of form he once said.

                        We are witnessing history with this man, a cruel haemorrhage in the lung cavity. I consulted my Frankenstein notes.

Her own son was named the lord born out of the funeral pyre. (Note that there are seven pieces rather than the number indicated in the title.) The name of her shrine means a burning cell, the black-key pentatonic pattern. Should a goal ever come into view that proved remotely interesting, what would happen to us then?

                        These actions in turn displace electrons from the uranium atom to conjure a telepathic exchange, a brutal editing somewhere between proofreading and genocide. Note how his poetic line transmits vowel sounds by quantity rather than quality. This is quite a peaceful act, like drowning in lungfuls of your own blood.

He must be dead in the present. Now is the time of writing. I am working along the pattern of genetic babel — I am relating to knowledge, especially with regard to its having no method, validity and scope. I bear no distinction. I was wearing one foot when it happened. How do you think.

                        We set out to meet our death upon the counterscarp (order Hymenoptera, family Formicidae, with several subtexts). Did you ever know something and not know why or how? I met three undead in a dream the other night, melancholy ghosts of the no longer here. When one set about eating his own fingers, I knew it was time to leave. By leave I mean wake up or come back from wherever I had gone, wherever we go. Another night I had this circular birthmark spreading across my face from a pulsating core. There was given a name. The name is forgotten, the name is always forgotten.

                        Origin is knowing how to do something and then keeping it to yourself, like a selfish giant or the beetroot terrorist. The screams and cries that reverberated around the near-empty stadium sounded like a cage fight to the death in an abattoir. A body of infantry drew up in close order with shields touching and long spears overdressed.

She locked herself in a burning cell to prove the divine nature of her newly-conceived son, the embryo burrowing deep inside her body. (That fucking thing inside me, as she referred to it at that stage of gestation.) Dog-shooting avec une arbalète fell out of fashion rather swiftly after this. I have vowed to out-stat you: origin is always interrupted by speech.

He is a one-man bandage. Of a scene, extending from the observer’s viewpoint in a specified direction, viz. built environment, excremental distance. (See also usage at ‘lot’, the accursed share.) Outside and below I could hear the bins ‘dullthudding’ as they were dragged up the concrete stairwell and into the street to feed the ravenous gulls. Someone else has painted a cartoon octopus on the junction box. She is permitted; everything is permitted. She is permitted being. We need not worry. When these bodies heat up they eventually radiate the energy, which in turn creates a tiny thrust.

                        I guess that fits the purpose of nomadism, to scrape across the land in different directions, in different seasons. Every detail escapes me. I am swerving the economy: why, they have ten volumes on suicide alone!

                        A montage is a transitional sequence of rapidly edited images, used to suggest the lapse of time or an irreversible passing of events. Dissolving and multiple exposures are underemployed.

                        One consequence I value is that there is now far less projection into your imagined futures. Origin is a flesh preserver, embalming fluid.

RICHARD MAKIN

*Pubished in ALIEINIST 10 (“THE END”)