There is a murmuring in the wind, all the voices that are hidden underground.
Muttering in the slots of the cash machines.
Last night’s vomit shifts on the pavement.
Servo-motors are groaning, chewing on mist.
In the city of trees there are pockets of space that are immune to light.
In the city of trees there are floods of light that can never be seen.
But they will speak.
There is no single term that can summon us. The forest is also a river,
the corpses buried under our trees, the slime that drips from our branches.
Unnameable. We are your shallow grave, covered in leaves. Bambi will nibble on your fingers.
We will bankrupt your citadel.
Our entrails are open. Read your future there. We are surrounded by cameras.
We live in the air.
Every stab hole can speak.
Every slot is a tongue.
We live in inversion.
All the signals are forces, make a city.
All that hassle, the petrol, the parking costs, the childcare, my busted back:
who’s going to take over the world? Who has the time to scheme?
They imagine insurrection, they imagine gathering around a big building, an idea,
and swallowing it. This would be easy. No. There are a thousand years
of slow burning hate, in hands, faces, clean toilets and meals on tables.
The killing is already going on, unhurriedly.
Every household holds back the forest.
A queue.
Imagination is the capacity to think about what is not there.
What are you missing?
You fuckers.
This is a brutal definition.
We can take over this signal.
We can eat this street.
Stop.
Now.
No.
Want.
More.
We.
You.
They.
Do.
Not.
Ask.
No.
Now.
We.
Do.
What is this murmur? The humming of bowls, skinless drums, ready to be beaten.
Watch your signal.
A slogan has no full stop.
We move when we possess the requisite series of permissions.
Fight.
What are the sounds that a million mouths can make all at once?
They are either learned and repeated, or consist only of vowels.
This is a howl, not a slogan. Technically, we do not need to speak.
We are beyond screaming. Asking doesn’t work. We only need to destroy.
The names and addresses of the ruling class.
Our fathers, husbands, sons.
A procession must be described beforehand before permission can be granted.
X lay with Y and begat Z.
Y lay with A and begat B.
Z knew C and launched D.
D lay with F and bore E.
G knew H and called I.
X knew A and launched J.
Y multiplied C and equaled K.
D loved C and disgorged L.
F lay with H and set the value of M.
E lay with Y and was equal to N.
Z fuck H get O.
D knew H and begat P.
Y coughed blood up O’s shitter shat Q.
A loves M and was barren.
K multiplied F equals R.
C had carnal knowledge of Q and bore S.
N lay with K and bore T.
Y stole a process from N begat U.
R knew M equaled V.
N fuck R equals A.
O had N had a baby called C.
D knew K and bore F.
M knew P and bore G.
Y knew F and had H.
Growth.
In the body the skeleton is the fixed capital.
Meat has its own speed. Blood has its own speed. Breath has its own speed.
Speeds overlap and make things.
Things overlap and make growth.
Growths move towards the castle.
Abundance is upon the earth.
Eat air. Eat waves. Eat signals. Eat wires. Eat plastic.
Eat instructions. Eat aerials. Eat pipes. Eat pixels. Eat.
Eat circuits. Eat the idea of eating, but do not feel yourselves
to be capable of eating and drinking without being gnawed at by the
things that slide into you as pulp.
You are lovely and round.
You are of a species that is almost extinct outside of captivity.
Those who are wild are continually discovered by logging companies.
They are erased.
It is not the defeated who can at will blot out the past.
Drink.
Grow.
Slide out from between my legs.
Gush blood.
Gnaw at my bones, child.
We come together like Voltron.
We and come and together and like and Voltron and.
We or They or come or go or together or apart or like or unlike or
Voltron or a whole made of parts or.
We and They and come and go and together and apart and like and unlike
and Voltron and a whole made of parts and.
Betrayal breeds betrayal. Trusts breeds trust. Betrayal breeds trust
that betrayal will happen. Us prisoners will force a dilemna on our jailors.
A betrayal cannot be seen coming.
The betrayal of a betrayal opens up a state that cannot be predicted.
The betrayal of a betrayal of a betrayal makes things certain.
The grammar of betrayals makes everyone king.
Who can you trust now?
What game can you play to anticipate what happens? Who lives?
What moves? What are their moves?
Things start to grow powers they do not own.
When did you begin to see yourself as God?
Is it an idea so easy to implant, that moment when a future was mentioned?
Abuse of towers comes as no surprise.
You will be the greatest.
The sensation is not simply that of a word, of being the Lord, but of noticing
the way in which you find the right perspective, the ability to see all those
who were once you equals as mere stepping stones to your current position.
This is wisdom. Those of them who are wise will place their faces under your feet.
