Aug 232020
 
Jul 162020
 



A play about the words and deeds of Revolutionary Hero Thomas Paine.

GREGG GLORY

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"...our honored flag... asks no monarch
           to support her stars...."

    --- Philip Freneau, 'On Mr. Paine's Rights of Man'


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Top^


THOMAS PAINE


In protestation of his time
He found the human mind divine,
Found the talk that made it up,
Spoke aloud, and would not jump.
"Clear words beget clear heads."
Clarity in life, clarity in death
Is the best man has to hope or dread.
In protestation of his time
Man completes the balance of his rhyme.

To rip at the savage face
To tear out the tyrant's heart
Was his only mellow wish, when once
He tottered at his infant start.
"Poetry's the soul in the hole
Of all our deluded union."
Never again to read in dread
What any briary tongue
Or lashed heart had said.

A pauper's son, a poor man's daughter
Live their fused lives upon the waters,
Bless the vision that lifts them in a trance
Beyond their haunted circumstance.
A steady voice, a glance like Fate's,
"All the million reductive deaths
Of a single soul in resistence
Find their measure, and their truth in Time
In the balance of a rhyme

Not otherwise."

Top^




SCENE ONE

[PAINE spins a globe outside of FRANKLIN's London office.
Books are scattered all over the floor.]

PAINE
Spin, spin!
Iron ring I am whirled within!
Arbitrary midget measure of my unconfining infinite!
A span of bands all flicked from flat
to this uniform globedness to ring my aching head
whose every thought is centered
on the latitudes you winningly bend.
Dear iron thing pinged from iron ground, rent
from flatness to the shape of Earth one man's brain intends,
you laurel my lauded humanity when
to my invented center and gravity you tend.
Spin, spin!
Those laws of nature that great minds reveal
may in yet greater imaginations strip repealed.
Only my blue eye (and my diamond eye within)
give credence to the luminous architecture you pretend,
flowing shined lines
through space and time
to end where they begin.
Chaplet-circlet of all the circumnavigated seas,
it is in my wide eye you thrive
and give me the image
my imagination divines,
plushly hover to deliver there, in picked increments
the measure that I had made back to me again.
Ah ha!
If cold-hearted Columbus knew you
through and through
I doubt that I'd be splayed here to beg
(an impertinent impatient menace to my own peace)
old Benny Franklin for his lettered word
to push and passport myself through one half of you
from the old drab world toiling here
to the Edenic new whom
that Italian's ballet-tighted stride
had mistakenly discovered. Meritorious maritime error!

[Inside FRANKLIN's office.]

MEMBER OF PARLIAMENT
There's too much talk of America for my comfort.

FRANKLIN
And not enough action for my satisfaction.

MEMBER OF PARLIAMENT
You know full well, Dr. Franklin, that your American
interests are represented in Parliament by your worrying
English brothers.

FRANKLIN
Yes. They worry our poor stag of freedom
to the poorhouse by their taxes.

MEMBER OF PARLIAMENT
Well, there's not exactly an exactness
in the extraction of your tithes, it is true,
but there is an approximate proxy of your solemn wants
figured in Parliament as near as our charter may permit.
Realistically, Benjamin, I don't see that changing any time soon.
This policy of ours of virtual representation serves
all our colonies around the mounted globe. Soon
the British flag-pole shall be her axis;
what you ask for is uneven, unfair,
and would knock our other more peaceful provinces
to rash action by its example.

FRANKLIN
But we are Englishmen like yourselves, and not
a conquered land. Surely that difference penetrates.
Our skins are as white as the flag's X-ing stripes.
We're blood and blood through and through.

MEMBER OF PARLIAMENT
Our wisest heads here at home have endorsed
the virtual representaion policy. And besides,
you are free enough in America.
What's the point of making trouble?

FRANKLIN
What's the point of being free?
We are virtually represented, you say.
And you say well. Would the King be as pleased
with us for nearly paying our taxes
and almost obeying his laws?

MEMBER OF PARLIAMENT
I have small doubt that it would be considered
a most treasonous rebellion.

FRANKLIN
A king is under an obligation to those
he proposes to rule, no less than those ruled
are obliged to him and to observe the laws
they make in common. You see my point.

MEMBER OF PARLIAMENT
And I shall take my leave. Proposes to rule?
He is our donned soveraign. These words of yours
deliver a treasonous treatise. And I, for one,
would not have my trunk separated from this crown I wear.

FRANKLIN
I spoke only, friend Terrence, as is my scientific habit:
in hyperbolic hypothesis alone. A junture of conjectures
conducted within the safe parenthesis apparatus
of our dear friendship, Terrence. I hope you do not
take me too amiss, sir, or ferry it too far astray
and deliver my words' import into the hellish harbor
of another's ears, who may be less disposed
to levy my enthusiam with his love.

MEMBER OF PARLIAMENT
Trust my silence, and my self-interest.
Goodnight, friend.

FRANKLIN
As benevolent friends let us always part
until these tight-stretched times tear us apart.

[MEMBER OF PARLIAMENT exits by far door.]

PAINE
Ah, Chris, expecting old India and getting America,
were you pissed at the switch
the whirling world had slipped you?
Ah, Chris, Chris, you knew, you knew, didn't you
that the whole world is in the mind
and no place other;
and of the world, and of that mind
I am the lonely citizen.

FRANKLIN  [Entering.]
A jake jenny will spin as pretty, son,
and you might even do
some more useful woolgathering then.

PAINE
Turn a profit or turn the world:
which majestic enterprise
do you choose to pursue?

FRANKLIN
Few revolutions ever rotate to a profit.
Those that do most often mis-aim their circles
and round on nothing worthy, or had too low
and ungolden a stock to start with, sir.

PAINE
Human happiness is ever the right and highest aim;
and doesn't that slap of happiness
demand an infinity of wish lived the minute
we experience the weird, willed, insistant rush of it
wired alive from the prison of skin?

FRANKLIN  [Laughs.]
The blank page in the annihilating brain?
Maybe. Sir, I don't believe we've had a proper introduction.
I'm....

PAINE
Propriety be damned! Perdition it!
Have all hell environ its vetted
shalls and shall-nots in walls of fire.
Propriety, manners, graces sociale, the plume
of grooming, and the pander of please-easements:
junk all to a rump-superstition
trying to tell me by poxed signs how to relate
in the uncreated minute
I share with my glorying fellow-man.

FRANKLIN
But what ever should I call you, sir? Mr. Blank?

PAINE
If I really gave a damn about that...

FRANKLIN
Even my pussycat purrs to his syllable. Right Rog?
Unnamed is nihilism, for we must name to know.

PAINE
Well, sir, Sir won't do for a start.
Neither Lord, nor Your Majesty, nor You Jackass,
which my ex was so pricker-burr fond of.
All too stratospheric for my loving muddiness;
and yet, to say honestly, not high enough
for my fired-high Babylon-in-the-sky desire, either, sir.
Sire... has a ring to it....

FRANKLIN
But... I sense a hesitation in this gestation.
Beasts and kings both sire offspring; it seems
a wide enough label by all accounts.

PAINE
Wide indeed. But inaccurate when applied to my amours;
all have ended without such tissuey issue, you see.

FRANKLIN
Perhaps I'll call you rootabaga. And perhaps,
like a ruminative root,
you could cull your tongue a minute
and raise a squalling brood
by its intermediate burial.

PAINE
Point taken. I'll laugh aghast at myself
and flap about gashed to uselessness
if you keep me in your wit's crossfire longer.

FRANKLIN
Point taken. I guess I must wait contented
in the bathing aftermath of your compliment
for you to spit out your alias.

PAINE
Honest Tom Paine, you may name me,
if you wish to follow my mother's custom
who had it, as she puts it, from my dire father.

FRANKLIN
Dire...?

PAINE
A grim man; internment improved him
(his only writerly quality, now that I think of it).
Prisons and genius are linked by locks
stronger and stranger than any heaven's Destiny.
And, well, he did save me from the Navy;
that blasted ship went all hands down and had to crawl
on their water-buried fingers to hell.

FRANKLIN
Pray tell.
And are you yourself a writer, sir, uhm, Tom?

PAINE
Given to scribbling. Blood and ink
charactering forth the teeming memes
of this spade's-worth of pink brain, and all that.

FRANKLIN
Well. This has been most amusing, but I'm afraid....


PAINE  [Looking around impaitiently.]
Now where in bloody beavered double hell
is that fat bastard Franklin? He's kept me
waiting here in his rump room hours now,
all afternoon the sun has blazed through those wavy panes,
and there's not a tract in his pick
I haven't raped over my spry eyes
a million times before, an annoying hoard
of dead words clapped between these reamed boards.
I myself am near as dusty, and near as dead.

FRANKLIN
Well then, Tom, let me be an Adam to your ignorance
here in my habitable Eden, and name myself:
Dr. Benjamin Franklin, at your service.

PAINE
Blimy. I never met
an ingenious fellow as fat as you;
usually, they're skinny as cadavers
and rude to boot.

FRANKLIN
You seem to fit like a snug glow into your own
indandescent description, like a wick
nipped into its tallow, Tom. As for me,
I've decided my girth should mirror, not mask
the chubby depths of my inner resources.

PAINE
A plummet-line down the bellybutton to the soul...

FRANKLIN
And there you've got my spiritual and intellectual measure.

PAINE
A veritable globe unto yourself, eh?

FRANKLIN
The ladies like a fellow of some substance.

PAINE  [Laughs.]
Well now you've turned the coinage upon its maker
and whacked the spitting image home with a vengeance;
my trim economy is disastered by your brutal wit.
Still, I've never met an opponent I haven't bested yet.

FRANKLIN  [Pouring.]
Scotch and soda?

PAINE
Ay.

FRANKLIN
Health, Peace, and Fraternity.

PAINE
To the survival of the ideal in the real.

FRANKLIN
An interesting toast.

PAINE
I always toast that. Nothing else exists
worth getting drunk about.

FRANKLIN
A champagne extreme, it seems to me.

PAINE
Life's lace and ashes, Doctor, roses and dung.
I like what I toast better than that flat
Quaker oat bread I was raised up on.

FRANKLIN
We're both Quakers, then.

PAINE
Civility, insistent peace (but not a any price),
a solemn or wondering longing for God, yes,
by those totem tenets shall I keep,
and expurgate the speakers from my picked text;
winos, mostly, more interested in ass-sniffing
civil authority than in living up
to the bold moral obligation to treat
each reaching individual as your soulful equal.
Such cowed cows!

FRANKLIN
An upright stance before both man and God;
and no superstition warps the stature of your bones.
Highly commendable in a man sent
to myself for commendation's stamp.

PAINE
I cannot take a compliment while I seek a favor.
I'll take this as a taste of your liquorish taint.

FRANKLIN
Squarely said. Do you have an ample sample
of your writing? A quillful will do withal.

PAINE
A sample pamphlet's on the table. Written on behalf
of the King's excise men, of which I was one
haranguing his Highness for a raise.

PAINE  [As  FRANKLIN reads.]
Maybe here in England we're a little bit clearer
who have less spavined freedom from the powdered Parliament
than our water-separated neighbors, and so I'll not relent
from tugging you a bit nearer health by my stitches,
which these bitching words you pull at
by your nickering lip in fastidious judgement, are.
America's a right yummy ripe prize
the mincing king in his house-robe has sworn to squeeze---
scouting the palace for yesterday's newspaper,
   his shoes a hurry
of velvet on velvet while his ministers mangle
the masterful quadrangle of his royal foreign policy;
But when he with his fey ringed hand, almost a glove
of golden mail it is so richly ringed, enrings to wring you
with every sort of constricting blockade and strangling tax
don't say that I didn't warn of choking, even until
I myself did croak! And then your theoretical, heretical,
unEuropean Britishness shan't stay his envious, pretty mitts
but more merely spike the dregs with a tough clump pulp,
soon enough swallowed as a single undissolved sweet
in his gargantuan majesty's gargantuan gullet.
You'll rebel, we see that plain and clear.
Now, you folks won't say as darn much, that's clear too.
But when the itching squeeze arrives,
most intelligent types on this pitted isle surmise
(and not without some sour pips of bitterness)
that the reaching King will stretch and find
an aching fist of hawthorn thorns adorning
his shilling-supple grip, and not a lazy goose
or pioneer-reared American turkey on the table
hankering to honk:
"Where'd ye like yer golden eggies, Majesty?"
nor any docile dove cooing full eagerly
and baring a plucked pink breast to put
a bit of neat meat on his heavily buttered table.

FRANKLIN
An awful willful quillful.

PAINE
For a mind to hear its thoughts,
               they must be said:
and no one's howled it loud enough before:
my human loves move and near compel me
to root and roar in ramping brashness for your cause,
which, even if you don't see what that is as yet,
yet still it must be shouted about, and louder shouted:
for America, for Progress, for Humanity and me:
listen, my bespectacled aquaintence: INDEPENDENCY!

FRANKLIN  [Shaking paper.]
Quite a paean to procure a pittance, Paine.
A love-libretto to Liberty that might inspire a riot.

PAINE
The drug of love never slavvered me to much of a lather---
but Liberty!--- Well, I'm her most adoring whore.

FRANKLIN
I'll write out a note. Take ship with this
and find a printer's apprenticeship
at harbor for you in my beloved, brotherly
big-time backwater, Philosophical Philadephia.
Here's my impress. Whomever you deliver it to
will know its trueness in that colonial city.
Come. Take it.

PAINE
Thanks!

[PAINE exits. Outside office door.]

PAINE
No reason for me to keep middle-aging in England;
to woodlands wild I hie,
and to pastures new retire my ire!

[PAINE begins to whistle, then sings.]

PAINE
    Cap'n William Death was of bitter worth
    And he sailed aboard the Terrible;
    A crow their flapping emblem was
    And flamed down to the bitter seas.
    For defeat came blowing in French Vengee's sail
    Under clouds confused as a bruise:
    O the dead men's storm-breath was terrible
    Under clouds confused as a bruise.

    O Cap'n Death was of bitter worth
    For when the weather and cannons were wroth
    He sent his unpaid men ten fathoms down
    To collect their coral crowns.
    Beside their chattering skeletons goes,
    Serene as if in the sky,
    The burning bodkin of Ol' John Crow
    Who fluttered high but now's below.

    Black brother Crow's flap warns us all:
    For as ye rise, so must ye fall.
    Dead men's storm-breath blows foul and used
    Under clouds confused as a bruise.

Now to America I wing,
Of America I must sing.


Top^






SCENE TWO

[PAINE enters with a fresh copy of the Pennsylvania Gazette.]

PAINE
All language takes some stain of ill or good
from the character of the man that yaps it.
In my own zone of rights I write and knight reality,
and kneel to no mental soveriegn but the muse imagination
I rum-reelingly pursue. Come, blood-potent rum,
and serve the prophetic office of a tired Tiresian tit,
reveal to me in this minute's less some more consuming All.
Come! attendant angel or ministering harlequin
to the splay water-palace of my mighty-tided heart!
Overwhelming Fate's one gospel of 'Obey,' spill to my glum gullet
and trash the fabulous furies' fang-gaped destruction, come
and in my pleasant dreaming take up a torching seat,
for you in molding fire all shall choir 'I am free!'
and I shall spatter out the language to make that freedom ring.
....Ah! Argh-oh how I am spun to dumbness
in this walling world that prisions me!
Here evil ministers jangle unreachable keys of speech,
deny me paper and shout down my rising voice;
through the dawn-dashed bars they hack at my words
and unstitch my life-lexicon to mere mumbles.
Witness well their degredation of-- of themselves!
They steal my speech and claim my saying as their own,
hollowing out its virture by their rotten lives.
How shall my hard-held honor this dishonor sustain?
How renounce this attack on the very sound
of myself, the very soul of my talking enterprise?
Prised apart and pitted empty, my words are spit-spattered
away from their durance-resistant usefulness
and let to loll unacknowledge in the gutter
of common discourse. My words! A told tool
I would not trade away for the nothings
so plangently proffered me by nothings.
I walk and talk these Philadelphia Gazette steps,
round-robining all day all the old news-of-the-day
with these current estimables, a smashing
cash crop of the red-nosed best of America,
merchants and others with enough free time
to pay their way to freethinking like me!
Here's the meritocracy, paying enough
to buy the public opinion away from those
who tax it royally to their blue-blooded side.
Pennies well spent! Their wary copper
buys golden souls that would offer themselves for lead---
and some day shall--- some day soon, too soon,
mark my history-honest words. I'll tell a tale  [Shakes paper.]
will kill some men.... Damn, the things I say!
Half the time I don't know why I say 'em;
half the time they're nothing but all that I've got.
What will my penny-a-day words pay me?
Let my ripping talk unstitch this trans-oceanic union;
it is a challenge to roll a world on one's tongue, non?
My loves have disappointed, and my eyes all are maimed
to see that kniving inhumanity until they are too much cut
to look a moment longer dry, and must perforce
weep out a ruin of pure blood on the blood they see.
I feel all a bear, and would tear a thing apart.
Here's the coffehouse where all the future stife and rule
of our not-yet-nation is avidly debated, and yet
through some causeless niceness is left to languish unpursued.
The noble word finds not it noble counterpart
in honorable action, and all lies undone;
we speak and spat of self-governance, who have none.

[Enter FRANKLIN.]

PAINE
Come, old tongue, let's talk a new union
into its existence by the brashness of our wish.

FRANKLIN
Paine! Paine!

PAINE
In the ass. In the ass. I know, I know.

FRANKLIN
Oh, really now Thomas, I was just wondering
how you were getting along here in the city
of brotherly love. Not quite the debate pit
you're used to.

