Final Project - Pictures

Collaborative ETP VI - so this is what it sounds like to be ashamed

Are there children in here?

if we treat them like animals they cry

and some cacophonous thump echoes,

and I can’t distinguish groans of pain from moans of pleasure

I thought it was a cold man falling off a wet pail

diesel engines turn over like hungry stomachs,
like a baby crushed under rubble

it’s like a jittery old finger curling around the scene, surrounding, gripping,

and a motorcycle gears up and rips across the space

just this thin metal rod flying in from the street

snatches of words and sentences float in the ether above,
and where the lady spoke, music drifts

the refrigerators hummmmmmm like the water

can I make a confession?

EEEE tea peas-icks - joe

Amid the explosions I heard the moans.
Torturous grins of pleasure exist in dungeons where the mice squeak with relative glee.
I can’t distinguish groans of pain from moans of pleasure.

Guhdunk

What was that?

Kaboom

Staff sergeant says it was an unexploded mortar. I thought it was a cold man falling off a wet pail.

Even when it’s quiet I feel the vibrations in my skull. Rifles and stifled screams, plush soft hand grenades warm with desire. The vibrations grow and spread from my head down to my throat. Sometimes I scream at night.

Everything in this damned place echoes, especially fear. Can I make a confession? I humiliate victims of abuse and take lots and lots of photos for friends back home. I hear rape in my ears but it sounds like rubber boots on dry gravel. This land needs more lubrication, more blood.

Sometimes the prisoners sing, and I sing along but nobody hears. I don’t want them to anyway. The fans are helicopters and I wait for them to carry me away or at least shoot some rockets in this stale prison. Men speak like apes, too many “Acks” “isheeels” and “allahs” bouncing off clean concrete. Did I mention the mice?

What was that?

Are there children in here? Why? So this is what it sounds like to be ashamed.










The nights are too dark. The lack of light makes up for the surplus of sound. They are emitted from the tired hungry guts of dark mustaches and head dresses. If we treat them like animals they cry, if we treat them as queers they don’t. I fucking hate a man’s lips out here, all dry and red. They can’t wait to get their mouth wet but they wont admit it. Iraqis are homophobes so let’s torture them with bananas. Oh and don’t forget the camera. And the leash. Is this gay? Make that bitch sergeant Lynndie England hold the leash. Yeah now it’s not gay at all. Let’s pile them up and rejoice in front of the choir.

Aaaaah lay lew yeah! Oh yeahhhh ppphhhhuuuukk BLAmmmm.mMM~!!@##!


Trumpets pour out of their veins like angels from cloudless cities and diesel engines turn over like hungry stomachs. Deliveries are made; more humans than food I’m afraid. Entertainment, photographs, postcards for the kids, rubbing the prisoners down with petroleum jelly and forcing simulated oral sex. Crispy pink panties for the face of a terrorist. Bedpost crucifixion and electrocution. I doubt Jesus cried like a fucking pussy though. Christian homily, eternally boring, show ’em don’t tell ‘em. This is what democracy feels like, broken eardrums and synthesized identities. ALlaH allah! If I could laugh louder I would.


Oooh yeeaah. Mmmmmm. Oooooh shit that’s it. Don’t stop--don’t stop--I’m almost there. Uuhne mmmph mph uh hu huuh huh I can feel you. Get down now. Get down NOW. Strap it on you mother fucker. Hold it in your hands just right. Uhhh lock and load, pack in your ammunition. mmmmhmmm go go go go go!!! Go!!!GO!! FLANk right, blue team go go go! Oh fuck yes keep it going.




Bush. The shape the mouth is a loose blistering vagina. President Bush. Gross. Bush is really a worthless suffix, like a baby crushed under rubble. President Bush. Maybe a deaf person would think I’m saying press-in-then-push by reading my lips.

What was that?

Oh yeah.
I am so.
Sorry.

But yeah I’d do it again if I was promised earplugs.

ETP VI - Gary

Night

The air conditioning units are on the roof of the building. Their hum-rattle stretches over the lawn and up the sides of a sixteen story apartment building. The sound thinly bounces off each bump of the roughly painted façade, mirroring the gravel rooftop (where the AC units sit) in texture. It’s like a jittery old finger curling around the scene, surrounding, gripping.

Static, some palm trees are sitting in the noise.

Some cacophonous thump echoes over the sound of the AC units. Something large, hallow, and plastic dropping on the sidewalk.

Cars on the road past the roof with the AC units go by, but usually their motors don’t pierce the heavy sound of the hum and the rattle. Now a motorcycle gears up and rips across the space. It’s a laceration from the road that tears all the way past the trees and grass and into the balconies of the apartments. There is a hospital nearby.

Hmmm, there is a low hum as the AC units work, working.
HmmmmrtHmmrt
Walking across the concrete path
HmmmmrtHmmrt
No wind
HmmmmrtHmmrt
Leaning on rough paint with forearms
HmmmmrtHmmrt
Cold
HmmmmrtHmmrt
Badump, the large plastic
HmmmmrtHmmrt
container being dragged across the concrete
HmmmmrtHmmrt
its scratching like thin hairs
HmmmmrtHmmrt
HmmmmrtHmmrt
Hmmmmrtmmrtmmrrrrrrrriiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiinnnnnnnnnn
Rrrrriiiiiiineeeeee
An ambulace:
Like a point, precise;
A pin entering the skin, striking the one nerve;
Just this thin metal rod flying in from the street, through the bubble of the hum-rattle, into the middle of the forehead.

