Life of Riley

Lyrical exposition of the political apocalypse of 20th Century US history.”

CHOIR
O everything is nicely iced
Waiting for the birth of Christ
Waiting for the candle to
appear

[Gregorian chant intonation for 2-10 seconds, breaking into Moslem prayer-call plaint, modulating lastly to a deep ‘AUM’ sound with punch]

NARRATOR
This is the initiation of the story, the bloody scar– Boil wind, mouthing– the word is doctrinaire.

JOHN
Bound to thieves.–

CONSTABLE
We have a right to see every week. For editorial purposes.

NARRATOR
You see here Self-preservation.– You see, we are our relief– Gross of the people their misery– 116 sextons cast it– Plague bush emanating loud undesirable in blank flesh, stage left. This is the announcement of the birth of Christ, stage left. Please board at gate 12. At gate 12 please board.– Died fourthousand with a handbarrow–General calamity and rue in his mouth–Most dreadful his own mouth–

CONSTABLE
No doubt there been broken dead bodies– Go and fetch my lord gravedigger and bearer of the dead.-

MARY
I lay there shivering with the other animals on the straw. And then the great heave, my body radiating sweat, and it was done. It had been done to me and it was done. The thing finished that whispers started. The thing finished. So bloody and little. Like a thing thrown away, really. A god in the dirt.

DOCTOR
But is it a corporation? On the advice of specialists in the United States, circa year Zero,– the buzz of lamentation dry over Dead Sea scrolls– has this project been aborted at last? A wide variety of sources are up 22% and all the bets are not yet in– God diploma of death is a rare catch.

CONSTABLE
Just try to die or get born without the official papers in this district!

JOURNALIST
Variety of headlines possible– The Shape of things Too Messianic– Corporate dream of taking obscurely praised by specialists– each mocking in separate pews– house of god, church of christ– All bets are off!– this babe guilty of many calmnesses–

DOCTOR
The greatest mockery is to perform the office– God upon us others assembled, witnessing the gold haloes sticking up like combs– from the holy heads.– Has God continued officiating the event or no?– His hand checked a most deplorable spirit–

JOURNALIST
A photoreconnaissance mission reports
“And they came….”–

CONSTABLE
All births require a signature chalked in Japanese. Then the wax seal.– Third priority the autumn.–

NARRATOR
Slamming his blind Texan voice into the barnyard without noticing– An atmospheric distortion:– Reap hand spacious above mushroom trees– yellow double golden snakeeyed trees– spurting death color in a red blanket sky.– A nearsighted nurse rattles the crib. The doctor meditates:

DOCTOR
Dead bodies caused me. But is there any money in it?

MARY
It is over for me. Over for me and over me. Who has constructed this body from such metals?

NARRATOR
Berlin in the thirties was full of neon. A cultural mecca on the rise. From our zeppelin we can spot the Doctor and little Ziggy Oppenhiemer displaying their brains to each other in the shadow of a wrecked church.

DOCTOR
Dead bodies caused me– electrified frog nerves jumping and active on the lab glass– smoky eyes set at minimum height. They were furiously in love on the laminate surface– one set of eyes rigor mortis grey under a white cyclops mask.– Even here in the graveyard X-ed out minimalized bodies copulate under the earth in occasional skeleton clacks as flesh falls.– United bodies vaporized as spirits lift into a cadaver sky–

OPPENHEIMER
My mind is not spared– God please please no more–

DOCTOR
Knowledge is profit. Learn how to read.

NARRATOR
The doctor fades out. As little Oppie knells towards maturity at a fixed rate the Doctor thought would later relieve his tax burden, the signs and omen about him increase geometrically-

OPPENHEIMER
Philtres, exorcisms, amulets, and I relive themselves– The papers are full of it.– Walking the hands of these streets possessed by knots– forming a triangle or pyramid of one thought in my mind, one that reads:– My spirit is I am.