PAINE
Much more so actually. Many fine talks indeed.
But if you mean, by how I am, how goes the cause
of insect-winged locust Liberty (how many years
since Athens first heard the wings!) well then, I must say
the locust is bursting through the ground in Concord
and Lexington; just yesterday as a matter of fact.


FRANKLIN
What in heaven's name do you mean, man?

PAINE
Read it in the Gazette, and you'll see soon enough.

FRANKLIN
Have some shocks in store for us?

PAINE
Just honesty, Franklin. A common enough trait.

FRANKLIN
If you say so. I'm on my way to our coffeehouse.

PAINE
Ah, yes, where all you continentals discuss everything.
I think I'll join you.

FRANKLIN
Here we are.

PAINE
In, in! What're you waiting for?

FRANKLIN
Anxious as a slaver with his unsold load of darkies!
After you.


Top^






SCENE THREE

[PAINE and FRANKLIN enter the coffeehouse.]

ALL  [Variously.]
Benjamin! Franklin!

FRANKLIN
Popular as ever, aren't you Thomas.

PAINE
Gentlemen! The continent has shouted out loud
for Liberty, and strikes at the chains that bear away
our taxes and our freedoms. And the first heart-blow
has landed in Massachussetts!

ALL
[There is a general outcry at this news.]

DICKENSON
The man's a tear-sheet specialist.

PAINE
There's a lady or two who might attest to it.

DICKENSON
His news is no news.

PAINE
Which then must be good news too.

DICKENSON
Would you trade wits with me?

PAINE
I'd not have your wits with a pound of gold.

DICKENSON
And if you had 10,000 pounds you could not buy one of them.

PAINE
No, for there's not one of them to be found.


JEFFERSON
Of all the noise and bother, man, spit it out!
What've you got under your tri-corner?

PAINE
Hold your horrors, and your tipsy cups contain
in steady hands while I my steady tale relate.
Listen to me, breathe all silent, and follow
on subtle steeds of imagination while I ride
to a distant dark that's yet too near our hearts.
No tall tale do I trip in here to you to tell,
all grenadier and gnash, no not so tall as they are,
nor as viper sharp as a Redcoat snaps, all brass
and splash and flash, but merely a minor story simply told
in amiable note, of small acts and large hearts
where a simple standing steady has effected
what all the bravado of words never could.
Men of the hour? No, not so grand as that,
but of the minute? Yes, they'll
          stretch to that extent
and be remembered as they have named themselves:
Minute Men.

RANDOLPH
Isn't that the Massachusetts militia?
Those old groaning fellas that put
their earlier steel to riotous trial
against raping Indian raids and those
French incursions of years ago?

ADAMS
Yes. And they've kept up their drumbeat,
the ancients,-- and the youngbloods beside 'em,--
putting away powder and blasting balls against the day.
They weekly drill their assembly on the town green
"at a minute's notice," as they so baldly claim.

JEFFERSON
And the Sons of Liberty all call from there,
their terrorist pranks and wild high times
making the ruinous incursion of the Brits
a laughing matter as much as anything else.

ADAMS
I swallowed all my light laughter the last time
they rifled through my havoced house in Boston,
and now grind all my guffaws to grist.

PAINE
While we all dreamed headlong on our pillows
in pleasant Philadelphia yestereve, and of shooting
heard only the hooting of the rustled town owl
or the low growling of a dropped locked-box
knocking the cobbles, men awake in Lexington
were laying about their harrassed ears with fast hands
to stopper-up the deadly bombast of British lead.
But wait! I do not want to jump the story,
confusing conclusion and lead, spiking titles
with the weedy inference of an afterword,
but shall lay instead this narration in one row only
that corn shall grow by corn in serried succession
and we all reap its meaning at once.
Well you know that Concord is the provisioning-house
of precious gunpowder and hard-caught musketballs
for our fierce Northern friends in liberty
who look to disengage the English Gage
from our Boston's harbor where he's sunk at anchor,
bottoming out our hopes of independency.
Well, that Gage last night had aweighed anchor
and shoved his dumb humpers into longman rowboats
to swish the blue inch on our maps
from Boston proper to the peaceful Back Bay swamps
(see page two of your Pennsylvania Gazettes, gent'men),...

[The assembled company all snap thier papers open to page two.]

PAINE
...his gross ranks breathing heavy in their bishops' hats
and tack pants, faces moony-garish and powdered,
squeezed cheeks carmined to set a raucauous red
to the parade red of their dandy red coats,
moved in uneasy union against the giving mush of marsh,
sucking away the calm silence of the night
with each bootblack boot's approaching gasp.
Who among them, in their defensive tenseness,
hunched into the long round hour before dawn,
regretted their intention to leave defenseless
their outback colonial charges by destruction
of Concord's hidden charges? Who among them knew
that in quiet Lexington lay a fuse to ignite the night
and out-firework all the stars that shined on them?

ADAMS  [To FRANKLIN.]
The garrison's active; this is a solemn business now.

PAINE
They approached the town with the unwiped mud
still clinging guilty on their soles. And then,
on the minute, and at the trial telling of a bell
a racing Paul Revere, pacing Prescott and daring Dawes
set clanging at the redcoats' coming on,
some few men assembled on the town green
exchanging nervous grins and greetings
cheated of their normal charm and pleasure.
And as those few stood shouldering difficult guns
a reasserted quiet fell from an empty sky
from which, it seemed, God's face had turned aside.
And then those brave few heard a heartless haloo
ranting anarchic through the rumoring wood
and the soul of each man-at-ease went bell-wild,
ringing each steady steeple to splinters, or nearly,
and yet each man still stood his minute stilly
to look on coming ruin with the same eyes they used for love.
Useless monks spend their closeted lives in sackcloth
righting their minds for the divine, but those 80-odd
knew more of all of God, and what God might
helpfully trumpet down to our skunking circumstance
than a million such widowers of miracle,
prayering self-abasers crooning to high heaven
for just one more fix of some diviner substance.
White heaven was in their mustered hearts, which red-eyed
Redcoats marched from the scarlet sea to bleed
into a single lake of blood.
These Minute Men, assembled mixed upon the green
whereby a red flood of near-enemy troops
must pass and parade, mustered softly in quiet pre-dawn,
waiting for the landscape to rouge aroused
           with their future. All alert,
and steady-still as ever their starting hearts
might make them, they heard the trooping song:
     Sam Adams and damn'd Hancock
     We'll take the bunch and clap the lock!
     And watch our leaderless colonials scurry
     Back to our royal order-- in a hurry!
     Every Englishman cry ho! Ho!
     We are the law where'er we go!
     No more talk of rights and shit
     When Sam Adams and damn'd Hancock are in the pit!

DICKENSON
How was the conduct of the troops? Did they
brandish anger, or seek simply to keep the peace?
How lawful was their goal?

ADAMS
Tell us a story we can live within. My taste
is not for such a bloody tartness.

PAINE
I'll sharpen your ardors to the spur
with the whetstone of my story, and nag to neighing
our native horse's sleepsome flanks until they hang
in bloody flags of victory!

DICKENSON
Yet, how was the conduct of the troops?

PAINE  [Pointedly ignoring  DICKENSON.]
Maximum courage mustered then!
Eyes straight, backs clicked, men sixteen to sixty
who knew that their stiffness here would put
a backbone in their new-made American nation
stood steady and at ready when those Redcoats
bled into their sight. Old Jonas Parker,
spavined captain of the ticking Minutes
kept his roll-call of boys at regiment-ready
against the bright influx of Major Pitcairn and his men,
neither giving offense, nor yet bending his neck
to the black boot of wrong law; steady
for themselves more than against the troops.
"Ye devils! Ye rebels! Lay down your dour arms
and disperse! Space to your waste acres!
This is Britain, and I am Britain's hand,
you the smacked rump of incivility," cried Pitcairn,
and Lexington's men, outnumbered two or three to one,
did not pretend to obey his voice, but waited
with civil incivility in their paitient ranks
until they heard good old Jonas Parker call "Dis-
missed!" and, patting each shoulder as he spoke,
bade his men each one to "Go on home, son,"
with a "We've taken our stand for today, friend,"
or "no God's peace'll we break this day,
nor yet obey the slimy blackguard limping by."
Tis a point easily missed, but vital:
no deadly offense was taken, nor none given
as our men walked slowly toward their homes and beds
or out to reap private fields, arms shouldered
and not thrown down, a rifle each by their ears,
and no offence given, but all a slow obeyance
of their own chosen man, Old Jonas, and none other.
And then it came! The glory of this story!
An empty shot snapped apart the infant dawn.
Calamity! Heart-wrench! Confusion! Death's
hovering covenant that seals all pasts and
pollutes all futures with its bloody baptismal
made his harrowing entrance upon the scene of retreat
and came raining vengeful down on that innocent crowd;
none knew the source of that discordant noise,
all were witness to the shrapnel result of it.
Bodies crowned the common ground; gaped corpses,
chipped limbs, shouts, distortions imposed by force,
wild, angry, bitten faces, lightning arms,
trigger clicks, astonished blasts, after-effects
of numbing thunder, displacement of peace, fists
ramming renewed shot into a musket there, beside
a dead friend's final look or dying stranger's howl,
the British line all a pall of gunsmoke
as if in angel's wings they were enshrouded.
A deadly start has this adventure of the heart.
Let none shrink from it! Our men fell there
blanketed by defeat, and swaled to their final home.

ALL
[Various expostulations.]

RANDOLPH
Do my ears hear truth, and that
from the long-faced scoundel Paine?

PAINE
My tongue does bear a true and fruitful report.

RANDOLPH
Fruitful is it? And bloody hell shall be
our orchard. Your words grow from a cannon-mouth.

ISIAH
Yes. We shall make a strange fruit a hanging
from a gallows-tree.

PAINE  [Throwing his gazette.]
You can read about our eventual victory that day
on the overleaf.

ADAMS
Victory?

PAINE
The British marched on to Concord, destroyed
some spoil of goods, a trifle of shovels, and some other
warlike items, and were greeted shortly after
by some hundreds of our "armed farmers."

ADAMS
And they fled Concord?

PAINE
And with a heavy cost. Two-hundred sixty-three
British were picked off by our harrassing fire
between wronged Concord and their Boston barracks.

ADAMS
And how many lost we?

JEFFERSON  [Reading.]
Forty-nine.

ADAMS
It's a miracle. Against crack troops....

JEFFERSON
And you think we can carry this fight
against the King?

PAINE
Who can know what is to be? I see not;
although my hopes rise with your honors.

DICKENSON
Yet how was the conduct of the troops; did they seek
a lawful goal or no?

PAINE
Their conduct was wounded,
their argument was death, and their goal
our sacred Liberty.

RANDOLPH
I don't know if I've the stomach to digest this talk.

PAINE
Have you a stomach then to eat the King's balls?
For it is your self-assurance of free days
that he cuts up on a golden platter you have paid for
and then feeds to you.

RANDOLPH
We are all free Englishmen here.

ADAMS
The Parliamentary system of government
is the best in the world. Peers speak
clearly to their causes and interests, and often

against the king. Are we without redress in this?
Surely our safety clamors somewhat in their mouths.

RUSH
Was it to the cause of our safety and future
that British muskets clamored at dead Lexington,
as Paine here reports?

ADAMS
I don't rightly know....

PAINE
Every evil law penned and passed against our interests
sped to our shores from that paid den the Parliament.
Oh, they parled our parleyed desires into their purses;
there's not a man among 'em who wouldn't sell
our birthrights to their bidders for one shelled-out
shilling! A damned evil bunch, I say!

FRANKLIN
Overstating the case, perhaps, but this notion
of virtual representation hardly seems to hold water.
Don't you agree Adams?

ADAMS
I do. To say that our rights and problems
are under the care of those who live in England
who have similar rights and problems, is the same
as being in England and voting for members of Parliament
ourselves, is well, as my Dad says, a stretcher.

PAINE
Virtual representation is actual tyranny!

ADAMS
Well, things are not so desperate as all that.

PAINE
Intolerable!

FRANKLIN
All our honest merchantmen have been hard hit
by these recent taxations and exactions,
these duly lawful Acts of Parliament.

PAINE
These Intolerable Acts impose the King's misrule.

ADAMS
The Parliament is the best system of government
yet devised by mankind.

FRANKLIN
Surely, though, not perfect.

ADAMS
Nothing is as perfection would have it.

PAINE
Let us take our chances as they spasm at us!
Democracy's a caffeinated wind in our choiring quarter;
let's let an able nerve convince arms to move
and not a tongue alone. Our dearest object
forever is and must remain: INDEPENDENCY!

DICKENSON
Revolt! Treason! It's death for us all by your say-so.
It's not for honorable English boys, as I swear
we are all, to knock so glimmering a thing
as a royal crown into rabble-democratic dusts.

RANDOLPH
I am not ready to dissolve into revolution yet.

PAINE
Resolve, I think you mean, for all's now certain
that had an airy unrealness to it before.

ADAMS
But what method of independence do you propose
beyond the bloody dawn of anarchy? How can these colonies
hold together for a common purpose without a common center.
This is what the living symbol of a monarch provides.

RANDOLPH
He's the father, we his children. Let's let
our loyalty prove as royal as our parentage.

PAINE
That fucking rex-hex is a veritable Saturn of paternity.
He eats his spawn in the gross pleasure of his table.
All monarchy is crime, and steals its air of authority
from the soveraignty of the common people, who can only
consent to be ruled. That consent denied, all is crime.
We have no voice in Parliament, yet must obey their laws.
Gentlemen, help! Are your reasons so impaired
you see not your chains? Am I not to see
where I stand on earth, and make conjecture
of my future state from a concern of self?

DICKENSON
Is not our soveriegn our source of soveriegnty?

RANDOLPH
To kill a king is no good work for those
born beneath the throne.

PAINE
Kill a king? O to crush a dirty worm
is every infected party's part. To cough oneself to health
the irretreivable right of every sick man
in protesting protection of his natural vigor.
And tyranny is a foriegn ill indeed. No thing for men
on this untried continent and infinite land, all future
from our shores past green-infinite mountains, to... where?
We cannot see to the far end of this paradise, sirs!
And would you be the wasp-coated servingmen
to dish it up as if it were a new sherbert
to midget empery's appetite? O tell me you would not
docilily serve such self-serving vanity!
What faces shall we wear so that our souls
start not back appalled? Look to India
if you would see how the King will treat us
by slavish domination: sell us to a corporation
for eons of unendurable lackey-work.
Under the elephant's stupid foot! Not a place
for me, at least; I'll resign my part on earth
before I'd crimp my free white neck
beneath such a ton of gross fat greyness.

FRANKLIN
And killing the king was never seen by me
as necessary to assure our own liberty.

PAINE
Even a moronic ox knows that once he's thrown his yoke
he needn't trample out his guide-man to stay ramping free!

DICKENSON
A moronic ox!

PAINE
He eats his children! Lexington was a snack, and he's
a starving robber defending his filtched appetite.
What could be clearer?

FRANKLIN
An old man gnawing on his pile of bones.

PAINE
Thirteen piles of bones, make no mistake!

FRANKLIN
A strong image, Paine.

ADAMS
A painful one. Do display more taste, Thomas.

RANDOLPH
The king has promised to hear our late sent
ambassador with his good ear, and overview
all our penned petitions with a nearer eye.

PAINE
That eye of his put out Concord in the dark;
how shall it see honest parlance in its home-hole?
Of his cheap, deaf ear----

ADAMS
Paine, Paine, Paine, Paine, there is no
easy touch of pleasure in this tough talk.

PAINE
If it is in the hard touch of truth to hurt you
take the wound stoutly, and put into your endurance
conviction to hold those bruises honorable.
The pain we take for the convictions our best mind
judges right enhances the goodness of their ends,
and with this right end in view the intermission
transmutes itself to a bearable necessity.
Pleasure herself is a sort of raunchy taunt
when dandled from a master's open toy-box, and not
earned by a more decent labor of our brows and backs.
A Dad's treat to trick his ranting child
to a returning calmness, and then an ignorant sleep.
But pain, if deep enough applied, can hack at lies
and leave us without those false comforters
or with none but that rough comfort-burr of truth:
on such a thorny ground I would barefoot go
and discount the cheap tinsel promises we have now.

[PAINE exits.]

RANDOLPH
Can we come to no agreement or cordial compromise
on these impending matters?

RUSH
And what of the dead at Lexington and Concord?

JEFFERSON
I wonder if they'd be pleased to know they died
in the spirit of compromise.

[JEFFERSON exits.]

DICKENSON
Independency! Really!

FRANKLIN
Our old lives lie extinguished by a fiery word.

RANDOLPH
Shall we make adventure with all our lives and loves,
even unto the death, upon the thin subsistance
of a word?

ADAMS
Let us make our banqueting hearts eager to eat up
the roaring employment of our days ahead.

[PAINE and JEFFERSON outside collide with a PASSERBY.]

PASSERBY
What do we have here? What's this?

JEFFERSON  [With a warning note in his speech.]
Paine....

PAINE  [Blissfully ignoring him.]
A moment, my friend, when speech and circumstance
might intersect, and the right word tell all.

JEFFERSON
Well. Now independence is on the tongue.

PAINE
Soon it shall be in every farmer's hand
and each rough-and-ready plow-black hand
shall be flexed alive against the tyrant-ranting King!

JEFFERSON
Well, I don't think everyone's exactly convinced yet.


PAINE
Oh, but where the able tongue purloins the sense
long enough for uneasy conscience to make
its essence's slippery entrance, why then
how long laggard will the deciding mind remain behind
that sets its sharp fence of reasonings against
any backward step? This trined tongue of intent
but once insinuated into the clear air here
where our most honest thinking occurs
overturns an eon of inherited predjudice
and flatters us to action.

