by Diana Damian-Martin
This is to announce that something has arisen
Something has come to light
Something has caught on fire
Something has made itself known
Something has rubbed itself in your face
Something has hit you right in the face
Something has been building up
Something has been rising
Something has been moving
Something has moved you
Something has to move you
You have been moved by something
You see something
Something is making itself known to you
You can no longer look elsewhere
You emerge in a state of emergency.
In the background, someone is spilling out this word, emerge and see, emerge and see, emerge and see, emerge and see, emerge and see, emerge and see, emerge and see, against the grainy soundscape of a post-industrial ecology of sorts.
This is to announce a state of emergency
This is to announce a state of emergency
A broadcast hanging, left behind
In an empty room
In a big auditorium
In a concert hall
In a concert hall
In a concert hall
In a concert hall
In a forest
In a town
In a city
In a building
In a house
On the outside of my skin
On the outside of my skin, in my house
In my house, on the outside of elsewhere.
In the background, someone is repeating this word, emergency, and it exorcises itself, it keeps drifting away from us.
This is to announce a state of emergency
You have lost something
You have lost something, somewhere
We have lost something, somewhere
I don’t recall if we lost something somewhere
Or if something lost us
We have been lost by something
An incident has occurred in which we have been lost by something.
In the background, someone is calling you to drown your sorrows in deep water, and the strings of the violin are breaking the air.
This is to announce an incident has occurred
This is now a battle zone
This is now a war zone
This is now a derelict place
This is now a relic
This is now a museum
This is now gone
This is now gone.
I want you to say something about what is now gone
I want you to say something about what is now gone
So I remember
Not to forget.
I want you to do something about what is now gone
I want you to fix this.
I want you to fix the incident.
I want you to prevent the incident from happening.
I would like you to address the incident
I would like you to remember to address the incident
I want you to not forget to address the incident
I expect you to address the incident
This incident is an emergency.
In the background someone is asking you to hide, to hide, to hide, to hide, to hide, to hide in water.
In this emergency we are waiting for noise
We are waiting for noise, the silence is too much
We are making noise to forget the silence
We are making noise but nothing is coming out
Our mouths are opening but nothing is coming out
Our dreams are here and we cannot shout them out
Because of the silence
We are still waiting for noise.
In the background we are in deep, deep water, deep water of our troubles, we are moving at the speed of money, he says.
This is to announce that the incident is now an emergency
This is to announce a state of alertness
Of vigilance
Of civic observance
Of civil obdedience
At a provincial level
At a municipal level
At a national level
At an international level
On a small scale
Just around the corner
In front of you
A natural state of alertness
A national state of alertness
A disastrous state of alertness
An incident that broke the executive chain of command
An incident that disrupted the legislative system for a period of time
An incident that caused inconvenience to the judiciary system for a period of time
An incident where something collapsed
An incident where someone has collapsed
An incident where many collapsed
An incident of disappearance
Of evaporation
Of diffusion
Of dispersal
Of softening
Of passing
Of vanishing
Of wasting
Of fading
Of melting
Of drowning
Of quenching
Of fighting
This is to announce a state of emergency due to the revolution.
Someone in the background is telling you to emerge in the sea, to emergence in the sea in silence, to quietly emergence in the sea.
An emergency of people gathered
An emergency of people who have gathered
An emergency when everyone sustains its own fire for a period of seven hours
An emergency when no one eats food
An emergency of rising sea waters
An emergency of heat dancing across the skin until it begins to shrink and split
An emergency of idiocy
An emergency of transfer
An emergency of breath
An emergency of sighs
An emergency of sorrow
An emergency of flight
An emergency of unsettled dust
An emergency of screeching voices
An emergency of births
An emergency of loss
An emergency of loss
An emergency of love
An emergency of people gathered to observe the incident being classed as an emergency.
In the background, someone is in the background running through mud, through splinters, through tents, through water, through hope, and I stand idly by.
Due to lack of funds we have had to cancel this emergency.
We are sorry to announce that due to austerity measures, we can no longer see this emergency through.
We are sorry to announce we have no time for emergencies.
We are sorry to announce that due to workload, we will be cancelling our attendance at this emergency.
Please let us know if you observe any suspicious emergencies.
It is imperative at this time that you inform us of any suspicious emergencies.
It is important that we are made aware of any suspicious emergencies.
Please check our new regulations on cancelling emergencies.
A course for the cancellation of emergencies has been made available to you.
Due to lack of funds, this emergency is now an incident,
Please attend to the incident
It is imperative that all citizens attend to the incident
It is imperative that this incident ceases to be.
We can no longer afford this incident.
Please be economical about your incident.
This is not a place for emergencies.
In the background, you cannot see past the dust, the ice, the rubble, the love, the eyes, the mouths.
Someone is still whispering, emergency, emergency, emergency, emergency, emergency, emergency, emergency, emergency, emergency, and it slips off my tongue, and the language slips of my tongue, and the voice slips off my tongue, and the names slip off my tongue, and you slip off my tongue, and something has arisen,
We must tend to what has arisen,
Something has arisen a very, very long time ago.
Something Other 