A whisper: the foundations are rotten.
The corpses mount up in the basement.
Bodies of girls start to shake.
Cow’s milk turns to cheese in your throat.
Eggs hatch in your belly. See that purple sack drag on the floor.
Flesh is rebirthed.
Clean your teeth carefully.
Do not breathe.
Bite open your face.
Eggs hatch.
Every rotten beam seeks your collapse. When you are this scared,
or this powerful, everything signifies.
A million droplets of water in every mouthful of fog. It will drown you.
The faster you chase, the thicker the fog gathers. You are blinded
by your own speed.
In this cold, your own hot breath dams up your eyes. Keep panting.
Keep roaring, keep making rational statements of intent. When you think,
oh wise one, oh ruler, let your jaw hang loose.
Scream out the intensity of your rage. Become confident.
There is nothing we can do for you oh mighty one, oh chief. You are so perfect
that only you could be your own most deadly assassin.
Many bodies are crushed in your confusion. You will slip on the entrails -
may you be praised.
Listen to those you love, they will fuel your stupidity. You may become emperor.
You must be placed nowhere in order to have you influence felt everywhere.
Let us take you down to where there is nothing.
This is a war between the rhinoceros and the grass. We will grow over your bones.
Victoria bends over the corpse of Albert.
Oh, still warm mighty one.
The carcass arrives in glory.
At the helm of an aircraft carrier surrounded by a full fleet of exemplary objects.
We cannot remember who you are. At this point, you will be worshipped.
Mission Accomplished.
You have liberated us.
You and us.
You or us.
You and liberation and us.
You or liberation or us.
You or us or liberation or domination of you or us.
You and us and liberation and domination of you and us.
Now we can breathe.
Listen very carefully, stop breathing: the sound of a twig
slicing the breeze, thousands of them; that of a leaf rubbing
over another, many; the speeding up of a disk. The world is running
towards the achievement of your destiny.
There is another forest in this city.
You must become sensitised to things that are not signals.
You must hear things that have not yet been said, things that
are not language.
Your skin will prickle at the trace of certain numbers.
Listen to the singing.
The sound of sap being drawn up a trunk is that of endless drinking.
Were the first human sedentary societies those of the gardeners
who stayed around wild fruit trees?
Because wild trees outlast wild humans did trans-generational use of
such trees, such sites, condemn humans to the process of scheming
over their possession after death?
When the forest moves, can it still be tied down?
By mapping genes responsible for the control of tree habit, pest and
disease resistance, and fruit characteristics, genes will be selected to
give the right requirements for high yields, transportable fruit, pest resistance
and early machine cropping.
By selecting for human-scale, dwarf varieties that are easy to pick fruit
from may be developed.
By selecting for shortness of branches, columnar trees where the trunk
gives directly onto the stalk of a fruit may be achieved.
When the forest moves, can it still be tied down?
When the forest grows numbers, does it count?
All forests are harnessed to statistics.
All lungs grow models.
Every breath ends up as data.
Can we grow models fast enough to map the wreckage?
First we have fruit to slice. Dipped in:
Mancozeb.
Captan.
Folpet.
Pesticides.
Fungicides.
All of these compounds are designed to kill some form of life and
to do so in extremely low concentrations.
Sprays for your luscious orchards.
Our leaves are dripping with it.
Alar.
Growth regulators reduce leaf and branch growth. They encourage budding
and fruit production.
Growth is important.
Growth is necessary.
Growths will happen.
Grow and Grow.
Grow or Grow.
Grow or Grow and Grow or Grow.
Grow and Grow or Grow and Grow.
Grow and Grow and Grow and Grow and Grow and Grow.
Grow and Grow and Grow and Grow and Grow and Grow and Grow and Grow and
Cancer is a growth industry.
Inside the Castle, those statements that can be captured are monitored
and disassembled.
disease: cancer. predicates: growth; industry. Subject: industry.
Predicates: growth.
Analysis: statement includes double use of term as predicate. Indicates
bifurcation of meaning.
The uses of the words are mapped across to other instances of the same terms.
The table of all the uses of the words ranks the words they are linked to.
The meaning of the words grows through what they are next to.
As the meaning of all the words is logged, it becomes clearer what they mean.
A child’s voice says: “The Shogun just stayed inside his castle and he never came out.
People said his brain was infected by devils.” His mind was riddled by rule sets, riddles,
axioms, grammars that moved cells, made wires sing.
His mind is made of rules, riddles, axioms, grammars.
His mind is made of rules not riddles, axioms not grammars.
If his mind is made of rules then it is made of riddles, if it is made of axioms then its is
made of grammars.