JEFFERSON
Revolution occurs first in the minds of the people.

PAINE
And words alone may make the mind revolt!

JEFFERSON
Total treason.

PAINE
Common sense.

JEFFERSON
Paine....

PAINE
Are you ready for the revolution?


Top^






SCENE FOUR

[The Rush household. PAINE is hunched over an apparatus, intently.
RUSH is at a second table.]

PAINE
Back when I took the book at the Headstrong Club,
obnoxiously orating on my dual theme
of free and freer, I never thought I'd race to a Rush
who collapsed history's wide actions to his narrow minute
and then decided to make that pressured minute EXPLODE!
Oh ho! I've homed in on the Homer I adore,
into American image has the Greek passion passed surpassingly,
willful Iliad, all fight and farce; that was the book
the most ornery, obstinate talker packed back home
from our rum club there in pederasted England.
How can you hear a man's ideas clear
when all he want's is you to tiddle his slumming bum?
Here the air's freer, even the gal-pals I've got
would sooner nail me for my abolitionist views,
and hear them articulated through and through,
than dwell adored in the moony blues of my open eyes.
They turn my ocean of appeal into a puddled pond
of "whys" and "why nots"--- defending deafeningly--
and deftly!-- each of their own articulate points
with finnicky pricks as razor-exact as any man put forth.
Rush! Rush! That vile white thing, spin it here.

RUSH
I've measured it to the grain, Thomas.

PAINE
Against the grain were better service in our cause.

RUSH
I've gotten enough splinters trying to get this damned...

[PAINE lights a short dry rush upon a tallow and inches it towards
 the apparatus.]

PAINE
And now...

[A loud blast, fire and light stains them. BETTY rushes in, with
 needlepoint.]

PAINE
Ha ha!

RUSH
We need to run a confirmation trial.

BETTY
What is all this noise? You and your songs, Mr. Paine, really!

PAINE
Music it is dear lady; the potent pop
of your own soma-dose of freedom, madam.

RUSH
Betty, you'll never guess. We've probably got
a home-source of gunpowder to gag the gaggle of Brits
clipper-shipped to liberty-clipping port
in old New York.

PAINE
A practical means of resistance.

BETTY
Resistance? Oh, like that slow glow
that goes along a spiral wire
because its fighting the shock-circuit of electricity,
like Dr. Franklin showed us that one time.

RUSH
Uh, yeah, I guess so!

BETTY
Nice. That's got some potent potential for that handsome,
non-spurious, supposed future you reference so sweetly,
I suppose. Maybe my granddaughters in that then
will reel alive in the freedoms that you scribe, Mr. Paine.

PAINE
Miss Rush, your brother and I have been systematically
eliminating the apparent obstacles to the inevitable
separation of the United States, if I may so term it,
and heather-buried England. That is all.

RUSH
I'll be damned-- uh, pardon me sis, if that ain't ALL.

BETTY
And do you think this swivel-switch from hitched
to ditched and unhitched inevitable, too, Benny-boy?

PAINE
I'll make my glad-handed geopolitical appeal:
The interests of two such mighty continents cannot go
forever together. Nature's stitching plates pull apart
all such useless causes in havoc and catastrophe.

RUSH
Volcanoes and earthquakes are the makings of such
opposite energies; their spumed fumes increase the splendor
of our sunsets years after such upsets, and that's a sign.

BETTY
So now you believe in signs, brother, whose medical studies
seek to have the physician's hand rain tender cure
upon itself, opposite the stupid superstitions
back-land indians chant and leech-hacks quack at the corner?

PAINE
The coming hail that'll separate us and England
shall be in a maiden's mittened mit minted in a trice,
a housewifely confection of saltpeter, etc.
playing the displayed hand of raging nature
on the timescale of one human mind's design.

BETTY
And how will you pay for your halo, Mr. Paine?

PAINE
In bliss increments, and laughing all the way.
How, dear Miss Rush, will you dividend your sorrow?
No thing in nature is sad that follows
and fellows its natural qualities.

[PAINE hunches back over the apparatus as BETTY and RUSH talk.]

RUSH
Let's pick unlocked snoring Pandora's
sweet locked box.

BETTY
         Would you midwife chaos
out of so infolded a coffer?

RUSH
And stand a panting paterfamilias to a punchy Paine?
For shame-- if I would not!


BETTY
Hmmm.

RUSH
Sweet sister; think of how all the world would unfurl
in that stolen moment's triumphant freedom.

BETTY
Hmmm.

RUSH
The blood of Concord is on our souls!

BETTY
The colonies in congress assembled have not yet
resolved for independence. Indeed, they seem more willing
to barter back King George's oppressions
for some few tax concessions and call it victory.

RUSH
After the story Paine told everyone today, you wouldn't
talk like that, sis. If you had heard it, felt it.

BETTY
Would you rush to war all alone
my imploring little brother?

RUSH
I'll race to it!

BETTY
In childhood you were ever an utter terror
and leapt to grow up to my mark upon the doorjamb,
crying, "I'll be bigger than Betty, ever!"
As, indeed, now you are. And I had washed you
in the cradle, and given you all my light-touched cares,
and tended to you every way-- no matter!
You still would raise up your eye at me
and say, a very presumptuous seven then,
"You are but a woman; I will be a man,"
as if that made all the difference.
As, indeed, it has. For you outpace me every way
in the world's affairs, and take the stick
to idiocy, where I may merely, indeed, I must
creep contented to crosshatch stitch my sayings
and put all of my wry commentary, all the luster
and insight of my rich story and view-point
into needle-pointed pillows for your big feet
that have battered back home at a flat run
from high deeds indeed, wherein (or where-out, rather)
I had been by my sex excluded.

RUSH
But you are a woman, sister, and all
the revolutions of the earth cannot turn
that fact about. What do you think of him?

BETTY
He's a rude man, and a strange.

RUSH
He's a great man, and right when all of an age
lavishes itself in wrong opinions.

BETTY
A kingly man.

RUSH
Don't say that, or he himself will blow
before ever another report of powder sounds.

BETTY
Do you not now note how that he hears us not,
but is all by his fluid mind engaged awash
in the high-tide flooding of his destructive pulse
whereby he sees a world engulfed; and yet he sings,
and that not humbly and to himself, but loud
and tunelessly. Has that hanging face of his
ever tied on a smile that was not a one
tried out in high irony, a sort of victor's ribbon
of sly teeth grinning his awkward opponent down?

RUSH
There is something in a man's part to love
that which sparks some friction in its giving,
and thereby's not too slickly conquered.

BETTY
Indeed, he is a great contrarian,
and takes it as his pleasure to be opposed.

RUSH
And yet he'll answer you point by point in argument,
broadsword aside his million rapiers how you will.

[RUSH hands PAINE something for the experiment.]

BETTY  [Aside.]
I'll give his wits a trial, and spot out
the color of his cholor with my brightness.

PAINE
Thank you, Rush. There. Now we must wait a minute.
Now, what were we discussing?

BETTY
Why men must make war on their common sense.

RUSH
Like that soused Davy Rittenhouse who failed to perfect
his skyward-aching inch of telescope from his couch?

BETTY
His Orrery accomplished the opposite,
downing downy heaven to the ground.

RUSH
You can peer at the Plieades from a squatted perch
and still reach pleadless your two finger's-worth.

PAINE
Say, rather, that he and I raise man into his sphere,
and there see celestial fire. For man's all vision,
a heavenly eye widowed to the earth,
an interplanetary planetarium of one.

BETTY
And what of India, Mr. Paine, what vision operates
to manacle that subcontinent in so white a vise?

RUSH
Everyone knows that its simply appalling over there,
all lice and infection, and worse, and more;
this sick world itself has how many untreated sores.

PAINE
Let's get black Sam in on this one: Sam!
Samuel Lemuel, alert, arrive, at once, speed,
hoist aboard, hop up, jump the gun, jam with us,
spike the volley man, and get your ass in here!

[SAMUEL enters, stands in solemn silence by the door.]

PAINE
Listen.

BETTY
Again, what do you think of the British errancy
in India, Mr. Paine? Is it an experiment
in increased slavery-efficiency, the turn
of mankind on man, a lesson in whips
and a pungent moral on productivity,
sprung all awry and a-wrong, or is it a thing
more simply evil in its derivations?


RUSH
They really do clobber those people over there
something awful; the stories that pour from there.

PAINE
Is it really much worse than the charmless oppression
a moody husband may in law dagger upon his wife?

RUSH
The white Rajah last month put twenty men to death
for disappointing his wife at her afternoon tea-taking.
The relatives of the dead men were hard-put
to pay their burial fees, since before killing them
the white Raj had fined each man the sum total
of his back wages to purchase the repair of his wife's
"injured tranquility." Can you imagine?

BETTY
Don't have to, quite obviously.

PAINE
No more barbarous analog of man's inhumanity to man
do I know to shout about.

BETTY
Is it the worst I've heard, or felt on my flinching skin?
I couldn't honestly say.

PAINE
To honestly say: it's such a treasure.

BETTY
Wifely obeying, sisterly sashaying,
is there not to be more of me than the female means
to some redoubtable, spouting male end?

RUSH
Sin, sin; to so self-slay and self-say so.

BETTY
And yet I'll still be the one to cook up
the skunking gunpowder at home, so you wild boys
can be out and shooting off your guns. Hmmm.

RUSH
Why don't you write it up, Paine? Put out plainly
why American and Britain should part ways?

PAINE
Perhaps I'll start. I foresee a day
when the tripartite freedoms of 1), America from Britain,
2) blacks from the whites, and 3) women from
the scourging and scouring positions, will occur.
A good day. Let's purge the scourged. Why can't
the spastic rest of humanity see as me, and know
the limitation on the freedom of one consciousness
claps chains about the rest? Severe delimitations
of the honey of one-one-one-i-oneness. Why the output
of every nation would double on the morrow
if every slave hand and female back could see
an honorable profit in their own actions,
ain't that plain?

RUSH
Sounds like common sense to me.

PAINE
Common Sense. A good, solid Scot's title.

BETTY
You're an alarmist. Always shouting wolf
when most folks don't feel that bad off.
It's a comfort-level thing, and not much else.
This tissue of issues tears to nothing
when pressed to the pins of daily affairs.
This talk and bluster, what's it ever accomplished?

PAINE
Then let's be precipitate! I'll call all the hail
aghast from heaven onto our current crop of snotty
not-problems, and crush the grain until all's level!
An Alarmist? Yes, I like it. Alaruum!!
Unshell the clarion bells in carillion tones,
each note echo-honing on its brother tone-- oh ho
what a mastery of symphony would America then be!


BETTY
You want to be under the thumb screaming bloody
murder awhile, then you'll see-- most folks, well,
if they're not in hell with you, they don't
give a damn. When you're in a coma long enough
you get inured to the hurt. Worse thing you can do,
sometimes, is raise the hopes of the injured.

PAINE
Well, Samuel, you've been silent as Pylades
and cool as a Pharaoh;
ywhat's your take on this?

SAMUEL
Seem Mis Betty got de view o' de oppressed.

RUSH
True enough.

SAMUEL
Ain't no easy thing living out in dese times
gots everything of yourself shackled to another
his words switching you every way which and back
running your life around an' no respite
no water-break on dem dere hot backbreakin' days.
Over your own shoulder go your eyes, instead of front,
to see what the future got in store for you
at the mad hands of another, no wife-hands there,
no chil' touchin' a knee you can keep, no folks
or other love-thought guiding the master's hand
or tempering dat man's any act; damn no humanity in dem things
got all twisted about some who-knows-how!
Your eyes all lookin' and no sass passable
out ov your mouth no matter: damn, the things I give
jest ta say my mind right out once afore I died.

[PAINE has been busily re-doing the experiment.
A loud blast, fire and light stains him.]

PAINE
Rush, our hypothesis is uncannily and without con, confirmed!
We've got the unlocking formula for cheap gunpowder
sifted from shelf-available ingedients! O pretty Betty
and damned Samuel-- you'll run free and rack the world with cries
of all-ecsatic exultation unassailed soon enough!







SCENE FIVE


[PAINE sits composing Common Sense. He is drinking steadily.]

PAINE
A searing halo-scab crusts my forehead;
I do not know how to make my imaginings real.
Not God, but my own luminous mind has brought me here,
a shuttle of empty light over tar-dark waters.
How intemperate is this life's little tempest that
convulses the scarring rictus of my neighbors' hearts?
I paddled the black Atlantic on my sheer wings to say the one
right word that will flame this marsh-gas bay
of waiting rebellion into the manifesting Heaven
    my vivifying vision begets.
Destruction and creation are chopped from but one block:
the diamond iceberg of imagination is my worker's pick
I pick and choose with, editing the mired files of reality.
It chimes and rings against-- against I know not what, but yet
it rings-- oh-- it is against itself it rings the hardest,
chimes and rings with a futile fury, as if
it burned light to so strike itself and be thus made
illuminable. And I am a charitable, black matchstick demon
chained to the whirling mill-wheel of this work,
striking and striking in the blinding brightness of the Pit.
Oh, well, I know not how well I am, or yet
how well I may be; there's a soapy hope, shall I grab it
merely to have it slither from my gripping?
Each hour's a blinked link in Life's gold chain:
we demand our days be daisies and link them in vain.
Every boiling colony seethes hissing against the king;
his trans-Atlantic scepter rusts in the salt distance.
Wild opinion everywhere is corrosive against this tyranny,
this thing mouthing royal order and tradition
against a fraying wind. So this is how my magic mist of Liberty
begins its insinuations: in the libelous acid-bath
of naysaying complaint. Well, you never know what
you want until, like a baby denied its nipple,
its tickled from you. Sore feet pay the cobbler, as they say.
How will the common people my Common Sense ingest?
History has its tides, yet I'll surf the crest
on my hand-made revolution for the masses, by the mass!
I'll be the first to print what they niggling feel
and reduce all loyalty from monarch madness to sane
themselves--- as infinite human potentiality, nothing less.
Hunched in my prision of skin, how insanely rips
my ineluctable spirit towards its transcendence!
A free bird will shread its wings against a cage,
no matter how golden. Men will in one blood-thumped second
destroy the finest system of governance devised on earth
in all her generations to get back a single whiskey-lick
of the uninhibited Liberty they had tasted heretofore.
One reckless pulse, and all the noble past
            is pushed to the stinking heap!
Desire is infinite; possibility is finite;
but the true, determining actions of men that shape
their crowded cowed lives hived striving together,
even to the half-done mark half as well
as a lazy anthill's improvisational organization
are few, few indeed-- and sparely placed in history.
This is my minute to push the wisp toward incandescence,
my arriving fire's the one to transmute rebellion's bonfires
into individual Liberty's multifarious candleabra,
the thousand stabs of light burned true out of today's
inflammable haystack of discontented "maybes."

[PAINE pulls a quill from an inkpot.]

PAINE
Come, my feather, and fan the damning flame,
we're fallen angels all and still squeak at the light
like deluded bats in our hopeless caverns: fly,
my feather, on hopeful airs and the destruction's
daring updraft, on into the sun of reason, a winning Darius
fuelled by his whipping ambitions from light to light.
Below us, all the old monarchy's fluxed in immolating ruin;
above, the reasonable sun draws us on until as sweet mists
we rise to his imperishable realm: a radient and radical
farmfield of high Enlightenments. Flock to freedom,
my angel minions, or perish dully all in hesitation's flames.
  [PAINE begins to write.] I write in light!






ACT II



SCENE SIX


[Before a tavern. Enter three idiots.]

JOHNATHAN PLOUGHBOY
 These are suspicious times.

TIM RIDDLE
 Then it were well to suspect everything, and keep a watch-out.

JOHNATHAN PLOUGHBOY
 And our civic duty too.

DICK CIVIC
 And if you keep a watch out, you shall find the time to
 be roundly burgled. Watches are rare jewels in a poor place.

TIM RIDDLE
 Well, then, how else to find out the time we're in?

DICK CIVIC
 And if we're suspicious, we can deduct it.

JOHNATHAN PLOUGHBOY
 Well, it is night plainly enough.

TIM RIDDLE
 Know you by the dark, or by the lack of daylight?

JOHNATHAN PLOUGHBOY
 Why, by the lack of daylight, for there's many seasons
 for it to be dark in.

DICK CIVIC
 Ay, my wife will put me to 'em oft and oft.

TIM RIDDLE
 It's tyrannous tough to be a bride's thing.

DICK CIVIC
 If the bride have a thing, I would suspect myself,
 and think me no true man.

JOHNATHAN PLOUGHBOY
 Then what if you give her a thing?

DICK CIVIC
 Why then I would respect her under near examination, and
 have no more doings with her, if a divorce could not
 settle the peace between us.

TIM RIDDLE
 Absence then would keep the peace.

DICK CIVIC
 And a peaceful piece is a pretty peace.

JOHNATHAN PLOUGHBOY
 And the maids will be warring their skirts over their heads again
 to get out the piece.

TIM RIDDLE
 [Looking around.] This is someplace hereabouts.

JOHNATHAN PLOUGHBOY
 It behooves us to entrance it-- if it is a tavern.

DICK CIVIC
 I have some reading. I shall spy out the sign, if I see any.

JOHNATHAN PLOUGHBOY
 Spying is a bad offense, unless it be plain.

DICK CIVIC
 Then, if it be a plain sign, without marks, I shall spy out
 if I shall read of it, or no.

[PATRON exits.]

PATRON
[Sings drunkenly.]
    Lib-bert-ty tib-bert-ty tree!
    Lads of Athens, faithful be
    to thyself
            and Mystery!
    All the rest is perjury.
    Lib-bert-ty tib-bert-ty tree!

