Professional Documents
Culture Documents
oki sogumi
I.
LIVING
ANYMORE
NOT YET
on living anymore
part I: suicide
is suicide the staking out of autonomy or is it murder by slow poisoning (patriarchy, capitalism,
prison, etc take your pick)?
is suicide the ever-resistant final fuck you to that slow poisoning?
is suicide the best star, the prettiest girl, the tightest beat we ever danced to?
can i literally kill the cop in my head, burn away civilizations noose?
if one takes down ones enemies with them to hell, does one have to also drag those bodies down
a river like a horse on fire?
i went to court to deny my suicide, my perpetuation of suicide, i refused to answer their
questions which
they took to be a sign of suicide
Untitled
We trace a container
the mouth holds canines and enamel chips
opening in the dead mall
Ponies ran
against a download
against it
chewing just wheat things
In a cathedral in Boston I met a sweetheart I showed off my marks under the light
A modern dove with modern hair
But they rubbed off with salt water
And the sweetheart couldnt see me
In a storm drain in San Fernando Valley
I softened into an earthquake
And threw up earth
And my hair was tangled with the earth
And I couldnt get up
The Santa Anas kept knocking me to the ground
I woke up later and blew one holy bubble on May Day and said goodbye
I got on the same transparent plane that imported my kind
I filled my mom with water and told her
The game begins, sticks are cast, dog-dog, two-two by which is meant
Predictably, the intended result, by which is meant
Any corrective as an obscene gesture, mother eater, by which is meant
Boiled culture, with water dear, by which they never meant
Any of it but its not intention that undoes the paving
Pavements press down on people to make way for
The money horses moving toward the Seoul center or the Busan corner so
This is how the game continues getting stuck on home so
The center & corner need to fall out at the same time so
I hated her but in her universe love was more violent so
Non-violence wasnt a real option just violence deferred so
We found others hiding in the hypermart dressed in vegetation so
We unearthed all the dying before the chance intersection so
Necessarily no future resides in a place
All notion of a good option deferred
No more advice, no
Innocence as requirement, no
Remote crime reports, no
Profiteers of small utopias, no
Hills, at all, no
Sincere tropical vacation, no
Ramen hotels, no
Mostly everyone is the enemy
As long as this is where we live
II.
FLEXIMOB
FROM SMEAR
This one is a loose scholar, full of soil, grit all up in the pen, the eyes, the holes, the creases.
A poorly welded crease in the conduit is leaking all the juice and all the goo and all manner of
odorous.
This one tried to believe in smelly music, tried to tear more conduits open through this shadow
optimism.
Plastic parts can become its own junk river, its own oozy smear upon the earth.
This one becomes its own junk vehicle on the junk river which sings a junk song.
Ownership gets melted and gooed too, an oil that moves slowly toward fire.
This one says there's a whole lot of brushing against, glasses clinking lightly, but what of the
movement of the smears?
Dirt vehicles are being wheeled into a showcase, all marked with their special number, brushed
with pineapple glaze and told so lovely, so lovely.
This one holds up the letter with all the names of men who are threatening to sue, declares it is a
letter from the city, declares it a record of the arrested, and it is burned.
A micro-scene is not the economy, not a city, not a jail, it is hardly a place at all, yet this one
circulates in it, yet this one languishes in it, yet this one dies in it, a scene of two, or a
polyamorygooglecalendar, or the brutal ice rink of a bitter town, its all circling and scraping at
the ice.
This one refuses to call the letter burning and what may yet still come anti-violence, the odor is
acrid, the junk counter-cuts, and the floppy lace is invasive, refuses to promise safety.
Wildly external, wandering and carving and whipping the place up: destroy the scene.
TO MOB
The butchers sat down to dinner. The table was covered in silk damask, strewn around were tiny
rubies, meant to look like glistening drops of blood, to whet the appetite. Those who had their
heavy hands on the table got rubies stuck to them, leaving ghostly marks on the skin. Their skin
washed as it was in blood, so many times over, and had stained. They were rubbed with a cream
of snails, and then dusted in pearl powder. This was allowed to set, and in the candlelight, they
glowed of subdued blood. They were butchers not vampires so it was right the blood was
external in this way. Their boots were still covered in the sticky oil of the rivers, and the sludge
moved throughout the course of the dinner, off of the rubber and onto the floor and the carpets
and mysteriously, even to the curtains and the crystal ware. Later in the evening they would be
set upon the world, but for now, they ate carefully, cutting the organs with expert precision,
their knives knowing what was sinew, what muscle, what would give away and what would
remain stubbornly wedded. Each wore a gold necklace, on which dangled the words bad bitches.