NARRATOR
Time caught Oppie cutting his theory thin, yet still accurately delivering enough high–

DOCTOR
That’s right! Oppie always was a cheap sonofabitch.-

NARRATOR
Oppie, whose calculated gaze would later raze cities, inaugurated a massive pogrom of precision daylight bombing with colored flares. He was tired of kites– Funds independent of sources began to arrive deployed– He was playing big business now, at ejaculast with his chemistry set.– Death enters, stage left.– Mineral traces hop a gravestone– Captain Oppies eyes are sandpines.– He counts his cells– millions are spectator’s benches.– He squints–

OPPENHEIMER
Today the acquisition business– In addition, Tomorrow–

NARRATOR
he notices Death in his sulking robe.

OPPENHEIMER
[clearing his throat] I would like to start a corporation.–

NARRATOR
He gushes apoplectic with his own erection–

OPPENHEIMER
I love is– whose eyes are animals….– Our firm is to design the disabled, retirees, or dye-cut models of finished lives.– We could be limited partners– no personal debt if it all goes under–

NARRATOR
Oppie taps Death on his ginger shoulder– a thousand scorpions break in a sweat from his back– Oppie stutters–

OPPENHEIMER
Partners, usually,– umm…. tax writeoffs–

NARRATOR
Death sockets his abrupt clock face towards Wallstreet– Black silver teeth gate out like bullets–

DEATH
Begin reap–

NARRATOR
it intones.

ACT II

NARRATOR
In chapter two, the young Oppenhiemer, messenger of God, declarer of the aphasic word, and haircutter to the stars, founds a secret society dedicated to impregnate multiple Marys in the bland hope of fathering eventual redemption. They know the myths, they know their physics, and they wear dead leather and rhyming chains. They call their hip little tea club, The Open Conspiracy.

OPPENHEIMER
The Open Conspiracy, the collection begins
Electric Engineering Economic majors, infected at the start with grandiose conceptions, dreaming of mind stars and death atlases, will be our first recruits.

DOCTOR
I said to them I had diagnosed as Spanish– perhaps even to those who had been declined another passport on account of an oriental name and cheap mystery wicks– I said to them– to them straight in their burning eyes I said
‘the death-cart’s in Whitechapel, was rolled off by thieves in Whitechapel, laying jammed under those linden trees there near my pre-nuclear set-up and diet drink.’

OPPENHEIMER
Hmm. Can we use the abortion cast-off of these whores in building the perfect savior?

DOCTOR
With enough rivets and venture capital you can do anything.

NARRATOR
Time wandered bleak but whispered SOON as the demented Doc and little Oppie sauntered past the Hungry Institute for Theoretical Physicists. The Doc, a gaunt bald Russian, his real interest in the entire Savior Inc. affair carved and set before them in the nighttime dialog like a hammered bust, whistled his approval of the bloody riots post WWI.

DOCTOR
Stronger progress in our death-march will come of this stomach-nihilism.

OPPENHEIMER
Gunpowder saved Germany from too much thinking or PhD’s after the armistice. Max Planck’s wearing a new German edition– The partly empty informal collegiality of the students stands angrily inviting. The ocean levels are dropping this year. Europe’s ego bled a boiling armistice, and eventually, well, I just thought it was time to make the bomb.

DOCTOR
Let’s go turn some heads.

NARRATOR
Oppie saunters in a timewarp, foreknowing the outcome– A neon sign sizzles and pops over his head– vanishes– He kicks history’s oak door under an attic sky. He and the Doctor grasp at the future with obvious tentacles. They stand above floating down. Visiting a WWI cemetery with his abrupt steel cane, the Doc restores physics students to intoxicating life–

DOCTOR
Opp– oop from zee dirt– All zee dead dears…”

NARRATOR
He flipped them up like cards– led by his rope hand–

FIRST STUDENT
Shall we mate in first person whispers?

SECOND STUDENT
Shall we bear them still bleating from the abortionist?

THIRD STUDENT
Current trends in the market indicate that we can still get away with this if we’re drunk enough.

ALBERT EINSTEIN
There are no laws to stop us. I’ve doublechecked with the universe and God.

OPPENHEIMER
We can get the Doctor to preside.

NARRATOR
Almost a guild of international scope, Miles van der Rohe designed, they took Berlin by storm, upsetting the cabaret tables and silky prostitutes with their ritual activity. The elderly, rosy face of the city was blanked out by their antics, wild and unearthly as a salaried civil servant. Oppenhiemer breathed in zeroes and paid out cash– Death’s agent.