TIM RIDDLE
 Well, is he a spy or no?

JOHNATHAN PLOUGHBOY
 I see he is a plain man with nothing to doubt him above
 the average.

TIM RIDDLE
 Are you well-knowing of it?

JOHNATHAN PLOUGHBOY
 Ay, he is enough like me to leave no assurance. And I am as
 plain a man as never took note.

DICK CIVIC
 Well, then, if he is as plain a man as you, I shall attempt
 a reading of him.

TIM RIDDLE
 As long as there is no sorcery about your business. I am
 from Salem.

DICK CIVIC
 My business has no beginning to source it, sirrah. Not even
 a passim Salem.

TIM RIDDLE
 Well, and he was as drunk as a skunk, was he not?

JOHNATHAN PLOUGHBOY
 A plain drunkard, as I ought to know who owns a mirror.

DICK CIVIC
 I revelation that he was drunk, sirrah.

TIM RIDDLE
 And what think you well of that?

DICK CIVIC
 Well....

JOHNATHAN PLOUGHBOY
 Well...!

DICK CIVIC
 Well....

TIM RIDDLE
 Come, sir, what think you well of it in all these wells?

DICK CIVIC
 Well... I think it be as plain a sign as any that we're
 come to a tavern.

JOHNATHAN PLOUGHBOY
 Oh, well then, let's make a boldly into it, and mark an
 entrance where he did come out-of-doors.

TIM RIDDLE
 Come; let's subtly then.

[They enter. A RECUITMENT OFFICER is signing men up for the war.]

DICK CIVIC
 What are all these men a-standing about and signing?

TIM RIDDLE
 It is a signal that I am suspicious.

JOHNATHAN PLOUGHBOY
 Ay, then let's sniff slowly.

DICK CIVIC
 I for one had rather not smell.

TIM RIDDLE
 Then nose about without breathing.

DICK CIVIC
 And thus sufficate? I had rather smell myself.

JOHNATHAN PLOUGHBOY
 No you wouldn't.

AMERICAN RECRUITER
 Why do you men stand in such amazement?

JOHNATHAN PLOUGHBOY
 Why, because we've found ourselves in a maze, and cannot
 wend about of it.

TIM RIDDLE
 As long as there is beer, I shall bear it.

DICK CIVIC
 Ay, in your gullet.


TIM RIDDLE
 As long as my money holds out my arm shall hold out too.

DICK CIVIC
 Ay, and a mug at the end of it.

JOHNATHAN PLOUGHBOY
 And your gullet too; pouting out fat and burpish.

AMERICAN RECRUITER
Are you men ignorant?

JOHNATHAN PLOUGHBOY
 I suspect.

AMERICAN RECRUITER
Are you ignorant of the news that the Continental Congress has
passed a resolution for independence?

JOHNATHAN PLOUGHBOY
 If I am, they have kept it independent of myself, and assorted
 their cause of independence right well.

AMERICAN RECRUITER
There's a maze in such a speech.

DICK CIVIC
 Ay, true said, friend.

AMERICAN RECRUITER
According to the resolution, we are now to be no more of England,
but only of ourselves.

JOHNATHAN PLOUGHBOY
 And if I am not myself, I am as Englished as any that
 never spoke a true tongue.

AMERICAN RECRUITER
Well, then. Have you read the Common Sense by Tom Paine?

DICK CIVIC
 Say yes.

JOHNATHAN PLOUGHBOY
 Yes.

AMERICAN RECRUITER
Then you know he makes the case plain to every faculty,
that we should be a separate peoples, and that the king
is no more than a brute beast to oppose us.

JOHNATHAN PLOUGHBOY
 The king a brute beast?

AMERICAN RECRUITER
Ay, and tyrannous. And that we have the power to form a
better self-governance than his could ever be. And that we
have the power to make the world over again in our lifetimes,
if we but put our shoulders to it and follow our hearts
and hopes.

JOHNATHAN PLOUGHBOY
 Then, if the King rule us, we are no governors, and lack a rule.

TIM RIDDLE
 Why, that's plain anarchy.

JOHNATHAN PLOUGHBOY
 And if we would run about under that, it were a dark day.

DICK CIVIC
 Ay. And no light to see a tavern by.

JOHNATHAN PLOUGHBOY
 But I see one plain. Or what else do I spy?

AMERICAN RECRUITER
Your friends are in some confusion....

JOHNATHAN PLOUGHBOY
 Ai me! Then it is anarchy come down among us from on high,
 as they say.

TIM RIDDLE
 It is the crucible of God's will.

DICK CIVIC
 Very plain, very plain.

JOHNATHAN PLOUGHBOY
 Then we must be governors at once, and no delay for light
 to see ourselves by in suspiction, lest the time fly by.

TIM RIDDLE
 That's a truism.

JOHNATHAN PLOUGHBOY
 And a friendly one to lead me on. [To RECRUITER:] Say,
 if I sign this, is governance back among us all?

AMERICAN RECRUITER
We shall fight for it to be so.

DICK CIVIC
 And blood shall be spilt in the contest?

AMERICAN RECRUITER
Ay, or else it were no fight.

JOHNATHAN PLOUGHBOY
 And all this is Common Sense?

AMERICAN RECRUITER
Very common.

DICK CIVIC
 Oh. If you read this thing, friend, your eyes are traitors.

JOHNATHAN PLOUGHBOY
 For certain a traitor.

TIM RIDDLE
 Ay, it's very plain, very plain.

JOHNATHAN PLOUGHBOY
 And did I say I read this?

TIM RIDDLE
 Ay, you did, and with no little prompting of friendship.

JOHNATHAN PLOUGHBOY
 And if my friend lead me on to traitor my eyes, shall
 the rest of me be anathema?

DICK CIVIC
 Ay, very much so. And if you are anathema, you are
 no friend of mine to my nose to stick out stinking so.

JOHNATHAN PLOUGHBOY
 Oh, and if I am no friend of yours, I am no traitor,
 since then no friend did lead me on to read this
 Common Sense.

TIM RIDDLE
 There's the king's man!

JOHNATHAN PLOUGHBOY
 And none no more so loyal as I.

DICK CIVIC
 Then are we ready to look down at your papers and
 sign up, sirrah, being no eyeing traitors, but that we
 give out an equal naying to all.

AMERICAN RECRUITER
 Here's quill and ink.

JOHNATHAN PLOUGHBOY
 But yet hold off. And if I sign this, what shall I be?

AMERICAN RECRUITER
 From your loudness, I'll put you down as an ordinance officer.

JOHNATHAN PLOUGHBOY
 And if the ordinance be of a great enough caliber to keep
 the peace easily, I shall be a peace officer too.

TIM RIDDLE
 Only if it break the peace.

JOHNATHAN PLOUGHBOY
 Ay, truism enough. And then either way I shall be an officer,
 which I was in England.

DICK CIVIC
 And that's as sure a truism as ever I heard, or they all be false.

JOHNATHAN PLOUGHBOY
 Let them all be false, these truisms, so long as that mine is true.

TIM RIDDLE
 And if it's true, your shooting will go well.

DICK CIVIC
 If it makes others go astray, it shall.

JOHNATHAN PLOUGHBOY
 Truism enough, friend.

TIM RIDDLE
 [To RECRUITER:] And what shall I be in the lists?

AMERICAN RECRUITER
A dead man, most likely.

DICK CIVIC
 You're a true enough large caliber target to get killed.

TIM RIDDLE
 And as long as I count as two hits, I will be satisfied
 to have played a bigger part than most.

JOHNATHAN PLOUGHBOY
 That you do already, friend.

DICK CIVIC
 And if I witness such purgation, I shall be happy.

TIM RIDDLE
 And I too, if I should live to see my death.

JOHNATHAN PLOUGHBOY
 God save you! And if you should chance to see it not,
 I'll report it to you in the hereafter.

TIM RIDDLE
 Slow your oath! If God saves me, we shall miss each other
 in damnation.

JOHNATHAN PLOUGHBOY
 Ay, I had forgot that. And I would not miss you for all
 the world.

DICK CIVIC
 If you miss him, you are no ordinance man at a shot.

TIM RIDDLE
 True.

JOHNATHAN PLOUGHBOY
 And if I am true, I am an ordinance man; so I shall not
 miss you, friend, on either the field of battle here or
 hereafter; and if I am an ordinance man, then I am a peace
 officer again as well, and serve the King by example what
 my loyalty is.

AMERICAN RECRUITER
 Ay, all that, if you sign here.

JOHNATHAN PLOUGHBOY
 And then we should be back among the English by your scheme?

AMERICAN RECRUITER
Yes. And many a man better than you.

JOHNATHAN PLOUGHBOY
 Why, there is no better Englishman than myself, God save the
 King, sign me up.

AMERICAN RECRUITER
 Sign you up, sir. Can you make your mark?

JOHNATHAN PLOUGHBOY
 And if I was not as loyal an Englishman as the King, I could
 sign my name as well in any language, mark me.

AMERICAN RECRUITER [Offering paper.]
 Here then.

JOHNATHAN PLOUGHBOY
 And will I serve the King a good turn, if I assign this?

AMERICAN RECRUITER
 Ay, if you disturb his sleep enough to give him a turn.
 But truly, sir, you can do the King's service no better
 service than to remove yourself from his.

JOHNATHAN PLOUGHBOY
 And I will be among English again, if I go my name here?

AMERICAN RECRUITER
 Ay, I have said so. You'll be thick among the thick.

TIM RIDDLE
 And what was our aim among 'em?

AMERICAN RECRUITER
 Why, if it's a right good aim, to rid the land of them all
 by death or expulsion.

TIM RIDDLE
 Back to England?

AMERICAN RECRUITER
 Ay, or hell.

TIM RIDDLE
 Oh, well then, you were a constable in Exeter, were ye not?

JOHNATHAN PLOUGHBOY
 Ay.

TIM RIDDLE
 And you will be back among the pushers to Exeter then.

JOHNATHAN PLOUGHBOY
 Oh, and I will be at the front of the pushers, policing
 my fellow Englishmen back to district, as was my wont at home.
 Oh, now, if this is my duty again, sign me up, and God save
 the foundation!

DICK CIVIC
 And I might be a legal spy, among the Englands, with no threat
 of the interminable?

AMERICAN RECRUITER
 If we end this conversation, and you all sign, there is
 no more interminable thing on earth that has ended.

DICK CIVIC
 I see your meaning hidden plain. Sign me up too, Johnathan.

TIM RIDDLE
 Ay, me too. I cannot mark to write, whether I will or no,
 so mark me-- I am as loyally suspect as either of you two!

ALL:
 God save the King!

[They sign.]







SCENE SEVEN


[At General Howe's Long Island Headquarters. The three man
troop escort in this scene are the same three new recruits
from previous scene.]

PRESCOTT
At Bunker Hill and Breed's demoralizing debacle
we showed his highness' ass-men something of our toughness.

FRANKLIN
But we were defeated!

ADAMS
I'd sell them a thousand such hills, such defeats,
if they paid such a price for each overweening tiptop.

PRESCOTT
We wouldn't crouch and scat at the first smacking.

FRANKLIN
Indeed. We hissed a something spectacular
from the advantage of our barricades. While we held them.

ADAMS
And now we are off to the foul Howe dispatched
by the snatching patch-work of Congress
ambastardored to sew our mini-victories
into this truce-rag of defeat. We come to combine
our bilious biles in one puke of peace,
nothing more. It's foul, I say.

FRANKLIN
Then be the watchdog, Adams, and, if things issue foully,
lick back up such peace to its initial indigestion.

ADAMS
If I must, I shall.

FRANKLIN
Tom Paine put a pretty piece of the populace
behind our designs with his invective.

PRESCOTT
My brother signed up the moment he finished his first
read-through of Tom's lopsided Common Sense.

ADAMS
I have offered my corrections to his ill-digested ideas
as Publius Civis; there's no way we can live with
his spastic democratic demands.

PRESCOTT
And yet, without him, we'd be almost armyless.
I can't tell you the crowd of talk his
pamphlet shouted out of hiding.

FRANKLIN
And such a groundswell re-geared the keel
of our Continential Congress, Adams.
You know it. The July Fourth resolution for
independence would never have passed without
that tippling inch of doing pressure
undoing our tentative members' insecurities.

ADAMS
Yes, yes. The man's a genius demagogue;
I'm just glad he's on our side.

FRANKLIN
And now we have a real war on our hands.

PRESCOTT
Speaking of which, I don't like the way
our sullen Sullivan came limping back captured
from our host Howe's enemy camp so fat and feted,
legging it to Philly all hot and ready
to pant a peace and plant upon our honors
a king's kiss.

FRANKLIN
We're well to walk here warily, inching our steps.
It's certain no compelling king, in his habit of command,
ever gave his executing general his full mind
since time and kings began.

ADAMS
You step into my argument like a trace-horse, Franklin,
and make my meaning race at double-speed. Let's circuit
our commission to its finishing here and now
and decide against Howe's howsoever persuasions
before he licks us nickering to a different ribbon.
To whatever he says, we'll be Yankee stags,
and bray all nays.

PRESCOTT
Yea, I say, if ye'll have me
stamping after your quick fetlocks, Mr. Adams.

FRANKLIN
Too fast, too fast! My coursers, discourse!
Often has a score of words done more good than blood.

[Inside Howe's Headquarters, as a servent lets the Americans in.]

HOWE
Bunker Hill was not worth the blood that muddied it,
all with sour redcoats harshly sauced. We're alone
on a continent of able axes anxious to hack at us.
Our detatched detatchment runs too ruinous a progress
against the tartness of their muskets' invective;
force of arms, so detatched, is too gruesome a prospect
to assure our royal appetite's respite. Where's dinner?
These cordial colonials who served us comeuppance
in the cups of our own heads are coming mustered now
to my marooned house in strategic Long Island,
stepping to the drum-tap I command. With a swelled sweetness
will I greet them, and with honeyed words defeat them.
There's enough lush fat in this America to go round!
Take the damned lamb off its twisting spit at once, Pierre!
We'll throw these rough-housing, somber blue boys a tax break
and mate them back to the hungry bum of our loving monarch:
a king's kiss! God save the king!

[HOWE toasts. Party enters.]

FRANKLIN
We had some difficulty in finding you.

HOWE
Old grievances are like old shoes
and make every new step painful.

ADAMS
We'd gladly give you the royal boot
so you would only be forced to paddle back
to England, and not march on to war.

HOWE
Your tongue's too sharp-- upon my soul!

ADAMS
Do not make it slash practice upon your heart
or you shall bleed for it.

HOWE
Come, let's to dinner, and bury our hatchets
in some four-footed meat. This Paine of yours, with his
Common Sense, prates like another Pericles,
but instead of honorable union with his King, his tears
and tearing protestations rip a fetidness from fertile fields
and from the bludgeoned dead of cold Concord
draws out in dark and dusk the musky fungus Discord,
and lets set florescing the million attendant lichens
of intolerable Democracy. Surely such a scheme
set rotting in so pure and wide a garden as America
is anathema to gentlemen such as yourself.

ADAMS
Democracy's a mob in a garish coat of laws
so patched and pinched with imperfections
the crazy wind of Anarchy will chill its wearer
to the bone.

HOWE
There's the fellow!

FRANKLIN
Not all of us are of a color to tinge
our constitutional formulation to his solution.

HOWE
There's the fellow! So, know from me
that the King shall all his purse of taxes
pour back out upon these shifting shores
and leave to the discretion of yourselves
all nattering money matters in the future.

PRESCOTT
So Sullivan said, who jogged to jar
all our apprehensions with your words.

HOWE
If Parliament permits, of all this I can assure you.

FRANKLIN
That smacks of a start.

ADAMS
If the King is willing to resign in principle
his sovereign right to tax without consent....

HOWE
In principle? Never; how could he lose those rights
that God and all law's precepts align to grant him?
But he shall relent in the unspecified interregnum
and let your novus ordo seclorum play alone
along these shores' as-yet-untested serrations.

FRANKLIN
Let's taste more.

HOWE
Here's another slice: but re-swear your royal loyalties
to crown and England as we down this swish of wine--
and all the rebels shall stand with a pealing repeal
of soveraign pardon upon their clamoring crimes.

ADAMS
Come you here with the power to pardon?
So you may say. But you are wrong. You have not that power.
He who can pardon can only pardon one who has
by erupting interruption of some hallowed right
done some wasteful wrong. Since we did give no such offense
your presumptive pardon lacks its puissance.

HOWE
Not swear back again to the King?
How then could you be his loyal subjects?
How then could the fraternal breach be healed?
What other budding buss should be our business
if not that?

ADAMS
And should we swear our allegiances to this King
and against our sacred Liberties? I think that each
man-jack among us would rather die today and be free.

FRANKLIN
Our enduring liberty is to live and be
self-deciding, self-governing, and free.

HOWE
The King himself is now more royally aware
of all your colonial gripes and groanings;
should he now go deaf to them? But trust his majesty!
He feels your pain.

ADAMS
Should the mugged man trust the cut-purse?
One who then, to palliate the offense
promises to pardon those he has offended?
Only the drug-addict and his pusher continue
in mutual love when all basis for trust is cut.
I'm not so high on the purled word Sovereignty
to muster up my trust for absent kings
absent the gravest assurances.

HOWE
Grave assurances shall we all have in eternity
if we four cannot conduct a living peace
to this entreating table tonight.

FRANKLIN
Yet you yourself declared your guarentees
provisional to Parliament's approbation.

HOWE
How could it be otherwise? I own not a man of them.
They are free to vote their conciences before the King.

