1773 c/o Buster Jones

Rules By Which A Great Empire May Be Reduced To A Small One


brothers
lay down your dicks

give up
relax
be warm

lay down your dicks

be gentle
stop

use your life
to undo
yourself

whatever
please

1676 c/o Buster Jones

unicycle

1. Moving down tree-lined road. Providence, Rhode Island. Birds, wildlife in trees, hello, road covered by confetti, tickertape, 3am, our hero. How can we ever impress a bird. There could be a hot air balloon in the sky at night who knows if a bird cares. Our hero - Gridlock Grappler - with tasseled biceps and unimpressed birds.

2. Two months previous now, in the hall of an abandoned church near where their usual gymnasium is prebooked for mixed martial arts. So there of course being an old wallmounted pipe organ. Gridlock Grappler wanting to sit on top of the pipes. With a girl. In love with a girl and on a pipe organ naturally. That being all and seeming easy as his head hit the mat but later now more unlikely at 3am. Being the eighth most popular wrestler in his organisation not being enough still. Needing a girl.

3. Thinking at 3am are there footsteps in Rhode Island. Gridlock Grappler looking over his shoulder but there being only this baby wolf, head tilting. Small wolf running away, pausing once, a look back, running, head tilting, away. Our hero wearing a chauffeur’s hat at 3am; his gimmick when wrestling is "disgruntled chauffeur". Why did I call myself that, he asks. He says it to a hot air balloon if it's there above the birds.

4. Gridlock Grappler wanting to like someone a lot, that being all, but feeling afraid of other people. So afraid. It being enjoyable for Gridlock Grappler to pretend to attack and injure other people, whom he fears. Also to be injured by them, attacked and snapmared, superplexed. These same fifty people coming to the wrestling shows each month, all terrifying, growing more frightening throughout, always louder until a locker room, no pipe organ or a girl.

5. Under Rhode Island there being a sewer with a long and meaningful history. Our hero not thinking about this, ever, but instead saying “Swimming pools are strange” as he walks through the nearby hush of one. Opening and closing his hands, gentle, feeling calm take control of his face, thinking on wildlife, wolf, another missed parade here, thank god.

6. Wanting to run until he is sweaty and then roll down the centre of the road, his body turning confetti-covered, tickertaped. Waiting then to be run over by a police car and decades later found.

7. If you just keep growing, just because you want to, you can be so big. Gridlock Grappler says this to a hot air balloon who already knows.

8. Gridlock Grappler stops and there is quiet again and with one hand on his hip he is this confident teapot. Can I destroy Providence, the teapot wonders. Can a teapot destroy a town. Then a raccoon making a different sound, nervous, a baby raccoon who doesn't yet know how to sound like a raccoon, quietly moving its limbs, again this indirect light coming from the moon onto tickertape in Providence.

9. Gridlock Grappler is afraid of the people that aren't here at 3am and so here he is. Wanting to do a handstand here inside of 3am with a girl, laughing, filling their mouths with tickertape and leaves. Wanting to plant himself in this night, instead these quiets, looking back but there only being a unicycle in the road this time. How the hell do you walk past a unicycle.

10. Why do people clap. It's a frightening sound near to your face. Gridlock Grappler thinking of the noises now of how a unicycle could be here from nowhere. How. Wanting to be at home only. Hearing another sound, the simplest decision to start to run. Running, the sound getting louder. Not looking back, Gridlock Grappler running faster and the sound growing thicker and tall, more mossy, worse. The sound becoming something: fridge motors, glass beneath wheel, a hum, pipe organ, steady noise, a note.

11. Running, Gridlock Grappler imagining himself huge at 3am, huger, being stopped by a child who steps from behind a postbox shape, a child's knife, giving no money and being stabbed, and stabbed, and stabbed but the wounds healing like an omelet. A child's knife hitting pavement, child cry sound starting. A child looking up at a huger him, growing. An awestruck child, a terrified child and our hero, inconsolable Gridlock Grappler and still always never a girl.

1483 c/o Buster Jones

Us... Our Father... Black Moths... The Ghost of a Bear

If we can be killed then bring ravens. Small girls are difficult to break, ask pastors. We are small boys and are easily broken. Go ahead and break us. Bring ravens. We can be killed. And so on.

There are crowns on cushions, punchbowls, sceptres, orbs and golden picnic tables somewhere. When ravens are brought then kill us and bury our bodies beneath the stairs, the two of us. Or somewhere else, in boxes. We feel overdressed to die. Perhaps that is vanity.

We are brothers. We do not feel confident about our hair.

We are so hungry. The food is venison, sometimes blackbird, sweetened with honey, rarely sugar. Where are the ravens? We will learn the taste of potatoes sometime later, served on ornate salvers, sweetened with honey, rarely sugar. We want elaborate cabbage, sweetened, before you kill us. Here is something we have seen on a platter: a bustard stuffed with a turkey, stuffed with a goose, stuffed with a pheasant, stuffed with a duck, stuffed with a chicken, stuffed with a guinea fowl, stuffed with a woodcock, stuffed with a partridge, stuffed with a plover, stuffed with a lapwing, stuffed with a quail, stuffed with a thrush, stuffed with a lark, sweetened with honey, rarely sugar.

Surprise us at least. Where are our wives? We are 10 and 13.

We are holding hands, looking in different directions. People approach and one of us speaks and the other looks in a different direction, listens for breathing, beading sweat, footsteps.

Our father is not our father.

One of us was King once. The older one, probably. The older one was never crowned though, the younger one also, probably. We’re not sure.

It is dark unless we play in the courtyard, in which case we are followed by soldiers and the ghost of a bear. Also black moths move through the air around us. There is a heat from the scaffold that we barely notice nowadays. The ghost of a bear grows desperate. The sunlight pinks us while we hold hands.

One of our wives is French, one is English. Our wives have a combined age of 17.

Explain the ravens as having something to do with why the stairs are being dug up. Put a small girl on The Rack and quickly pastors will refuse, impressed that the small girl is so difficult to break. The dungeon is called ‘The Little Ease’. The pastors will hold their hands up and smile at the girl’s body. No-one will take us there.

Here is an update. We are no longer allowed in the courtyard. It is dark. The ravens live mainly on dead flesh. Bring them. People will not ask questions about the ravens.

If you kill us, do not later admit to it under torture. You will not be believed. Remain always impressive under torture. Pastors will remember you this way for a short period of time, like small girls.

What will our skeletons look like? Can experts tell us apart? Will they muddle up our bones? We would not mind. Each of us is envious of certain parts of the other.

This castle grows like a fat man’s heart. We aren’t old enough to know this probably.

Explain the ravens as part of the menagerie. Lions, leopards, lynxes, camels. Admission to the menagerie is three half-pence or a dog or cat to be fed to the lions. It is easily explained. If you must kill us then do it in a secret or special way. Use a method that will not show up on our skeletons at least. Explain the ravens as being to do with the smell on the stairs.

Put a man in The Scavenger’s Daughter and tighten his body down in on itself until you are no longer impressed with him. This will happen quickly.

If you kill us, use it to achieve success, personal advantage or some degree of notoriety. Explain the ravens as explaining themselves thirty feet from the scaffold while what remains is carried calmly to the chapel.

Soon after, a ghost of a bear walks towards a soldier, and the soldier not able to sleep later, or dying soon after, and use this to explain the ravens. So bring the ravens here, and our wives, and the black moths dead and falling and laying and lying dead just there on the lawn, by the scaffold, on the stairs.