Tourette's Syndrome as Future Metalhead
It started like a dare, a friend
saying, in order to be heavy,
you have to listen
to heavier things.
I thought heavy must be a measure
of intensity, which I thought meant
it had something
to do with pain,
which had something to do
with the capacity to resist it.
Heavy cannot be
moved too easily
but I knew I moved all the time,
or my body moved all the time.
We still find this
to be a strange idea.
My body and I are never still.
My body and I somehow are
both excessive
and deficient,
in that we have too much to control
and lack the control to have ourselves
as a body
should be
had. My friend said he’d start the song. I pressed
into my seat, wondering if this would be music
if music is intended
to be understood
and, if not, could it still be appreciated? I tried making sense
of the screaming but there were only a few stray sounds
resembling anything
like language against
all the noise, but this is called music, and I hear it somewhere, unless
the opposite of noise was never music but the word it’s been given,
that I have
given to it.
My friend forgot to hit pause but I didn’t say anything, just pressed down
into my seat with all of my weight until I had none left to give. I wanted to
prove I could be
my own ballast,
that I could hold my breath and nothing could force it out despite me being
such an antic balloon, always bursting in some lightning I can’t help but keep
generating. And what
could be more metal
than an outburst, an explosion, the permission to explode as everything that explodes
around me, that will explode around me, my body, we are exploding, so I knew I had
to keep listening
to all that light.
Tourette's Syndrome as BOP IT EXTREME
BOP IT EXTREME may be held by either handle. Use your free hand to respond to commands.
Should you have no free hands, try another available body part, perhaps your elbow, foot, or nose.
Should your elbow, foot, nose and other body parts all be unavailable, it may not be the best time to BOP IT EXTREME.
It is always time to BOP IT EXTREME.
When left alone, bop it extreme will activate sleep mode. Note that sleep mode is not the same as sleeping.
BOP IT EXTREME never sleeps.
BOP IT EXTREME is extreme.
BOP IT EXTREME awaits your interference.
BOP IT EXTREME never tires of repetition. Its orders are limited: bop it twist it pull it spin it flick it.
BOP IT EXTREME adheres to a randomized order of commands. A randomized order is an order masquerading as disorder.
A disorder is an interference of what is understood as order.
BOP IT EXTREME shouts you its orders.
When you hear bop it, you bop the bopper.
When you hear twist it, you twist the twister.
When settled into a rhythm, BOP IT EXTREME will do its best to unsettle yours, your randomized order.
The intended functionality of BOP IT EXTREME can only be referenced with an imagined symbiont: you.
You and BOP IT EXTREME constitute an extreme body assemblage.
EXTREME BODY ASSEMBLAGE develops its own proprioception.
EXTREME BODY ASSEMBLAGE orders faster and rewards with faster orders.
To function as intended, EXTREME BODY ASSEMBLAGE requires concentration without interference.
To function as intended, EXTREME BODY ASSEMBLAGE must always interfere with itself.
To function as intended, EXTREME BODY ASSEMBLAGE must sustain itself through an unsustainable rhythm.
To function as intended, fail to function as intended.
JUSTIN GREENE organizes the Where to Submit list at Entropy and is an editor at Qui Parle. His poetry and fiction have appeared or are forthcoming in Hayden’s Ferry Review, Hobart, and Barrelhouse. He is a PhD student in anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley.