please skip to the last line of this poem and read from
the bottom up
never to speak again
and so by this line the lovers have already left each other
feels that the other is a blind conformist
yet the person who read from the top down
feels that the other is by nature inconsiderate
because the person who read from the bottom up
but then there is an insurmountable tension between them
they will meet here in this line and fall in love
the other from the top down
one from the bottom up
there are two people reading this poem
god will send you nudes
if you’ve been feeling guilty
about all the sinful things
you’ve been enjoying on the internet
and you try to seek consolation
in the presence of your grandma
she will say fuck’s sake just go to
confession you devil child
but what she couldn’t know
is that if you leave your room
there is that fear that the internet
will die of loneliness without you
at night alone you wonder whether
if you looked hard enough
you might find god on your facebook feed
constantly posting status updates
like a distant relative who is the only person
more active than you who is rumored
to send nudes to the boys in your school
quietly you feel that
in this way that you might find faith
and befriend the lord, and maybe
in time, god will send you nudes
the world’s youngest desert
in a young desert
one of the youngest on the planet
where the sand is still clean and the dunes
mountainous the camels infantile and adorable
there is an inbox and in this inbox
there is spam
the spam tells of anti-ageing medication
of botox and silicone and it is
written by hand in the cursive script
of your mother, bold and legible
just like the permission slips
she would sign and leave
by the door for your sisters
so they wouldn’t have to swim
in the ancient desert of school sport
you were only six at the time
after six years of life
you went to a michael jackson concert with your dad
who was wearing a silver leather jacket
(or at least it was shiny)
you were wearing a skirt with butterflies
he told you to stand on his shoulders to see better
when michael jackson moonwalked
you felt all the butterflies on your skirt
turn into razor blades
(or at least it felt different)
michael jackson threw his towel into the crowd
a woman caught it and put it to her face
remember
language giving birth to itself in our mouths
your name is xyz
you have been accused of a terrible crime
you have to go into hiding and take on a pseudonym
from now on i will refer to you as sarah
sarah, you are not alone in this
because in the future most of us will be forced to use pseudonyms
in the second future no one will know their real name
children will be born and given a pseudonym
pets will be given pseudonyms
abstract nouns will be given pseudonyms
it is possible that by the third future we will call ‘happiness’ ‘rebecca’
and we will call ‘rebecca’ ’seaweed’
in the fourth future the giving of pseudonyms will be non uniform
meaning that in the fifth future we will be endlessly confused
and in the sixth future we will talk aimlessly
hoping to be understood by coincidence
so that by the seventh future we will talk with no meaning
like parrots and we will be living in caves too
but then for some unknown reason the eighth future will happen
and everyone will be free
and we will come out into the sunlight
and start swapping our names back
i can imagine it now
you will walk up to a beautiful man and you will know straight away
you will say to him you look like someone called sarah
and he will say to you, you look like someone called xyz
and you will embrace for a minute then shake hands
and in the ninth future you will swap your names back
everyone will start swapping their names back
and this action will be repeated over and over
and we will authenticate each other
so that by the tenth future
we will once again feel language giving birth to itself in our mouths
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Mark Leidner – Blackouts from Oscar Schwartz on Vimeo.
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Oscar Schwartz is a writer from Melbourne, Australia. He is currently writing a PhD on whether computers can write poetry. He tweets @scarschwartz.