DATA ENTRY 001//TRAUMA_MAPS
Asceticism:
1) Autodidactic
orange rinds and hoops after school
wandering hands in that void of a closet
got big teeth like a beast, sinking—
fires in my chest; I am eating the last
of you. Little pounding nymph. Boxing gloves
against the caverns—these damned walls are thick.
You’re straight like an octagon. A million tiny dots
on that globe I can’t shoot. You’d laugh,
you ever hit it from the back?
2) Database Animal
I am [ ]
I’ve been chewing at the moon—barking.
Fucking on Wednesdays. Resting on Fridays.
On one at the Turkey Hill—drinking
gasoline some guerilla shit.
Eat till full, molars crush rinds.
Seraphs too, wings and horns,
all bodies are [mine]
Y2K deathmachines; factory farm
sonata. You better meet me in the middle.
Listen moment static hits. I’ll meet you there. Bring the goods.
You’re a god today.
Bring everything.
I’ve/got/the/cash/in/my/screen
bring the goods to the drop spot.
// error
4) trauma maps
a) ontologies
Trauma
Acceleration
$$$$
Data
$$$$
Autonomy
Uprooting
Blood
Quarks
Parts
Simples
Theism
b) [memorytype]
the gig
fucked
up
club
oldheadwithhands onmyback
seehisfaceintheevenings,
tracingoutlinesonmyback
5) Repeat
does the void speak in tongues or the queen’s English?
a) Autodidactic
orange rinds and hoops after school
wandering hands in that void of a closet
got big teeth like a beast, sinking—
fires in my chest; I am eating the last
of you. Little pounding nymph. Boxing gloves
against the caverns—these damned walls are thick.
Been drinking gasoline in the mornings
fucking on Wednesdays, resting on Fridays—
watching market trajectories like blood-sport.
I am [ ]
Eat till full. Molars crush rinds.
Seraphs too, wings and horns,
all bodies are [mine]
Y2K deathmachines; factory farm
sonata. The hot silence pre-Disaster Engine.
Machinelearning into hyper-capital—
technoanimalia, I am
a legion on the face of advancement,
the vanguard to a dying day.
Phenomena:
1) Café
Let’s fuck during the Zapruder film.
We can drive a ‘74 Cadillac off desert roads
till your trauma catches up to you.
If we unravel, I call dibs on the brain.
The font of the organs spread like
d r e a m s
2) Home
Singsong advertisers, sing me to sleep.
Tear me into quarks, spread me thin;
eat me whole as I whistle that church bell
melody, the death tone.
Guide me down the roads where
I found love on blacktops and
you—are one, and all bodies subsist
in their solipsistic glow—O’ melodrama!
Got four walls and I’m screaming—
head into plaster, chewingonthumbs.
3) The City
overlapping
traumamaps
noise.noise.noise.
fuzzy warm
[blankets]
screaming.
4) Everywhere
repeat.
5) Nihilism
fuck that.
a) Ontology
Roots
Sex
Love Body
Rest Labor
//error
[start up: init //002]What’s the harm in lips?
I read an article on the calisthenics of communism and the inherent freedom from capital that comes with lifting oneself via branch or bar. Parallel bars rooted in concrete utopias—where the body defies gravity, where each second is a fight. It’s all in the control. The tearing
of muscles, when shoulders become planets—when the body, reacts to the abuse. A feeling of flight in the muscle-up, a communal celebration in the park across the elementary school where shells sleep on pavement like an ocean landscape in the evenings.
X-ActoTM knives, boxcutters, and anything with some grit—it’s all in the control. The tearing of epidermis. Those fascists want blood. Predatory opportunists, they slept in backpacks and drawers, cunning friends when his hands grasped my face.
It’s all in the control—of breakbeats and vibrating fluorescents. Make the people dance. Kiss the boy with long sleeves and hands tucked in pockets. What’s the harm in lips? Repeat these words. Talk about time like liquid and not like a carved out stone.
In Calisthenics, one aims for hypertrophy, growth from the conjunction of time and tearing.