The little stretch of road is short and the ambulance leaves. There’s no change in the rhythm of the AC units, Hm.

Josh ETP VI - Beep

There's a broadcast; The lady sounds nice, friendly, and unreal. She's saying something, I can't quite make it out. Snatches of words and sentences float in the ether above.

And murmuring, murmuring trails through. Maybe 

someone's saying something important. 

It doesn't matter, the lady is still broadcasting.

Then there's water cycling through a sink or pipes. I realize it's always been there, probably before the lady started speaking. I'm guessing it'll be there long after she's stopped. And she stops.

There's a beep in the distance! 

Someone has bought something. 

They're committed.

A wheel creaks. It's creaking by me.

Beep! Beep!

Squeak.

I hear a laugh. HuHuHuHuHu!

And where the lady spoke, music drifts. It's above and around. The water is probably cycling, but now the music is playing. And playing.

Squeak. Beep.

A cart rumbles.

Voices murmur. Maybe someone asks, 

"How far would you go to survive?"

The refrigerators hummmmmmm. They've always done that I think. Like the water.

Voices wander past. There's squeaking.

Somewhere, somewhere something

like trays impacting something sound off.

Bags fluff! Are they for produce?

The doors creak open.

Beep, beep, beep, beep.

The doors. Squeak.

Beep, Bags. Footsteps in a hurry.

Bags shaking. Footsteps. Beep!

A wheel squeaks.

Beep. And there's a glass somewhere? Are they in the bags?

Footsteps. They might be flip-flops.

A cart rumbles.

The doors.

Collaborative ETP V - Migration Geneology

ACT ONE: that particular chapter

Miles and miles tell her that she needs something but it wasn’t from Chicago. Montana is where you go to have a large house after years of saving. There were days she would shut her eyes so hard because of all the hard work and long writhing and decaying years. The past was crawling up her leg and sinking megatons of thrust deep into her memories. The mission is important, the objective critical. She's finally going somewhere.

ACT TWO: move

She inserted the key and turned the ignition

She burns left, then right, and north, and backtracks. She waits, she crosses the divide.
Noxious gases puff and swirl. Metals and paints corrode. The maelstrom is at her door.

She's finally going somewhere. It's been years.

ACT THREE: the glass is half empty

She really belonged to the world sometimes.

Once she lived in Mexico City; The skin there was so, "southern belle-ish on your sister and so I’m-going-to-help-build-the-atomic-bomb-ish on you." She had to leave. It was far too much.

She wandered lonely landscapes. She wandered into the black desert and its endless waste. The mission called.





Time passed.
She moved to Montana. Afterwood she would call it.

It's not everything she was promised. It’s a log cabin in the middle of nowhere. It made her more hate her sense.

She's finally there.

Afterwood - joe - ETPV

Unrelated, and for a Cause known to only the perpetrators. The streak of white is inviting her to lick up any extra salt. Who among the living is willing to fork over the gold? She would yell this from her glass tray that showed four non-faces. and What to make a struggle for nothing out of? Was her second favorite thing to make people taste it. I tasted it and was comfortable with being confused





The name of the game has always been comPETITION, and there are insects and the gods of them are all ready to comPETE for more coopeRATION.

Actually

She looks out her compounded window lenses and sees it dripping like a flag. She reminds herself how lonely it was without it, her hot meals and habitat. Now it’s far too much, seeping through her cracks and fissures like apples in chain link fences. The colony, the nest, the rest of the world that she loves to forget; the best of it was left underground in writhing, decaying tunnels. She could either pit it out Ffrumm the soil and taste the juice or ignore it. The days of fighting for food and feasting with fools were gone and she decided not to think about that anymore.





Afterwood she would call it.




Gut wrenching, these parasites that eat for me.



She would tell me about the days she would shut her eyes so hard all she could taste was apples.









God spit more salt in the eyes of her brother and his lover, both shared her molecules. The past was crawling up her leg and sinking it deep into her pores. It was always there like copper residue, memories just made it more detestable. The system must be broke?

If only taste was as magnificent as non-sight, then she’d be able to find her way. She fancied herself a criminal. She liked to fight and make it twitchingly good with her brothers and their lovers. This, she thought, would truly cause a riot.

But it didn’t. It just made her more hate her sense.






Things took a turn for the worst when she fell too far from the apple tree. That wasn’t a chain link fence at all. She told me that once in the sand. I’ve been climbing WHAt forever? Leave what exactly for what, four faces for freedom? What is freedom without liberty? What is liberty? Why do these questions taste so good, why does everyone else tell me they’re supposed to taste like a mushroom? She really belonged to the world sometimes. She would break into song.

I have wandered lonely landscapes for too long.
If only I could count the moons
I would tell you but I’d still be wrong
I’m led by my tongue
I’ll compete I’ll get along too
for some more of it. It is It.
Is that it?


These moments when she made sense-- they make me afraid. Clarity is hard to come by in this kingdom. I find it hard to express but never to remember. When do I remember her words? When it’s dark I feel them crawling through my ears and molesting my drum. The vibrations. I visualize her taste. Though I cannot see, I can taste her sight when I taste apples.