FRANKLIN
You see my point then.

ADAMS
They vote freely, and with free voices,
while we are bound in a virtual reality.

HOWE
But they shall approve at home what I do say
in the field; I know it. I know they will.
I have the King's consent in this, and his voice
shall over-master their static, if they profess any.

ADAMS
One voice is no voice if it rules others to silence,
but is itself rather a sort of pestilent silence,
choking all.

HOWE
But the King is the State.

FRANKLIN
If that state is a desert.

HOWE
I am a man of worth, and a worthy gentleman;
my voice will float upon the controversy of these waters
and oil to a calmness the place of Parliament--
My voice and impress shall not there be ignored.
Mercy or annihilation is mine to procure.

ADAMS
And yet, you have no power to say the last.

HOWE
Dash it! I am an honorable gentleman! And that
is enough; or else there is no England for you
to spurn or rejoin.

PRESCOTT
Any who would consent to these bribing bids
loves not himself, and deserves not his Liberty.

HOWE
Let your rebellious feet leave my premises
and walk alienate from soveriegn sod forevermore
if you are all of a mind to decline this overture.

ADAMS
My Liberty is not so cheap as your threats.

FRANKLIN
Nor is mine available at the price of your promises.

HOWE
  [To an aide-de-camp.]
I hereby proclaim a general amnesty to all
American troops; post it on every tree.
Any who would come in to us, bring in,
and in they shall dart, back to the royal right;
oh they'll come, and at a run, to the fraternity
they had so unbrotherly abandoned.
And you shall all be hung on the yardarm
like damned pirates, without so much dignity
as a peasant who expires in the dirt. Get out.

ADAMS
Come. We'll pull ourselves away.

[They exit.]

PRESCOTT
Howe's amnesty could scuttle all our hopes,
and leave us with not a man at the yawning gunwales
of our ship of state.

FRANKLIN
Ought we to have been so obdurate, Adams?
Perhaps our perversities will scurvy us
on these ominous high seas of independency.

ADAMS
Our fruits at least shall be of our own growing
and not vined tentacle-like from glum London's
emcumbering Parliamentary hothouse garden.

FRANKLIN
We'll go forward then, and not froward.

PRESCOTT
Damned be any backward hand now.







SCENE EIGHT


[By a campfire.]

PAINE
I sit here, in seared hearing of this bleak defeat
of stormed Fort Washington across the bleary Hudson,
tapping out my day's thoughts atop a resting drumhead
with my slim measure of ink and brain. There's England,
arterially red, pulsing well against our held position,
crashing in on our cornered troops. Gate's smashed;
the flimsey picket fence is overrun with stumblers and others.
My ambling hands stain with this useless soot of words
while those patriots gore the earth with blood.
Did certain sniping words of mine send out
certain men the English shot? I've nibbed my quiet quill
to loud killing, and redden my shameful papers
with unlucky deaths, haphazard as a rash of dotted i's.
Its what I wanted, non? And yet: to win is all.
To half-carry our half-escape hunchbacked into raw dawn
and not to win by our hard-bearing turtle-crawl
I count a sin against myself that I cannot grave
in any shape of peace. We must win. We must.
How to do it, though? That's the fucking crux---
and my dreams all harshly in my lumpen throat
cry me quiet until I wake unworlded, and quite wordless.
How much harder will it be for us to win free?
I follow my boyhood dream of liberty like a beir
from funeral to funeral.... How long til it's my own?
Our boys tumble in the grass with graceless playlessness
and speed toward the imagined safety of the dark.
We haven't the boats to nip across the uneven Hudson
and tuck our losing men back into New Jersey's nighttime.
As thin and blue a line as my retreating vein
scatters from the hazard of the onslaught, a blood splotch
of advancing redcoats; all green's blotched black
in the firelight's withering fritter of light.
Tiny legs, tiny arms, tiny, silent screams
that only roar back awake in my rearing dreams.
What deserveless death is coming to those humble ones?
All the hard hopes I had stitched together in a gale
to reach these unimpeachably peachy shores
are forced apart oh so easily in the deadly breeze.
I watch these snows thunder silence upon the dead.

[A BOY enters.]

BOY
Sir, Genr'l Washington's requestin' your presence
respectf'lly next time he hits a camp in the sticks.

PAINE
That'll be Hackensack or some such.
Danke, boy.

BOY
Danke? What's that?

PAINE
German for "Thank You." Something to say
when the Hessians overrun our frail position,
our wickedly thin picketline of foundling blood.
Not your own, I hope, of course.

BOY
Nor you neither, sir. [Pause.] With respect, sir....

PAINE  [Thinking.]
Yes? You still here? What is it?

BOY
Am I dismissed, sir? I think I gotta drum retreat.

PAINE
Hmm. Yes. [Hands BOY the drum.] Scat!






SCENE NINE


[At WASHINGTON's tent.]

PAINE
Today I shall wowingly reimagine my swatted world
and its crookedly connived constitution with truth's force;
divinity, with a little human imagination,
can get the job done. These are the times....
I shall orate an augerful of frothing truth
and not swallow back a word while I live!
This dirty tent, thrashed in the back-sizzle of new hail,
tied frozen down in these grimy woods,
here's a place to lay sweet newness on the earth,
inaugurate a heart to the swift weird will of one,
here's a place, an altar of activity to actively
announce my grown-tough truth, a fabled place, perhaps,
where future disaster or glory laps at circumstance
and sheer human will overturns all the tides that meet!
Ha ha! I in my mock coracle-cockle will toss the turbulence
in my humanly mouthed direction on towards perfection,
and not drop dropsey-sick into the old worm trails
that so lovingly lattice the past with irking defeats,
the benighted unlightedness of my predecessors.
What have they ever lived to light their way to
besides death and the present tyranny?
This present tyranny and trumpeting injustice that makes me
curl curdled against it and call to the remote sky:
I must! I must! Can Justice exist when all are not free
to imagine it into some hammered shape of perfection?
Come rain, come storm, come snow,
   withering blizzard or puffing drift,
      I see the forecasted crests' shapes
and do not spurn my own straightness of purpose!
I'll knock at the tent-- and may that tent let me enter!
   [Crowing:] I've come! I've come! I've come!

WASHINGTON  [Waking up.]
In God's name, who the hell is that!?!!

PAINE
Tis I, in the blaming name of no God but my own:
Thomas Paine. I was sent for, and adjudged the cause,
and, having backhanded the winter that would stop me,
I have arrived.

WASHINGTON
Out of the rocks themselves, it would seem.

PAINE
Out of the furious snow storm, certainly.

WASHINGTON
Sir, you have arrived with the chill swiftness of a ghost
swirled from the white nightmares of my dead sleep.
Even this midnight entrance brings my writhing mind
to the one thing, one problem constant as a drumbeat:
desertion. My ranks are as thin as Franklin's pate
and as hungry as if he had sucked up all their suppers.
General Hamilton corralled his men on Boston Commons
and harangued them in a shaming speech to ask 'em
if they'd extend their rebel enlistments by a stretch
of even four days forward from the new year nearly here,
and not one in four stepped forward. A general amnesty now
would unman us down to zero. I thank the Deity
that Howe had lied to Adams and them on Long Island;
our cause could not survive his generosity today.
This is our first hard year of winter, man,
and is like to be our last. Our cause
in bloody abortion stands, and the restless snows
are cherried with our deaths. Exhaustion cannot rest,
but churns on harrassing dreams even in ditched sleep.
We cannot win. We must not lose. What brave words
do you bring to one so confused?

PAINE
That liberty is no ghost, genr'l, but our only reality;
as alive as the men and women that imagine it.

WASHINGTON
As fiery as your pamphlets, Paine.
I wonder, are you as soon burnt when tossed
into the crossways rash heat of war's crucifying fire?

PAINE
The test! The test! My tongue itself's a flame
and my heart smoulders knowingly enough aghast against
cold England's distant injustice, heart-pressed
by the eager evil of those Tory lords
to our honest American breasts, jammed
by that pampered tyrant rattle-ranting
from his damned castle to pull our pitch
of mutual coalition back into the spastic Atlantic.


WASHINGTON
This damned seige of defeat has the men down
and near drowned. They won't take it, and it's
hit them hard in the balls, by God.

PAINE
Self-slavery will hit them harder.

WASHINGTON
Well, if the troops could be fed upon long letters,
I would believe we have the best commissary on earth.
Until that time....

PAINE
If they live long enough to take their ease
after a beating defeat by the Despot
(those who don't go hanged, or bang-banged by a squad),
they will live to sire enslaved great-grandsons
on an English fiefdom, a Parliamentary playground
carouselling their dear ideals into bright, shining lies.
They'll mint their new mine of liberties to cuffs
and not coins of free exchange for their inheritors.

WASHINGTON
It's hard watching your soldiers starve.
Nursed in the pilgrim night by three generations'
crazy liberation, I don't think they're ready to back out
blackened in the eye and soul by imperial men.

PAINE
I'd hope no man so backward and willful
against his own golden chance. This hour'll
not come round again in our winding down, Washington.
This glad hour must be held aloud and told on every wind
or die soundless as a tear in a velvet coffin.

WASHINGTON
Still have to shoot 'em if they go south on you,
can't have commiseration turn to dissolution,
shoot 'em in the back if they won't turn round and take it;
damned hard to take, giving out the orders for that,
and their own blood frozen on their broken feet,
      swaddled in scraps, feet looking like bloody babies,
both the feet of them that get shot, and those
that do the shootin'. Nothing good in any of it.
Can't even bury the ones you shoot, really, pile ice
over the snow, call any whiteness sticking up ice
and hope you're not in the same place same situation come spring.
There was one we near buried just today,
        how young was his soft-seeming face
turned brutal-hard. I looked down at him, the neutral shovel
splashed the lime like powdered light upon him,
down on his face, down his shoulders, and on down.
Little hope and great heartache. And the Brits
sit in fine fettle, fat Hessians eating Christmas goose
and other potables denied us in this war.
Stings, hurts; too tough to tell of,
      even to speak a word, in some ways.
War's not for honor. Little accomplishment, vain days
blizzarded against us. No gentleness left in nature
or ourselves....

PAINE
No gentleness....

WASHINGTON
So, you're the demented Brit who gloveless shoved
the demos-rabble toeward towards sabre-rattling self-
emancipation. So, what do you think of the present situation?

PAINE
My divine mind, in uncluttered creation of itself,
followed out the currents of the current, royal knot
and proceeded by hard thought to daringly undo
each weave-waver of the fiber that I could
back to the looming first pluck and spool
of their dreaded threads, the initial conditions
that made tyranny the inextricable inexorable
tangle of that spun thread's outcome; primary causes
and first principles alone I allowed my by-myself mind
to trace, fingeringly unravel and sinlessly unstitch.
Let us begin as I myself had started: since the king
is as cipher-zero without his thousands of subjects
(and since my ton of words is a weightless nullness
in his Highness' lead-adapted ear, a nothing of disgruntlement)
I interviewed those who knew of their self-soveriegnty.
And in this I came to the native wildness
of individual Liberty, the unsold self we each
reach into the create a god or nod to a soveriegn,
or rebellingly unleash a quicksilver rain of disdain
on these things that had kited over us
in the temporary high-wind of our self-ignorance!
The clowning crown has clasped these freedoms to crow
a know-nothingness of impressive feats and feasts
and dangling fates down the echo-alleyway of tin-eared history:
here a man is pinned to a rickety stick
on Golgotha, there a Spartacus rises whip-angry
against a reviled slaver's salveless hand.
In the caved-in carved tomb of our own commonwealth
there is glorious evidence and incident enough
to black the tides with ink of their telling.
But these secret histories of freedom's shouts
I'll not relate beneath your tent tonight.
To those others who knew it not, I reminded them
that they are born free and only sell themselves
into the ruined pool of subjugation by their actions:
the daily prayers to resign their wills to a blank diety,
the dread repeat of illegal laws obeyed, and not examined,
like a stupid boy camp-following a dumb drum
for its deaf, mesmerizing beat, and not because he knows
the red fields of timeless agony he's entering.
By these simple repetitions a life is lived---
and if it makes me spit my charming heart
like a ravaged, bloody flag upon the nation-stick
of my invective pen...
well, then, that's the least I could do,
moved to make a human sound at all I see and feel.

WASHINGTON
You know, don't you, that I never toasted
"King and Country" after I had read
your damnable scribble?

PAINE
A sound decision. Redounds unbounded to your
inevitable credit as a freethinker, Genr'l.

WASHINGTON
Oh, things redound to me from all directions,
Mr. Paine. Hundreds of things come cannon-balling my way
daily. It's a fell acre of hell out there. Fell indeed.

PAINE
Your Americans need you, Washington.

WASHINGTON
My Americans! Fuck, I need a drink. The rum, Tom.
To splash my unbelieving eyes with horrored sights
and tear out my clear hearing with death-sighs
seems this war's only purpose. I swear
this retreat eats out our hearts before the Brits
can shoot them out of our chest, via the spine.
To all tyrants' demise!

[They drink.]

PAINE
Tyrant and subject, master and slave....
WASHINGTON
Master and slave are the old world's vaunted divisions.

PAINE
A vision of divisivness! Old blind-maid Fate!
Such a damned dumb mummery, an antique peep show
unfit for the finer feelings of mankind.
Why would I rape my innocent innards simply
to be declared, by my own owned slave, the winner?

WASHINGTON
A thin satisfaction for an enslaved brain, I agree.

PAINE
Where's the meat for a heaving heart
in that withered domninion?

WASHINGTON
I don't know. I don't know. It seems
an unreal disease to me, a Macbeth infliction,
going to bed on empty ambitions to awake in nightmare.
Its a dirty world, and Hackensack is the center of it.
Now it seems, at least. But you are a fine man
with a pen, Paine. You're Common Sense united a nation,
named it, gave it a sense of itself, etc., etc.
Can you turn the trick again on my demoralized boys?
They'd like a vigorous victory, a proud hour
upon the field of honor, but if we took on England
full force to force in coercing battle, we'd be down and out
in a minute, bayonetted embarrasingly back to colonial status.
This retreat through New Jersey has been a heartbreak
to every barefoot dogface shivering with us.

PAINE
I'd love to, but I'm plumb out of rum.

WASHINGTON
  [Opening a trunk, pulling out a bottle of rum.]
Sit your cockney ass down and have a few;
we'll warm the warning ink over the fire here.

PAINE
I always keep a juicy pouch in my crotch-pocket;
if it freezes down there, I'd just as soon
snap off my whole career as a pen-man, monseuier.

WASHINGTON
Have another.

PAINE
To the survival of the ideal in the real.

WASHINGTON
What can we do for each other but get dunking drunk?

PAINE
Fabius, baby, the best of life is but inebriation.

WASHINGTON
You know, don't you, that after I read Common Sense
I could no longer toast 'Long live the King?'

PAINE
Go to bed, Washington, go to bed.
Your head's in a rum sack, and my heart's
far too tense-excited to beat asleep now anyway.
I'll write, I'll write, and give these fragments of a dream
hard words. Let no tyrant sleep tonight
but that some oppressed slave
goes by his bed breathing nightmares
upon his naked neck. Open wide your restless eye,
for I shall be a scampering Scavola, I swear,
with a rib-tickler of heart-stopping razor words.
[Pause.]

WASHINGTON  [Dead drunk.]
I'm going to bed.

PAINE  [Also drunk.]
Master and slave, master and slave,
what ideals are these that I, I Tom Paine,
give my rewinding, revolutionary mind
a flickering minute's undecided pause?
Oh, I'll do it as an exercise for my right mind,
to think on the world as I wouldn't want it,
as it really is without our devout success:
all sliced into that dicotomy of master and slave,
saved and burned, trashed and polished, sweet
and sour... heh heh. That'll clear my brain
for the real theme free selves, even stuffed in slave-skins,
tragic masks of forced labor wearing gulag scalplocks,
get crucified on the high wire of history for: Liberty.
If I were a wailing slave, a murderer and a bum,
what would my outlook look like? I'd sing:

I trod to prison on burning feet
Accompanied both before and back
By squadroned angels in heaven's black
Receding into the abject divine;
They ferry souls upon their backs;
I was trussed against the horizon's line
But had no captors I that could see
But my squad of angels to accompany me.
I am John Brown and will not come down;
Cold murder of the one or the all.
   Spartacus defied when hard men called
   And deified more angels than God.

My hands were bound in threads of blood;
I struggled against harsh cordage once
And was blinded by a golden hood.
My guilt has come and gone many times
As I recalled or forgot my crimes,---
Yet all about me I feel the wings
Of my locust angels on everything.

The Executioner flips his lash
In mockery of innocence:
Irrational murder has made him
One with the common tide
Raising his spade with the bladed wave
That falls to his own side;
By every blue, angelic face he may erase,
By every thought he kills, he's less.
I am dead but still can chant
All a passing artist's passions out:
Interior echo of the outward shout.
   Spartacus defied when hard men called
   And crucified more angels than God.

Are my grim limbs, hanging inverted here,
Above the midnight chrurchyard's grave
Above all that ghostly-priestly rant and rave
All exalted sacrifice has won
All ecstatic triumph has known?
All scatters backwards madness-chased
Into a rolling blizzard-ball;
Insect angels surround my ground
And their wailing wings buzz-sing:
Whore or chaste, the world's laid waste

 Come kill the one or the All.

These are the times....

[PAINE begins writing.]






SCENE TEN


[At the tent the next morning.]

WASHINGTON
In God's name, Paine, get your fucking ass out of bed!

[WASHINGTON kicks  PAINE in the head.]

PAINE
In God's name, never. On my own account, well,
I'm still too curious to see how the sun goes round
to not get up. I suppose.

