1473 c/o Ryan Manning

being nicolaus copernicus

my feet hurt. i need slippers. have slippers been invented yet. i don't know. my whole body hurts. this chair is not comfortable. i need an office chair. i need to exercise. i need to stretch. will i ever get laid before i die. will someone write a wikipedia entry about me. will someone write a story about me. on the internet. will someone look at something i've done and feel negatively about it. will i formulate a comprehensive heliocentric cosmology. will i write a book. will i be a mathematician, astronomer, physician, scholar, translator, artist, jurist, cleric, governor, military leader, diplomat and economist. will i ever be famous. when will i die. will i ever be loved and adored by a member of the opposite sex who's not my mother. will i ever achieve steady cash flow without a real job. will i ever experience not awkward sex. will i ever be accepted by my peer group. validation. that's all anyone really wants, really. that, and amazing sex. multiple orgasms. will i ever experience the joy of date rape. before i die. will i be criticized by my peer group. will i be rejected. ostracized. will i experience severe alienation. will someone dislike me for arbitrary reasons and therefore attempt to convince others to dislike me in an effort to legitimize their own arbitrary dislike of me. will i ever not masturbate. when will i stop existing. will i achieve cult status. will i ever love myself. will i ever have sex with a prostitute before i die. does it matter. what matters. does anything matter. who cares. are we fucked. what difference does it make. who am i. how am i not myself. am i making sense. i feel afraid. there is much fear in me. what exactly do i need to say in order to attract a female. that's all i really want. does that make sense. can anyone tell me what needs to be said in order for me, to get at sex. before i die. please. help.

1472 c/o Glen Clarence Djinn

Waiting for Summer

"We were all waiting for summer and then it came," said Shelly.
      Shelly and Lemuel were sitting on Shelly's front step, throwing stones at a blue bag caught on her fence. Cat and Adam had just broken up.
      "They have broken up at a time in our lives where we are unprepared to deal with the division of property. They both won that mini fridge, they won it together. They won it in the quiz." Lemuel said.
      Shelly said:
      "The thing is, they had entered into one of those relationships that is mutually beneficial to no party. They were very nurturing of each other. Very considerate of each other, but. No, actually, well, they weren't really." She twisted an ice cream stick into the gap between the paving stones. She scowled.
      "That really is not what i was trying to express," she said sadly.
      "We have all been friends since year four. If anyone should know what do do about the fridge, its us. Perhaps Cat's brothers will force Adam's hand?"
      "Cat's family are a tight and inscrutable clan" said Shelly. Cat had six brothers.
      "It is unlikely. Those six brothers are as shy as Cat," said Lemuel. "I say down with Love and Money. Norway handed Orkney and the Shetland Islands over to Scotland over a defaulted Dowry payment."
      "What? You are kidding!"
      Lemuel looked demurely at the middle of the road.
      "Indeed they did."
      "Oh. shit. Lemuel. that's the heritage of the UK! Think of them in their stone huts, considering their new near neighbours with suspicion!"
      "Well no one asked them" said Lemuel.
      There was a shout. It was Adam. He was running- and he was shouting at the same time. His face was dark red. He was sweating. Twelve doors away, he stopped. He bent over and took three long breaths with his hands on his knees. Then he straightened up and started running again.
      Lemuel stood up, alert.
      "Adam has something to tell us!' he declared.

1471 c/o Ben Segal

Switzerland, 1471

Today we got her but good. She would have cast her escape spell, but we cut off her hands and then diced them into cubes and scattered them in different lakes to be eaten by geographically diverse fishes. Well, so they could not re-attach themselves to her, so she could not cast her escape spell. She has pretty and long hair that is so blond it is almost white and that I would want to bury my face in (admiringly) if only she wasn't-- well, if only she wasn't a witch.

Ok, yes in fact we do have evidence that should be more than strong enough to convince the good gentlemen of the Swiss Confederation that she is indeed a Satanic cultist. Well, for one thing she takes evident pleasure in sex. And she tempted me (actively and using all manner of witchcraft) from my betrothed to spill my seed betwixt her strong, lithe loins.

