Are you referring to that embarrassing speech I made whilst ensconced on that embarrassing trunk of a decrepit couch?

Everyone is terrified of war, whatever nonsense you might read about it in Miano Driec, who seems to be delighted by the prospect.

We’re all surrounded by the nonsense of war. Miano Driec’s apparent delight, in Anim û Kali, is simply a maverick journalist’s free investigation of the noose that traps all of us, in one way or another, terrified you included.

Expensive people’s expensive tombs. For a mere headstone, even, how much wealth’s put to waste! None would be better.

A sepulchre is a strategic waste of wealth precisely in that not a single living soul can profit from it — undertakers, gravediggers, etc., excluded, of course. Our ire at that strategic vault of bones strategically proves just how much the dead spurn us.

Little eyes master their tears better than big. The little lids, more local, freeze them.

Hard lids lend a haughty look to the eyes. The haughty ice of hard tears.

Amusing descent through the anastomotic light. Shot through with the whole amusing sense of it, the whole amusing stench of it.

Its ethereal blast is evanescent. Like light, its very sense is ethereal and evanescent. The ethereal descent is evanescent.

The open truth of open words wounds. I open my blood to it.

Blood responds to truth’s wound, however stoic I seem. The unresponsive word envelops its own response.

Slimy summer party with slimy Saian there, nue, annointed, dorée par the sun, on all fours like a slimy lion cub lancée à travers le gouffre absent du temps, depuis its slimy lair in the slimy city.

Our academic hostess Moéu Noäu Nin does not lack for a nest, a field, an academic lair on oh so many sides of the academic cosmopont: Owlstain, Lutèce, Agua Prieta, Barkeno, Aseli. And Saian, her academic lionne, does not lack, thus, for opportunities to slough, in a single moult of an academic aerostat, in a train or at sea, du pelage d’hiver au lissage d’été.

Between bank and sad bank, the dolorous apron of the glum tide drearily beats. A lugubrious part in the middle of the loathly bride’s morose coiffure.

Like staunch Artemis, more self-possessed than, like bovine Flaith, depressed. Impresive stomacher girdles her from bosom to basin, from stoic heart to the stalwart delta. Impressive banks, resolute crinosities.

Silent deeds and silent reason make you my silent enemy. I hate sorbs, I hate figs. Silent fruits.

A subtle enemy’s subtle acts cause hate. Figs, within reason, are a more subtle fruit than sorbs.

The wanton natures of our wanton guide’s wanton consorts trample with wanton feet, asperge with wanton breasts, the chaste dead.

Heavy feet, heavy breasts. The heavy natures of the heavy guide’s heavy consorts lave the frivolous dead.

Our guide’s wild glance at my wild foot as we cross the wild bridge. The wild mountains. Something wild stirs in me.

I’m moved by something a bit more pervasive. This pervasive bridge at the pervasive foot of the perduring mountain. The pervasive guide’s pervasive look at you, at me, at us.

I’ve spent my whole life on this tired brige linking a weed-tufted crag of tired I to a slightly more tolerable I on the other side.

The foolish I on the other side is as foreign to me as this foolish bridge we call “life.” A foreign I within the foolish, or foolish within the foreign.

I endure the angry faces. I marvel at one head in particular, angry, that marvels at angry me.

The vulnerable face fronts an invulnerable skull. The enduring wonder of being vulnerable to just one among the invulnerable many.

My miserable refusal would pierce. Fierce recognizance of a miserable shadow of cowardice.

I refuse to wince. And my impartial cowardice would recognize, in the very acuteness of that refusal, the impartial shadow of itself.

Hopeful fear howls in the hopeful sense of the voiceless phrase. Hopeful language howls in silence.

Sweet language is full of sweet speech which consists of sweet words with sweet meanings, able always to muffle fear.

Like the vile night against the bastard sun’s rapture, and the sun against the base world’s rapturous filth, I rage against this rapturous day’s depravity.

The scientific sun by which our scientific world exalts in both scientific day and scientific night is not something that scientific I would rage against.

Wisdom is knowing where the gods crap, she told me. And who is she? She is that place where stench reigns: a hole, a bucket, death.

