Noise needs a body so i
rematerialise
diaphanous      girl-tongued
spangled walking trash theory
laudanumed           lauded
sipped my thé lipton
historied with shrill silences    massacres
illegal dialect
changed i
wear salt crystals
froghopper cloistered in foam
hiddenly plastic
restless pinball muscles in murmuration
howled i
make unseemly sounds between walls and washing lines
was emptied
lost solidity then outline
ombred into mute gonehood
bodiless i was far from alone.

Testimonies crowded as taxi horns.
“I swear
the discarded petticoats fell that way from where they were thrown.”
it must have been a bodiless body of unsubtle force.”
that body was both mine and not.”
I was overcome.”
it threw its bridle down and jumped it into the dirt.”
it whistled in my ear and sang Chase me Charlie, chase me Charlie, lost the seat of me drawers.”
and responsibility pressed
absences demanded with interlocked fingers
these were wisps         unhitching me
into mist        my precious carapace
these were bridled girls        unbridled.

new form        affect of corner
an intimate field for dramas
of overlooked
beads,
waterfleas,
slimemoulds,
thimbles,
brineshrimps,
fondueforks
unstill lives       abominations
flourishing.
i felt succulent            a salp
transparency seemed transcendent
my body and gendered accoutrements
unneeded
my vestibule my pantaloons my handbag my nourishing beard oils
i did need          to float
in electrolyte   a ghostlet.

Then from behind I felt a touch
constituted again my outer
congealed like scoby
in class          my hair
moved at a distance                apart
someone held the long plait lifted.
Dip, dip the tip in ink.
The tip split into two tips,
forked tongue
dripped red ink upon release.
gathered i this ink        in staining hands,
clutched to my staining shirt
bidden make it defiant missive
monster signature
and kick her hooves and growl
“Down, I said, go down,
in one great coil.”

later the sphere lifted
with mischievous fanfare
noises of the deadliest stealthliest shy ones
i’d never heard such noises
sultry disappearance began to chafe
the reburgeoning folds of my outline
that did not fit but that still commanded my affection.
Finally i understood how silence
makes you servant in your own house.

i felt myself awake to the act of collection
accrued relations that, though they could not tether me,
made me complicit in their acts of positioning.
discovered previously thwarted noises,
via sensory vicissitudes of flashback.
Noise now seemed notorious,
impish and appealing.
Disassembly and dissembly lacked lustre.
i’d be an avatar of noise, its shining situation,
its mostest precociousest.
i’d make sweet nuisances
craze all limits.
wear my hairs and blow them like carnyxes.
float, and hide, and feint, and let fly
seminally polemical disturbances
magic words
of a vanished and recovering girl.

For the body deserves -
i really hate this word -
but it does deserve
its call and quiet. so here
i cast my quoit.
do you now lend me your awe
and all your strangeness
to envelope luminous
to undertake exigencies of exercises in disturbance
to disturb those universes
and to dare