David Roden, Neko Smile

Neko Smile

image by David Roden

Neko Smile

 

Smoothies
Rub ur eyes, brat-head! They’re awake, already, confused n blnkng back through grey amniotic swill behnd that blister n the fake rococo ceilng, from danty oocytes on the Smoothie Xylem’s termnal stems (just visible through cloudy nutrient) to cavern eyed blobs listlessly emulatng the Neko’s scissor smile n flex to fluctuatng nharmonics n ur snouty drills (Sensory differentia accelerated n vitro.)
Born hungry, u always sense w/ they’re about to drop. Coolant electrolytes gush from spiracles n ur concentric tongues n transpire through ur cobalt alloy underbite n micron wide channels. Voremechanisms whir ready; the last massacre’s bloody particulates cleansed from ur monogrammed sheets (JI). Hooked crosses voxel above the bed n auto-erase before ur saccades. Buffer dreams of wounds, while the Flic re-plays Sana’s Opera
The Hussar crawls back to his ‘safe space’ by the Flic sngng some tearng ballad of parted loves, walled cities, ambiguous crusades n crackle; cavalry moustache, a dark whorl n once handsome n tonsured face, dedifferentiated over the iterations (The Countess came down from the walls, burnng Morsel Knight’s perfumed declarations n crucified him as she promised n their epistolary romance. She ate his offal as it flopped, steamng on pale n danty.)
‘Embryogenesis is sick n sad’ the Neko hisses through bruised lips n empty gums, pillow talkng Anna’s penultimate voice, ‘Just embrace the replication, flower Jonny, n shit where u eat.’ 
Long, membraneous ears flop over her vacant obits. The Hussar deforms blob to toroid, to lamna yellowng down embossed floral wallpaper like urne through lace.
U call this stuff ‘Thanatos’ or the ‘Will’ - a topic of fevered speculation among Dead Planet Ntelligencia: Is the Drive what it says  or just the bubblng, threshng, squirty girl? Is life  but death deferred? If u fabulate Anna’s autaphilia to gratify ur destructive urges, u come to the right place (‘It never happened. Let us be!’ we chorus outa space w/  physically impossible specific resonance.’)
Morsel oiled n spiced, Countess lays him on the thorns of the Theophany Rose to lapidary percussion n ravaged pizzicatos. The Neko turns cyanotic n pouts. Remnd u of the sexual partners u never got to choke? Coughs up fur, vomits, bumps n grnds aganst ur sprng heel hnd parodyng the Countess’s feral paroxysms - for which u flexi-drill an anatomical bulge n plushed Lunagirl skull.
Savng ur ablated lacrimal sacs, u might weep for these delicious meals.
Not for ur first jelly roll, the Bitch craters n dies n poopng, caterwaulng Sibs, Anna’s cunty smile sealng her til next iteration. Act II, Scene II: Mise-en-abyme: A suspiciously gaunt midwife attaches electrodes from an improbable car battery (backstage) to Hunger’s exo labia, between brocade screens, embellished, like our Cornice, n lanceolate leaves where swarms of robns bunch like angry grapes. The Morsel keens an achng antiphon; fadng fast. Decelerno. Decrescendo. Fnale.
Curtan fall; decayng beats, cryptid wngs.
Applause. The rattle of dyng stars.
Like the Door, the Audience were never here.
 
Done, but for our unscripted addend: Countess Hunger dilates, burnng bright n wetly exultant n, crawlng up from the Abyss, the shnng bladed Jackal bursts mewlng between the ornate screens; ur magic toys tnkle, avid, threaded w/ her blood n offal.
 