So then I had to cube her hands. Yes of course and burn that cross into her chest that she bared at me. That bare chest, those heavings, those small pert---Oh yes, and the lashing of the feet was for the prevention of running, as she is known to be very fast. Yes, I know. I am and she is. Well, no, but you see the performing of witchcraft is evidenced by my actions with regards to her, and witchcraft is a priori the sign of a witch. Quite right. Ok next time we'll leave the body intact.

1470 c/o Andrew Borgstrom

In Barbaric Splendour

Nicollet lit up next to his Gregorian calendar. He put an X through the day as the sun rose. Four years earlier, he left Russia, a lone merchant headed for India. When he arrived yesterday, he called the inhabitants Indians. He felt historical, and if he had another twenty-two years, he would repeat this on another continent. He smoked next to his calendar of excess and watched the armor-plated elephants walk even slower. If he had another hundred years, he would go to France and introduce tobacco. And if he had twelve years after that, he would reform the calendar.

1469 c/o Rebecca Perry

An extract from Elia Levita Bachur’s
Bovo-Buch, generally regarded as
the most outstanding poetic work
in Old Yiddish

this love
your own mother could try to poison you
you wouldn’t even notice
it could kill a sultan even
it could keep you alive
without food or sun in a prison cell
for exactly one year

it could
probably you won’t understand
jump down a horse’s throat
and buck its heart from the inside
it could make a horse magic
magic heart, magic hoofs
faster than sand storms
a horse capable of saying
its own name Rundele

it would
come into the forest with you
when you have to run away again
from men with black teeth
and you are warm inside the woman
who may as well have been your wife forever
pressing down into the leaves and earth

and then
still there when she is big as a cloud
her scream louder than mountains falling
and then when she has a twin
in each arm-nook
her eyes like mushroom caps
unblinking, soft, waiting for something

1468 c/o Jason Lee Norman

Charles the Bold Signs His Name

Charles the Bold is holding a pen. Charles the Bold has a song stuck in his head. His Portuguese mother has her hand on his shoulder. His mother taught him about love. His father taught him about loyalty. Charles is in love with an older woman. Charles is in love with a teenager. The woman Charles loves has green eyes in winter and grey eyes in summer. It is October. Charles has ordered all the fridge and freezer doors to remain open. Their bulbs have burnt out. Charles the Bold breathes oxygen through his toes. Charles the Bold signs his name.

Charles the Bold is holding his only daughter. Charles the Bold is the world’s youngest widower. Charles’ daughter has green eyes, she will speak only Spanish. His daughter looks up at him just like Charles did with his father. Charles feels like an orphan; the only orphan in the world. There is no term for an orphan widower with a daughter who has green eyes. Charles the Bold puts down his daughter. Charles the Bold picks up a pen. Charles the Bold signs his name.

1467 c/o DJ Berndt

An Offer in Polyalphabetic Cipher

r qhahkb pjnn ckn oruoxzrqp xioha cr wqh zxuug lo hrd bhwg pn yllwdunv ro hrdu lwvrgnv l zrou cdyh wqhv cr wqh zjouv ro vb dydawvhww dwg onw bxx fqrxvn qrf r ahjfc fknq snryon jvt fkh cknun jun yllwdunv ro qxvdw rqblmhb cdyhm cr wqh zjou

1466 c/o Alec Bryan

The Lain Egg hatched the Reformation

Praise to folly. For it is by his invention humans esteem adoxography more than sound doctrine. Even the Pope, Leo X, attuned to spiritual truths, couldn’t help but laugh when folly, disguised as orthodoxy, pranced around and upon the traditional Catholic views. Luckily, a scribe, accompanying Leo X and in charge of chalking any divine declarative, preserved the dialogue between Folly and Leo X. The conversation took place during Leo’s nightly reading and stems from his contemplation and imagination and perhaps, a little too much wine.

Leo X: (laughing) Ah, you’ve got us there.

