#LanguageSpeaks!

A man carrying a voice recorder pauses at the door, enters.  

He looks a lot like Kafka but has the eyes of Tennyson.  

He possesses a picture of Saturn, and you don’t.  

It is green. If you like you can say the same.  

You can’t blame me for this. I am merely the host.  

The party has just begun. Enjoy yourself.  

He should have brought wine instead.  

Some people like voice recorders, some don’t. It’s not an issue.  

‘Turn it down,’ he shouts. ‘I can’t hear myself speak.’  

Language speaks for itself, and you cannot say otherwise.  

All speaking is shouting in brackets.  

Exclamations are excuses that can’t be helped.  

He has a great enthusiasm for fashionable words.  

Ineffective diphthongs are worse than postmodern derivatives.  

The eye looks; the ear hears; the heart yearns; the mind thrashes about in time.  

Wait! He has yet to explain what the body is.  

Wretched is he who despises the cry of the goldfinch on a cleft tree.  

Smile with your own teeth or don’t smile at all.  

I can see from your face that you’d like to wear a neoconservative t-shirt, but your neighbors are intolerant fascists.  

New York is poisoned; Beijing has tumbled; Oslo is sunk. London is ill.  

And yet we are still here, together and smiling, equal in the sight of Jesus.  

What’s to understand here?  

X + Y is a calculated non-position designed to keep you impartial.  

If mediocrity is a lake, then genius is a river.  

This is not a joke it’s real.  

My teeth hurt, and my clothes are rags.  

My nerve is losing its grip. A rupture is coming like the sound of paracetamol rattling in a body bag.  

Life is an algorithm. After the algorithm, an outcome.  

You are that outcome, bringer of great joy, bringer of apocalypse.  

You are dreaming grotesqueries.  

No matter how many shapes you throw I can always add another side.  

Geometry is an art-form, like dancing.  

I don’t like to dance because I am a square.  

Life does not include personal issues.  

In other words, what counts in life is failure.  

My heart is a map, and X marks the spot where the flies crawl downwards.  

The map says I haven’t arrived. I’m not even nearby.  

I blame the Americas for pushing me into something final like the end of summer.  

Mexico is on the line. The United States is at my door.  

If Time had a voice, it’d say, ‘Leave me alone, I’m heartily sick of this shit.’ 

Well, language has a voice, and it says, ‘Time is sick of this shit.’  

Space is not happy, either.  

How do I know? I have ears, don’t I? You just need to listen.  

This is milkblood to my ears.  

Listen up! the universe is speaking through me.  

Are you reading me?   

Kafka looks jaundiced, lethargic. ‘Oh.’ He rocks gently, humming.  

What shall we call this, Franz? How about #LanguageSpeaks!