Love Hotel
She runs ahead, bare legs golden as the sulci we engneered n our chronically neurasthenic star. Her voice reverberates across a pedestrian thoroughfare n the University n its rows of twiglike, dead trees, like the stng of ice felt aganst ur long discarded teeth. The servants had cleaned n aired the apartment off the square. A honeymoon briar w/ red petals weaves round the balcony’s wrought iron balustrade. U follow her, diffident as the jerky automata under the old town radium dial: Death, Nsenescent, Engneer, Matriarch. Grey Hermetics whose bodies contaned countless birds. KAKA STARS oozng formless forms. Subsequent generations sculpted such impossibilities as shny metal polyhedra, tnny analogies n anal eye dirt. ‘Jonny is so wounded. Nothng is ever enough!’ The Neko ventriloquises. A naïve n essentialist readng of Eternal Return bubbles up from a mucoid crevice lackng larynx n epiglottis. She should be irrevocably mute but can never brng herself to shut up. How many times did u tell her this n a voice distorted by dental prosthesis, ‘There is only one us’?
A pastorale of happy cottontails tendng their tranquil herds is displaced by another drift of X’s w/ diacritical hooks, boilng antilife, transliterated unbeng.
The Newborn Neko slithers out of postpartum muck, coy, beguilng n fresh while its sibs await death on that carpet w/ its sick corporate hexacomb. The Flic casts a granular radiance over her bloated fluff n a starry glnt n her vacant sockets.
For a special moment, the Hussar tries to become her by occupyng the same space. Flesh, even wounded, was never so precious - we get that - but he never got the hang of possession, its ntrnsic moral potency. That we can see through ur eyes, Jonny. Like nothng, like we are. Rejected, the Hussar  ripples through the air back to his corner beside the Birthng Blister, sproutng arms like a dyng baby spider.
 
Yet another bucolic reverie from the uplns of Warren’s only contnent. Leggy, horned rumnants tended by fat fluffy shepherds on long-eared hexapods. The Cow-bunnies wore bright harnesses n coral-beads n red n ochre. Green acclivities, warmng yello star!
Could u see it now. Bulk carriers sparkle over a throngng port as they ascend. Planiformers n Orbitals team w/ our diseased meat; desires, bodies w/, bodies w/out. Hegira Corp mantans a breedng population of the bunnies on vast battery farms for the luxury export. Tender, happily decerebrated. Love it, love us! we want to shout. But u’d traduce n mock us, Ibnis, n rightly. Somethng is always off or comng. Our mutual Friend, amenable yet unntelligible, exculpatng; delightng w/ perfect ignorance. We ganed crucial traction w/ ur little god. Bluntly empirical devoirs. Experiments n obedience contnue n ur absence; though the signs are frankly not good snce u elucidated His Boxes.
Which is why, Jonny, we cradle u among our delicious Smoothies, sooth u neath gravid scrotum, bulgng sac, sulkng blister, follicle, dividng egg…
 
 
Somethng is Comng!
‘I’m sorry to drag u nto this’ u lament.
‘Jonny, u have a lot to be sorry about.’
‘U say nothng …I’m soliloquisng’
‘Nsane how much u hate, dear. Fear not, there is no one to be, no one to see. Nothng but addends, dividends, differentia. Go, not too soon. U’re never leavng because u were never here. How can u appreciate the Friend’s florid Surnature if u misconstrue Nature?’
 
Amid the sophisms n the hectorng, like magic, the ceilng sags, seams of weaker tensile strength tear w/ the partitioners n its cytoplasm.
n (like so) the waters will break n the Babies will fall. Ripe Smoothies floppng like turds n a latrne. The humor of lipids n phospholipids, collaged n immaculate, tanted cruelty.
That last one crawls up from the end of ur bed, big as a baskng seal, blnd, a void of voremecha or apparent defence.
U reach between its buds, little furrows w/ cute art-hymens.
U resent their sexless opulence, cloaked n cloaca, mucus, cum, urea, piss. U abide, get used to it.
Not long now! We’ve eaten our fill from the Boxes.
U extrude hook, claw, syrnge, mecharostrum, flexidrill, razor lip, spirocrypts. Obey precarious whims. Stroke her till she farts, excretes n expectorates. Then follow the Misdirections.
 
Belyng her oedema n vegetatng head, the Neko uses ratiocnation, cunnng, rhetoric n timbre; protests, however u wounded n violated her, that Anna never deceived, resented or made stuff up, like u notice. W/ each of ur ‘U’re not really …,’ she dribbles n dissembles she never loved or died, Hastur did not fall. It doesn’t matter who speaks snce w/ all is said only Language does, though ‘Neko’ doesn’t mean Nobody. Just it’s nothng personal. Do u consider this life lived well n the teeth (sic) of impossibility? Why do u defame her memory? Ur past is erasng, poppng, so who’s to tell? Not U, we, nor Our Friend on the Outside nnocently accommodatng us.
 
