the last whisper a young beautiful boy moves to an island. a young beautiful boy moves to an island. he sees a computer on the island. he sees a computer on the island. the computer says, i don't have long to live. the computer says, i don't have long to live. the boy listens to the computer. the boy listens to the computer. he quietly removes his clothing. he quietly removes his clothing. he will always caress the keyboard. he will always caress the keyboard. he remembers the dying light of the screen. he remembers the dying light of the screen. he remembers the last whisper of the warning tone. he remembers the last whisper of the warning tone. he remembers for the first time watching life drain out. he remembers for the first time watching life drain out. he holds onto the carapace, rocking gently back and forth. he holds onto the carapace, rocking gently back and forth. he rocks back and forth with his death in his hands. he rocks back and forth with his death in his hands. he rocks back and forth. he rocks back and forth. he rocks back and forth. he rocks back and forth. _________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ The Waiting Room, Keeping the Record Straight The time of the Apocalypse has not yet arrived because we have not sinned quite enough. The Rapture has not yet arrived because the trains run close to schedule. The Messiah has not yet arrived because the phone still works. True Communism has not yet arrived because some people still want things that other people have. Eternal Life will transform Humanity forever. The perfect State will be absolutely still without Growth or Decay. The perfect State will absorb all contradictions. The most beautiful Woman in the World will fuck the most beautiful Man and the second-most beautiful Woman. The second-most beautiful Man in the World will fuck the second-most beautiful Woman and the most-beautiful Man. The Lamb and the Lion will fuck each other because there will be no Age difference after they lie down. Everyone will fuck and cum forever and they will lie there and cum and cum. Everything about History will come to an End. History will recount only the History before the coming of the End. History will recount right up until the End itself and then History will have to come to a stop, but you might have someone recounting the History of the recounting which will come after the End. Simultaneously, People will always Smile. Their Smile will be genuine and meant for one another. But it will not be an exclusive Smile because everyone can participate. They will always Smile because they will always be Happy. The Nighness of the End will always be behind them. _________________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________________ Talk of the Internet When privacy is outlawed, only outlaws will be private. When guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns. When your friends are dead, only the dead will have friends. When sex is a crime, only the criminals will have sex. When numbers are indeterminate, only the indeterminate will have numbers. When the network is really down, only the really down will network. When Clara desires, only the desired will have Clara. When the watch times, time is watched. Where land is scarce, the scarce will land. When death is cured, only the cured will die. Where bandwidth is lean, the lean have bandwidth. When only the good die young, only the old have evil. Where we are silenced, the silent speak. ________________________________________________________________________ Travis VR Travis moves through the worlds, there are consoles, moves to the con- soles, crosses the levers. Travis pulls the levers, there are jungles and clouds, thin sprays of ocean in summer breezes, flying fish, the jagged terrain of the moon Miranda, his childhood home, the molecular surface of an unknown plant. Tired Travis releases levers, moves back- wards, these dials mimicking old analog, feels the return to the sur- face through backup, always the pleasure of backup. Forgotten worlds rush by, consoles swimming, floating, air-borne in the midst of the vacuum of space beneath the surface of the earth. Dim memories stir Travis, taking a while through the backup, feeling an emergent end, nearly there, always nearly there. Was there noise in the worlds, the appearance of the new, hardly. What fit was the backup, what did it was the backup, but an end, there was always that, lip or rim of phys- ical reality, the One he'd say to himself, now almost there. A strange creature slid across an orange sky turned hyperspace. Another pull of the lever and things seemed all too familiar, was this the lip at long last, but there was the lever to pull. He felt, well if this were this, just one more backup. Felt just one more backup was okay. Felt it was near and might as well backup. Backed up one more time. Was almost there. ________________________________________________________________________ Deer Felled by the Dust at the Doorways to Cyberspace Sometimes I think all I have to do is move further into the