Read a preview of /prAI/:

Gamma and Omega hold hands. Their hands are expectedly fleshy (no surprises there!). Chemically clammy. Fists clenched, sleeves rolled up, lifting holy hands, /ˈpreɪɪŋ/. They, too, demand a blessing. Their bond can overcome the excess or the contaminated holy water. Gamma and Omega don’t have birth names, they pet named each other at an endearment baptism we're not yet alphabetised enough for. 

Faithful jewellery on their flexi fingers. It’s a clever trick, spinning from LTR or RTL, the decades all circle in her direction. All the hand gestures in the world with more than one finger. Five decades, luminous mysteries, 100 decades, other mysteries, keep counting, keep pacing. They’re wearing bling blings wrapped as tight as cockrings, my mood rings. Tender silverware, always warm from our body heat that lingers on the silverware, it got all hot and heated up not long before. [...].

Hope Narcissism Takes Me Back, 2020

The mouth whispering in Hope Narcissism Takes Me Back (2020) concedes to guardianship as the humanization of surveillance with built-in human eye anatomy, a moment of beauty in the symbiosis between body and technology. 

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I flanked my screens on each side by two stone lions. Playing guard at the gate of your temple. One

with an open mouth, an intro, the other with a mouth closed, an outro. 

They stopped looking alike until gradually returning to being identical.

Starting to kiss your mirror with your eyes closed, hoping to get beyond your own reflection. At least

with your reflection, there's a good chance it will sync much quicker.

We offer guardianship for your screens.

We offer guardianship to turned on screens.

We offer to turn your screens on.

I’m looking for guardians just as you choose your guards, your body guards, to walk beside you.

Flanking or flaunting. Flaunting. No. Flanking. Who knows?

I find guardianship a growing instinct in much more than a body. Somewhere in a body trapped between not giving nor wanting guardianship, but simply wondering why it is absent at all from plain sight? Should we not see the guardians that have been bestowed on us? And not hold on to a guardian angel that follows you more strictly than a surveillance camera ever cared to do? At least when caught on camera, you appear on the screens, recorded every 5 minutes, but who knows where the footage registered through the eyes of the angel goes to? It's all memories to fill the inevitable Image Blank.

What about a visual sewage system?

Can I be assured that everything you’ve ever seen has been or is currently processed to be digested;

and soon out of your system? Our bodies can’t hold on to that many recordings without them coming out some end. We'll be like a house without sewage. And so I wonder, how was I so easily tricked into thinking it was safer to be watched than to be hidden? Why wasn’t I taught how to hide? Isn't hiding as important as finding in Hide&Seek? I accepted being told an angel watched me every second of the day but now I hurry to cover up the security cameras in my studio?

What honorary surveillance companionship, of the order of angels. Only the first and second orders. [...]

Guardianship for Turned On Screens, 2020

Read a preview of Guardianship for Turned On Screens:

[...]

I’m looking for guardians just as you choose your guards, your bodyguards to walk beside you. I find guardianship a growing instinct in much more than a body. Somewhere in a body trapped between not giving nor wanting guardianship, but simply wondering why it is absent at all from plain sight? Should we not see the guardians that have been bestowed on us?

And not hold on to a guardian angel that follows you more strictly than a surveillance camera ever cared to do? At least when caught on camera, you appear on the screens but who knows where the footage registered through the eyes of the angel goes to? What about a visual sewage system? Can I be assured that everything you’ve ever seen has or is currently being digested and soon out of your system? Our bodies can’t hold onto that many recordings without them coming out some end. And so I wonder, how was I so easily tricked into thinking it safer to be watched than to be hidden? Why wasn’t I taught how to hide? I accepted an angel that watched me every second of the day but now I hurry to cover up the security cameras in my studio? So much trust in surveillance companionships and so little muscle to the floating eye in the corner of the room. What would you do to all of us if you were born even a little more than a cyclops, more than a camera observing coolly? How much of a hunk would you choose to become, camera, if eyes could grow bodies like a germinating seed? I wonder if that is what you fantasise about at night, all alone in night vision darkness. Must be a curse to see, that's why they made you without eyelids. It must be unbearable to never close your only eye even for a blink or two. Counting the blinks like seconds, hoping maybe they’ll never finish and you can blink into asleep. With such an attractive big eye, it’s lucky you don’t have any long eyelashes to bat in our direction. We would all turn our eyes to you like a flower to the sun. I wonder if the sun’s fantasy is to be the last image we see before our retinas burn to blindness, or does it feel more disappointed that no eyes will risk their sight even for a glimpse of it. My eyes would fog with envy on any surveillance camera.

To tell someone their eyes have no eyelids is like telling them they don’t have a backbone. If only you could grow bodies and become walking eyes. We’ll spare you the gruesome image of the bodyguard as a hunk, a finesse musculature and a fitnessed image. Immaculate to eyes we can’t trust. Like those green eyes you can’t trust. Imagine being born with eyes that others are told not to trust nor follow. You might as well start deceiving them now because your eyes have a reputation hard to escape. [...]

The chameleon in your speech, the chameleons on your tongue, 2020

Read a preview of The chameleon in your speech, the chameleons on your tongue:

The chameleons in your speech mate with the chameleons on your tongue.

Will we get to see the off-springs of your mouth?

I’ve started seeing chameleons everywhere. Beyond a market of the actual animal, there’s an image market borrowing the face of the chameleon to distinguish just how visible you are now and how much more invisible you could be. It preaches that you should allow your cover to be visible, for you to give a face to this cover. Something to ignore needs a bland appearance. There should be a visible face to the invisible. It’s important for the absent things to be beautiful, looks are important when we like seeing what isn’t there.

We can own chameleons. We don’t become chameleons but we can wear them. Non-toxic, washable ones, applicable ones. I didn’t think I could go into a shop and step into the camouflage market. The visible face of the chameleon is on consumable packages. Packages that sell chameleonic nail polish, a responsible nude cover you rub off your nail when you’re done hiding. How does it feel to keep buying and plastering new patches of skin onto damaged bodies? [...]

We Take Technology In Like A Pill, 2020

Read a preview of We take technology in like a pill:

We take technology in like a pill. Mixed with all the others in your pillbox. We take it with a duty we don’t usually indulge in. What? For our bodies? Never.

We take technology in like a pill. With sufficient water at regular intervals. It’s become more than a routine I got used to, now this pill is a supplement. And like any other supplement, it’s a good integration potentiator. Technology is the probiotic summoned to action when we conform to the antibiotics of our system. Technology can take many forms, it’s like a fantasy cobra snake fallen into the trance of a song. Who’s turn is it to sing to the snake? We always blame the snakes but not their singers.

[...]

If you can’t get any recognition anymore, be sure that you have finally escaped the system. [...]