FIRST STUDENT [to Doctor]
Are you a student too?

DOCTOR
I am a student,

NARRATOR
he explained,

DOCTOR
of ADVANTAGES.

NARRATOR
It was 1933, you understand, in the bleak Berlin suburb Unter den Linden. Oppie wiggled in his death-pact– White hate mask descending in an iron grid over his face– his empty face dispelled– The plastic transponder in his throat began to cough– snow crystal speaking in morse code–

OPPENHEIMER
Attempts to change this public offering are punishable. These able profit shelters will enable the bomb to be born.

NARRATOR
He gauged the blotched map-colored landscape with stone eyes–

OPPENHEIMER
The United States has shown a green feasibility to foster us later. But for now what we need

NARRATOR
he emitted–

OPPENHEIMER
is the Bund.

ACT III

NARRATOR
Meanwhile… General Barko and a stout spirit begat gospel music on a park bench, injecting cruel antigens into innocent bystanders until their minds blanked out and their throats opened in song.

BARKO
The thronging choir lined up, damn it was splendid! Bent to my one will, we exited the decaying park and headed for Oppie’s hideout.

STOUT SPIRIT
Everybody sing: silver, silver!

BARKO
Christmas carolling in July in front of the Whore’s House, on abrupt knees trying to scoop up the cash.

STOUT SPIRIT
DOWN, I told her first–That it was technically not possible, second.

BARKO
Mary was such a good girl before she noticed the red hot halo hanging like horseshoe from the holy erection. Here we are. Lopsided Oppie is still in his brain phase–

NARRATOR
Ten thousand quacking chinamen crowd to the rosy window to breathe out fog and see the action up close.

STOUT SPIRIT
Let us sing.

NARRATOR
Oppie had been forced to abandon– the good drugs were still in him, making him sleepy as the blue Mary whores proved fertile and had conceived from death’s sperm these possible Jesuses. Outside, General Barko pulled on his long cuban, belching smoke, starting everyone on the song cycle. First in Mandarin, then in the sad, triumphant ooloos of the poetry of black. The Chinamen slouch around, needling the air with their bird tongues. Their gold arms performed–

10,000 CHINAMEN
Dolla Dolla–

NARRATOR
Shout the moneyhungry fish.

OPPIE
Oppie picks a bitch out on the bare mattress. Using descriptions like “the gold” he squinted sweating in the direction of her holy folds.

10,000 CHINAMEN
Dolla Dolla–

OPPIE
His drug head heavy and sad, his Doctor friend nods OK to the use of a medical jar in which the presidents genitals formerly floated pickled.

DOCTOR
Sprinkle the wild red roses on them, Oppie boy. Yes yes, out of the big jar with the blood pentagram on it.

OPPIE
45.50 FOR EACH OF US OUT OF THIS MANGLE, RIGHT DOC?

10,000 CHINAMEN
Dolla Dolla–

DOCTOR
Go and see if you can get that choir to hang itself.

NARRATOR
A boiling wind moves through the room and evaporates–

10,000 CHINAMEN
Dolla Dolla–

NARRATOR
Glazed vinyl eyes moisten up at them– the Marys mouth “Ouch” with exquisite lips–

DOCTOR
The idea,

NARRATOR
said Doc,

DOCTOR
is to introduce tougher anti-drug Americans.– All the herd needs is one leader. And we’ll build him.

NARRATOR
He shifts the slow red jar.

DOCTOR
Moomsday is coming–

NARRATOR
he prophesied, wait to cradle the induced abortion cast-off.

DOCTOR
WATCH THIS PAPER.

OPPIE
He noosed the jar with catching plastic–

DOCTOR
Break my dark child hungering on the cold wind–

OPPIE
The whore rolled, her stomach riveted–

DOCTOR
Somebody wipe that mess up,

OPPIE
declared the Doctor, spilling a little Jesus spook full of thorns from his scabby hand.

DOCTOR
Grab those pills first. I need joy.

