Nico Vassilakis

from THEN THERE WAS YOU

*

A man, a mister, a red

The light’s on and the dark is on

Burn the blues, yes sir

That’s your Saturday face on Monday.

Mr Sun, I beg you, come out

Oh crunch. It’s very good for money. You’re sleepy.

No, I will not remove my foot. I have one too

I use this hand cause I’m crooked –

if it’s not the east then it’s the west

What’s your favorite animal?

Western union, no

New Jersey, no

German Shepard, yes

Look at that box. I’m going to make it

move with my mind

Well, I know her mother was the devil

The judge said to me, if you feed them long enough

they start looking like you

*

The circle is everything, is everywhere. A word is made and then collapses and it reforms endlessly. Letters, our children, play and dance over the canvass of our mind’s eye. They make the word one letter at a time while forming word signage for our convenience. In these examples here, they are in a whirl caught before ever organizing into a word. Bits of letters on excursion, rows of punctuation in frolic with the guiding premise that words disintegrate. Most people see words that become devalued by visual deterioration as the destruction of language. I see the release and rise of the Letter Empire. Each letter a sound, a thought, a visual concept that houses our human history. Letters are always on the verge of combining into words. But what if they were never to reach that result? I wdnt no ow say this you. Gja frun koltk ‘deyp wwqh olf. H s R gh x -u tt L. Vvv e w( o OQa z

a cura di Francesco Aprile