A child’s voice says: “His mind is made of if not then.”
A spider dances between thoughts.
Attention.
Pay attention.
The lice on the body of the emperor.
The stones of the castle.
The tongues of the servants.
A thousand perfect forms of administration.
Welcome to the house of world conflict.
We value your participation.
If we, then value.
The city of trees, arboreal sprawl.
Gnawing roads, drinking up sewers, bending foundations, cracking pavements.
The forest returns to the city, begins to digest the castle.
Insurrection becomes subsidence. There is nothing left to dominate. The land slides.
Last night’s servo-motors shift a million droplets.
The betrayal of betrayal equals succession.
One thing after another.
Grow plus grow.
Grow times grow.
Grow.
Ten thousand lifetimes of cleaning and scraping and feeding and washing
and carrying and buying and saving in order to grow.
A million years of subordination to the next generation in order to grow.
All children annihilate their parents.
You know very well: two is two.
Betrayal, flesh betrays flesh by growing. Growing, it doubles, becomes two.
Two swallows one, creates a third. The third is uncontrollable.
Growth occurs when the third appears.
The third sits in the middle of the forest, waiting.
It speaks to the first, and then to the second.
The third says that it will come after, that it has already been after
the first and the second.
The third knows how the first and the second end.
The third spins webs from tree to tree.
The third picks an atom from the thin air and hangs a strand of silk from it.
The forest bulges, and a tree breaks open at that point in thin air.
The third becomes a series: the moment when things trip over, out of whack,
start running, a motor, growth, proliferation.
A shout.
The river runs backwards.
No-one speaks about betrayal.
An orderly succession of rulers.
The correct adoption of emergency powers.
Democracy must be suspended in order to hide that it was always up in the air.
The symbols of power provide a false target, away from its exercise.
Mark Duggan, we remembered you correctly.
But how many banks were saved from the bricks and flames as we settled for
a shoe or a screen to run off with?
Stabilise the centre.
Normality is strong.
Something to look at.
Send search patterns amongst the population.
Network analysis, flow control, keywords, deep packet inspection,
identity, trusted computing, security, data integrity,
behaviour recognition, biometrics, social physics, data hygiene,
slow control, deep packet abjection, rusted computing, network paralysis.
Surge.
Blowback.
The garrote, the sphincter, the diaphragm closes on the castle.
A thick ripple runs in reverse across water.
Throw stones.
Take stones from the walls of prisons.
Overthrow them.
A shout in the street.
How long is the time before a shout bursts through the walls of the castle?
How long before it rattles the corridors?
The shout is behind the head of the emperor.
A shout.
A shout that goes from one thing to another.
A shout that sets out every act of fuckery and violence this body
has had beaten, written, allocated, stabbed, injected, injuncted,
smoked and paid into it.
Thoughtful advice.
Everybody.
The shout will not turn into a scream.
It is silent, and will not stop.
Shout and silent and will and not and stop.
The emperor is killing himself with ifs and thens.
The Emperor's Dilemna.
We must feed ourselves with ands and ors.
The emperor, the shogun, the lord, the almighty, the boss, the ditch, the arse,
the drain, the pustulent hole in the gum, rotten head lopped off neck,
blood squirter, zit.
pop.
The runny nose, the maggot, the turd in the basement that grew white fur,
ermine, roadkill, daddy, the ruler, chief executive, creative director,
the chancred dick, piss for spunk, dangly bollocks, god, friend, advisor
and confidante of the powerful and wealthy, expert commentator,
much celebrated cocksnot, exit wound, fart, third nostril, broken tooth,
spider husk, priest, crushed pigeon, squirrel guts, bloody handprint, Kaiser.
Out.
Protector of the faith, constitutional symbol, commander-in-chief,
ancient tradition.
We and must and feed and ourselves and with and ands and ors.
We or must or feed or ourselves or with or ands or and or ors.
We and / or must and / or feed and / or ourselves and / or with and /
or ands and / or and and / or ors.
A shout and / or a shout and / or a shout and / or a shout and /
or a shout and / or a shout.
If forest then the impossible.
If forest in the circle inside circles, inside circles, inside the walls, then death.
Mist covers many crimes.
A million droplets make a tiny cast appear like a multitude.
Such things can be done by a tiny number.
Given the right special effects.
Insubordination.
Tricks of the light.
We say nothing.
The refusal to answer a direct question.
All minions of the world, stand still in fear and anger.
Run when your master lurches.
Kill him when you get a chance.
One arrow runs up to the back of the ruler's head.
The verbals:
I tell the story of my life in the stabbings of a twisted knife.
I tell the story of my life in thick-shafted arrows.