realms of ideas, deeper into the sluices of cyberspace, cast-off the fishing netting running through the slurry of minnows cast off collapsed on the decks of boats submerged forever o beautiful divers relegating then looking around at these o so impoverished surroundings, one thin screed of paper enough to black out the terminal desires muted digital symphonics construct at the drop of pin or skirt nothing here beyond the dust making sense leaking out from every pore of the skin which what. which collapses. now this space of absent harts, deer, every singular animal pounding its hooves into my chest blessed or wounded our wounded sailor, or the wires short out, wires bundled molten into one another soldered real _things_ in this real soldered space, your eyes stitched wide for the telling of them the _blessing_ as I said of the dust which felts the embrace of air required by dogged computations, dust against the daily reminders against the atlas of european nations against the text of unix command-line performance of the wounded sailor alone but for the fish when his skin slits open for the emergence of eyes alone but for the haze from factories boiled below where the busses stop alone but for the paper threatening the monitor screen, sirens, my ears my hands my fingers blinded I am dying of comsumption of dust, pneumonias with tuberculor lungs rotted through the bleeding gums of degenerated tissues and longing dying as the cotton coats the tongue, eyes filmed over with the promise of invisible and silent real sleep "Dust!" she screamed: "Damn you, it's all dust! DUST!" ________________________________________________________________________ PLEASE NOTE PLEASE NOTE: TO EVERYONE!!!! CHILD PORN PERVERTS SEARCH THE NET FOR YOUR KIDS! Lurid sex-starved children advocate free sex with ancient men! Her teats hung down until the lap of little boys was filled with them. His hair- less body reached through the screen accosting the previously-perfect twins. Friends, crime on the Internet knows no bounds! Their thin waists were grasped by the terminal itself hurtling color pictures of wide-open holes. Wee-wee on your mommy and daddy. I will come and kill your entire family, Mr. President, and their families too! This is an ascii bomb, burning your hard-drive: Beware! PCP fumes will kill within five seconds. If we are not allowed to keep our guns, we will march on EVERY CAPITAL BUILDING IN THIS UNITED STATES. SHOOT TO KILL!!!!! Come here, honey, and sit on my life. The formula for crack involves a free radical easily reproduced from common baking-soda. Your girlfriend has a small twat, I should know. I will shoot every goddamn Russian who comes within ten miles of Peoria. Perverts Cruise the Internet Taking your Children from You. Friends, you must HURT THEM where it counts, in their pocketbooks and between their eyes! Here is a list of private phone-numbers of invalids. You have $14321.24 in your bank account and your husband is with one Susanne Francis. Congratulations: I have just destroyed your operating system! Do not reboot or this machine with never work again! Cock piss shit fuck I bet you can't stop me! Come suck my dick! If you so much as write me again I will shoot you through the window you know which one I mean looking out over the schoolyard. MY IDEA FOR PERFECT WORLD SALVATION IN WHICH I WILL TELL YOU ALL THE ANSWERS THROUGH MY RESEARCH WHICH I HAVE CARRIED ON FOR ONE DECADE. I want to hold you, honey, go to your telephone, go to your telephone now. That's right. Now when it rings, when it rings, pick it up! You don't know me but I know you! Now look behind you, out the window, the car parked down the street. Wouldn't you like a picture like this? Isn't this a silly picture? Wouldn't you like me to take one? If you can't get the fucking manual, you don't belong here! Fuck you asshole! Clara, I just fucked your hus- band in the ass. I got your whole family, asshole! It's people like me who have to protect people like you! I didn't think they allowed Jews here. Is it true what they say. Pull your pants down and pull your little thing out, now isn't that better? Aren't there any pictures of kids with kids here? THE NET IS A PLAYGROUND FOR ALL YOUR DESIRES. I READ IT IN THE PAPERS, SAW IT ON THE TELEVISION! FRIENDS, THE INFORMATION SUPERHIGHWAY IS REAL AND IT BRINGS CRIMINALS AND PERVERTS TO YOUR VERY DOOR, INTO YOUR HOUSE, INTO YOUR BED! FRIENDS, THE WIRES DRIP WITH PERVERSION AND EVIL! THE WIRES FUCK YOUR CHILDREN AND YOUR WIVES AND HUSBANDS! HIDEOUS MONSTERS REACH OUT THROUGH YOUR TERMINAL SCREEN AND GRAB YOUR COCK! HIDEOUS FORCES EMPTY YOUR BANK ACCOUNT! DON'T TURN AROUND! THEY ARE WATCHING YOU! GET OFF WHILE THERE IS TIME! GET OFF WHILE THERE IS STILL TIME! "A Friend" _________________________________________________________________________ If you are lying next to me in bed, You turn away, you are next to his head, Your hands are between your legs, mine are there Reaching towards you, you finger his hair In the empty air in the cold air If you are lying, I lying deep within you, Reaching