LOUIS ARMAND STEMMATA: MODE D'EMPLOI the rhetoric is all in its cast—or is at least in its cast—(bridges, machines: no longer what is read but imagined in the weld)—elliptical as ... [text? or pretended evangelicum—en-capsulated, staring through plate glass la mariée mise a nu par ses célibataires, meme / valium sundays in a haze of lightswitches / red beneath the membrane faking it / turn over & scan the wanted ads—practiced inversions / underground breathing becomes difficult—humidity—attribute this to psychaesthenia / a telephone voice particles, connectives—w/o which nothing makes sense. no meaning (echo does not politely wait until the speaker is done) how it all seems so significant trying to form words by hand ear mouth eye automatically & w/o falling into sentences or barking like a dog conscience / framing motives / the reductio ad absurdum of who’s speaking or not / between the tympanum & the receiver (it flaunts its operations & integrates them into other desiring systems along strictly verbal lines: “heightened language,” “a pathos of traditional forms”) phonic substance doubling the translation of soundwaves back in/to voice simulation: “her hemispheres loomed above me” token & parodic ... in the streets’ demi-mundane terminus [add also <&, or comparison of subsequent a/versions> e.g.  “only the hate turned the milk” (this passage is followed by random notes in x handwriting at the bottom of the page & carries on in y ... heavily crossed out in red ink, except for “thank you” & “close”—a catalogue of items found anatomically (he clutched w/ his hands & missed & turned away hopeless & unhearing)—in other words the nebulous sexual / linguistic sin imputed to him  (he abhears: “& i turned to see the voice that spoke to me ...”))] q.v. the counter argument presented even by the appearance of other people—waiting at airports / bus stations / outside telephone booths / in hospital wards—enantiomorphic chambers like mirrors placed to reflect one another’s dis-appearance—torn silhouettes pinned to the walls or hanging from ceilings a dark sea of television screens / though loss of sensation & the news still leave you cold in mid-july (unseasonal weather they say)—millennial scenario ... filming la fin du monde from a pier at liberty island—architectural dis-symmetries in the lens, binocular or trans-sexed as “result angles” simulating morpho-genesis / a colossal drag queen shining a torch on the “big apple” (& paris is burning) / ash in the upper atmosphere red & smell of acid discharge—ambiguity mimicking the veiled intent in-different to antihistoricisms / “crimes committed against nature the state” / citing n[ew] y[ork] in quadrilaterals of savoir-faire [?]: space / deteriorating in parallel inertia as “it” bestows a point—conditions / of use—tying up with a telephone cord / & transparent wall to keep upright / dial tone “on the third stroke it will be x precisely” double-checking the transliterality of its [...]-figurations—the credulous eye endlessly re-volving glass by lattice (alluvial or consumptive cityscapes / hyperbolean)—speculating on the purity of illicit substances—mind over matter? or «jeu de la vérité» feeling the ground slip beneath the feet & the prompter feeding you your lines on the way down / “thirteen flights of stairs ‘cos the elevator shaft’s jammed with shit” / crossing an ocean vomited up by someone burst capillaries in the eye “landfall” in a strange continent far south of assumed bearings / (when you’ve lost your map of the world & the actors all quit / “mutiny on the bounty” / left with just the walk-on roles a list of stage names zip codes & social security numbers) shadow transmissions from the other side of the oneiric dumbshow—a flow of punctuation marks, periphrasis in the vein / itinerancy; an unresolved gesture towards n+1 conflicting destinations: “& although there are x there are sometimes no y” / hooked on the magic carousel (get a ticket buy the soundtrack got to keep the replay button pressed down) midnight—riding the subway to the infirmary / the sound of air approaching through the air-conditioning ducts & “no vacancy” radiant in the cancelled dawn—cinderella laughs through a gap in her side, pale fluorescent skin graphing the aftermath / divested of sentiment—cold hard reality waits around every corner but it’s difficult to see—counting the squares back to the start again / “at the antipodes of unity” / or slipping between the usual cracks on the sidewalk ‘cos you’re too sick & tired to jump any more / watching the rain dissolving in the monotrope *first published in boxes, ed. d.j. huppatz (melbourne: textbase publications, 2000) (c) louis armand, 2000

louis armand (c) cait regan, 1996