...
.
(they were lined against the wall. they were facing them. the procession moved as though notched in place along a tread -- a creak in the strings of their wooden legs.
one had breath who failed him. across the line, one walked along the wall and went to him -- without hesitation, he went to him.
- buck up, mate. it's time. you weren't brave before. don't dishonor yourself further by refusin bravery now. c'mon. c'mon. what if i gave ya a lil stroke. lookit those luscious locks! there's a good, strong soldier. picture me doin this ta you when i'm over there, facin ya down. hee-hee. hee-hee. c'mon. feels good, don't it?
... i'm sorry it has to be this way, mate. i'd have loved to have met ya under better circumstances. i'm sure it was the pressure -- you know. things get to be so much sometimes. nobody wants to turn away from what they love, but sometimes we got to, mate. even if it destroys us. ... all turns out for the best in the end, y'know.
he walked as though composed of cartilaginous tissue -- a bounce in his step as though the bleak morning air contained some warmth or buoyance.
across the yard, the day had turned to night -- the night had swallowed day. in aspect, rationally discordant. the hyperagitation of spotlights playing over espresso steam in bitter root.
on the stage where the orchestra played, metal cross-hatchings rose in gleams of spectacle gleaming silver modernity. the black velvet billowed before the speakers. the yawns of their eyes beheld a shepherd falling nowhere down some fractal of infinity.
--\\./--
_0_0_0_0_
between the breaths it came --
to provide respite from the faint relief.
the wail of a speared leviathan collapsed the wall of sound -- the clattering of chain ringing on bone -- the jigsaw peels into rinds --
smeared in ambergris warmed personally by the bulbs, the roots and the gloves of the officers who had taken the task of so tenderly arranging them --
the toothed caress loomed in languid mid-parting --
a lotus of men in their racing skins -- stewing for sake of sport and display. elbows coiled around their knob of knee. cheekbones plush around pungence of groin. a mutual recognition -- of their place and their role.
[prokiev - dance of the knights]
-/~_/.\_~\\-
two stood in a crucible off the main-stage -- where one looked out a window into night, and the other into day.
in their den, the lights did play over the karats of their insignias, hexagonal lenses refracting upward ever after.
the velvet trapped the silence inside. they stood inside the speakers.
the gloss of their leather gleamed in the false moon -- a light diffuse through the weight of an impenetrable overcast.
[ … ]
strings fluttered in flight some far off place.
-/~ -/~
now together, they faced the night.
- sir, the musicians have grown impudent.
- the musicians are well within their right to grow impudent, brother -- look at the service in this economy.
- amid these masks, my eyes draw to serious faces.
- malfunctions, disorders, and bears -- a koi pond schooled with red herring.
- against the walls -- we face the walls.
- i cannot abide poor organizing principles, brother -- especially in service to ceaseless brutality. a true patriot ought act with brutality which aspires to be ceasing.
- we bid the cowards adieu.
--//.\--
/. / . / . / .
- friends, brothers, sisters, siblings without whole or center -- we do not wish death upon the musicians!
(a deathhead flutters
torpid on the acrid mists --)
... for if we draw close, even in their silent hatreds we can hear the resonances which sing at the center of their beings!
(-- and into lethe plunges
stain to slop his wiry gutters!)
... hearts which have known beauty still express themselves in these faces, no matter how well eclipsed by these loom-embroidered roadmaps of blood!
- barreling down the road.
[shrieking far -- ]
- there need be no blood shed today which was not preordained.
(i entrain all
which my pre ordains)
... we are few, and without counting -- we have brought the night and we shall sing to you tonight! we call shadows to the world of men -- and strip men to the call of shadows!
- pierce your lungs -- and breathe the air.
- walk with us and know no fear --
(from out this state of suspension
we broil and peer)
... these columns of smoke you see with eyes so singed have grown blighted to the fires which spew them!
- look to the skies!
[ -- echo of decimation]
- the way we bring the day!
.\ o -/- / ( o ) \ -\\- o /.
... moonscapes like amethyst in fields of glass
- when i level my hand, the bombs always seem to fall.
- hand in hand, you will be as we will be --
( O ) =+= ( O )
- we will rule your airways with two cast-iron fingers.
- WE LIGHT UP THE SKY
- bitch
- IIIIIII'M
- the dog days are upon us.
- LIVIN IN THE ICE AGE
(for the joys of my discontentment --)
- the ides of march have lingered late this year
(i am free to do my loving in the winter)
(o // O)
<O*.*o>
... the calendar spins as a top without surface.
- WITH THIS APPARATUS, WE SLIDE ASIDE THE ORGANS OF THE STATE // CLENCH YOUR EVERY ROOMY BOWEL //
(LEAVIN A SLIME TRAIL AS YOU GET LICKED)
THE PRAETORIAN GUARDSMEN WILL PLAY FOR YOU TONIGHT.
