If we spoke as we sing

frame #1
Every day I spit into the soil where a plant slowly blooms
I open my lips and saliva flows sliding gently over the tongue
Leaving glistering droplets on the sharpness of the teeth
Saliva carries the words I uttered in the previous days
It liquefies meaning
It transmits the memory of the voice
The pleasure of the voice nourishes the flower
With pauses detours frictions misunderstandings without formalities without ceremonies
A flower blooms with the salivavoice
Saliva
bypassing omitting
misreading m is trans lates

Saliva slips escaping the limits of the frame
It spills over the black fence soaking the soil where the screen stands

frame #1.1
What is the politics of soil?
outside the frame of the screen?
And its violence?
to whom does it belong?
And its words?
what relation do they have to the soil?
Which mouths define them?
bodies move upon it
they are exiled
They are misread m is trans lated

frame #1.2
What words were spoken? What kind of words did the voice shape?
In the production of which words did the saliva froth get entangled?
The voice is never neutral
The saliva is never neutral
The words are never neutral
The soil is never neutral

Situated words
Situated saliva
Situated voice
Preplaced soil
;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;Displaced bodies
;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;Targeted
There where they open their mouths
T o a s k f o r f o o d
Or to speak

What χρώμα1 is the skin of your saliva?
How does χρώμα translate the saliva and the words pouring out of your mouth?
How does χρώμα transphrase your words?
How does the soil translate the skin?

Every translation (of soil) is a misreading (of bodies) m is translation (of bodies)

διαρροές leakage
οπές holes
ροπές impulses

frame #1.3
And now! how do we reclaim the fog of words?
How do we regain the right of bodies to survive by hiding their traces?
How do we choreograph dynamics of uncertainty?
How do we uphold bodies within the opacity of the cloud?
How do we welcome words as unpredictable (unrecognizable) weather conditions?

frame #2
They say words wrap themselves like gauze around
events objects bodies weather conditions
And yet no!
I feel the words wounded
Do words feel wounded?
Let’s begin with acceptance
Let’s begin with the hypothesis of the words
words have agency
words have a body
And that means nerves that connect their fleshes their networks
with our organized or scapegoated organs
Let’s not talk about the words
Let’s talk together with the words
With the mouth of the words

frame #2.1
Broken tongues lie down
Scattered on the soil
On top of their broken bodies
Which archives record these disturbances of explosions?
For violence to be recorded on bodies on words inside archives
We need first to shoot the archives,
bomb them
And inside their fragments
place
shattered organs
without bodies

How are scattered limbs translated on the soil opened like mouths that cry out?

frame #3
we never have an unmediated relation with anything not even with our own skin

frame #4
or better, let’s speak of the words that got entangled inside our body under our skin that suckle our intestine and churn our bladder they systematically defecate us
they are covered concealed restrained connected by that single elastic macroscopic membrane
the organs the nerves the arteries the bones the muscles the words

frame #4.1
Language and messiness
We are seeking messiness
The lips of a wound

frame #5
Words hide or they flee into the interior of the mouth
dark liquid smooth
We have learned to avoid the inside of the body
Or to investigate it as something
neutrally objective
Or to translate it into fragrant faux-kindnesses
But body belongs to another community than the one we define as ours
To a network
A rhizome
Of memory
It knows and remembers what we (did not) live
It connects with other bodies
Present or absent
Here or there
With stories routes transitions

There the words move
In that cloudy reticulate mycelium
They weave their vital dissonances
to make a mistake means to mis:translate μετα φρά(ζεις)2

frame #6
Shall we perhaps sew the words onto our body?

The needle carries in its colored tail the word
It runs through the sky of my mouth
It spins vertically unearthing the caves of my throat
It competes with the gravity law of my esophagus
It pierces into the glossy walls of my stomach
It endures digestion and is preserved by the bacteria of my intestine
Pointing its sharpness toward the pointless unreproductive organs without order
It whirls at full speed toward the recess of the my dark star

does it love us?

frame #7
translation > tongue > distribution > incision
the subalterns tangle the tongues of the masters they bastardize them make them their own
zig-zag seam between the internal glossy organs the rules of grammar crack
the commands shatter
the vocabulary bends welcomes remembers loves?

How are the sounds of interjections exclamation joy scream translated from the dominant language?
Language is not neutral the bodies that speak it or paraphrase it are not neutral

Languages are by definition translations mutations transformative tropes of viscera
A thrust outward
Violently stripped traveling through the branching organs that pulse warmth
immersed in a musical communication of disturbances

;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;the words
erupt from the opening

sharp teeth bite them
reassuring fleshy exteriority scream laugh sobs
They are translated only abusively
Translation the first operation
Translation the last incision in the labs of the departed
or alchemy
The opening of the living body to save it
The opening of the dead body to examine it

The words
Traces of secretions of touch glands of spiderwebs rescue code

Language originally served rescue
In hours of sharp weapons

frame #8
translation is the practice of
screaming3
with strawberries in your mouth the laugh of the medusa
sweet bitter juices flow through words my lips grasp my teeth
sounds throbbing

keeping in mind that words continue the bones
I wake up my throat touches my life aches

frame #9
What kind of violence do untranslated words do to the body of the text?

frame #9.1
I want to wind your larynx around my tongue to shatter every possibility you have of answering me
Then I swallow all the sounds the frequencies you’ve produced

What would it be like if we spoke as we sing? Would language have the same violence?

1 The crossed-out letter ρ in the Greek word “χρώμα” generates a connection between the words χώμα (soil) και χρώμα (colour).

2 The word “μετα φρά(ζεις)” is a symbiotic network that encompasses words such as “φράζεις” (you express, you utter, you define or you block you close off) and “ζεις” (you live)_ “μεταφράζεις” means: “you translate.” I propose “transφρά(ζω)” as another possible wordy creature inside this symbiotic network.

3 Inspired by Anne Carson’s reflection on screaming in translation. With transfeminist thanks to Selby Wynn Schwartz, who referenced this idea during her writing workshop at Sappho’s Academy in Skala Eressos, Lesvos, October 2025. frame #8 was written during Queer Poetry Circle Eressos.