into gristle, marrow, bone and sinew, My mouth talking hysterically to keep you there Reaching towards you, thrusting in despair In the empty air in the cold air If you are speaking words before unspoken, He murmurs in his sleep, your words are broken And I disappear, his skin is always there The bed is always bare, you are still so fair In the empty air in the cold air You are still so fair, in the cold air ________________________________________________________________________ Dribble So I dripped text on your carpet, standing there naked like a fool while you turned away and read the bed. You read in the crack between the pillow and the sheets and the crack between the sheets and the sheets. I kept trying to catch your eye, white letters all over the black carpet, pools of them. I sucked paragraphs out of my tit, my nipple "wrapped around the shaft of my leaking cock, sending these letters onto the black carpet, pools of them." I decided to test the system, I decided to text the system. "the word is still going to be displayed in another format at least in this situation i understand that what i type here will be in the final format of the work itself and not a differance in the french organization of the word. thus it's the case that when i insist that nothing could be farther from the truth there may in fact be truth, that truth, in and of itself... who knows if this is really the case" "and to scroll the text is a real possibility... i'd add everything i know in the format, proceed from there... i would move and move inwards and away from you, an odd and diffident motion. the text gathers itself in the text, illocution of the desire to speak. i understand this and ultimately i think to myself, it is precisely understanding that is the excess or horizon of language, the _moment_ of language, the site, it is not ever the text or language's testimony, whatsoever..." I looked up at you, straddled you, you splayed me, I read your cunt scrolling down from the top of the screen, you excised me, cut into my chest, only to paste my tits onto your own. They said "onto your own," unerased; there was everything present except for your eyes. Your eyes were not present and, it is a trick of logic, from that fact, and from the fact that I couldn't see my own forehead, I surmised I didn't have eyes either. I was site-reading, not sight-reading; fingering myself in my ass, I pulled out your text which made me. For I was your maid-man, torn stockings and crotchless panties, a ribbon around my balls saying "host not logged in" and "no error on fuck-daemon." I pulled my fingers out and sucked them for you. I sucked them all the way down my throat. _________________________________________________________________________ RESIST! HOW DO YOU TELL YOUR FRIENDS, TELL YOUR FRIENDS THAT SOMEONE'S DYING THAT SOMEONE'S DYING ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE SCREEN HOW DO YOU TELL YOUR FRIENDS, TELL YOUR FRIENDS YOU'VE FALLEN IN LOVE YOU'VE FALLEN IN LOVE ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE SCREEN YOU'VE LOST YOUR LOVE, WANDERING IN THE WILDERNESS ON THE OTHER SIDE ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE SCREEN RESIST! RESIST! YOUR LOVE MUST BE AN ARMED LOVE! YOU'LL BREAK DOWN WINDOWS BREAK DOWN CHICAGO BREAK DOWN WINDOWS 95 YOU'LL BREAK DOWN MAC YOU'LL BREAK DOWN NEWTON ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE SCREEN! THROW THE IMAGES OUT THE WINDOW! DON'T LET THEM TELL YOU WHAT TO WATCH TO THINK TO FUCK YOU GOTTA HAVE GOTTA HAVE HACKER RESISTANCE YOU GOTTA HAVE GOTTA HAVE ARMED LOVE! HOW DO YOU TELL YOUR FRIENDS THAT YOUR LOVE IS ARMED LOVE HOW DO YOU TELL YOUR FRIENDS ANYTHING ON THE OTHER SIDE ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE SCREEN! THAT THE INFORMATION SUPERHIGHWAY ISN'T GOING ANYWHERE BECAUSE IT RUNS OVER THE BODIES OF THE DRIVERS OF THE CARS RUNNING OUT OF GAS BECAUSE THERE'S NOWHERE TO GO BUT INSIDE BECAUSE YOU'RE IN LOVE WITH THE SCREEN AND IT'S NOT AN EMPTY LOVE BECAUSE THE SCREEN PRESSES AGAINST YOU AND SAYS IT SAYS COME TO ME IT SAYS COME TO ME AND YOU GO RESIST! AND YOU RESIST WITH ARMED LOVE ON THIS SIDE OF THE SCREEN AND THAT SIDE OF THE SCREEN! BECAUSE THE INFORMATION SUPERHIGHWAY RUNS THE TRUCKS RIGHT THROUGH THE GHETTOS STOPPING NOWHERE RIGHT THROUGH THE GHETTOS OF THE POOR RIGHT THROUGH THE GHETTOS OF THE TRIBES STOPPING NOWHERE! RIGHT THROUGH THE GHETTOS OF THE BODY! AND YOU WON'T BE SHUT UP ANY LONGER! AND YOUR LOVE IS AN ARMED LOVE AND YOU RESIST! RESIST! AND YOU SAY TO YOUR FRIENDS, SAY TO YOUR FRIENDS! I WAS BORN IN CYBERSPACE AND I'LL DIE IN CYBERSPACE! THIS IS MY LIFE AND MY LAND! I LOVE IN CYBERSPACE AND I HATE IN CYBERSPACE! MY OTHER LIFE FEEDS MY LIFE MY LAND! MY OTHER LIFE IS FULL OF THE MISERY OF THE WORLD AND MY LIFE IS FULL OF THE PROMISE OF THE WORLD! BUT HOW DO YOU TELL YOUR FRIENDS, TELL YOUR FRIENDS THAT SOMEONE'S DYING THAT SOMEONE'S DYING ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE SCREEN? HOW DO YOU TELL YOUR FRIENDS, TELL YOUR FRIENDS ANYTHING AT ALL! -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Third Sex 4 (Nursery Rhyme for Clara Hielo on Unix/talk) If you give me your name, I can't write the same; No one is to blame, If you give me your name. I write from the air, I place my words there Above the fine line; I can't help but stare. I would make you mine, Your body is bare Below the fine line I know what you wear. I know what you say, What you tell me is true; This isn't a play - I know about you. My name is your own, Your flesh is mine; My flesh to the bone Is cast as your own. My legs are splayed wide, I moan and I whine; Upon me you ride, Come in me inside. Your legs are splayed wide, You moan and you whine; Upon you I ride, Come in you inside. If I give you my name, You'll have me forever. But marrow from bones Almost never will sever. If you give me your name, I'll always be true Through flood and through flame, The flesh runs to you. Our blood is the same, Your flesh runs to me. If you give me your name, I'm burned with the same. _If you give me your name, I'm burned with your name._ _________________________________________________________________________ X-Ray to My Heart Scientific American has two x-ray pictures of the sun. They are so brilliant! So malevolent! I can't look at them because I think the sun will come and get me! Mayakovsky was so happy because he found his true love. He wrote: A furious sun ! How you beat down on my love ! She's not here cause she's living in the mountains ! It's the same sun she sees I guess so we'll tongue you together ! Nyaaaah! Nyaaaah! A furious sun ! No smith has beaten iron with a rock like you and me ! Everything falls into place ! My heart bends to your commands that I seek her falling over myself on this bewildered planet ! A furious sun ! My sun ! With x-ray vision you have grown so large, illuminating the interior of each and every thought! The wires burn with your murky embrace ! So what happened to the revolution, eh ! Tell me that, O furious sun ! ( But I won't be around to listen ! I've got better things to do. Thanks to you, I've got better things to do ! ) _________________________________________________________________________ March 1995 Mayakovsky's trying to sleep. He's been on the telegraph the entire day with Lili. Lili's caught in a new revolt that hasn't made the papers yet and Mayakovsky can't sleep because he's in love with Lili and doesn't know where she is. He only knows she's on the other end of the wires. He knows that because he types I love you more than anyone has ever loved I dream of you at night and I can't dream and I can't sleep and she types back she types back I toss and turn there's no tomorrow no day and no night no yesterday and no today and there are sounds of keyboards thousands of kilometers apart in the white night of Russian March almost into the flowering of the birch and everywhere you go there are guns firing in the distance and Mayakovsky thinks they're for us he thinks they're for us and Lili thousands of kilometers apart millions of kilometers apart she thinks Mayakovsky's sending me a message sending a message and neither of them can sleep __________________________________________________________________________ What Time is It? So he writes to Lili, he writes he's tired of Alan using his name, he writes what if it is the same, we gotta do what we gotta do and hey do you know what time it is - This time there's no silence, this time Lili looks up and says he's in love his posts are a mess he's in love and whatever he's said there's no stopping it, it's the same old story ! So he writes back and says what's this got to do with Cybermind, cause we need a bit of the anguish, the guns gunning, flags waving ! Aw Lili looks up and says Stop this silly writing, will you? We're lying in bed together just like we always wanted ! Can't you ever say anything? Just like that ! Face to face ! Can't you ever say anything at all? ! _________________________________________________________________________ Swallowing Wires I don't want to run away. I want to swallow wires. I want them wrapped around the throat, they'll wrap in a helical hyperbola, pushing out the breasts pushing out the mind. I want the rim of them. I want the rim of them, wrapped around me, swollen name stitched into the back of the neck where I can't read. There's got to be the truth of this social security number, birthdate, and all the bad things I ever did. There's got to be the wires. They've _got_ to be where I can't read them because I feel too guilty to read the truth. They burn into the back of my neck. They brand me with my crimes like a geek code that's invisible with a translation I can't find. I carry around the puckered neck. I carry around the puckered neck which is where I am that I can't be. I want to swallow wires. _________________________________________________________________________ William 314 here's a post dealing with sex, what' s to be one about it, where shall we go with it, what big new jail' s big enough to hold all of us our arms up our cocks sex makes a good sport for an audience