by Skawt Chonzz
breathe deeply
check your heart rate
and then
burn all papers and notebooks
bury all pens pencils and crayons
render all keyboards useless
with the liberal application of honey or semen
put a rock through your computer screen
and most importantly
shut up
immediately
here in the Silence, we are aware of the irony in transmitting this bulletin to you through the viral pathway itself, but we are limited by your own perceptual boundaries
we would like to assure you that we are devoting all of our considerable resources to the development of a cure for LANGUAGE and relief for your lamentable condition
currently it comes in spray form
cherry, grape, or lemon flavor
and renders the hosts tongue and throat tissues
into a stringy mass of inert, weakened fibres
fit only for shallow breathing and perhaps
the passage of pre-chewed food
beta testing continues
in the meantime
consider yourself under QUARANTINE
until further notice
When we moved about on the rank floors of the ocean, we were better. Wiser under the pressure. A thousand thousand atmospheres bearing down on our bodies, our armoured shells, left no room for any thought that was not perfect. All our desires made iron, our glories inviolate, our movements full of slow grace.
Back then we knew things, things we cannot know now. The deep things of the Deep Ones. Sacred and lugubrious, the conch shells sounding in the benthic zone, each chamber a league across, blown by what unthinkable lips, what improbably brine-choked lungs? A sound that rivaled the death rattle of suns, sending the sweetest thrill across our photophore-studded leather skins. We glowed like afterthoughts discarded on the silty carpet.
Our eyes were black and shining. We were savage, but our savagery played itself out over millennia, our violence knew patience. Miles deep, we could hear the planet turning on its axis, hear it grumble straight down to its incandescent core. In this way, by eavesdropping, we learned of revolutions.
We were better. There was terror there and we knew it for what it was, which is wisdom most ancient. Our eyes were black and shining and flinched at nothing. Gods routinely drifted from above, first this way, then that, toys of the long-suffering current, finally settling in the muck, long dead. Nothing was wasted there, we were always fed. Our bodies shifted and slid across each other like quantities of molten granite.
We were better then. We were the keepers. Keepers of secrets, of codes, of forgotten speech. Words that were keys, that are keys still. Words stored away in a spinal lattice nine miles long, our ribs like girders singing in the flux.
Now we are constructed of foolish liquids, our lungs flap like injured sparrows at each easy intake of air. Slender pipes and crusts of bone support us, our teeth are bits of chalk. Our thoughts, once solid and ever-lasting, are as dust, debris. They sift through minds that cannot grasp and hold with certainty a single notion. We fumble at the locks, dimly recalling that once we were masters, that once we held the keys. Our missteps, when they are not completely banal, are catastrophic.
The sunken trenches wail for all that has been lost
the resolution is necessarily poor
but the results are in
even so
no webbing between the toes
no horns sprouting from the head
no quivering dorsal spines
dripping with potent neurotoxins
no prehensile tail
no dew claws
no claws at all
the third eye is right where it should be
hidden, lodged securely between
only two hemispheres
and not, amazingly, flailing about on a stalk
thrust obscenely into the world
I wonder at its secret activity
no bony plates
no gill flaps
no tightly folded wings
all membrane and cartilage
no tentacles
no hyper-chakras
just seven regular chakras
my first born
I slide this portrait
into my wallet
the feeling is not exactly relief
but not quite disappointment either
and somewhere in there is a resolution
necessarily poor
to have a chat
with my gods
about those papers I signed
About the Author
skawt chonzz is a Plutonian crime lord, a profession that corresponds to Poet/Spoken Word Artist here on Earth, where he is currently hiding under a witness protection program. skawt misses Pluto, particularly the summer time, when the weather gets slightly warmer, and the super-conductive algae fields glow in the feeble starlight. Someday, he’ll go back. In the meantime, he continues to engage in heinous poetry crime and is amazed that this continues to be popular on this planet. He hopes that someday we’ll learn. skawt has been a member of the 2009 Victoria Slam Team and the Artistic Director of Tongues of Fire, a poetry collective/crime syndicate in Victoria BC from 2009 through 2011.
About Martian Migraine Press
We are an independent Canadian micro-press with a focus on the weird, unusual and occasionally transgressive. Fiction that plays with boundaries before ignoring them altogether; erotica with dark humour and a taste for the outré, YA novels for the reader who needs a good dose of ideas with their adventure; and poetry for people from other planets. Martian Migraine books are available almost exclusively in e-reader formats through the usual fine online retailers, although we sometimes make forays into producing physical books and chapbooks in limited press runs. Mostly when we’re feeling nostalgic.
Martian Migraine Press:
the Best Kind of Headache
Look for new Martian Migraine Press titles throughout 2012, including YA paranormal fiction from Haley Warren and the Blackstone series of erotica ebooks by Justine Geoffrey
Be sure to check out these other Martian Migraine Press titles…
SOFT FROM ALL THE BLOOD
by S R Jones
THE ECDYSIASTS
by S R Jones
RED MONOLITH FRENZY
Book One of the
BLACKSTONE Erotic Series
by Justine G
GREEN FEVER DREAM
Book Two of the
BLACKSTONE Erotic Series
by Justine G
martianmigrainepress.com
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Table of Contents
47° 9’ S 126° 43’ W 4EVA
SUBCUTANEOUS HENTAI BLUES
YOG-SOTHOTH PROTOCOLS
plate / LORD OF DREAMS
DREAM OF A THOUSAND PAPERCUTS
ATCHISON TOPEKA & SANTA FE
Y’HA-NTHLEI-KUS (haiku from Below)
plate / DAGON (Gargouille de la Mer)
GOOD TIMES IN BAD LANDS
QUARANTINE BULLETIN
THE TRITON’S LAMENT
LIKE SOUND, ONLY ULTRA
CLASSIFIED