I tell the story of my life in sword thrusts.
I tell the story of my life in data-entry.
I got rich by stuffing envelopes.
I wanted to earn 30-40 an hour working from home.
I pluck 30-40 chickens per hour.
I smoked crack from the pipe of the druglords.
I clean seeds by hand.
Spit flies over the head of the shogun.
Spit and / or flies over the head of the shogun.
Something as modest as doubt will not enter the Lord's theatre of betrayal.
There is a moment when betrayal watches itself being betrayed by those
it thought incapable of action. This moment is precious. Within a few seconds
you will have to act or die.
Suck arrows towards yourself oh lord.
All of them.
Drink it in.
See the sky fill with clatter.
Clicking shutters and arrows.
A ruler with his throat severed still makes minions rattle.
Ring white round your eyes, stare fiercely.
You will be safe.
All that happens travels through the depths of a camera.
Sucked through a lense, chunked through a circuit.
What falls outside the circuit: causes without effects.
If it turns out that you will not be the greatest, you will at least
have been recorded.
The tokens of sudden understanding will be registered.
Will X please tell me the length of his or her life?
Sudden understanding, as you, mighty one, stand astride the mountain peaks,
with your feet upon the floors of the oceans, may be armour-piercing.
Sudden understanding may cause your eyes to bulge, with red rims on your holes,
but this effect should not be taken for the condition itself.
Sudden understanding, of a mighty one, may be congruent with death.
You will make good money on the lecture-circuit following your execution.
Drip after drip.
The throttling of a collapsing throat, air turns to blood.
Men make war because a heroic death is easier and wins more praise than
the daily murder of wifing.
Keep things simple.
Ruler.
Fooler.
Leader.
Bleeder.
At the moment when the ruler notices that he is not The Most Important Man
his brain assembles a list of all those who are now more important.
At the moment that this list completes scrolling through his head,
at the moment when he sees, at the bottom of the list, his corpse
taxonomised as dung, he gives up the ghost. Immediately before this moment,
the near corpse of the deposed ruler recognises a simple sensation: that he
wants cold water running across his tongue, could do with a kip.
The corpse of the ruler is shielded by such an amount of under-armour
and over-armour that even when his rotten juice flows out through the chinks
in the mail his body stays solid as the carapace of a beetle.
Mist blankets the body.
Underlings gaze at the corpse and hold two thoughts in their head simultaneously:
hate and love.
This really hurts.
They cry and cheer and hold each other and weep and kiss.
The underlings lament and / or cheer.
Scream and / or cry.
Collapse and / or faint.
Dance and / or seethe.
A copse of flowers is deposited with candles and teddy bears and photographs
and well-wishes and poems and gifts around the body of the despot.
This is an expression of love and of democracy. The corpse of the despot stands
in for the suffering that is borne by the living.
The trees go into a bezerk branching.
Thick trunks split and split and split and split until they become little
twigs squirting leaves out their ends.
The trees throw out thousands of seeds.
The seeds burst out of the ground and explode into thick trunks.
Trunks split and split and split and split and split until they become roots
sucking drops into their ends.
Blossom squirts from twigs.
Fruit is hurled from the base of the withered blossom and is gnawed upon by humans,
pigs and squirrels.
Some fruit is left upon the ground to rot, where it ferments. The animals get drunk.
The fruit is slippery rotten. Sweet slime in a bitter membrane, seeds in
a chewy sac.
Animals stagger round shitting the seeds of the forest down the backs of their legs.
Hairless monkeys grab each other and rut amongst the trees.
By shitting on each other they become citizens.
Speeches are called for.
It is well known that the fall of the ruler makes everything perfect.
and / or.
All returns to mist.
Bownian motion of drop upon drop, milling in the turbulent air.
Mist of water replaces mist of blood.
Nothing to see here.
Move along now.
Move or along or now.
Move and along and now
Move if along if now
Move.
Move now.
The most important man makes fair to average compost.
Life becomes perfect.
This day will be re-enacted
There is no constraint on jubilation.
The memory of this day will be called upon to ensure a further slaughter.
Death is better than work.
Drink.
Drink up.
Drink it all in.
Drink and drink and drink and drink and drink.
Festivals are revolution for the depressed.
The eyeballs of the Lord's consultants cloud, shrivel and slide out of sockets.
Grass grows over broken knuckles.
The forest slides backwards and forwards.
Felled trees make good barricades. This is why cities are full of them. They are ready.
Land slides over land. Line hatches line.
Branches overlap.
Pine in flames.
Oak ablaze.
Burning beech.
Live in a house on fire.
Put the kettle on.
Here comes the mist.
We could use some steam.
One last gasp always.
