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.

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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.

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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.