COMPOS[T]MENTIS, by Aaron Aaps (A Review by j/j hastain)

BlazeVOX [books]

$16/100 pgs

What of ourselves can we see in what we have been given? We stare into the scraps that overflow from our open palms. We stare into the puddles of seepage which are the results of our interactions with one another.

Aaps’ new book is a bawdy proposition (“on silence- fuck silence” / “where there is talking the world is like a garden to me”)–is the possibility of interacting with a thrashing, decaying host and something positive or self-affirming coming from that interaction. What if it were possible to ascend or become enlightened, by way of decay (“the bloody, peeling body archive made lucid”)? What if upwards and downwards were not at all at odds?

COMPOS[T]MENTIS is a carnal celebration, a cantata with smegma being marked into it by invested hand. Aaps’ book is an animal preoccupied with its own genitals; do you see it smile as it gingerly fingers itself (“the ape submerged the pages in hot glue made of bone”/ “it then proceeded to consume the round, extruded, phallic fruit- a sea of infected cocks. A sea of itchy clits”)

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