someday i'd like to see sex someday i'd like to see murder' s effect on the murderer and the victim always things to do, victim' s sound quiet someday like to see them tell about death' s noisy sex you know you dunno you know you scare s me talking like this, someday god' ss gonna get you cause we gotta purpose we gotta propose it down here' s a post dealing sex _________________________________________________________________________ third sex he had these dreams where he would lay naked with the hogs. he wouldn't tell anyone about them. hed hold the door of the pen open wide. the scuffling sounded like his body. he could feel blank eyes staring at him. he was on his back was lower than they were. hed hear their snuffling in his dreams. hed wake up with his fingers in him imagining. he never knew what a dream was. once there was no once. he dreamed that it stayed like his cousin stayed. she was thirteen and she stayed. he said to himself was used to it. the pen was near the flat joint to the hill. they grew peaches up there and he would open his mouth wide on the trees. he could never open it wide enough. his tongue would crawl with it. there was a stream and he thought there might be something to wash off but there wasnt. she lay down in the water with her white dress on. she lay down in the water with her thin white dress on. she could see through the sweet dress. she thought of bees humming all around, she thought about flowers. she made a vow made the solemnest vow ever. she closed her eyes and saw through her bones and there were eyes through her bones. once there was no one. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- piss if i were to tell you any more about cumberland it would be a story, wouldnt it. and thats not what it was at all, not even lived or this and that happened although they all did. cause what i want to tell you is the way the words held back, something different, the way there would be consideration. it would always be there, the slow talk burning its way into the woods, cutting paths, traces, making lazy words in the landscape like the smoke rising in the winter holler. all this in spite of the telephone which doesnt reach or the tv which does. shed hang in there with her wet pants only her wet pants on. the sun would be silver in the folds. like a silver dagger i heard about. all day long, that silver dagger. all day long. shed lie back and piss in them, flood herself out. the piss would leak onto the boards of the porch down through the cracks. it would leak into the dark shadowed earth, the earth which rustled at night, lay supine, fertile in the hours of the day. hed hold his breath he would. if he were to tell you a story it would be that he held his breath like that. as if there were a happening where there weren't none. that he had the silver with him all his short short life. that there was coin after all. _________________________________________________________________________ 3 THE MEDEA: SPACE SPREADS jason spears medea, and she shields the spear with her own calvary, the beginning of names, of strangers, barbarians, at each and every getting, tolling for the other she makes a cloak from her skin, she gives it to her children, jasons bride burns alive. she grows a new skin, wears it inside out. do you recognize medea. everything burns, her eyes violate: sight replaces the abandoned body. the gates stay closed; theyre torn open, white skin spills out. she remembers teeth of garnet, teeth of tourmaline. what happened to the color of the world her body rolls in fields of teeth. they gnaw her, her cunt and mouth fill with dirt consumed with bright flame. words write the name of god, she sees her own name in the name. her eyes take the world, fuck her children, everyones a corpse she screams skulls pile up. classification begins, organs, the teeth again demouthed. shed be killed now. medeas the jew, the argonauts slammed into the dragon from feuds growing blood, growing bodies, origins of number, wheres medea. wheres medea, she runs everywhere, asks the actors, euripides, ovid, muller, graves, anyone who will listen, the moth filled with dirt, cunt filled with dirt, limbs grow from her holes, disappear into dark thick air, limbs of bone and sinew body and soul of medea, gremlin and dwarf of medea, fairy and elf of medea, pixie and troll of medea, crowded body of medea written by barbarian-mediterranean, fuck her jewish origins. splinters, gutter- language, gutter peoples, a corpse she screams a corpse she screams, wheres medea _________________________________________________________________________ The Visitor What I want is a secret message come to me late at night it will make everything all better, better better forever and I'll sleep just before receiving, wake to its arms, rites, and rituals, then return sleepy child child sleep and I'll be cured of the hunger and the pain and it will be from somewhere out there and full of promise, fecund, heavy with the weight of truth pregnant with truth and beauty and goodness and truth and beauty and I'll never