OPPIE
To which Oppie replied, staring at the fingered mess containing extra heads, in astericked syllables– “The God of this Bacon…”–

NARRATOR
The use of fetal tissue transplants to treat the divine image on the mountain will soon be proved functional or a joke.

OPPIE
Oppie swept the vomit under, seaweak and sickening, said
“Is not falling down pilgrimage?”

DOCTOR
The whole business

NARRATOR
quoted the Doctor,

DOCTOR
is business.

NARRATOR
His opaque eyes rang cash– Gold silver brass–

OPPIE
Barko and his Spirit taxied into the room from On High. The downed Whores twitched when their asleep minds sniffed Barko’s chemical ride. They berated his old and changing music knowingly and braced themselves for a forced glance at the slogan festooning his uniform and gave his black church before the anesthesia took full effect. Using prayer to publicize his version of events, the billboard sticking out of his neck said:

BARKO
They came 20,000 strong to God.

OPPIE
Barko and his spirit arrived at North’s house on Maple, to make money. To grow better at it, the choir sang:

10,000 CHINAMEN
I’ve decide to make Jesus iron!

OPPIE
strafeing their tin cups over the barred window, laughing at the heaving Marys with their tongues out.

10,000 CHINAMEN
O Let Jesus Fix It!

NARRATOR
Oppie scratched his arm with a plow. Inseminated with lament, the brown sperm of intergenerational justice, he winced.

BARKO
You’re not just the United States and the two who acted. You must be responsible for everything from here on in.

NARRATOR
The tome voice put dust in Oppie’s veins. His blisters wept–

OPPIE
I cannot conceive–

NARRATOR
he admits, staring at the blue Madonnas fertile and quivering a hand’slength from his white desire. He thinks– thinks hard– to put his paranoia in perspective.

OPPIE
Robots may hold the key to the enigma
America, Art and Leisure, the president, current films about adolescents… Once ritual is made cathartic by robot means… Hmmm. Only where the New York Times is available? A second key? How would this charade work? Entrance granted by a stamp with a secret star–

NARRATOR
Oppie opens a new debate in his mind–

OPPIE
Maybe the sex drive is dead and a mechanical replacement necessary. Still, it makes the beds surge. Crying and tossed medicinal Whores breaking the cold wind. A diverse coalition becomes clear. 3,000 students in a hate group. Maybe it’s us.

NARRATOR
The radio screeches like a nail-ridden blackboard. Invisible officials announce a new institution
The Engraver. A clicking soft hiss like glass emits from the speaker.

RADIO
A man with a pick axe and a state stylus will zoom by your neighborhood soon. He will employ many nightmare techniques in the slashing night. Each gravestone blank waiting like a forehead is to be initiali by the state. An ID numeral pimpling the newborn to be considered standard equipment. The dead

THE NOT YET DEAD
only categories understood by the state.

NARRATOR
Great tufts of this knowledge hit Oppie. The Engraver kneels at the curbside– albatross white in the dead moon.

OPPIE
For us they fell…

NARRATOR
Oppie mumbles, trying to repeat, to memorize the goofball formula–

OPPIE
We parallel their fall..

NARRATOR
he dreams of the new order
Technology at the beginning of life. Numbers etched in acid on each forehead. Long front bangs a crime of obscuration. The birth room slopes. Blue Whores spill onto the carpeting, cockroaches jump from under their asses in a perpetual distort. Rose wallpaper shifts. The camera dances. Doc cradles the red jars in his cellulite. Dust appears. A time crimp folds the wet bedding. And the edifice falls…

OPPIE
Oppie swoons at the first blood exiting. His radial head tilts. He sleeps, including lots of people… The Sunday radio drools….

NARRATOR
The forms take infant shape–

PROTESTANT
Protestant–

CLERGYMAN
Clergyman–

BHUDDIST MONK
A Bhuddist Monk–

FARMER
A Farmer–

WORKER
A Worker–

LEADER OF HEADS
A Leader of Heads–

OPPIE
A banner unfurls from the collective skull: WE FETAL TISSUES CELEBRATE THE ABORTION DANCE. The resultant composite fetus walks upright in the dream sequence, clocked hands whirr, performing the pre-destined motions.