WASHINGTON
Hmm. That was one fuck of a twister
we had on ourselves last night. Hmm.
Got your damned words?

PAINE
Yes, yes. They're all here. I'll need
a windless spot where I can be tender
with the stiff sheets, though, the midnight ink
froze on the pages before it could dry right.

WASHINGTON
Stand in the shadow of my horse's ass.
That should almost be cover enough. The men
are trembling assembled in the field outside.
God, what a poxy lot! Yet I need more
of their innocent number if we're to remain
free in theory, and grasping after the fact.
Wipe your sandy eyes and read, Tom.

PAINE  [Reading.]

“These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the
sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his
country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks
of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have
this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious
the triumph. What we obtain too cheaply, we esteem too lightly: ‘Tis dearness
only that gives everything its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price
upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as
Freedom should not be highly rated.”

TROOPS  [Singing, sort of.]
    Rum and water for old Tom Paine,
    With rum and water he'll save our ass again;
    The angels he'll entreat
    To parliament and debate---
    Convinced they don't exist,
    They'll dissipate for shame!!

PAINE
I am a glorious boy and spiral where I will,
giving ground to none on history's high dunghill.






EPILOGUE



SCENE ELEVEN


[Seven years later. PAINE and WASHINGTON are on a small skiff
at Rocky Hill, testing the waters there for marsh gas.]

PAINE
Fart in the jar, George.

WASHINGTON
Thomas, hand me the fucking wine.

PAINE
We only have champaign; you know that.

[There is a loud, resounding sound.]

WASHINGTON
This patriotic celebration is costing us a fortune.

PAINE  [Hurrying, knocking  WASHINGTON out of the way.]
Cap it! Cap it! We'll have to seal this with wax
as soon as we paddle back, duck and stroke home
to test the gas' composition and capacity.

WASHINGTON
Yes, Tom, yes. By all means, immortalize my farts.

PAINE
Ah, George, can you really believe its all over?

WASHINGTON
Oh, I can. I can.

PAINE
What's next then for our interminable freedoms,
our unfinished zip to achieve and be?
What new-foliaged laurel shall we yearn
to pursue, where will our dragonfly likes alight?
What driven-down or under-rated item
shall we ressurrect to its original worth and virtue
as we have the Roman Civitas regained,
regained and raised to a serious, religious,
real and human highness?
WASHINGTON
Good God, Tom, do you really need a cause
beyond the simple one of peace? Look around--
our continent and countrymen are at liberty;
we do as we choose in loose co-mutuality. Ain't that
enough to subdue your rough wishes and manicness?
I could live a thousand years on a simple acre.
And if we keep this acre free, I shall.

PAINE
My future includes a rupture of the ancien regime
and a spectacularly faceted new Republic for France.

WASHINGTON
I've heard of the stacatto of disturbances
from over there. You'll have to be quick.

PAINE
They themselves have seen our experiment go aright.
They themselves have helped it come to be.

WASHINGTON
Their country's perhaps high-tide high enough to try.

PAINE
They elevate the meaningful mind
to a fair height.

WASHINGTON
I believe they might marshall a martial example
from the flying bayonet involvement thay had here.

PAINE
Layfette and his flueur-de-lis lisp
took some narcotic quench of our opiate trip
and trapses to try his new tropes
against the Paris galleries' rope.

WASHINGTON
Salons and sinister men. Old guard Admirals
fin the dry land like sharks there, Tom.
You be careful.

PAINE
If I take my naked innocence with me
who can denude it?
I'll add my optimistically throated note
to their plangent Plantagenet choir.
We'll uncrown a king
and set a fresh French 'mister' on his feet.

WASHINGTON
Nothing like seeing how unhinged reality really is
to buck up those with a new good thing
to begin to believe in.

PAINE
Amen. [Pause.] And I've an iron bridge design
I'd like to place across the commercial twirl
of a swinish seine over there. Someone may buy into it.

WASHINGTON
I wish you well with your ungovernable,
fanatic fondness for newfangledness.
Harness it as best ye may.

PAINE
I shall. I think each day somehow
has a new, untried trueness in store for me,
if I can but strike an aim at its burning center,
release myself,
and fly fast enough to the alarming target.

WASHINGTON
Perhaps your iron bridge will arrow you there.
Good thing we weren't trying to unrivet one
of those things as we retreated from the British!
We might've lost the war if your ingenuity
had quicker tempo, Tom.

PAINE
Some new solution for it dissolution
would've come to dismantling hand at the time.
Of that I haven't the slightest doubt.

WASHINGTON
Neither the Continental Congress, nor any
private subscription among the victors in this contest
has been ferreted to light to fund you Tom
or underwrite out of sheer gratitude your existence.

PAINE
It figures. Just as well I'm on my way then.
In fact, I might construe my dear adieus as overdue.

WASHINGTON
This ingratitude of an entire nation, and that
nation my own, and yours, the nation we invented....
well, it shames me deeply, and I am weak
against the shame, dear man.

PAINE
I gave every penny-ounce of my thousands of pounds
earned by my copyrights of Common Sense and the Crisis Papers
to buy wool mittens and good socks for our soldiers.
I don't regret that for a second.

WASHINGTON
You gave the cause all. And now they'll let you starve.
It sheds a low dishonor upon our high enterprise.

PAINE
History and latter ages will whip 'em with it.
Ingratitude's a monster. And folks love
a good monster-show.

WASHINGTON
If I catch 'em first, I'll tan their asses
and pick their clicked wallets to the last centavo.
By my word, Tom, I will.

PAINE
We'll spat first. After all, I'm a real bastard,
don't forget.

WASHINGTON
I will never forget you.  [Pause.]

PAINE
Here I sway, myself a slender reed near under,
assailed by restless visions, atop my mass of swamp
and lurching as much as any church
from my crow's nest tip of tippling star-farsightedness;
yet out my mechanical uncertainty I'll fix up
a metronome of reform and dance its spectacular minuet
until all the thin paper-writ music is trashed
to my stamping, and then revives, recomposed as ashes!
Beyond this midnight miasma, past the trinking taunts
of revellers drunk in their assumptions
or dear friends ready to measure their coffin-acre
of sweet peace and lie quiet down until
(all egregious through torn lips) their skeleton-smiles
appear, I see a certain city arise, arise and assert itself
in the indefinate halo of a final outline
amidst this subtle shower of soft-starring sparks.
Amongst the plush pastures of memory, and still
here in this present dark of work and hope
I see a filiment-winsome construct of pure light arise
and flicker about me over the sussurations of these reeds.
O barbarous clearness in this evening's dark! I see
great cities of new men and new women, full of
free sex, free life, kindnesses, harlots and cymbals!
But of their dancing souls they have made no whores;
hazeless lightness and two million souls alight and free....
When morning's blue minute ticks over me, her hands
fallen gently upon my upward dreaming face,
her few, revolutionary rays tempt me from the haze,
her igniting light reviving the shapes of angels
in sculptured flight, cracked as this faint lake
in the river, whose soft sounds fall lonely and proud
on ears so attuned to softness, they seem of stone.
Tonight, the Alleghanies sharpen our idea of the sky,
and each unknown height we arise to lifts our expectations
higher than ever the simple fickle breeze allowed.
What pealing vistas now sound me out from core to pore,
each real thing I see sprouts me new inward eyes
to view the renewing of my own blue-black soul!
Tonight, newborn and pure, there are angels
in my heart's moist architecture. Hyped
on the hypnotic caliber of my ressurrected senses'
insistence to feel and be free, I spot about
and find myself the solo founding clown
of this: the uninheritable! A dynasty of wishes,
with each free man or woman their own subaltern of want,
the maker of their own aching,
              where the capacity to make
tidal-waves above our cloud-shrouded heads unimpeded!
The sea's free step mingles music with my quick swishes.
I am a pounding Poseidon commanding nothing
but the high wet wailing of my own hard-held heart,
a thing never suspected before in history!
Now, and for the first time (ever!) we arise aroused---
unknown music vibrates in booming theaters of real sound;
our bones flare out in trumpet-expectation. Shall
we squeal revealed, and arise in no reprise, but first
and then forever, born unchristened and new? Hopes dome
a billion glass minarets of spinaretted thinking.
My tongue injects the sky; each soveriegn tongue
carols its own beloved self-knowingness into new skies,
each cry an alternate universe electrified to life!
We walk amazed, with new muds upon us, of new births,
new daring, new enterprise, new eyes staring to new noons;
forever unsettled in our wish to wish again.

WASHINGTON
Ah, yes, yes, Tom, how could any world deny you
her churn of womb as genesis-crucible
for such fierce dreaming?
I pray I don't see this infernal globe decompose
to such an eviscerate, infertile dryness, friend.
A few brief, blind sighs bind us to this life;
and oh if those sighs moaned out all meaningless,
how could I even in this accident be reconciled to live?
My eyes take leave of their dryness once again;
I'll baptismal your departing hope
with their wet graces. And now you transfigure
each dark thing with such a harnassed wash
of wanting, Tom. The light, the light!
I am diamond-shot with stardust.
Only our awkward continent's tough, abrupt newness
can shove above the watermark as mountain enough
for the discovering blues of your high-stepping eye.
I myself love the unlevelled tripping of your whim.
I myself feel somewhat more guyed and bouyed
toward the honeyed fire-frets and fangles of the sky
than I had been before in my drowsy daze of peace.
Yet still, I think, I'll stay here, and if
your iron bridge steps you to a wider France
where armed Liberty in her brightened gown contests
Champagne plains with Kings, and her blooming bubbles
are all of vilest violet blown from bleeding mouths,
as restless then as my self-imposed repose
shall then become, still I'll stay here and endure
an unmourning peace, nor moult a doublet
of fresh eagle feathers for my mounting spirit
but stay here by my doughty rounded hill
and look up at our old stars
in dewy-new happiness still.

PAINE
Let us harnass our unmarked stars tonight
and rip the quiescent swamp with light,
as we've made this empty outlined nation
take our chosen colors of the limitless.

WASHINGTON
Torches aloft!

[They raise their rasping torches on the quiet set.]

PAINE
    Liberty Tree, o Liberty Tree
    What ye are ye know well, but oh,
    What ye mean to be!
    Listen, flusterless swans of the swamp!
    Oh hear the tale, hear!
    Never was one so drear,
    Of how all the tyrranical powers,
    Kings, Commons, Lords and sours,
    United on the hour
    And at one stroke
    Had thought to choke
    Our Liberty Tree, our Liberty Tree.

    But then, and then, hee hee!
    From North to South
    Called the trumpet's mouth
    And when we'd gathered
    With ourselves in a lather
    We united on the hour
    With all of our power
    And far and near
    Conjoined at a cheer
    In defense of our Liberty Tree!

WASHINGTON
You do make the worst ditties, Tommy.

PAINE  [Picking a fight.]
Take your teeth out and say that!

WASHINGTON
If I take my teeth out now, it'll be
to keep myself from biting your fool head off.

PAINE  [Shrugs.]
The marshlights are coming up
in a uniform blue to the left there. See ye?

WASHINGTON
I see. A soft spot of color on the eye.

PAINE
Let us conclude the experiment.

WASHINGTON
We heave ourselves beyond experience with this!

[They throw their torches in high arcs that fall in a swale
of light into the soon-blooming swamp. The swamp catches fire.]

PAINE
Everything is illumination in God's suspiring fire.


THE BEGINNING


===FIND THE ORIGINAL LINE!!===






WASH speaks of death-fears. Paine replys:
These irrational itchings are as nothing
to my sainted clarity; my clear cerebration
shall not scab its supple greys with superstition.



PAINE
Like Pericles, I shall not perish from my time
but live on, an ever-ringing voice of high snap,
regular to the regular folks, a jolt
to those nuzzle-nursed on the old fogy ideas dead-past,
accepted ways batted into raw heads and kept
out of tired habit and petty custom for the sake
of that nappy slap-happy pontifex, Farce.
Today I shall wowingly reimagine my swatted world
and its crookedly connived constitution with truth's force;
divinity, with a little human imagination,
can get the job done. I shall dance to my own tough
and jangled, mangling jingle,
              ice skate over the void,
here in the sweet salt aftermath of creation, my own,
the sweated spray every individual makes and spades from torpor,
his own mossy square acre of oceanic freedom.
Only Poseidon, of the old gods, stood by Prometheus
as I recall, the welter salt spray of water okaying
the backdraft spread of the englightened flame;
he saw their realms as mutually imperishable, no doubt,
the flounce and rash flash of flame no threat
to the underwater underworld wavery haze-vision of Neptune's
misted mirth, the roly-poly water god girdled
in frowning sea-coral fronds and crowned with a spiked squid
petrified by the old wet man's honor in choosing it
from his wonderous habidashery. Ai! Electric eels squeeled
in dry delight at Prometheus, friend of the free--
they, whose dear god took every shape and sweated ecstatic
up to heaven to weep back down in the ramming rain.
I am wild lightning in those black swells, and a fire
on the highlands of this first and best time of men!
These are the times....
I shall orate an augerful of frothing truth
and not swallow back a word while I live!
This dirty tent, thrashed in the back-sizzle of new hail,
tied frozen down in these grimy woods,
here's a place to lay sweet newness on the earth,
inaugurate a heart to the swift weird will of one,
here's a place, an altar of activity to actively
announce my grown tough truth, a fabled place, perhaps,
where future disaster or glory laps at circumstance
and sheer human will overturns all the tides that meet!
Ha ha! I in my mock coracle-cockle will toss the turbulence
in my humanly mouthed direction on towards perfection,
and not drop dropsey-sick into the old worm trails
that so lovingly lattice the past with irking defeats,
the benighted unlightedness of my predecessors.
What have they ever lived to light their way to
besides death and the present tyranny?
This present tyranny and trumpeting injustice that makes me
curl curdled against it and call to the remote sky:
I must! I must! Can Justice exist when all are not free
to imagine it into some hammered shape of perfection?
Come rain, come storm, come snow,
   withering blizzrd or puffing drift,
      I see the forecasted crests' shapes
and do not spurn my own straightness of purpose!
I'll knock at the tent-- and may that tent let me enter!
   [Crowing:] I've come! I've come! I've come!








FROM
SCENE TWO
If an upright fellow speaks low, why the poor word's
discredited and given some high sheen of his
moral height and more sober quality, against
the insistence of its syllable; and if a man,
a base, a twisted, a poor and lunatic soul
to whom the phasing moon is monitor and mirror
of his unsteady moods and inconstant thoughts,
backlighting the weird proceedings of his strange eye
turned blank inward on a sick imagination,
if such a man, a vile, distemperate wretch
should speak in clear ululation, as even
the reckoning of God on his last Judgement Day
(when all is overtaken by his mystery of mercy)
would have all men speak, in accents to shame the angels
with his bright crystal syllables and sweet tricks,
why then the very heavens themselves take a taint,
a very palpable taint, from his silent loud-spoken
bastardry. His very perfidy will roar him down,
though he sing a hummingbird to stillness.
No matter how clean, no matter how absent of evil
go his words to their intended hearts
they shall inherit an afterburn all of black
and burnt miming umber umbrage by his stooping use
of those chosen words, and not others, those words
until all that was thought fit for tender human ears
is blasted, blocked, confounded, drowned in deaf tones,
poured void upon the incomprehension of the world,
erased from the tight mating poets crave
of sound and sense. The entire penning tenor
of my trial of life is to the language of its use
blameless stranger in this respect, and pleads in tongues
a real nearness at the docket of the hours every day,
a nice binding of human man and mouth-motion
which no other ordination I know of so obdurately requires.


END

Jul 162020
 
		Experimental adaptation of Euripides' 'Bacchae'
		    to modern-day South-Central L.A.
 
 We're the kids, we're the kids
      and we don't give a
                   shit about tomorrow.
            Anonymous Song.
 
  Rightly to be great
 Is not to stir without great argument
 But greatly to find quarrel in a straw
 When honor's at stake.
   Hamlet.
 
 Words are no satisfaction for words.
   The Code of Honor.
 
 There exists in our country a privileged class, soi disant,
 men of honor, who have established for themselves a higher
        law. They put their foot upon the criminal code and trample it
        in the dust.

        They may and do commit murder with impunity. I have
 no objection to a privileged class built on virtue and
 intelligence. But I protest, and shall to my dying breath
 protest against an aristocracy of crime.
  Reverend Arthur Wigfall, mid 1800s.
 
 There is no one here but carries arms under his clothes.
 At the slightest quarrel, knife or pistol comes to hand.
 These things happen continually; it is a semibarbarous
 state of society.
  Alexis De Tocqueville.
 
 "God damn you," Goode swore, standing over the dead man
 and firing twice more. "Maybe that will satisfy you."
  Fox Butterfield, All God's Children.
 
 These heavy-headed revels make us traduced of other
        nations.
  Hamlet.
 
 
 

SOUTH CENTRAL L.A.

