On the first day

 

An inconsequential man

completely unremarkable

couldn’t be less emphatic.

By the kindest people’s standards

he might as well be dead

slept for fourteen weeks

then woke up in his bed.

Sits up, folded at ninety degrees

arms in the air, mouth wide open

sucking up the dust like

a whale shark sucks plankton.

 

He sits there until the sun gives up

waiting for something unknown

unstirred, at a perfect right angle

his joints forgot what they were for.

You’d doubt he’d ever change his ways

but he might.

 

On the second day

 

His body starts to move

listen to the creaking and clicking

as he unlocks his unremarkable

skeleton, a stalk of oxygenated blood

And muscle. The whole vessel revives.

Brain and body ready to fuck the world,

kill it, or at least run away from it.

 

“I am the UNMARLED man.”

Gets out of bed without making it

leaves his boring flat

marches down the street

with that UNMARLED look in his eyes.

Finds a large Government Building

sits down in front of it, at a right angle

hands in the air, goes sharky again,

mouth sucking in the urban particulates.

7 times worse than smoking a cigarette

but for the moment he does not care.

Leers at the receptionist through the window

as she rummages through the files

on a Government Computer.

 

Unlikable security guards appear,

in their serious Government Uniforms.

Can’t get a word out of him, so they pick

him up and throw him down the road.

 

He freezes, everyone thinks he’s homeless

but soon he will be revived again.

 

On the third day

 

Creak, creak. Ventricles fire UNMARLED blood

through the arteries, the UNMARLED Man

gets up and plunges through the market

leg after leg, looking like he wants it.

Battering through the bodies, the perfect skittles throw

crashes into a melon stand on purpose,

Melonskulls crushed and split on the cobbled

market floor with the labels and pieces of cardboard.

The melon man is not angry, but intrigued.

“Look at me. You are now UNMARLED.”

And with that the man sat on the floor,

90 degrees, arms, mouth, shark….

“Come with me. Bring your melons.”

They walked through the market

dumbfounded faceless civilians.

Nothing was said and all eyes stare at the UNMARLED,

The crowd step back, giving them their

own path, like they were war-lords

returning from a long and historic victory.

 

On the fourth day

 

Outside the Government building

the UNMARLED sit, this time- with melons.

Sitting together facing the glass. Unmoved.

The receptionist lady sighs, she can’t find her file

so she sits down at the desk, sees what’s outside.

Realises she’s UNMARLED, switches her

computer off at the button, and wanders out.

Joins the pair, and sits, like them,

With melons, becoming them,

staring through Government Glass.

The security guards don’t last long,

They throw their ID badges down the drain.

 

After hours, the Original UNMARLED man turns to

all, and cries “we are the UNMARLED, throwing Melons!”

and with that they were thrown, they smashed against

the building, melon flesh and water falling down the panes.

The siege lasted 9 hours. Melons were restocked faster

than they could be catapulted and thrown.

The building defaced, humiliated, crying melon juice tears.  

The UNMARLED growing in numbers, faster and faster.

Men, women and children of UNMARLED.

 

On the fifth day

 

It’s all getting out of hand now.

A scruffy man, desperate, losing the will to breathe

arrives at the automatic doors, hands up,

He’s practised his speech, he greets the UNMARLED

falls to his knees. “Let us go! You can have our building!

Please! I am unmarled, just like you!”

The UNMARLED did not like the way he talked

the way he dressed, the way he moved, or his face.

“This man is not UNMARLED. Show no mercy!”

they stoned him to death with cantaloupes,

stampeded over the body, and bundled through the doors.

Government Bodies pleaded to be spared, but

All were torpedoed and rocketed by the watery fruits

(it takes a long time to kill somebody with a melon)

and cast from the windows, to be discarded in the rivers.

 

On the sixth day

 

After the fighting and the capture of the building,

the original UNMARLED man, washed the melon off his

clothes and climbed the stairs and stood on the balcony

facing the thousands of UNMARLED. All sat at 90 degrees

hands in the air, mouth open sucking in each other’s

UNMARLED breath. As he began to speak,

the flag of the UNMARLED was pitched on the roof.

 

“We are the UNMARLED men, women and children.

We have taken the building

we have taken the city

we have taken the GOVERNMENT,”

It couldn’t have been less spectacular.

 

On the seventh day

 

Nothing but, absolutely nothing but

 

Nation of the UNMARLED.