PROTESTANT
The brain tissue technique to a created salvation is perfected.

CLERGYMAN
If we’re lucky enough maybe we’ll all blow ourselves up.

BHUDDIST MONK
Christ is fission. Esoteric studies prove it.

LEADER OF HEADS
Created by fission and a few spare parts, we learn how to hold the Institution’s top administrative positions in three days.

OPPIE
My whole being in the feast!

FARMER
Eat the conception. Radiation gives you such a healthy glow.

PROTESTANT
Now think, also. The world we celebrate is a sweet mess also. Libyans seeking a reconciliation with taskmaster death also. A whole new market for the atomic stockpile also. A flowing erect Arabian on a sweating horse with a majestic nuclear device in his fist. But Oppie must work harder to achieve this first also.

OPPIE
The king had a hook to pluck those blue mortals out by the eye, Oppie thinks, staring at the duplicate Whores. A transplant to replace the Father, and therefore to be killed.

CLERGYMAN
My Lord now turns, turns only.

BHUDDIST MONK
A tambourine clicks.

WORKER
A string of firecrackers orange out into the footlights of the World press.

OPPIE
She kicks a blue foot, her pelvis making an O-mouth.

LEADER OF HEADS
The rumble of a dozen organs farts out. These I will incorporate into the We-Flesh.

FARMER
Oppie speaks the relentless theme of the Iranian, another Homer, spurring a new tradition which wafts up from every room.

OPPIE
The Blue Madonna Whores start up nailed,

CHORUS OF WHORES
God is spent. We have the blood pool to prove it,

OPPIE
echoes out of each. Concerned hands flutter over their crotches sweet and unobservable–

ARCHBISHOP
As musicians rehearse their rents through the ceiling, scalds notes drift down, tearing tubas– gutting a sax.

PROTESTANT
Gibberish! Gibberish!

ARCHBISHOP
Claiming a foreign heraldry, they came, enforcing WASP, to bind the loose, to keep the present purpose alive from these scattered parts. Baby noses and barking seal fins. The relentless theme the pattern.

OPPIE
In Berlin again, they came, riding rosy-cheeked and blistered on the surge of medical interest in these small shapes we have gathered here to re-assemble.

DOCTOR
We’ll set up a factory in that abandoned lot. The students can fuck ’em, then wind up here on the cutting floor. We can edit to the proper atomic holiness. Nes pas?

OPPIE
The Engraver punches his own button and dies, in the niNth inning. Oppie looks up from the spilled floor with a changed mind and dream indecisiveness. His crab hands red with Governmental remains; tissue from the aborted fetuses has crowded the waters. Ultimate death-peace approached by temporal dissolution. To diminish the self has come back in style, with a wicked hemline. This God’s starry hemlines end in dark hills. Cliffs rise pale unexplainable against Satan. Angry brothers march from the soggy womb, returning terrified to the light, eyeing the Whore’s crotch with suspicion.

DOCTOR
They’re all born erect, ready to mate, to repeat the mistake.

THE ENGRAVER
The United States has my choice. I’d rather die there than anywhere.

OPPIE
declares the Engraver, dead, and punches his vote button.

BHUDDIST MONK
Include a Star of David in the feast!

OPPIE
shouts the Bhuddist Monk, who hunches.

CLERGYMAN
The Clergyman emerges from his robed back–

BHUDDIST MONK
Hunchbacked as I am with eddying eyes spelled in stark Sanskrit–

THE ENGRAVER
The government is linked directly in these implications. Let’s sign a pact and start a nation. Swap spit on it. I do sololy swear…

WORKER
We do we get to start killing?

DOCTOR
Right away. Just mail in your subscription form with three box tops and aim.

OPPIE
Oppie pulls the Empire State Building from a vein, rubbing his marked forehead with a velvet rasp.

ALL
Blind and old they kneel. The collective fetus kneels on one knee.

OPPIE
In the event of a crisis, they play Al Jolson to rapturous seaweed crowds.

OPPIE
the Guide people wave their arms and shout in unison. The Director of the University stands up in the packed vault house, directing the silent traffic. Imbibing mothers with ghost infants crapping in the aisle shuffle to their seats. A gloomy prophet deadly pale leaps on stilts to the stage, a Farmer.

