Shoot
by Mike Tyler
Startin’ is not so hard, when I’m just, what am I doing, dictating, oh what, yeah transcribing, ah, describing, yeah, that’s right, thanks my friend, ha!, that’s the first thing for you to know, you reading this, maybe I could have even have made it more upfront, I’m here with my friend, and this thing is going to be about in one way about a friend, the idea of a friend, what, yeah someone that’s willing to shoot you, exactly, what makes you a little different and what makes this even kinda scarier is you don’t know how to shoot at all right, yeah, this is the first gun you’ve ever had in your hand, no water guns don’t count, Chris’s friend could shoot you know and, so he did not miss, I mean he missed, uh huh, tell them what we’re talking about, what we’re talking about here is what we’re doing, and what we’re doing is we’re recreating but in a different form, obvi, the performance artist Chris Burden’s Shoot video, where he had a friend of his shoot him, except we’re doing ours like this, writing it up on a laptop, describing what me and my friend are up to in this and what we’re saying to each other, in words.
So you may think, you probably think, you’re not doing that, how do I know you’re doing that, I can’t see it, I could see it in the video, of course it could have been special fx, but no it seemed so real, jerky, like early silents, it was real, but you, you’re just, well typing, there’s no danger, you’re not about to be shot. Look, I admit I’m not going to be killed, I told you my friend can’t even shoot, stop laughing will you, and no more drinking, seriously dude, it’s on safety, not yet, don’t take it off yet, step away from the booze, please, I get it, he’s real close to me, Chris’ friend was about 15 feet or somethinc, we’re not doing that, he’s going to point it at me, so the barrel nearly touches my shoulder, and it’s not a rifle like with Chris it’s a handgun, and yeah the wall behind me is thick cement, we thought about ricochet, don’t worry everything’s going to be fine, if he kills me you’re not going to know about it, it’s not going to be on your phone as breaking news, all we’re going to do is this, he’s going to shoot at me with the gun, but right before he does, right before he takes the safety off and does, we’re going to save this and send it to Elliot. You won’t know what happened.
Mike Tyler is a poet who has said he is only going to write poetry because he doesn’t know anything. Like this; Duchamp, The Champ/Russia’s greatest/ Napoleonic reenactor/Was found drunk/In a river/With the severed arms/Of his lover/In his backpack