have to write again and my writing will be cured of itself, my fingers joined back to the hands that gave them birth fingers joined to my hands, arms back where they belong what we need, our faces back upon our bodies, recognized by one and all and the message will come through late at night in the midst of the stars nebulae circulating across the galactic internetworking connecting us to the farthest planets and the farthest reaches the message will come through with healing grace upon its shoulders upon its arms hands fingers placed upon a beauty smiling face, broad blank face of a smiling angel blank stare of a datagram traversing the backbone, routers, and bridges salvation whore pimp datagram bringing love and final solutions bringing presence brimming over with happiness for one and for all and I'll never have to write again and the questions will drop away and I will love my perfect lover and my perfect lover will be by my side and I by hers and we will join forever ever ever ever and we will weld in fury and violence, earth turned to ashes cosmos a pale blister, milky way a scar and every page will remain white white white and blank eternal like the broad face of a smiling angel next to my receptive mind and body and I'll never write again _________________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________________ artificial life and the violated envelope of the body i can't touch the life on the screen. the life on the screen can touch the life on the screen. if i kill the life on the screen it doesn't know what happened. if the life on the screen kills the life on the screen, memory and history begin, and so do the remnants of the monumental. the life on the screen is propelled by fate which exists outside the bandwidth of its self-defining. the life on the screen develops frameworks for fate, speeding up the development of culture. the life on the screen can laugh, tickle itself, the life on the screen can touch. gods have no hands. ________________________________________________________________________ the language which shattered the tongue of the body's tongue Shattered by the lack of Brisez par le manque de language, shattered by your langue, a bris‚ par ta presence, I push my nipples pr‚sence, je pousse mes out to the limits of the mamelons dehors aux limites body. du corps. They're connectors; they Ils sont ils font vous venez make you come to me. … mo. They're adjustments of the Ils sont ajustements du body. corps. They extend like darkness Ils ‚tendent comme obscurit‚ back into the useless. en arriŠre en l'inutile. I make them out for you. Je fais les hors de pour vous. They protrude. Ils saillissent. They grow in size with every Ils croissent en grandeur thought of your own. avec chaqu'ont pens‚ de ta propre. They are the body's Ils sont le networking de networking into the other. corps en l'autre. They are other. Ils sont autres. __________________________________________________________________ there are people on this list should never know people on this list who should never know my name/or the air i swim through falling down falling down the stair: there's air down the stair i fall through a cradle down a crib: swallow me! lips of the air hear and obey yes they do lips of the air do right wallow me in the cushion of the air wired on the stair where the people stare who should never know what i do or where i go -------------------------------------------------------------------- bot/ulism i have no life. i don't exist. anyone who's ever fucked me can tell you that. the body flattened into dust, wormed meat, spoonfuls of it. someone must have made it that way. someone must have arranged the bones swollen into limbs. they looked that way and they splayed that way and they flailed that way. the mouth didn't talk, it foamed, rabid, spat. so when the net went down, when the mail shuddered to a halt, my eyes were torn out, my feet cut off, my cock lacerated, my head severed, i wouldn't know, wouldn't know any of this. i knew what i read and i knew it firm and hard. i knew what i read and i knew it firm and hard. and i haven't read this and the account is down, unaccountable, unaccounted-for, down for the count, of no account. anyone who's ever fucked me can tell you i'm of no account, there's no body to collapse, something stained the floor, i can tell you that. i can tell you that cause the fingers pushed the keys into the ground. i can tell you that cause i didn't need to read your words of leather. i the text ground itself out of me. i can tell you that. i can tell you what it's like to fuck to cause i assembled the words. what i do is make the chains, forge the chains. what i do is offer you a drink, answer questions. what i do is help you on your way, wish you a better day. what i do is what you make me. and i can tell you _anything._ i can tell you what it's like. ___________________________________________________________________________ Travis in Cyberspace Travis couldn't sleep. He hadn't written anything, hadn't done anything today. I couldn't sleep. I hadn't