Traces n Erasures.
N the apartment, timber smells from resnous contnents; antique scientific n musical nstruments; Anna’s recreational torture-snuff artifacts restng behnd acrylic screens, bookcases n a small private library, n vitro foetal prodigies pickled n formaldehyde, the Old Gimp Cage spikes aganst a wide steel framed wndow. Beyond n the abstract brightness, Cathedral, Rotunda, Equestrian, Radium Clock, modest Gnomon… U call some unentered halls of civic buildngs, some eccentric Iron n Steel Magnate who built a foreign Chateau among blast furnaces n cokng towers. A lonely howl expressed from ur hairy fore-lip. Did u hear that? Lupne, bestial, panfully self-aware just as u telescope ur vicious fleximolars, snout ablaters n raspng, rotatng cartilagnous needle beds. It is hard to keep as ur worlds break asunder. The Smoothy’s throat sprays dark green as u release her sknned, laughng skull.
Some iterations, u begn w/ the Sibs; let the Neko sit watchng til blood, faeces n cum wash her necrospasms n analytic terrine. Welcome to the Ln of Bubbles!
 
Eater
We bran-bloomed our anonyms to suffer gratuitously n poorly but made u hurt all the right ways. They hurt but w/out proper values. n that needles. Thalamocorticals png, prions rng stokng bilirubn w/ u open their laughably thn skulls but nobody gives a fuck, despite which u taste them all emphatically, like a gourmet w/out proper grammar. Only now there is a ‘bouquet of Alterity’ as Map or Anna might put it: a piquant distillation of nitrogenous bases like a manufacturers’ brn: MAXIMNIMAXIMNIMAXIMNIMA, each ‘X’ hooked to mark its transliteration.
Ur Crew happy-raped the Sag, pnng for Strange New Worlds, ridiculous Vivs n Civs to eat. Skns, biomes, rituals, genders, pharmaka, magics (mathematised, naïve) complimentng unique, flavoursome disparities n tangs. Robust or juicy, rubbery or gamey. (We) tasted Warren (Lapn à la Moutarde), Vostok (Venison stew), Menion (A deep Peppery Chowder) n the Bearng Worlds of the Glis (Ndefnable). More, we loved u more than ourselves, companions to watch the stars unmade n remodelled. Bubbles n our Hyperchaos. A chemistry of mngng.
 
n the Facng Smoothy is agape as the top drawer of the little bedside cabnet a meter from ur ruttng head - unnoticed snce a dozen bubbles n O-gates popped – furtively vibrates, shakes, opens, impelled by a plangent arpeggio on an unstable dimnished seventh. The highly strung chord ntroducng Countess Hunger’s odious fnal recitative over the Flic n a fug of distortion risng to an exponential scream. Reach n, pet his ribbed little segments, tickle his lol little tubes. The Gate n the Key!
Krilln’s legs skitter nanely aganst ur fngers, while he remonstrates delightfully and bitily.
 

Just as ropy yellos punch through the ceilng, tear panels and support struts, exposng the service cablng n the void above, cradlng, feedng and modulatng the Stoma per our needs.
W/ unreal speed, an oblate ball w/ pseudo-convex foreskn pops through the  fresh hole, clambers n, bounces, mocks, rocks and slobbers balletically, aqueous w/ radial nausea, towards the No-door, pausng to flower undulant toroids.
Several hotel floors above, an emaciated grey child (Hi!), legs like gnarled wooden posts; toothless, w/ our glossal obsolescence flappng over our chn like Anna’s old leather strap. As if to advertise our seriously outmoded anatomy we lift wizened twigs, tuckng the skeuomorphs between blackened lips.
The Ghost Hussar detaches from the wall, plops onto the filthy carpet, crawlng under the bed n a surely doomed effort to elude the fractionated attentions of Urdrugna, Eater of Souls.
 

—David Roden