      

No work in the hood,
nothin comin up;
violence is drunk by us,
violence makes us drunk.
Pistol, Whippets, China Doll,
Tammy, Shakedown, Dog, Larry,
Monster, Crip-boy, Terri,
Linda, boyz and girrls all;
As men and women we must fall.
Toke it, smoke it, better not choke it;
hammer comin down all over dis town.
Back on the street, I is Fleet;
killer nigga witha attitude,
killer stare killer cool;
my hatchet will wack it,
PCPs in my blood will hatch it.
Mayhem is my plan,
Chaos is my tool;
rod and rocket,
fuck you we gonna lock it.
Tribalist hate, lying in state,
Crips whip sissies,
sissies gotta take it.
Make it, can't fake it,
my blood is buzzin
cause your death isa comin.
.44s, .32s, sawed-off righteous,
teflon bullets come'n kiss this.
Workin down the alley ccol as a cat,
our feet like moonlight, light like that.
Nevah mutha-
fuka gonna fuck ya;
cap in yo nappy head
lickin asphalt dead,
my rule is crimson
hatred is my brimstone;
walk this world stone alone,
put a cap in my enemy befo I's gone.
Victory, victory,
chaos gettin inta me,
wildnight action,
adidas-fast traction.
One dis and you get this;
muthafuckin nevah gonna miss.
Handy, dandy, my colt .49;
effortless, endless,
these scraggy streets is mine;
highest, wiredest,
my flight's so tragic-magic
I paff out the rest best;
I kite it, I bite it
no matter how windless.

This which is in me
is my only kin, see,
nothin else can win me.
Violence, violence,
put its crooked root in my tooth,
grow outa my shadow
to shatter the vacum.
Outer space gonna waste
when my god give the nod
and unleash what's within me.
Up from the Dime,
down to 299,
all the way I'm gonna riot
ride it, abide it, alla that fly shit;
nothin ain't no sin, Jammers
just so long as you win, Bamm!
John Wayne Gacy, Dick Tracy,
they all say it and lace it
inside like a sidewinder,
just a little reminder;
Like a Medusa, we'll reduce ya
until you crawl in hip-deep;
make your little sister weep.
Yeah, yeah, yo mamma gonna cry
river a tears, bye n bye.
Ain't no offer, I'm gonna off ya;
no amnesty served up with your tea.
Wackin and swackin
and crazy-ass crackin
is all you're gonna get
from the boyz wit the hit.
The God a Din
growing mighty within;
I puff him and huff him,
I'm down with the dragon,
your blood, my religion.
Deflower is power
and I get it by the hour.
Every tear of your fear
I lick until it tickles.
Runnin with a Mustang
chillin with the Gangsta gang
baffin' with the master man.
Yo, color! Yo color!
A militant flip-off
is enough to get ya knocked off.
Adrenelin
rushin in,
flamin it
never taming it,
my juice is a mighty tower,
my snakey spine's a howler.
Whip it, drip it;
cordite smoke, I lip it.
Givin every sign
I'm possessed by the most divine.
Yes, it's spastic
but the girls dig my brass stick;
unwavering they savor it,
gettin humble just to flavor it.

Now this night is diving
like wine from a shiv in
somebody, a stranger,
a kid in a manger;
don't matter, it splatters
its darkness that flatters,
making me restless;
I'm up and I get dressed.
Night combat black
to match the sky's black attack;
Under my old stereo
my hand spans, there it go,
just like in the rodeo;
I pick up my pistol,
neveah gonna let it go.
Oh no, ho no,
out the house, I'm on Patrol.
Who's dat comin
My heart starts thrummin;
whatever's out, I'm in.
Nothin's ever prettier
than me and my boyz sittin sure.
Our waistbands are packin
when we start the dragnet
It's an old old story
rosy, erect-reared phalloi,
testosterone to the bone
bring tha muthafucka rollin home!
Pot smoke, ropes of dope,
crack-smackin, our heads be whackin
with honey-nugget naked dreams, oi!
We smash with the mastering noise of the Boyz!
Our eyes like blazin .38s,
heaven's angels at the gate,
satan's flamethrowers just can't wait
so we shout
while our arms sparr routs
pickin up the little ones
to teach em all the killin fun;
In our enemy's fear
our hearts sail clear;
our dreads sled better
when they're deader and wetter.
Snortin and flarin
wild and darin
like some high-wire act
we dance in the flak
hotter and hotter,
demented as otters!
Mighty in our joy
boyz among boys;
Holy loud-proud
our hand signals make the rounds
til every fucka in the hood
just wishes that he could or would
throw his hand around his heart
and break it flaming like kindling wood!







PREFACE SCENE


[PSYCHO SIXTY holds a gun to the blue-swathed temple
of an enemy Blood, who kneels cuffed before him.]

PSYCHO SIXTY
You rude, intruding Bloods covet too much
what my better glove alone must hold.

[PSYCHO SIXTY shoots the kneeling man dead.
All the other cast members are there, except
BLINDEYE, ROBBER G, and MONSTER. All solemnly 
approve.]









SCENE ONE

 

[In front of ROBBER G's house. His little sister is
leaning at the door.]

BLINDEYE
It's Blindeye knockin-- its time to start rockin.
Let's kick it; we're wicked. I'm sick a just waitin;
tonight there'll be no hesitatin. Yo yo yo
Robber G-- Let's go! We built dis damn town
Now is the hour to tear it damn down.
How else have we got to show our firey crowns aroun?
Li'l Sis, its my wish-- go get yo bro for this.

ROBBER G
Is that you tinkerbellin my door? Yo Blindeye,
here stands your able man in ripped-up Hell.
I'm strapped with my gat; let's kick it.
Let's shotgun our enemies, for violence is sweet!
Rowdy-crowdin these poor-ass steets
we're heroes, we're Neros, one hand smashin
one hand upliftin resistless the gold node of our "set."
Homeboys of the pure noise, we need to bleat.
Duck in your heads, resisters, before you get beat!
On my bike I am strikin.

BLINDEYE
Most merciless.

ROBBER G
With curses I'm rehearsin;
No stick shift help me with my deathwish. 

BLINDEYE
Yeah, deathwish for those suckers.

ROBBER G
I don't care if I die, long as I flyin!

BLINDEYE
I seen death many multiple times.
What his most ferocious incarnation, Robber G?

ROBBER G
We is!

BLINDEYE
Righteous.

ROBBER G
Made like an ace mace in the USA,
I'll split the illin' face of every disgrac-
ful flounder down under our 60th st Parallel,
I'm bulgin and boyish, not old and churlish,
holdin on to all the things I own
as if they'll save me some day. I am
my own creation, built to slay.

BLINDEYE
And that's how we'll stay.
But we still gotta pedal over to Psycho Sixty's
momma's house an get him up together with us.

ROBBER G
All one proud cloud of righteous trouncin!

BLINDEYE
Down in my neves, in my guts, I'm bouncin,
wired to the surprise. Yass, yass.

ROBBER G
This the Tradition. We down with it.
Older'n the hands that slapped down
these mean streets. Our augering god was cuttin
faces from their owners, ruinin unions,
smearing a weirdness over the cold nighttime,
napalm-lobbin our erect status outward
to girls and strangers since before Life,
practically. Damn, can't go gainst that
no way.

BLINDEYE
Who wants ta? I'm a live wire!
I'm burnin to be gettin it on, cuz.

ROBBER G
Let the old beware, and the young take care,
we here to rip their stars from existence.

BLINDEYE
Psycho Sixty! He cool like that.

ROBBER G
Yeah, he wit the hood all the way. 
Do or die, like the goddamn Marine Corps.

[Enter PSYCHO SIXTY.]

PSYCHO SIXTY
Gentle citizens! Has you heard the clap trap
bombasting its wailing rogue spell
into the clits' ears herebouts? Damn,
they sweatin they spandex off for some
new yule log, hotter'n our pistol-whipping
six-inch dicks. Say he like a god over there
and all, got the whole block scooted over
by one bushy nieghborly neighborhood.
Got every black female squattin at his shack.
His residence is "the Presence," what they say.
They shootin and hootin, gettin all kinda
malt liquor drunk over there. I don't know.
Shaneesta never give me no blow but she
down on all four in the bay window for this mo fo.
I thought I was the top cat, blacksters.
Can't no one go howlin at my black moon
lessin' I gives the say-so, you know?
Them girls all pretendin it some tenderness
in they minds that make them wild-ass wild
like that, strayin from they home-made beds.
I put some serious kidnapping on their sleepy asses
this wicked dawn, long befo yo asses was up.
They down in my basement sweatin it.
Rest a them squallers beat it, like a anthill
smashed by a passin holocaust, my death breath,
when I went down their bolted hole,
all ragin and maniac, sportin my mask
time has chiselled to outrageous disaster.
I'll catch 'em out later at leisure
when they come crawlin back to ol' Psvcho, not crowin.
Damn, my own Moms hot-footed it to that party,
she was hollerin and drinkin up with the rest of em;
and she can really do down some brew to, y'all.
Got all this on my iron hands, and what else?
This stranger baps his hip-hoppin ass onto the block,
a juggler, a magician out of Lydia,
head all nappy blond and fire-wild,
ringlets trapsing down his neck sweet-scented,
acne-free and one dear green eye to boot!
Says he got Lady Love on his soul's side;
well damn if he ain't buckin our honies
all day and all night too. Screw, screw, screw.
But I tells y'all-- and watch my scratched eye--
I ain't lying, neither, if'n I catch him,
by his gold-ringletted necklace of honey-locks
I'll shake him so down he can't dance shit,
his left foot be so disconnented it can't find
the right; his partnered hands, which been
snatchin my snatch so near me, they gonna
forget what a clap is, laddies. Yes they is.

BLINDEYE
Damn, man. You gonna bap our happiness away from us,
jest like that? I ain't havin it. You nuts, is what.
Since when you been against a little partyin,
Psycho Sixty?

ROBBER G
Shoot'em up and ride 'em high;
ain't that what you always say?

BLINDEYE
Don't make no sense, gentle citizen.
Gots to respect the wildness that's in us,
give it free let and insane run. Be humble
before the river courses of your adrenelin.
Ain't life just one rollercoaster whore, padre?
You talk like a cat that's swack, but you
ain't makin no kinda solid sense, mistah.
When lovin and hatin come against us, we break.
Our innards scatter outside, and freeze
in whatever shape overwhelming desire or
insurmountable hate has trashed em into.
C'mon, Psycho Sixty, you know. We head up
for that damn party ourselves. Gonna get puss.
Gonna get high. Gonna kill some swell-heads
in the park about damn midnight. What up?
Why not? Our god done grow solid within us.
Rage and chaos dance. Suck my cock
or stuff a sock in it if you ain't down.
What kinda leader is you without your baton?
So this new one on the turf ain't no good?
That ain't what I hear. This Monster, yeah,
that his name; this Monster got a chomp on it,
hold the whole hood in his mouth like it nothin,
he could done damn spit it out again.
He gonna be ridin high Old Gangsta style
quick as a hiss-mist grafitti swish a silver Dutch Boy
hit them splintery city walls. His name
gonna rise and shine; all a all the rest....
They gonna fall. Don't ask me how I know,
I know. You damn know I get them frenzied
sessions when I'm outta breath, trapsin
homeward way after some slash and action.
You know what I see flashin in my head then 
is the God-awfulest truest things there be; 
I get my Blindeyes then, white chocolate and starin'.
Robber G hadda drag my sorry ass off of Florence
that one wilding night, scrapin my heels raw,
I was so blind-righteous with my vision, cuz.
Monster, man. Partyin, yeah. Get your soul,
wrenched from your nervous skin, flyin high
and feelin whole again; ain't that enough?
Ain't that what all the all be all about, Psycho?
Can't feel no wretchedness in us when
you floatin mighty enough to touch dead Heaven,
see everybody there, all my old homies ressurected,
kickin it at a fat-ass barbecue, smilin,
laughing on the butteriest summer afternoon
that ever was. Sincerely, Psycho Sixty, man,
that's what all I seen last time I rolled
into one a Monter's monsta Parties.
And Belinda weren't no shy Aphrodite that night!
Pinned her whimpering body on me like a
shishkabob, bro. My Heaven one wet place,
Lester, I'll tell ya. Your babes, man they
be gettin it on or not once you out that door
just like they please. No monster got
a remote control on all that. They do like natural.
Don't be shootin me those evil looks and all that.
Shaneeta wanna be your li'l princess,
well she'll keep her legs crossed then anywhere;
one party ain't gonna make no horndogette
outa her if she loyal to your poinger.
Shit. You know how it is when you get The Rage,
your eyes roll up red like gumballs,
and your lips bow over theyselves like some
African mask Miss Pederson tripped on the class
last year; sayin about our heritage and all.
Yeah, yeah, that's just a buncha crap. I know.
These streets is my labyrinth, back and forwards.
And Monster, man, he got some kick-ass biceps,
22 inches, and a bazooka forsooth stashed
at his wackin shack over past the rended Hendersons'.
Damn but the mighty eye of him will bend 'em,
even the most honorably ferocious-rough
of 'em, down to a cowardly knot of nerves;
sometimes, anyway, they jes' break and scat.
Seen it happen; they had the guns, and he just
had that moon-blind eye a his, blood solemn.
You think you got the way with all the block
just cause you the Power here? Think again;
something high and wilder goin on when Monster stirs.
Robber G and me, we your loyalest,
shout out Psycho Sixty forever! and blow
more than one rival clean away into yesterday.
You know we done that, how many times together,
clearing midnight with all chambers empty.
How many wakes we drive by laughin our asses off?
Every crib sibling of our troop say first
"Psycho Sixty!" before they pop out "Moms"
or "Daddy," oh yeah. But I tell you, Psycho,
although you the first word round here,
you ain't the last or only. You like being high?
Monster put a zip in it make you think you
pure undiluted sky, commander. You like
to see stitched Xs over your enemies' eyes?
Monster gonna whip those Xs in fast as kisses,
and get you ripped on givin 'em, too.
Whee ooo! Come on down, proud crown!
Step mildly to this new wildness;
won't wear out no welcome at the Monster House,
nobody there see what comin or going.
Their minds is gold-blown, his stash is so noble.

ROBBER G
Blindeye sayin just what he seein, by Jesus.
Priceless advice ain't often gotten so free.
It only a goodwill gesture to take what he givin
at the very lees of the least, my Priest.
I know your holy vesture is crossed with a baretta.
My prayers all open up hot like a hollownose
shot too, Psycho. It ain't about that at all.
If he givin on all whacked and false-like, well,
at least the ecstasy today's gonna be real real.
What more you need to know 'bout that than how you feel?
You don't come down, some a the others may
get smellin that you're weak, put off, shy
of divin inta what's here. Now why would
that be? they might ask. Psycho Sixty,
he the real down with the downest man around.
Maybe he slippin, just a li'l bit. That's it.
Next thing, someones be skating past our wake,
a triple one, gasping laughs into their hands,
and drooling their Coors out they noses, jose.
I don't like it, but there it is.

BLINDEYE
You gonna fade up like a bruise you not careful;
I don't care how black you think you are.

ROBBER G
C'mon, man, Blindeye here right. Real right.

PSYCHO SIXTY
You keep your hands straight off me, now, hear?
I don't want to hear anymore of this Blackenstein shit;
superduper Monsta Trooper. Y'all can just stall all that.
They call you Blindeye... huh... well they gonna
call you Lefty soon, cause all you gonna have left
is your left nut, homie. Don't be pullin no stuntflying
in my zone, Mr Bones. You got it? One more slip,
you won't even know what happenin'.
And that ain't no stale threat, jet. Monster-Man,
I'm a gonna deal with him most harshly.
Yes indeed. Spliff, Fast Matthew, c'mon,
we gonna rouse them lazy asses kickin back round
Yolanda's house. She been diggin his ass
most unrighteously of all. Her and her wondertunnel.
I'll spurn those he's turned away from me first,
that'll burn him most deep and creeply, I know.
Him and his pretty green girl's eye, well hell,
they can just be trippin on seein
all the homies torn away and spurnin him.
You go there-- tell him that. He just
a hissing miss until he take me out;
I'm the wack trap that'll zap him, no pre-lim.
And when time come round to blistex his ass
for the final, humiliating kiss of my colt .45,
let him see the hardy party he been plannin
disintegrate to tears while he wailin.

[Exit PSYCHO SIXTY.]

BLINDEYE
Damn but that one-hundred percent whack!
Monster ain't no threat to his po ass.
Damn! Psycho Sixty is within inches
of being the top dog among top cats, and he
blowin it bigtime. He just gotta go along
a LITTLE with the adrenalin high Monster havocs,
then everything'd be real cool. Ice cubed.
Let's you and me weave over to the Monsta's house
and put a molten spotlight on Psycho Sixty's
good deeds and charming ways. Monster'll see
and make sure Psycho repent his ashen ass
step'n'fetch-it quick. That's sure.
Monster'll play straight, and no mistake.
'Long as Psycho Sixty play along, jes a li'l bit.
Some bowing now will save his sassy ass from howling.
Maybe it'll look like we beggin a little,
but let's throw our whole hearts inta it, cuz.
Everybody get a bit pleady and wrecked when they buzzed.

ROBBER G
That fool talk like a fool.

BLINDEYE
Gospel.




    
Crackin on a six-pack
golden liquor makein eyes slack,
distributing hilariousness
handin over some fleshy miss,
Every kind a lovely sin
Monster pulls pulsin in
with a smoke-wreathed grin.
High times with him be certain.
No troubled hand draws a curtain
on the revelry, the mystery,
the peek at ecstasy.
Don't be bleedin no worry
on the magic carpet he procures.
Harps and snow-flurries
mix it up with the crack now.
Snap it, and trap it, c'mon hands let's clap it,
Monster is a comin in with his wings a flappin.

Thrashin and trashin,
it's anarchy he's hatchin
it's a method of freedom
when your heart is a speared plum
when your eye sockets
feel like a dirty pocket
--seen too many corruptions
to pull together your gumption?
then let thy soul be free!
Take it from me, for yourself take take it,
mindless happiness is in these veins
when you let your blood be insane
and thoughtfully derrange
what happens in the brain; hop that train,
ride the high wire,
club your dick wit desire.
Expand necromancin, with the DJ trancin,
twirl like a girl, no one will be wiser.
Monster, Monster, in us he's exercisin.