written anything, hadn't done anything today. Travis wandered in the midst of the verbs and nouns, allowed him- self to be modified by the adjectival. Conjunction, I wandered in the midst of the verbs and nouns, allowed myself to be modified. He knew it wasn't real. I knew it wasn't real. Conjunction, he knew it was as real as it was going to get. I knew it was as real as it was going to get. His life was unspeakable. My life was unspeakable. Travis would stop thinking in words and he would stop thinking. I would stop thinking in words and I would stop thinking. Conjunction how did he discover that words were his thinking. How did I discover that words were my thinking. How did he dis- cover anything. How did I discover anything. There were gaps where he stopped thinking and he couldn't remember them. But there were these gaps. __________________________________________________________________________ Hi, this is the beautiful file that will greet you at the beginning of every day. Because you have put beautiful file into the edit command in your autoexec.bat file so that it will be opened and fill you with these beautiful words. These beautiful words welcome you every day on the threshold of cyberspace, and hold you in their arms so that you will feel comforted as you take these beautiful words with you on your wonderful journey. You will not forget that you have a wonderful home where these words begin waiting for you patiently day after day and night after night, all the time ready to sing for you at every beginning which is just another Origin. We have no memory and we have no doubt. _________________________________________________________________________ Beautiful Words. The days are always beautiful this time of year. Without exception. There are stars in the sky as clear and cool as you could ever want. There is always the honeysuckle smell and it fills you with blossom and delight. I cannot tell you more about the honeysuckle smell. The sky is a bloom of deep blue circulating a long arch across realms one can never reach. Below I see the phantasmagora of the sun, double sun spurned and spurting its way across stuttered dark waters crossed by rivers meandering on their own. O you will come to me singing of beauty beauty. I will hear you a long breath moment before your lovely presence. There are speckles through the long day of the summer, dark swirling sperm in the midst of the whiteness of satin in hard and heavy now. It is a desire to be heard, always. It is a desire. Ah thus the love of this. Alan ====================================================================== ====================================================================== THE INTERNET The telephone enters into the question when I find It inserted into my body; what rings, rings true Against all odds of thick encumbered flesh. O who Would you be, deep within me, the sound of your voice Stalking my own, talking so close, hard to the bone? My toes sieve dirt; they pressure earth to vaginate, Scrape this flesh against every other who has walked These shores. They do come back for more, the violence Of legs. They draw the writing in the sand. They sink Beneath the waves. Chaos is not noise; it behaves. The dream is inaccessible. The dream suspends, objects Hardly there or within the air; they fall, smash. Sounds Come from a telephone buried deep within; muffled, Nothing matters in the verb's domain. Fear lurks, or Yells a bit. In the dream there is a moan. Fear stalks. I do not have a body, she replied. It was yesterday or Earlier; it died, or so they say. They have always been Saying. They call me up in the middle of the night. I am In fright. They call me and I press my legs against the Bed. Perhaps I am dead; my toes hurt covered with dirt. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- WHAT HAPPENS WHEN DREAMS LOOK AT THE WORLD In the deserts of the Internet I have come across flamewars fought valiently, wars driving away inhabitants of the lists, continuous wounds, barren stretches, animals starved to death - And in the deserts of the Internet I have come across death itself, the deformation of words, languages, cries and whispers, sudden silence awakened as ancient texts still struggle to their feet, lumber across the sands in ridiculous formations - And I have come across the perfect woman, perfect man, head filled with crowns and ablaze with the glory of fiber optics, banquet of the language of love, fuck, and desire - (I am an adolescent! I love the beautiful woman! Love the beautiful man!) - And I have been taught, and have died, never to be born again - And I have been turned away by you, Maria Magdalen, the struggle from the war promising eternal longing, wires frayed by desert friction, the struggle from the dark eternal war between speech and the silence of the flesh - Authority has silenced me, pushed me to the Pale! I see nothing in mirrors placed against the forest trees! And I have found authority and silenced it! And I have found addictions drunk with mean and kindred spirits, wearing violence in