((Read aloud))

Dear Artaud, 

The poets are restless in their coffins, for the Earth is preparing for a purge. It’s indifferent to human constructs like Justice or poetic justice. It kills indiscriminately along the discriminatory ranks by which Power has organized itself/its subjects, snuffing out the most vulnerable first. 

It will come for us all eventually. Magmatic comeuppance. Corrosion corona. 

Children tearing apart into sand. Green, purple, platinum, pink, silver sands 

enpixelated 

within these V.R. lorgnettes–affixed to mine eye, flesh of ore entwined by gilded pin with gilded web, by gilded fibre, wire, needle, staple, loom, elastic, & clip—thy silver, sliver fate incarnates—thy handsome, sunken face swirls before me—appearing 2-D in tea leaves—in warbling strobe smoke—I recline 

            along thy lunar molars I recline as thine incisors graze
            my fuzzéd nape & spine, disrobing me

Pinwheel static in opiated echo—I fall 

before Art’s Red Eye

Nimbus of spit, mottled with come and lipstick 

Nimbus of copper, fiber, a burning pyre    

I entreat thee–

                   Posterity is done! 

May Death safely hold me.

Hold me as its spawn.

Are you my sire ?   Are you fake or am I 

      foam

                  -ing at the mouth 

                                   foaming 

                                             sea  of styrofoam 

                                   vulviforming form 

                                  -ication What is real

                                  -er than this

                                                           itch this itch this itch don’t tell me to think practically. I’ll never do it again! This faux British accent enshrouds my realer more litigable (i.e. punishable [i.e. disappearable]) affect. I direct productions that the gatekeepers disdain. My plays—heartless, exoskeletal spectacles—melodramatize normative procedures like the Law or physical fitness, to push them toward inversion or autophagy (i.e. “self-eating” [i.e. literally FULL of heart]).

We emerges. Thy pickled body suspended in a laboratory vat. Vivisected for discoveries, ostensibly (and funded by nefarious actors, a secret sect of the aristocracy, methinks—a Coven, perhaps, or a lethal Cell). O buoy’d body bobbing against futurity! Against time’s crusades against all flesh & density. Against humanity’s crusades against flesh & time. O relic! Dear, gelatinous rune—thy potential energies enkernel within that cauldron which brews the salves of the Cell’s analeptic ablutions. Is there awfuller an end pursued than everlasting life? How could these bastards turn you into lotion?!

 “A healthy institutional vibe,” saith the Cell, “tis why thy troupe of devils & tramps shall ne’er enter our high-ceilinged halls again. Forsooth! Hast thou neglected thy fealty?! Kiss our feet & pay us amercement.” At which point they did open their mouths into O’s & expel a pestilent stream, a storm of hungry hungry wingéd worms, which did implant themselves to our skin by rows of concentric steel fangs—& burrow. Burrow themselves deep within our gristle. But why? Why?! To quarry our marrow? To surveil aphotic secrets, map the patterns into cumulous data and why? For research? Or for blackmail? Can you hear me? Tardive dyskinetic angel—can you hear me? My cancer tastes of 7up drank from animatronic rat bowels. Can you hear me? I am screaming. Teach me not to fail. For I am flailing. F(l)ailing. Constantly failing. 

            fearful,

Lo 

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Logan Berry is the Artistic Director of the Runaways Lab, a Chicago-based theater company, and the author of TRANSMISSIONS TO ARTAUD (SELFFUCK), NASIM BLEEDS GREEN (forthcoming from Plays Inverse Press) and Runoff Sugar Crystal Lake (forthcoming from 11:11 Press).

*Image credit: Photographic portrait of Artaud by Georges Pastier, ca. 1946–1948