It’s all in the control of repetitions, of breath. The control of repeated pain in hopes of accessing
something new. More control, more strength, the shaping of the self into something else—
it’s all in the control of etymology to create long words like calisthenics. The conjoining of
beauty and strength, the image of Plato wrestling boys before his hands spun sophistry down their chitons—the definition of justice is justice and the world is a series of shapes like puppets
in a cave where control is key to the shadows they make. You are not like Plato and your hands still move. Like shadows in a cave—I’ve been seeing you in the evenings. The silhouettes of time shapeshifting on my walls. My hands move differently now. No longer grasping sharp
edges, or any boy with some control fantasy. My hands curl into fists clutching rings and
branches and bars. It’s all in the control of moments, holding my breath, engaging my core as the blisters form and your face starts peering in like the violence in daylight or an email, something
so normal. Out of my control. I found a picture of us, two pleather jackets and my half-smile, a face like a car wreck. You still make people dance. The boy in that photo would leave and dig into drawers and backpacks, the normal things. He would reek of the cheapest bodega liquor.
He wouldn’t really read Plato, he’d carry some dialog sometimes. He’d dig into himself without the growth, just fascist edges and a marked up outer layer. He wouldn’t expect to spend days in the sun, grasping at branches— totally in control. Trauma mapping, not deconstructing—
init[repeating error][error] [error] [error] [error] [error] [error] [error] [error] [error] [error]
DATA ENTRY 002//BODY
In 1998, Serial Experiments Lain debuted. The series featured a series of adolescent suicides. Children abandoned their bodies to become one with “The Wired,” an early symbol for the world wide web. The first time I thought strongly about suicide was in 1999— I was four years old.
I read a chain letter on AOL and believed that if I took my life first, I would be saved from the haunting an adolescent suicide victim would bestow on me (per the email). My breathing accelerated, my mind was racing, I spent an evening in the ER with my first panic attack.
Recurring thoughts into catatonia—my time in the self-harm haze was controlled. Household objects repurposed—I became one with space. Evenings spent in thrash den paradises, learning to socialize in isolation. I met flame with
hazy eyes, greasy hair and love which only flowed outward. Everything passes.
Mitigated voids, held hands through the worst of it. Vomitfire nights—talked of songs, hummed melodies under motel moonlight, cigarette butts in the parking lot ballroom.
Mixed Lexapro with clear liquor and concave brain—smashed my head into walls until the lights went out. I wanted so badly to swim. Nerves at white corners, all my connections are fractured. Tying knots, trying to tighten my connection—every second is a reminder—is a stall tactic.
Every time I pass a diner, I think of a friend who used to bus tables. She took her leave at
twenty-eight after a man systematically maimed her. We met in Pittsburgh; smoking cigarettes outside of a Super-8 when I was young and taking the long road to decay. While having coffee or
when a morning breeze is too calm, I think of hanging bodies. Like the swaying of leaves, or Suzuki Izumi alone in her apartment. Dissociating in motion or mid-conversation; I have yet to find words grounding enough to keep me here. I wonder what she thought of before the leap?
Before me, my father served time in solitary confinement. The minutes kept adding up like
centuries. When I was five, he told me he tried to starve himself to death. I pictured his big hands smashing against concrete; his face gaunt, and my body disappearing.
My body is a survived future. My hands are automated machines, they clutch at my neck or
pinch at thumbs, I paw for a pulse to remember something about autonomy while someone,
somewhere else is abandoning themselves entirely.
There is a targeted ad promising
to press cremation ashes
into a record with all your favorite
songs burned to the remnants
of your loved ones.
I heard Facebook is working on a deceased
section: and I think I am still alive
on a Myspace page or AOL chatroom
where a man wants to fuck my seven-year old
brains out. I am alive everywhere
eternally, and with my feet
on the ground and my throat wilting—
do I need to have a body?
My flesh might fertilize honeysuckle
on a patch of green or glutton
the plastic-full seabream
off the coasts of some island,
only one maxxxed out credit card away.
Do I need to have a body
in order to subsist on a heating globe
or for my loved ones to remember
my face now that my prints
are digital, should I wait for the revolution
in virtual reality when my sprawled out flesh can be re-
animated. How many times does a symbol
have to shatter
before the simulacra
is enough?
Do I need to have a body/
//error_corrupt_file
//exit initiated.
Eros Livieratos (he/they) is a currently an MFA candidate in creative writing at The Ohio State University. Eros’ writing tackles topics of identity, capitalism, art, and the Anthropocene—their poems seek to deconstruct theoretical and systemic frameworks. Eros is a harsh-noise artist and can often be found yelling about aesthetics & automation in your local basement. They’re on Instagram and Twitter, as well as his website, eroslivieratos.com.
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