Results of a game played by SLAG
and the Surrealist Group of Río de la Plata
Spanish version: click here. What the unidentified object says:I say that I am an animal with a smooth body, with three characteristics unique in the animal world by which I can be identified:
• A muscular foot
• A bullet-proof vest
• An organ to feed with, called a mouth
My man's foot is the size of a moribund sole, errant, cast aside. My man's foot is the size of a star. My man's foot is the origin of all knowledge.
My bullet-proof jacket is a second skin, leaning up close against my bones like a nightmare.
My mouth is a nail painted with the colours of the flag, with the colours of a massacre. When it screams, it's as if a thousand fireworks have exploded on a golf course.
What the ear wearing a hearing aid says:I say that I'm a cuckoo clock of the springtimes of the eternal glaciers. The inside of my auricle, a sofa in the style of Louis XV, encloses a workshop making frames for pictures containing a multitude of gods, workers and gnomes. In times of peace they work to distinguish between a Beethoven sonata, a “Tyrollean air” a “Scottish air”, an “allegro ma non troppo” or an “andante cantabile”. Today, under a cloud of dust, they are flattened against the wall of the cartilage.
What an amalgam of splinters, earth, and slices of a young lad says:I say that I am a creation suspended and supported by mud which is textured with boot leather. The essential components of my harmonic being are:
• A torn penis which still hasn't shrunk.
• A hand which still clutches the assigned weapon.
• A pancreas covered in earth and dust, which lives and breathes in the open air.
My penis gyrates (perhaps blown by the wind) in between the perforated helmets and pieces of broken rooftops.
My hand still maintains its sense of balance in the middle of the smoke.
My pancreas is an offering of food to the most needy of birds.
What the nose says:
I am the remains of the euphoria of a few rivals, fed on a diet of pig and oats, and whose ideas were very conceited, so full of themselves in fact that they exploded in the form of flags.
I say that I'm a rigid plaque starched by the cry of terror which sprouts wings. I travel in the velocity of the wall which divides the world. Just like a bullet I splinter inside the hearts of the children.
Inside my skin all the sects and obscenities are investigated.
I wear a hairclip which adheres to every crown when it shines, and seduces the Parliament like a casket filled with rubies and sacred prints.
They are not afraid of me, although I am small I know how to carry myself and my sword.
What the two spermatozoids said to each other:Hola che, como te va?
Sorry old chap, don't speak the Lingo.
Ah, you are English. How is your Queen? Is she still on your pound note?
She is, and always will be, God save her.
It's good she is keeping well, good health matters. Fucking cold here, no? Turn your balls into brass monkeys, eh?
I don't know that I care for your turn of phrase, but yes, it is a bit nippy in these parts.
So che, how did you get here?
Well my master, or donor if you like, to be honest we never had a very close relationship, he was of the officer class you know, stiff upper lip and all that. Well he had this thing about the flag, used to get him all excited, you know, first thing in the morning. Well this time round he got a little carried away, if you catch my drift, crack of dawn, a bit embarrassing really, got sort of tangled up in the rope, ended strung up on the flagpole, hoist by his own petard you might say, sowing his seed on stony ground. And as one proverb leads to another, and all my siblings seemed to have drowned in the mud, here I am, all on my tod.
So he died a hero. No?
After a fashion, I suppose, yes, at least a patriot.
My father, hey I call him my father, because he did give me life after all, but he was only a boy, nineteen years old, from the country, the sticks I think you call him; well he didn't know much about anything anyway, only that he thought his country needed him, but what he really needed was his Juanita, and he was playing with his own flagpole, you know, thinking about her with no clothes on, and it was as if the National Anthem had reached a crescendo, and she was his country, when Bang, big fucking bomb landed right on his head; and here I am, all that remains of him.
It does make you think doesn't it.
Hey your group, the Beatles, did they not write a song about this?
A Day in the Life?
No it went something like - I am he as we are he as he are me as we are all together.
I am the Walrus.
Yes, that's it, we are all the Walrus.
It does seem all a bit strange, now that our masters are gone. What are we supposed to do now?
We could always check out the local chicas.
A bit of helter skelper.
Porque no? There are worse places to be than inside a vagina.
You're right there my Argentinean friend, it might be wet, but at least it's warm.
Make love not war.
You know when I grow up I think I'd like to be a woman, explore my feminine side. It seems to me they are not so obsessed with their flagpoles.
Hey if I grow up to be a man, maybe we could get married, and have little Arglish children.
You know, I think I'd rather like that.
The two spermatozoids exit stage left, in a hurry to reach the pub before it closes at eleven, singing lustily:
All you need is love na na na na na.
What the button says:I say that I am a sperm tossed out by the desire of a youngster with three legs. Found in a storm of luminous bushes and lost overcoats, where the words fed on flies hide themselves. Under my flesh there are broken clouds, and ideals reduced to a plastic bullet which penetrates the vaginas of the children, spick and span in front of the mirror. I say I am a dead book, but one which they have found.
