The Company of Poets in the House of Automata: Poet A___

Poet A____ wanders into a room in which a lake of pure artifice has been constructed using tiny mirrors. Tiny linked mirrors roll in synchrony to create an illusion of waves as a musical chiming fills the room. These waves reflect starfish of light on the walls and ceiling of this spacious chamber.

Ridiculous boiserie adorns the ceiling and corners, as though rococo wasps have been busy there.

Poet A. begins to manifestoize. She clears her throat and watches joyfully as a large swan automaton paddles through those waves of small mirrors articulated into an illusion of moving water. The brightness of reflection fills poet A. with an ecstasy and breathlessness that is the essence of self-replication. The poet feels herself the spangled dress of the lake and the swan at once. She feels as one with this artificial nature. She is the language of seduction and the transvestism of theory.

Before poet A. discovered this fascination, there were the usual sexual excesses, pretentious cinema addiction, the garden-variety, student-cadged drugs.

Oh, and crafts. There were many craft stores. It was the hell of the American Midwest.

But nothing compares to this exhilaration, she thinks.

She watches the swan automaton catch a tinier goldfish automaton and swallow it down its long silver neck with some calculated "difficulty" which amuses. She stares as the creature ruffles its pure silver wings and its glass eyes (which look like fire opals) coruscate. She notices with disgust the swan has the "male gaze."

An automaton of Charles Baudelaire which has been drowned in the lake pokes its head above the skein of mirrors which composes the water's surface momentarily, but just enough to reveal some forehead and suspect eyes. Poet A. wonders if he is smiling or grimacing below the reflective glass. He looks like the half moon on an old grandfather clock. His eyes look syphilitic yet somehow intriguing. She realizes that insulting him might be profitable in the American Midwest and possibly even elsewhere.

But the Baudelaire head slowly descends again as the swan begins to circle.

Poet A. has only a small plot of sand where she can stand in this brilliant room without venturing onto the unsure surface of the mirror water. She begins to feel a vague air of menace (or it that just an urge to share her discoveries?) and tries the door behind her, but finds it is locked, and she has been separated from the other poets in her party.

She calls out to the other poets now, but they seem to be unable to hear her. Probably they are engaged in another bitchfest, she thinks. She calls out to the head of Baudelaire, since she notices it has risen again, but the automatom does not lift its mouth into view to answer. A____ feels even more disturbed as she watches the head of Baudelaire disappear again below the mirrory surface, which is now beginning to work itself up into a fervor; she begins to tremble as the lake begins to resemble a storm at sea.

Poet A. tries the ornate door by which she has entered this chamber but it is still securely locked and very thick. She pounds on the door but finds the sound is strangely muffled. She realizes this has something to do with poetic theory. She had been attracted to this door by the word "ORATORY" on the other side, which had been chased into a large golden plaque. Somehow this explains the muffling.

Tiny automata of ships begin to appear and are tossed about the surface of the mirror waves, and tiny sailor automata on the decks of these vessels begin calling out forgotten poems of centuries past. Poet A. finds this spectacle ridiculous and begins to laugh.

The ships are soon taking on water and begin to sink. When the last tiny ship founders, the room itself begins to spin and the lake has become a sea in full hurricane. Waves are now reaching a prodigious height and further sheets of mirrors are unrolling from slits in the walls themselves.

The swan automaton swallows another goldfish and then eyes poet A. suspiciously and hisses at her.

The mirror sea advances in all directions and licks against the walls until Poet A. is forced to walk on water. This is something she had always planned to do anyway, but in more controlled circustances. This is a disastrous choice as the waves begin to cut her ankles and cut her legs.

Needless to say, her teasingly bisexual pumps are soon cut to shreds.

She notices the top of Baudelaire's head with its ridiculous near-tonsure just below the surface of the mirror waves and tries to balance on it by straddling his head with her crotch.

This irritates the Baudelaire automaton who begins complaining in French, but the bubbly sort of French a pompous, drowning man deeply-in-debt would speak. Bubbles actually emerge from his mouth. A____ can't help admiring the artisanship that went into this effect, even as she is bleeding and in pain.

"Up bubbles all his amorous breath," poet A. whispers to herself, as if she were teaching a workshop.

It is then that Poet A. hears a dreadful noise behind her, and looks over her shoulder to see the swan automaton now has a mermaid automaton drifting alongside it, holding to the side of the large bird.

"Hello, dear Friend," poet A. says to the mermaid, who appears a likely manipulee for the theory poet A. had been promulgating to the chamber of mirrors, to herself, just moments before.

The mermaid automaton smiles somewhat lasciviously, floats upon her back in the hurricane a few moments, staring fixedly at Poet A., then gives birth. The split in her tail opens to release a blood-bag of a creature, a sort of a medusa flecked with iridescent lights.

Poet A. watches in terror as the medusa drifts towards her. Charles Baudelaire lifts his head slightly, to watch the glittering medusa as it drifts towards Poet A___, whose legs are cut futher and bleed more as she tries to pull them out of the mirrory water.

"Are you...are you a phantasm of the Academy?" she asks aloud, unsure to whom her trivial question is addressed.

The blood-tinct medusa has reached her by now and Charles Baudelaire's smiling head descends once more, allowing the creature easy access to poet A___, who feels the nematocysts stinging her body all over and she begins to scream.

Remarkably, most of her screaming still falls within the register of poetic theory.

The silver swan approaches and feeds her a metal goldfish, beak to mouth euthanasia, which she gratefully accepts and begins choking to death.

The mermaid automatom swims over to the poetically defunct body of poet A___, who floats on the surface of the lake of knives which are actually mirrors, and tenderly holds her to her own verdigrised body for a moment, before diving with the manifestoist deep below the storm of mirrors raging in the oratory chamber.

Instantly the sea quiets and slackens and the swan dives out of sight.

The room goes dark except for a dull silvery glow around the corners of the chamber.

There is a brief echo of poetics floating around the room.

It is the legacy of A______.

Out of a high wall emerge several silver sparrows who catch the pretentious twaddle in their gullets, then return to niches in the wall, which seal over.

The house of automata will recycle this valuable twaddle to create lures for other poets it intends to slay.

******************************************

The party of poets walking down a darkening hall notice the absence of poet A., especially the two males and one female poet who had had erotic designs on either her body, her career or both.

But she is soon forgotten, as poet N____ has noticed a door labeled FAME FROM SUCCESSFUL ILL REPUTE and is just now trying the doorknob.