TEETH
A Terra Augustus Utopia Performance
Blog note: This is the text of a character performance I have had the privilege and opportunity to deliver at a couple different venues. I present the text here for posterity and general access. It consists of four monologues and four poems, and takes about twenty minutes to perform.
Content warnings:
- Atrocities such as genocide are mentioned, but never graphically described.
- There is a brief and non-graphic mention of an individual rape.
- I am trying to unnerve you.
1
Howdy-do. My name is Teeth, and it's a pleasure to meet you in the flesh. I'm not from around here, you might say. To me, lifetimes are like days on the job, so you might wonder why I'd come to a poetry night in little ol' port-land-oh-rey-gon. Well, maybe I can explain, with my favorite movie. It's called Contact. Y'ever seen it?
In it, a physicist discovers a signal from aliens. The signal is clear and undeniable, and even contains schematics for a device by which humans might send an emissary to parlay with this faraway civilization. Through preponderance of evidence and strength of character, our intrepid physicist persuades the world not once but twice to build this device, and ultimately, they choose to send her as emissary. But when she arrives, she remarks, "They should have sent a poet."
[laughter]
Well now, my gods thought that was very funny, so they sent me, and I'd like to read you some poetry.
This one's called, "O, to arrive!"
O, to arrive!
I just flew in from the end of time
And boy are my arms tired.
Well, they're arms now
And that's fine.
They've been flippers and wings
Cuz I've been arachnids and things.
Within me a great gathering sings.
Like a bell, my pantheon's resonance rings.
I did not articulate this vessel,
Nor such ancient pacts wrestle,
Nor put so many favors to the pestle
Not to have a little fun with it.
So I wonder, what to do with it
Now that I am inside of it?
I spent the last trillion lives
Digging and dying in alien hives
So though this world may yearn for relief
As its atrocities test the limits of belief
No insect I have ever known
Had the pleasure to browse with Chrome
Or enjoy the delights of human flesh fully-grown
And oh, what heights do lurk in these earthly bones
So when a supple supplicant invites me from my throne
I take the chance on a vessel I can hone.
You ask what happened to the mortal inside?
Oh they're safe, just along for the ride.
But maybe as you hear me you'll consider
When you plead to the shadows and feel a shiver
Your words find the ears of my kind
And we deliver.
2
I hail from a place that you may call Utopia. What a strange word to use in English, don't you think? It means "nowhere" and "the good place". Do you really think it doesn't exist? And what does it mean for a place to be "good"? To me, it is the endless and infinite domain of the covenant of peace and plenty, from the smallest loving contemplation, to the militant kindness of the greatest of galactic polities, across every possible universe, and every possible mathematics. Nothing but the dawn of universal zero kelvin can deny Utopia its seat in reality!
My gods curried my constituent fractions from lifetimes across that domain. Some of us were chosen faithful, standing ready in eons of service. Some of us were wizards meddling where we should've known better. But very few of us were ever human. Plenty of my lives passed as sentient trees in democratic forests, or thoughtful fish in ice-shell worlds. We don't need fire or industry or space travel to love each other, and the lack of such things rarely bothers us. See, loving each other isn't a technological challenge. It's an emotional one. And so I come to this planet and wonder, why do you not love each other?
Having seen what I've seen, your deeds beg the question: are you afraid? Does compassion somehow terrify you? Maybe that's wise. Maybe it should.
If you weren't scared of all that joy demands, I wouldn't think you were serious. The awesome task before you should make you tremble, mortal. Is that why you shy from the choice?
This next one is called "Blessing".
Blessing
Have I not blessed you with the choice of love?
You ask me, why would a loving god do this?
Yet would not a loving god grant you the choice?
Would you prefer my blessings render you a doll
To be wielded and posed, hollow beneath the shell?
I think you prefer the struggle
Because you relish the triumph.
Blessed is your strength
For it shall never fail.
Blessed is your doubt
For it is accountability.
Blessed is your suffering
For it teaches the value of the alternatives.
Even in the depths of suicidal despair
Your anguish sears because you know better
You know you could have better
You know you deserve better
And you're goddamn right.
Blessed is your defiance
For it is the seed of ambition.
Blessed is the kind rebellion
For its victory is inevitable.