What the letter which was never sent to the mother says (1):I say that I am the fairy of the pleasures of incest. My leaf of Sphinx and origami flies always towards the sunset, towards the end of the world, in the lap of the Lamia. I am the last vestige which accompanies you at the extremities of existence. Sometimes you don't understand. I am with you right till the end, and sometimes you don't understand. When you lift you eyes over the steam of a coffee, or up from the arid pages of a book of fire, sometimes you forget and your grief is turned into a sweet lament.
What the letter which was never sent to the mother says (2):Dear Mum,
The food is horrible and the atmosphere in the barracks disgusting. I have been trying to sleep for some nights but the thought of you and father waiting for me at home while I am combating at the front prevents me from falling asleep. So I masturbate – I know you weren’t keen on it at home, but there are such beautiful sunsets here and it seems only right. Last night I saw the stars of the Southern Cross catch light, and pass fire from star to star like a burning chain of barbed wire that might keep me safe from my own men. Mother, I am an onanist. Do not deny me this sole pleasure. I am sure that you will not deny me my lone desire. I assure you, I do not think of you. Take pleasure in this thought, if you cannot take pleasure in any other thought. But I am not pursuing this activity in an idle or self-indulgent way: with each passing night I am more and more certain that some form of cosmic communication is taking place when I lay hands on myself. My semen is the quintessence, the fifth element that runs along the edges of the emerald tablet. And so rejoice in the thought of my every lonesome tossing, and while you do, go fuck yourself, beloved mother, you wretched hag, reclining on the draylon, cosseted by central heating. Screw your incestuous courage up and face your loathsome countenance. I came across the seas to escape your clammy embrace and am still not free of you. Tomorrow night I die on this blasted rock but tonight I’m ecstatic in my hatred. Oh! Here it comes, in all its dirty transcendence. Adieu!
What the heels facing skyward say:It’s cold out in the middle of the night. The rain is falling and I can feel it above me. The sky is dark and all I can hear is the sheep.
What the scalp says:Scummy, scrumpled, ruined, bloodied, soiled and wasted. Follicles ripped, skin clinging to fragments of bone. Not the glorious shiny pate of baldness I had planned. Not the receding temples and flecking grey, not the peeling scabby eczema or the wispy comb-over. No drying, shrivelled rot.
What the tattoo says:I love Gerry and with my pretty tentacles I call down the sun to heal his torn heart. I dream of the phosphorescent glow of the cordite in his sweat, and I will count and bind his ribs, as his bullets tear into my flesh and putrefy my organs.
What the albatross says (1):I am in the sea, shining with the ministrations of porpoises. Gunboats are circling, but I flash gold and white, streaming and bold with a courage I hadn’t noticed before. What’s that glimmer over there? I like things of a shiny nature. Perhaps I ought to investigate. Ow.
What the albatross says (2):I have one wingtip on the mainland’s shore, and one on the island, and I will accept no blame for the bad luck at my feet.
What the gun says:Stand up and fight, you coward. Dropping dead on me just like that!
What the gun says and what the prostate says (in unison):Limbless and eyeless, my uncharged beauty lies abandoned in the mud whose oily darkness mirrors my own. I am the esoteric factotum whose pyre died unlit.
What the hat says:Damn! That one was close. One of these days I’m gonna fit proper and good. No more sweat, no more lice, no more … but fuck it. I’m gonna fit on some bastard, see if I don’t.
What the cigarette packet says:And I cannot get a light.
What the photograph of the girlfriend in the pocket of the uniform says:I say that I am the letter of longing that slides between stiff clothing. I maintain an ability to camouflage myself in the mouth of the dead. But I await an unexpected bite or reflex action that will render me asunder into a glorious star of whim and fantasy. For then there will be different explosions and problems.
What the head says:I say that I am a container of bones, openly on offer like a strange plate of ice cream. The broken ice of the morning, holds in place the bubbles rising from my inner being. I am the desert for the lieutenants and the filthy savage children.
What the crucifix says: I say I am an insect chewing a melon watered by a grandmother.
I say I am the crucifix of a brass little man in the midle of him, one which before to take a trip to here, this island makes think in a mattress of pure foam and sacred lust. Island that now have the color of all the children toys piled after of blood transfusion.
Yes, I say I can smell the back young spine mixed up with the meat of roots of trees, thrusted between the heart and a patriotic song.
I say that they found me later on a lot of years of get up early without skin where lie down and rub off and polish me.
Now I hide me inside of an oxided itch and sulfur of funereal gravestone.
But it is for a short time.
I perfume me with the viscera of the dead slaves between rifles and lawyer smiles. They harden the decoration of my future shroud. With it I will can bless the forehead of the most illustrious old men and diagnose the crime society.
With this sign they could name me:
for who don't take flowers to this grave, we exchange a clock by his hairedressers.