FARMER
Welcome to the theatre of hate.

OPPIE
His crop eyes turn slow and reap audience. An example of the outright segregation of the stage– everyone with their backs turned out like a reverse magazine rack. Performer and performed upon, irreconcilable as Whore and john.

NARRATOR
Oppie’s head leans into the dream tunnel, the near Whore’s bedspread a wash of curtain against his cheek, mambo cockroaches eating the fetus parts rhythmically before included in the Frankenstein savior who will invent the bomb. Oppie himself comatized and all audience (the Elected form of the oppressed). His lax mouth emits a pus which joins the afterbirth on the swayed carpeting, witnessing his own birth.

WORKER
The Worker builds his own church. The Leader of Heads directs him onstage as the worker sings
“Amen or Yes Jesus when we wounded walk from the Biomedical Church. Praise this extra heart sewn in. Praise the intestine blue heaven above me. Solace is a short forelock.”

OPPIE
The choir of one face and six limbs repeats the refrain:

CHOIR OF ONE FACE
This is the Ultimate Issue.

OPPIE
Sullen Nations depart the theatre with tired eyes. Clogged aisles are photographed cold and scientific, trying to pinpoint when the bomb emerged, for later identification of the participants. A man/boy/whore of all types and countries is later held for questioning. His blue face squints. A shadow behind the inferno light demands

SHADOW
Do you know this highly publicized but little known sore from London?

OPPIE
a processed photo flashes wormeaten and smeared; the light brightens).

CLERGYMAN
We know who is guilty and why it’s not us. I bless this first stone overturned to get at the nuclear idea.

OPPIE
the Protestant protests in quirky legalities. His holy voice commands in Farsi:

PROTESTANT
A fear like birth and babbling women afflicts– leave us.

OPPIE
A stream opens in his mouth. There is NO sign of protest.

NARRATOR
In a real world Oppie’s neon light blinks off.

CLERGYMAN
The Clergyman lifts his robe with a commanding wrist. Halogen lights from under the hem sear the optic nerve of the audience.

PROTESTANT
The protestant scurries under. You can see a desert landscape with lines of pilgrims under the high skirt.

FARMER
The Farmer scuttles under too with a plow between his legs.

LEADER OF HEADS
The Leader of Heads is coaxed under the bloated robe with a decapitating finger, his lips forming airless words as he ducks under.

WORKER
The Worker dissolves hammering a steeple nail. [Dissolves] Empty scaffold creaks buoyantly. Armless hammer falls to the stage.

BHUDDIST MONK
The Bhuddist Monk is chanting over an automatic pistol. [Chants] Apple-blossoms escape his lips. He raises his weapon like a bubble. His arms gold and tan under the circus illumination.

CLERGYMAN
The Clergyman grips his cross like a .45.

OPPIE
Snow shatters in a glass ball.

BHUDDIST MONK
A boiling wind blowing void shifts the Monk’s hair over his forehead and he disappears.

CLERGYMAN
The Clergyman is transformed
shrinking skull, hands inflating to the size of footballs. Mechanical innards eat the robes off his back…

NARRATOR
A dead hand enters, stage left, and engraves the presidential Seal on his chest while paired taperecorders repeat the Oath of Office….

1ST TAPERECORDER
Do you solemnly swear…

2ND TAPERECORDER
I solemnly swear…

1ST TAPERECORDER
To uphold and defend…

2ND TAPERECORDER
To defoliate and upend…

1ST TAPERECORDER
This constitution…

2ND TAPERECORDER
This prostitution…

1ST TAPERECORDER
I so swear.

2ND TAPERECORDER
I so swear.

1ST TAPERECORDER
I now pronounce you…

2ND TAPERECORDER
I now denounce you…

1ST TAPERECORDER
president of these United…

NARRATOR
His face opens–Oppie’s and the Clergyman’s– opens– vacant–

OPPIE
“THANK YOU FOR ATTENDING THE WORLD OF INVESTMENT BANKERS’ MUSIC FESTIVAL!”

[END]