-.-.-.-.-__\ =( \+/ )=/ __-.-.-.-.- o
. . . ///////// yhe plAV`ers \\\\\\\\\ . . .
(*** ***Arjs *** ***Arjs) / \
hjs Ascende^cV` -- el precede^ye yhe crjyjc lAvreAye | yhe Accvser -- yhe AdvocAye yhe hjgh ivdge -- yhe j^qvjsjyor yhe execvyjo^er | ^^Ai. ********** ******* cpy. brvxer hArvspex cpy. ioeV` schrejber^^Ache^ cpy. lAjkA psychor-rhAx cpy. iAcek psychor-rAgja cpy. vvAllV` hlAford cpy. lvxor dróyyj^.^
. . . ///////// { + + } \\\\\\\\\ . . .
/-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-\\./-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-\
the imperial palace at city hall was a serpentine folly of cubes and facades deadlocked into a number of revivalist styles, including, but not limited to -- neo-atlantean crypto-abstractionism, post-atomic pre-continentalist schizotype, and lacuna-coriolian sans-italic --well in-keeping with the metastasizing brutalism which had been in vogue since the time came when foundations had nowhere to be laid but upon previous foundations, and edifices stacked high upon one another in fossilized substrata which made you seem to careen upward -- or which made you seem to careen downward -- depending on if you were looking up, or depending on if you were looking down -- the exact moment of which had been a point of debate among historians since centuries prior to its occurrence.
- all right, new guy. it's real simple. if ya wanna get into the archives on the fourth floor, ya gotta reach into the throat of the lion fountain on the right wall of the lobby on the left side of the second floor balcony -- that's right wall, left lobby, not left-right, right-left --
... you think you got that?
... it's above the armory, if that most likely makes things easier -- you should see an escalator up to the library if you're in the right place, but if you're in the wrong place, you'll see a closed-down receptionist's booth and the ambiance of a bustling place left abandoned. now, inside the lion's throat you'll find the proof of sir winnifred's red rock, and under the shadow of this red rock, you shall find your way to the carved maidens that are the pillars of the evidence room adjacent to the right-side mess hall (that is, right and left from the orientation of the front door by the way mate, as that's the standard startin location. though considerin our orientation up here -- on the third floor office at the backside of the buildin -- you'd be descendin the stairs from this direction, and so would most likely be needin to reverse these coordinates, unless you, loike me, always orient yourself from startin location and learn to work your way backwards from there) ... so, like i was sayin, when you're in the pantry storage room, find the bust of the busty lass who ain't got any heart left in her and stick it right in. that should detach the chest of spice racks long enough for ya to sprint across the room and stick that brick we got up there in the track. ... that's when ya lean back and enjoy how gooey you're gettin under yer leathers, mates! every day here's an adventure! once the mechanism releases, the rock should drop outta the statue and into the gutter, returnin it to the lionmouth -- if you're with someone, it's best ya just have him stand there and catch it. why ya always gotta bruddy up on guard, mate! really saves us some time, not havin to re-do the retrieval.
the purpose of these architectural enigmas had been to enact the dual function of disorienting spies and other unfit seekers of state secrets in a process synchronous with embedding the deeper truths of our state mythology into stone -- in other words, they were to enforce unceasing ritual pressure on the serviceman who occupied their halls, while lacerating the thinly spread minds of apostates and other anarchists, and in design proved a faultless expression of the style and refinements of the bathing brothers -- illuminating the depthless majesty of our many faced father's inwardly fragmenting and outwardly blooming drive to self-refining perfection --
in practice, they proved a constant hemorrhage of cost, time and manpower.
[the aureole of your radiant, yellow-haired brother
brooding against a bank of dials and diodes --
aching in the throes of an obsolescent control schema]
- where is the centaur medallion, brother? is it in the relief on the balcony, or did you leave it -- still slotted for stray eyes to idle upon -- in the plinth of the statue of the holy dismembered?
[your friendly brother's finger --
slick against his lip]
- if it's not still on my desk, cozily tucked away under my list of conquests, turn-ons, secret longings and recipes, i might have left it in the room with the statues of the monks who cry blood -- y'know the acid blood that melts that ambergris material we use to hold the keys to the prison cells? the acid blood that's not strong enough to melt the key if you can measure out the proper ph?
... not that i had any reason to go into the prison cells, course. i was just reflectin on the wash dissolvin the corrosion of idleness in the mind, as any good serviceman does when visitin the acid cryin room. i'm not cruisin for beat-off material on the dow-low through my implant.
certain passages were accessible only through inlaying the correct ossified material into the correct portion of vacant space -- and for reasons of security, these passages could not remain open, for their obscure beauty and biological hostility would prove hazardous if disseminated without the time for proper absorption.