In death’s dry kingdom, even the gods are thirsty. She is that which would quench and make blossom even their dessicated knowledge.

Did you see the mortal eyes of those mortal faces? The mortal heads of those mortal figures?

Dejected shapes. Disdainful heads. Dismissive faces. I could not meet the sullen gaze of those hollow sockets.

Do you remember when that wonderful Poldevian prince related his wonderful exile to us? Where was it again? Ecadence? Do you think that other such wonderful places, other wonderful shores, exist?

I remember that on the intricate walls of Ecadence a finely wrought painting by Paul Klee hung. “The Exudate of Exodus,” I think it was titled. A complex, detailed, involuted beach scene.

The speechless others rush en masse towards the pier. They abandon gold, silver, indeed, their very souls, it seems, in their silent dwellings. An aphasic place where not even memory could dwell.

“I am zo ztimulated to meet you, madame. M. Mattias Lienant, of ze Physiological Inzdidute for Eraudist Rezearch (PIER), in whose ztimulated orifizes, I mean offizes, my ztimulated zoul, like zat of zo many ztimulated ozers, dwells, zere to gagner, comme on dit, its ztimulated aura of or, its graillon d’argent.”

Is it due to our contrary natures that, for instance, where I see a worm with fangs, you conceive a writhing conid? And my distracted mouth, in your schematic representation, does it become the abstract toral “limb” of a generalized female “space”?

The early worm catches the day’s tusk. The early jaw evolved from an early appendage of an agnathic something or other.

Did you mean M. S. Litarn? That autophagic male weeping over his bulging impotence in some cleft or crevasse of the rond des Mélèzes?

That’s very affectionate of you. To give power to a fissure, to make a man’s demented sobbing into an almost divine lament.

Like some strange thing out of Impressions d’Afrique. Green mountain, green water, green foliage. Yet strange nevertheless.

I have a worse idea: something green from Strange Mountain. A stream of falling leaves.

But surely you wouldn’t deny the blonde flowers of their excess pride? Blonde profits for a blonde people.

Solitary profits for a solitary people. And you, the solitary flower among that solitary crowd. Of your solitary arrogance, I deny only its fragile excess.

A constant city’s constant citizens are its constant masters; its constant sons have a duty to serve in a constant army in order to defend it from what D. I. Swopes calls the “doe-eyed edacity of duplicitous rapacity.”

You cite that bourgeois hack D. I. Swopes as your bourgeois master of bourgeois citizenship? That bourgeois spawn of a bourgeois partouze in some bourgeois garrison of a bourgeois city!

I will be the fabulous consort of our fabulous leader. Though I die the fabulous death of shame.

Dark shame, dark death. Our dark guide’s dark partner.

Have you met my grand sister? One could call her a grand old beast of pain.

Are you referring to your short sister? Or the monster over there? Are you, in short, trying to punish me?

I breathe. I’m so interesting. My lungs expell and inhale. Interesting breath. I breathe the interesting rungs of me.

The ravishing rungs of me. This breath that I breathe is ravishing. My ravishing lungs nourish this me I call “I.”

Life entails always a cold ascent. Does the cold flame of distance cloud your lover’s eye? That’s life.

That’s geography. The geographical ascent of love must thrive even in the geographic cloudlet of flame that animates the geographic eyes of —

Of bristly biting gnawing and tearing at the bristly skin of his back we endure in order to —

Claw at the absolute skin of this absolute act of endurance that absolutely bites back.

Fabulous how he distrusts me. But which person does his fabulous cowardice actually pierce?

Is distrust a form of anger or of cowardice? And am I really that acrimonious he who’d pierce her with my angry distrust?

A tent. A pulsing purling purplish medusoid stoma. Sans cri ni cor they assault.

We try to make ourselves timorous and agreeable. Say nothing. Complain less.

You, the toasted son of raw torment. The toasted castles enrage you, their raw fame unnerves you.

Merry children merrily torture the raging ulna’s ramparts of merry fame.

That creature’s death startled you as much as it did me. Judgment’s ruffled ruse doesn’t fool wily ignorance.

The benevolent judgment willingly lets ignorance exploit it. That kind creature’s death is a boon for you and me. He would bless us with it.