3
You might ask why a hyperdimensional outsider composed of a trillion lives doesn't say, take me to your leaders! But I can see those jokers on TV, and they don't listen to you, so why would they listen to me? Besides, what would I tell them? "Mr Macron, have you considered loving others as yourself? Have you considered loving yourself at all? Furthermore, have you considered releasing Haiti from the West's colonial yoke?" The unfortunate truth is, I think my dear Emmanuel has considered it, and decided otherwise for reasons with which I constitutionally cannot sympathize.
Someone once asked me if I was the tip of an invasion force. [laughter] Why would Utopia invade? Do you think we can conceive of invaders, or conquering, from a position of bottomless empathy? I was sent to understand the unthinkable, the inconceivable atrocities of this foie gras planet for which you have so many words. Genocide. Rape. Slavery. Holocaust. You even employ subtle euphemisms like purging and cleansing, and all manner of holy excuses for cruelty. [laughter] I have met your gods, dear mortals, and they are too alien for your excuses. You do this to each other, and no one told you to.
Utopia doesn't send war-machines. We don't make them. We don't use them. But for a planet like this, I sometimes wish we would.
This one is called "Downfall".
Downfall
They should have sent a war-machine
But rather it was me that awoke
In a miasma of suffocating malice
That swallows everyone I will ever know.
Everyone that I will ever fall in love with --
As I will fall in love with everyone --
They live in sacrifice and humiliation
On the altar of a death god.
What misery have you made
Of our sacred solidarity?
They should have sent a war-machine
To face the legions of barbarity
And the profiteer's privation,
To break the bones of capital
And the acrid bonds of colony,
To drive the genocidaires into their bunkers,
Into the belly of a fickle planet
Where that lightless absence might swallow
The body of their evil.
Down in the depths their eyes will shrivel
Like the overgrown sockets of the blind gecko.
They should have sent a war-machine
For it is the only language
The barbarians understand.
But I am led to believe
It is not war that will humble them
Or cast down their filthy gods
But the hubris
Of their own toxic designs.
I was summoned as witness
For the end of their world
But I wish I could be their downfall.
4
This body once belonged to a very different sort of consciousness. An individual, like you, who I have transformed into my palanquin. She sought me out, asked a favor, and oh what a delicious favor it was.
Humans have a thing they call vengeance, which my kind do not understand. Don't you know: there is only one being in existence, the one great living spirit of all consciousness, whose form is divided only by the geography of samsara. So when you ask me to realize your revenge, why, who am I to harm but you?
Utopia isn't joy and rainbows forever. It's just a word I use for something you'll never understand. It is a realm beyond space and time, belonging to immortals that cherish sorts of pleasure and terror that cannot fit in your mind. Perhaps that is what my dear host did not fully appreciate.
This last one is her attestation. It's called, "Because you hurt me".
Because you hurt me
I moved on. Nothing you did could stop me.
I picked up the pieces and glued the shards back.
Every part of me that you destroyed
I gathered like glass and set in mortar,
A sharp installation in the gallery
Where I set down my roots to witness
Who I have chosen to be.
But I'm no angel.
I tried to find forgiveness,
But I wandered off the path.
I found the scent of hate
Like the sweet smell of barbecue.
I wanted worse for you
Than your rapist mind could dream,
And sweetie,
That's why you don't mess with magi.
I reached out with a pact and an offering
And wouldn't you know it?
Stranger things are real
Than your settler science can suppose.
I opened the gate to the fae's emerald green
And brought along your spirit
That I had speared like a silver trout.
There in that realm behind,
I met an endless spiral of teeth,
And he seemed alright.
I asked if he'd like a meal,
And he spoke like a void,
But that's alright.
It wasn't my first trip into the green,
So I knew he meant, "sure,"
So we said alright.
He gave me a pearl, like the antithesis of you.
It screams like you,
And when I look close, I can see you
Spiraling into teeth.
In the land of my gods, the so-called Utopia,
You'd be disarmed or something,
Re-educated in a genuinely loving way,
But I'm no angel,
And the body will never know Utopia
As anything more than a big, big feeling.
So errant ol' me and my conspiring body,
We keep that pearl.
Oh, but we don't like to look.
That would honor you somehow.
Though when I do,
I like what I see,
Because all I can see
Are your remains
Chewed forever.
~
That's all for me, dear mortals. Enjoy what remains of your time. And maybe, if you steer just wrong enough, the first thing you hear in the after will be the long and terrible sound of me: Teeth!