[the tap of his boot on the tile --
a pirouette to the chop of his point]
- look, look at the tiles -- through repetition we've gouged the most precise solution straight into the face of the riddle itself!
|- _|
|_ -|
from out the sloped embankments of the mortar -- across the plain dredged by the migrating stones, some insect beheld the cliffs.
... it is a route test of endurance, nothing more. see to it that they’re replaced.
[a receiver dinged --
throat cleared]
- i've spoken to the contractor sent by the dean of interior constructive arts. we both agree it would be stupid to replace all the tiles when our able servicemen were so careful as to only scuff within the established gridlines. with the rate of recruitment spikin, and traffic to this hallway only increasin, it's gonna be the same tiles scuffed over and over and they're gonna have to be replaced, so -- let's only replace the ones that've been scuffed!
the fresh tiles shone like quartz in the moonbeam.
- why look at that perfectly styled cube of fresh perimeter!
|- _|
|_ -|
... it's as though the problem were as irrelevant as the solution and we need not ever have made the attempt to strive for one.
(breath and eyeballs, fucker!)
- we better get to work on makin em scruffy and dirty so they match the others!
o-(\ ) ( /)-o
two eager recruits -- lead by strings around their roots -- arms antennae against slunk heads -- stand shed of singlet pressed to damp of pit.
a touch anemic in the prime of youth -- the gelatin of tackle-dummy bodies stripped to dick-splotched rorschachs cradle the boughs of overripe meat in the dinge of their sacral warrior garments.
pinched by the bisected fly -- the sinews of the tether extending. musk of hearty gonads basting the crisp white cotton to the motley gradations of a viscid dawn.
the rib of their torsos, sopping in the other's runoff, pressed over noses to scald eyes pressed shut by stench. disintegrating the ions of awareness in blood flow to the brain. polar lobes in the oscillating kinesthesia of how you stiffened as they brought you to your knees --
bucked and strained.
bone against bone.
bone against marble.
{- _} -| . . |- {_ -}
... two L-shapes licked where they refused to intersect -- to writhe in the light of the torch that is our guard.
stamping impressions of their grime deep into the pores of the environs. to mark as they have always done where they had been and what they merely were -- a merger of spirit into stone through the lubricants of the animal body --
to in turn soak up the prints of the boots as the soil accrued and in turn give to the compost of the floor which was our nourishment --
tongue to grit -- tongue to gland.
blind eyes rolling queue'd balls in the dark -- clenches of breath between the pain -- as they begged to be left wrecked -- lingering at the edge of their limits --
pump after pump -- man after man -- lining up in the dark -- no trees, only forest -- in the trunks of pertly wrapped thighs -- perched, leaning and heel-speared against the molding.
begging for it to end --
being to be left wrecked -- to linger at the edge of their limits ...
the savory of the sweat, the dribble of the gilded pearls which dripped from the baggy hoods of elephantine cockheads --
a feast of packaging distant as shore shelves as your brother backlit by the hall lead you by a clump of your hair -- so blessed to feel his bare nail dredge your scalp as he went so far as to remove his glove.
- keep those ditches dug, men!
--//.\\-
the lock on the commode of the west wing balcony would remain sealed until two busts of the stars who were right were pushed onto opposing pressure sensitive switches. upon exit, the busts would appear returned to their place of origin by unseen hands.
some days you had upwards of ten or twelve recruits crammed into the vestibule, peeking through the crack of the door, hoping to catch a glimpse of the esoteric mechanism which would return things always to the place where they were deigned to be.
the busts themselves stood atop marble plinths, and inevitably proved a drudgery for even the mightiest of men -- which is to say that by the third or fourth time a day, you were done with them.
the pressure on your pelvic floor from a morning's adequate hydration would steep the downy folds palming at the heft of your black walnuts with a more fragrant and herbaceous profile the longer it took to tear yourself away from your duties -- pressing down until the brine would bead among your most tender and quivering divisions -- focused solely on the mechanical task of sequencing one series after another -- knowing that a line has already formed. that you will need to lay your palms flat against the stone -- unclench the crustacean claws that have become your fingers, pinching in finely-honed repetitions -- your whole back engaged in the act -- as you press forward -- slab of ab to slab of ab -- arms alive above the elbow -- a dribble coming down as the dam breaks -- all this self-control -- nowhere left to go -- when you're no longer being controlled.
the heat trapped by the layers of leather and decoration which made up your military dress would lead to you and other men to remove your jackets, pouring streams of perspiration onto the tile -- requiring both an immediate mopping and rehydration, necessitating, in time, a return trip here.
[the irons bolted to his neck --
chained to plinth, the pedestal of his knees
a mist over the lakes of his eyes --
stripped of all armament but tongue]
when your time came, you had a man stationed there at all hours, so with living eyes, the return trigger would not activate.