As they ate, they became vessels of all the organs and all the cuts on the organs, which were now
obscured in the dark glass of the butchers' bodies. Tonight, the butchers whispered to each other
in total conspiracy, tonight, they said exchanging kisses and bites, tonight they would swallow a
light into their vessels and run together into the town.
she sat next to the river so tired she couldn't move her arms to cover her eyes from the sun
above so she closed them and peered at the sparks of her eyelids she sat next to the river and did
not watch the junks pass by but knew that they were she pushes her fingers against the knotted
muscles on her face from grinding her jaw from too much coffee from being on the phone she
moves her bad shoulder to make its clicking sound she sat next to the water and felt warm a
savory warmth like she'd just eaten a hamburger all of her body was softening like trash she
couldn't feel her hands her hands were dispersed foam puffs lapping with the edge of the river
just riding it if she stayed here long enough her body would become rose-colored estranged from
the rose if she stayed longer it would get covered in husks blown out of a buckwheat pillow then
she might look like a natural thing a passive place like they always said she resembled her
insecure architecture was showing they said while she peeled and applied a sticker on her
particular spot by the river when she was younger she had to wet and wring a small towel and
put it by her bed so her insides would not dry out and sicken she had to chew boiled greens that
were covered in tiny thorns so she couldn't chew so fast but had to chew enough to go from
bitter to sweetness all along that river all the river
theres not enough words anyone can say to speak truth to power
Anne and I talk about how there arent enough Enlightenments to confess
or provide mental lamb-as-victim pornography for
that cant end well!
nobody want to look you in the eye when you say xxxx, but everyone still wants to hear the story
to judge for themselves
when you begin to tell, you become the one who tells,
but whether the girl gives or is taken for blood, she is carelessly leaving blood everywhere, she
was born bloody, born in a clinic of suckers
"The beatings do not work, the accountability processes do not work, banishment does not work,
forgiveness does not work"
"The fact that sometimes a XXXX chooses a violent response suggests that of all the impossible
choices given to XXXX, XXXX has opted for the one that express the actual degree of hostility at
the level of the social group-- that is, the hostility of XXXX as a group against the domination of
YYYY as a group. "
girl becomes the point of catharsis in her telling, but catharsis shaped not by her actions: an
extractive way
how much blood the clinic needs, how many clients are thirsty, she fills out a form, is asked
invasive questions, waits, bored watching the clinic clock as they slap suckers onto her skin their
slime covered exoskeletons shuddering with contact
a stunt girl, jumping into a multi vocal plain, a sea of alien bodies glittering like walruses, shored
up on this death beach, their bodies already rendered bounceable, surface-like
recall a poster reading "WE ARE YOUR FRIENDS YOULL NEVER BE ALONE AGAIN" as you
sit in the clinic, holding your own hand, phantom fingers sprouting from the wrists, to scratch at
the palms, stuck between the telling and a bad place
Ratioed
Ana pours bicarbonate soda into her fathers drink, to send a letter to her mother. A child
doesnt know how it got so fucked up but she still knows how to send the letter. The
transmission is fuzzy but in the end shes found a way to kill him, to sashay at the bottom of a
drained pool, to find a way towards living. (porque te vas, porque te vas, porque te vas)
Sophie hides her illiteracy from the Lelivres. Alone in her room, she gestures with a stutter
hand, following the illustrated boy in her secret book, his blank smile and easy mouth circling
the letters: clench, and let go, clench, and splay out, clench, and pull the trigger.
Camille fingers a music box. C lounges in a hotel room of Francis Bacon pink, all fleshy. Camille
in a black velvet dress, black velvet gloves, gesturing over the face, glancing arms, lifting up like
a passage through the club, caressing the blue walls, like they might let the body through (on se
croit d'amour/ on se croit froce enracin/ mais revient toujours/ le temps du lien dfait)
Cabiria pounds the ground full of dead leaves, emptied currency. Cabiria emerges from the
forest. She walks besides revelers, they shout, they spin, they strum, she receives their smiles,
her eyes flash, wet with tears: she looks into the camera. (ma la vita continua)
(ghost: Maggie Cheung as Ruan Ling-yu goes around the room to kiss her friends goodbye. She
eats poisoned porridge to die. Her friend stand around her porcelain body, her hair is wet with
snow, the snow dusts her sleeping poison face.)
The pessimism stored inside the glitch may yet turn itself out
Petroleuse-style
A mistake often made when putting a plasticgirl
In your pocket, in your house, in your city:
A plastic parts trojan can explode at high velocity
When the femme fatales and the gumihos finally get together
They dont just want your heart or phallus to eat
As plasticgirls they want the whole thing
Snuggled up in the cellular space
And spread inconsolably
Like big drippy tears
As the clinic clock ticks