Folly: Grabbing a bull by the horns is much more dangerous and less efficient than grabbing it by the testicles.

Leo X: Yes, this is true. We would prefer if you didn’t grab us there at all, and if you must, why such a firm grip?

Folly: The truth is best extracted from squeezing, applying pressure to areas of particular tenderness. It is the only way it gets away with such bold exclamations.

Leo X: Yes, we know this method. We have been applying the grip of truth to our devout followers for years. How else would we fill our coffers? This is why I have beckoned you to my side. We have a proposition to make you. We feel it is best to employ you and benefit from your services rather than suffer the ignominy of being exploited so humorously.

Folly: Money speaks louder than truth and is much more popular. But, of course, you already know that.

Leo X: Yes, again with your wit, you have surmised the truth of truths. We simply ask you to state your terms and we will gladly oblige.

Folly: Well, monetary gains are nice, but I prefer to have a say in the doctrine.

Leo X: (excitedly) What did you have in mind?

Folly: I want to make it more confusing and harder to derive at a true conception of God.

Leo X: Have we not been doing a good job at that already?

Folly: Unintentional, yes. Intentionally, no. I wish to employ a stratagem much more proficient and easier to keep people in line.

Leo X: What exactly do you wish of us? We are already the blind leading the blind.

Folly: Yes, this is true, but, “In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.”

Leo fell asleep after Folly spoke his last phrase. When he woke up and donned his daily apparel, he was surprised to notice a new assistant waiting to greet him at the door. He couldn’t help but recognize a wry smile sneaking out of the corner of the new assistant’s lips. Leo thought to himself: “I like this assistant already.”

1465 c/o Jason Cook

         

The Roses

The world was mine once. Or at least as much of it as I could see. Kings and Queens framed in glittering gilt and perfumed splendour listened closely when I spoke, offered me their treaties, their concessions, their daughters. The people, the great, swarming seas of unwashed grumblings, held their blank-eyed children to watch my cars and horses and nobility trot proudly through their midst. And the women…and the men. And the leisure and the passion and the watching the world, my world, through the windows of my palace. Armies stood at attention, navies waited for my word to fill their sails.

          Now as I climb the stairs of my tower, the world spins on without me. Continents undiscovered and empires unfounded, waiting once in the throttle under my hand. From these narrow windows, slits in the walls, barred, history moves on, blithely, me a snickering footnote. She tosses my tokens and weaves another man’s roses into her hair. Roses. The damn things are everywhere. In the night I’m sure I can hear their vines creeping up the walls like an unwelcome lover with filthy intentions. I yell for my paiges, I yell for my defoliants, I yell because everything growing from the soil is mine – the harvest and the glory is mine. Reasons don’t matter, though, when the only response you hear is your own words, thrown back empty and mocking.

          I remember the comfort of madness, how the world would just disappear, thoughts nothing but the cartography of vanished spots. Between them, those fantastic hollows where a man could crawl into the center of the world, for a day, for a year. The mind only runs in ease, though. It won’t leave me here – or it won’t fit through the narrow windows. When I close my eyes, parades clatter and shout past my ears, but faintly, faintly, and fainter everyday. We’d run, and even running to freedom, we felt the world slipping from our hands, everything solid made from sand. From palaces and brocade to the rough woolen corners. They dragged me from a gully, rocks digging into the softness of my palms as I scrabbled up the banks.

          From here I can see a language born, I see the greatest city on Earth in the seeds below my tower. Far to the east, mysterious lands struggle, helpless, with pregnant rivers swelling and cherry blossom flurries. The world gives birth to fantastic wars, to revolutions – the world is crushed to the breast of an Empire that should have been mine. How will death find me here? Love will never come looking here, won’t come on the draft between the grey, unforgiving stone. And the straw-haired maidens with rosebud lips and dazzled eyes and willing hips, the beautiful men of passionate poetry will seek their Gods between other sheets. The queen is run, or dead, or has already forgotten me. The past fades, the future storm s away and I, here, forgotten.