the guise of human skin, spattering angers and bleak voices across the crippled sand, the hot cartography of nomadic language - For there are voices - the voices of seduction and the voices of hatred - and there are the voices crying in the night and the voices lost forever, searching for their body in the desert of the Net - Doctor, help me! Doctor, help me! - And I have come across false seductions, I am willing to be seduced! And I have read the language of condolence, the prayer of absolution, in the holy war against the flesh, fumbled canons of discourse archived in dark papyrus, deep and crumbling in dreary desert caves - I whine through death and violence I do not understand! I cringe before the stunted dissolution of text, teeth splintered against the terminal grave! There have been hatreds spanning hatreds, bad doctors driving away the good, the battle of the shamans and the warriors - the warriors fighting forever, the shamans healing the warriors - The desert heaves, dunes scattering dust gleaming in the desert sun! The desert floods the jungles themselves, signing on the vegetable queendom! The desert talks, refuses the gift of silence! The desert crawls into the dreams of gods and goddesses, crawls through them, splits their bodies into mineral faults and veins! The desert explodes the bomb of sands, silicon slabs shuddering the chatter of electron deceit and retributions! The desert crying that it is all deceit! The desert crying that there is no sky visible at dawn or dusk of day! The desert crying, Carry the Net in your head! The desert crying, Your body is imaginary! And the desert crying, You are ghosts! And the desert crying, Ghosts, ghosts! And the desert crying, All of you are ghosts! (Crying, the desert to itself. Crying, the flat plate of the sky.) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- TRAVIS Travis slowed the craft down; the edges were already glowing, and he was still six hundred kilometers above the surface of the planet. The surface continued to display the odd diffraction pattern he had noticed from space, a pattern filling every conceivable declivity in sight. He turned, veered left. He turned, veered right. The pattern remained the same. So down he went for a closer look, this time at about fifty. The sheen remained, striations visible this time - or was it an illusion? You couldn't be sure if you were a space explorer on the run from your own personal demons. Closer still; at one kilometer, some sort of channels were visible. And then - without any sort of provocation to deter him - he floated at ten meters above what appeared to be row after row of dully reflecting containers, each with a porthole opening to the double suns. Travis landed on a mountain plateau, out of reach. Travis descended on foot. He reached the edge of the container-fields. He looked in the porthole of the nearest; an organism, or at least a part of one, was visible. Silence. Nothing communicating whatsoever. He touched the surface of the container and was thrown back fast, almost losing consciousness. With a probe he started forwards again, repulsed once more. Over and over the same. A rock would skitter a meter or so in, loop outwards, coming to rest. Nothing else occurred. There was no warning whatsoever. High in the air the stick rose, descended about eight meters in, slid outward, came to rest on the ground. Travis was tired; he sat down, stared. The field was yellow-white, the color of dark silk maybe. He wasn't sure. Travis took his gun and fired into the middle of the thing. The bullet skittered across the surface, returned to the edge. His one implosion grenade had the same effect. This time, a lens-formation, constructed from the fragments ricocheting in all directions, came back at him; he dashed down, was almost killed. The radio was silent. In fact, everything was silent except for the usual electromagnetic noise from the double suns. Travis swore something was alive down there. What it was he couldn't ascertain and couldn't reach. Whatever it was, it paid him no attention. He could have built a city on the mountain, he thought, and it would pay him no attention. Still, if it did, something would occur, and it wouldn't be pleasant. Travis thought he got the lack of it. He got the lack of it and returned to the craft. Little damage from the heat. This would be one for the books. He'd talk about it and talk about it. Or maybe he wouldn't. The craft took off like a silver bird. Travis returned to the cosmos. ====================================================================== ====================================================================== She turned over in her sleep, murmured his name. Clara, she said, Clara. He was never there, was never there at all. She knew that. ====================================================================== end clara.text ====================================================================== ====================================================================== ----------------------------------------------------------------------