Being wise is just for fools;
shake the house of the righteous,
that's the golden rule.
When trouble is floodin
and your thumper be bubblin
a karma-calmness like dew bedights
rage-reared heads day n' night;
forget hurry, forget-worry,
spear freedom's angry page,
take a life but take it sage:
owning every action-- never sorry.
Your eyes smile in the blast,
in the muzzle-flash I'm trashed;
by death's clear light I'm washed.
For every dissin' victim I've executed,
the Monster in me washes pure what conscience polluted.
I'm a bigger bigger bigger
with my finger on the trigger.

Eyes turned inward see your thought;
what's secret becomes what not;
the unconscious, the monstrous,
vomit visible in the roar's hush.
Before you born, who hung your face
before they skulls, cuz? What place
galloped your heart alert
from void and unbeing, the universe's dirt?
Buttermilk skulls harden to a grimace;
death had your face befo you was in it.
Mr. Bones still dance when flesh dismissed;
you be what you be, cuz, not what you wished.
Orgasm's deaf death spasms make eyes inch inwards;
heavy bodies drop lards, skeletons lighten skywards.
When Monsta has gotcha, yo tweet like a bird;
insane only insane for them that ain't heard.



SCENE TWO

     

[Enter SPLIFF and FAST MATTHEW, escorting MONSTER.]

SPLIFF
Man, his ass is silk.

FAST MATTHEW
No spine in his kind. Comes all simpering.
Let us cuff 'im too, wrists out poutin.

SPLIFF
"Truss me, buss me, just don't make no fuss. See?"

FAST MATTHEW
He came sayin at us with his nice green eye n' all.

SPLIFF
Swayin sweet and neat. Got us laughin and
so sorry somehow inside at lockin and knockin him;
Damn, when's the last time I cared I scarred
some stranger's sorry ass too hard? Yet
with him I was all gentleness and niceness.
Something in him. Some potent flow of twining
wine rhyming a wildness under his slick skin,
Psycho Sixty. I swear. Mister Monster,
me n' Spliff didn't take you on our own recognizance.
Psycho here done ordered it all. That his way.
Shoot first.... He crazy for his honor n' all.

SPLIFF
You know all them other folk we got chained
and chillin to the waterheater in your basement?
Well, they angels now, or somefin.

PSYCHO SIXTY
How angels?

SPLIFF
They done flewed the coop.

FAST MATTHEW
Loop de loop, dey flew de coop. 

SPLIFF
Yeah, and wasn't no lock nohow smashed.
Like they had the keys all forged and molded
that escaped 'em, Psycho Sixty.

FAST MATTHEW
Pretty nifty, huh?

PSYCHO SIXTY
You're a magician, ain't you, you Monster? 

MONSTER
What seem like magic sometimes de simplest thing a all.

PSYCHO SIXTY
You think you could undo a lynch in such a cinch?

MONSTER
Got to know what death be to undo a death, I guess.

PSYCHO SIXTY
Where you from? Ain't from no round here.
You infiltratin. What hood's backin you up?

MONSTER
My kind are from all around. No place everywhere;
You see a fire, you see a fight, I'm from there.

PSYCHO SIXTY
Uh huh. Any place more specific?

MONSTER
No. Naw, not really. My folks from out the cuntry.

PSYCHO SIXTY
Why you draggin all your wildass rollin-eye shit
down to my part a town? Don't need no voodoo boo
washing away our homicide outlines and marks a war.

MONSTER
Things I got in me just gotta come out.
Wherever. Whenever. It don't matter much.

PSYCHO SIXTY
Yeah, I can sip that, but I can't swallow
what everyone else gets just jammin away
at your hollerin wild-loud shindigs, stranger.

MONSTER
What they get stay in their eyes, but you can't see it.

PSYCHO SIXTY
Fuck that shit. You just jackin me up
so I'll let you loose just to get off myself.
I ain't buying that. You tell me. Get me off now.

MONSTER
Some things only come out in the doing, not the tellin.
I can't teach you howta fly lessen you jump up
to my piece of sky, Psycho Sixty.

PSYCHO SIXTY
Uh huh. You ain't tellin me shit, genius.

MONSTER
Wise things sound like fool things to a fool.

[PSYCHO SIXTY cracks MOSTER in the head.]

PSYCHO SIXTY
Keep that up you ain't gonna be wearing your tongue
too much longer, Monster. My dog be chewin on it.

MONSTER
Hidden things in you gonna whap your ass backwards,
Psycho Sixty; and it ain't me that'll do it,
it's your own ignorant self. That's a promise.

PSYCHO SIXTY
Damn, that's it! God damn you, you Monster!
Don't nobody step on my respect.

MONSTER
What horrors will you scar me with?
PSYCHO SIXTY
Gonna shave your dread head. That my first cut.

MONSTER
Do that. just know you ain't playing with no Maybe.
These dreads are a river flowing,
and ain't grown out to be chopped. They're sacred.

PSYCHO SIXTY
Girl hair on a man ain't sacred. Now hand me 
your psychoactive stash, massah. Ha ha.
Whatever it is you got a lock on ain't
gonna stay locked away from Psycho Sixty, sister.

MONSTER
I can't give it up. You want to take,
then let it be on you. Your stirring deep shit now.

PSYCHO SIXTY
Yeah yeah; I don't let no bald woman
tell me what I'm doing or not doing.
Now do I fast Matt?

FAST MATTHEW
You the rockin rooster a the roost, Psycho, no doubt.
But still, he ain't done nothing much. And maybe....

PSYCHO SIXTY
Maybe shit. Ain't no maybes in Maybe anymore.
Don't step on my respect.

FAST MATTHEW
No no. Nothing like that Psycho, man.

PSYCHO SIXTY
Yeah. That's fine then. Hog-tie this muthah.
Then drag his scraggy ass back to the basement.
No second escape about to happen on me. And hurry up,
those cocksuckers from over on Hoover lookin for us.
They just be itchin to be triggerin us
to rancid splats on the sidewalk. No more talk.
Lash him, and let's exit this disaster zone.

MONSTER
You bind me now, you be setting somehing loose
even you don't want no peek at Psycho Sixty.

[PSYCHO SIXTY strikes him.]

PSYCHO SIXTY
Trash that backtalk. I'm a martyr your ass.
I'm the master on this plantation. Strafe him.

MONSTER
You don't know spit about what your life really is;
you don't know nuffin at all about who you are.

PSYCHO SIXTY
Chain him to the light fixture with the bike lock
like I showed you. If he moves, he'll be
electrocuted in the darkness. That'll be
his only enlightenment. Fast Matt, Spliff,
move it! I'll grab Betty, Shaneesta and them stupid chicks
back to my dominion lickety-split again.

MONSTER
You sure is crazy Psycho, just like your name say.
What you lockin up wit me can't be kept pent.



Tidal triumph, awash like graves
Come to kill y'all, not to save.
My mind's unbalanced,
Entranced, with wicked motions dance;
But what's more subtle, right, brighter,
Me insane or you in chains?
Psycho's blind to what makes him wind,
He just a kite in this wind;
Now I look myself over, head to toe,
Just what I am, I just don't know.
But not to know is half the score,
Or more, cause Jazz to the soul's a whore.
Rap just happens, spontaneous combustion,
Of will and world it is the junction.
And all my plain "just Ignorance"
Overbrow's that Psycho's show
Of foresightful jurisprudence.

I'm a dunce, I'm a dunce,
I dance like I was drunk;
I drink like a dancer's waver;
Every gold footsole go clunk,
Many a times, not just once,
We live and die forever.
Of this stupid truth I'm treasurer
Cause my mind's expandin ecstaticer,
Ecstaticer until I cannot stir
Without the mutible union come
To do and do til my bones' undone.
Deep in Monster's interlocked skull
Lies a Zoroaster's indomitable skill
Will to swill and will to kill,
Together lie down on the rapist's hill.

But I dance in a trance,
My blood's as bold as an old lance
Dashin fantastic through my happenstance
Like a teflon-infected bullet's truth
That only in death may find a truce.
How we gonna this ecstatic state induce?
It come when it come, and that's the truth.
I won't degrade what's played into spoof,
Or uncoil my moil of heart with ruth,
Things too imposssible
Come and give me thrills
Time and again, as if Time stood still.
Monster and Psycho: are they equals,
Bone's cold truth, and tyrant's hot demand?
Before this play's final line's declaimed,
One'll drink gin grinning from the other's skull.







SCENE THREE


MONSTER
Hey hey, Betty, you gonna get it on with your steady?
Here I am, and I in the clear. Get near.

BETTY
Close as halitosis, Monster. You touch me,
man you put my pants on fire. Say, how you
get outta Psycho's clutches so fast
without so much as a scratch on your wild hide?

MONSTER
Betty, that sold fool Psycho don't know
who he is messin with in the least. Not the least.
I'll cut him up like butter, muthahfucker.

BETTY
But didn't he have you all painfully chained,
or somethin'?

MONSTER
Can't put a lock on lightness, baby.
Can't chain the mainspring, no way, no maybe.
I learned me a few tricks a gettin outta
my Moms' womb. After that trick, every other'n's
simple as snatch, natch.

BETTY
Not always so simple.

MONSTER
Don't even play that with me, Betty.
You was as easy to knock over as a toddler.

BETTY
There's something you're not a-tellin me,
Monster. Those locks didn't just pop off.
Psycho's no fool no matter how many ways you say he is.

MONSTER
Oh no? Catch a ear a this, then.
They had me so locked up, with so many chains
wrapped about my boisterous body, I looked
like a arrested tornado, Betty Boop.
Did that put old Monster down? Did that
crinkle the pure linens of my spirit? Did it?
Ahh, no. You put me lookin like a sunk slave
in your basement rooms and you find out damn fast
that down just ain't where I's stayin.
But, as I was relating, I was so ass-wrapped up
in these chains, that I couldn't hardly move;
so I had my arms out all christ-wise
and Psycho hisself and his helper hadda help
me move to my imprisonment, one broken step
at a time. And they dids. And I had my hands
clapped upon Mister Sixty's exposed neck;
and what was in my mauling hand? Now what
do you suppose was there?

BETTY
Beats me.

MONSTER
I tripped him out with a li'l slipped dose
of something totally morose and potent.
A most engrossing substance; all romance
and moonlight, with no follow-up dawn
to bring his senses back to a sense a belonging
in this ol' world. His nappy head
was in the most far-outest space sayable
inside of thirty seconds of my benediceion.
Soon's as sayin, he was a-wrappin my swayin chains
around the waterheater itself, and handin me
a uzzi from his personal arsenal.

BETTY
No lie?

MONSTER
No lie.
He was fumblin aroun and fiddln with many things
like a blind man with a combination lock.
And I was right there next to him, lookin over him,
him not seeing me at all, or with wasted-out eyss
overviewing my present frame, thinkin me
some out-of-alignment pillar o' the house.

[Offstage.]

PSYCHO SIXTY
He gone! Snap to, units! Get my slack soljers assembled!
Jump to my house, jacks! Monster's gone!

MONSTER
Hah hah hah. Guess we in for a li'l company.
Psycho, Psycho. He a man fightin against flashes.
What is men's meaning in life compared to me?
I'll knock out agony and joy in one wailin heave;
him? He gonna rage all a his days in a blaze,
not seein the true beauty of violence for his fires.
Ass up in the air, wigglin around, sayin
"I'ma shoot mo' fo'. I'm a shoot his eyes out,
gonna cut him up baaad." Hmm hmm. I'm wise
enough to see this ol' world with my own eyes.

[Enter PSYCHO SIXTY.]

PSYCHO SIXTY
My head is swimmin' like to universe's chaotic begining.
I had that Creature Features Monster spangle-bangled
with razor wires in my bloodletting basement,
and now he's out, gone as a hour burned past.
How'd that happen? Betty.... You! Down on your face,
fucker, nobody get me goin and creep outta my house;
nobody douse me with that humiliation.
I'm a drown your stray cat ass immeadimento, Pablo.

MONSTER
Relax. Your incompetence ain't your personal
diaster; everybody round here got a share in it.
You owe it to all to stall out that vengeance shit
until you see for yourself whether I bring some benefit.

PSYCHO SIXTY
Everybody, do a shotgun patrol. Now.
You see one strange head in our hood... Pow-pow-pow.

MONSTER
That ain't the answer, Psycho.

PSYCHO SIXTY
You so wise-ass wise. You got all the answers,
cept when you need to be tellin me true, bruiser.

MONSTER
I'm true when I need the truth. Then I'm truest.

PSYCHO SIXTY
Say your last prayer, pilgrim. This the apocalypse for you.

[PSYCHO SIXTY holds gun to MONSTER's head.
Two guys on bicycles scoot in, squealing to a halt
before the tableaued pair.

PSYCHO SIXTY
WHAT THE FUCK IS IT? I'm ready to waste this shit.

[PSYCHO SIXTY holds a confused hand up to his aching head.]

FAST MATTHEW
Everybody on the block has flocked out of it,
down towards Florence and Normandy, commander.

SPLIFF
It's true truth. And everybody strapped to the max.
They're out wailin and nailin everyone and everything.

FAST MATTHEW
I saw my little bro on his Big Wheel
tricyclin by with a slingshot.

SPLIFF
We arced around in the dark. Slammed
our breaks by a car chillin at the light,
y'know, near Hoover Avenue? Bap-- trashed
that ol' man in it, pulled him out
to old Mrs. Witchett's garage in a red rage,
stuffed his shirt in his mouf, tied him way down.
Left him there wit' some mangy hound lickin round.
Then we took us a fine drive, moving lightning
at our weighted waists and itchin fingertips,
plenty of trouble and noise available to our egos.
Saw Shaneesta, melon-head in a silk dew-rag
walkin sly and stylin outa the 7-'leven.
Damn she a evil beauty in a tropical skirt, Psycho!
So, we trail her, silent as silk out silkworm's ass.
And she stormin down those streets!
Makin time like a rock-climber in zero-G.
Her heels' clickety-click only sound out there
besides the moon's hollow burn-through
where the streetlights was out. Fast Matt
crackin his neck all-ways sideways to see
if any of the Hoover Bloods is in the water
sharkin our exhaust. But everything seemed clean.
Then China Doll meet up with SHANEESTA
after about half a block, not sportin our colors,
but got on instead the purple-blues the Bloods use
twirlin through their fine high hair.
Then Larry and Shakedown show up, movin too
down the same block, same direction,
toward that Normandy whir-pool center of action
and dick and quiff atteniion. The cold moon
smoking over all a us like a spurted gun.

PSYCHO SIXTY
You keep on talkin, Spliff. If
anything he say implicate you, Monster,
your blown-open neck gonna look as sad
as a chil' when his balloon get popped.

SPLIFF
We turn the corner, and whoa Lord! Hordes
a Bloods with zip-shivs, automatics, bats,
are dancin entranced as Manson aborting li'l
Sharon Tate in the white wilderness suburbs;
every fine hand was lifted, every piece cocked,
every hard eye targeted as clockwork
tickin the death-seconds back to the zero-hole
that eats the victim's life away. And victims'
startin to fall too, all over, like a dance
collapsed-- r'member that time we all played
musical chairs at your Moms' house, Psycho?
Like that. But the music stop and nobody here
have a chair, they all fall all every which ways.
Matted blood dull in the moonlight. Street-
lights shot out in favor of nature's dark
long time gone, maybe, as if the dark was forver.
Then me an' Fast Matt gets this queer idea.
Y'know how your Moms was out there an' all,
well, we thought we should go chase her ol' ass
and drag her back to the habitat, so she
here once an for all, whatever else is a comin,
and that's that; Fast Matt give it the nod
and off we shoot, moving through the cruel ballet
and sloppy bodies' hectic sprawl. Damn if'n I
didn't slip more'n once times in black blood,
my heels still bapped with that baptism.
Now we had just passed a smashed-in Sam's
Wont-Mart, not gone too far beyond that at all
when into my flyin ears came a stingin' singin',
can't describe it no other way, high keenin,
stripped of velvet humanhood, a raw caw
but beautiful too, as if every extragance of voice
had been torn muscle by muscle off, and only
this solo bone of hollow knowing, this hurt chruch
of moon-induced croonin was lef'. Shift
every flap of my heart backwards, it did.
And who we see at the quackin head a this choir?
Whose angel-face, intense as a punch,
and masked all from brow to drippin chin
in another's blood, the mask makin' her look
all holy and insane or somethin', but your MOMS
Psycho? No one but her unleashin that wire
of diamond sound down the corntracted alley.
And she flayin' some space cadet like a filet mignon,
right there in de crags a the trash,
makin this wail and tearin a man to pieces---
with her nails! Damn but that sight went mighty
right through me; I quailed; troubled somethings
almost undid my guts like I had the shits.
Moms bringin the life inta this world
and axing it out as weil-- that ain't damn right;
that for soljers and others to muscle through,
not moms whose titties is all molten over
with milks when you puts up o 'em. Not right.
Damn not right. So me an Fast Matt move to her
gonna just grab her ass or knock her outs,
if we have to, no disrespect, Psycho,
when she raise up that strange mask-face,
all Afrikaans or some shit, right from the heart
a the man she disastered, looks straight
through me, through my whole soul in one look,
with dismissive eyes, and then turns her howl-hedd
to the right and bites the night air
with these words-- oh Lordy I won't forget 'em soon!--
"They, untouched by the monster's grace
seek to touch to undoing our violent chase,
as if the mens owned every insanity!
AAhiiiii! Speed with me deathly! Deathly and free!"
Then she and twenty others batted at us,
flapped dark in the darkness, all speed, like she say.
We barely 'scaped. Scraped knees an hands,
pulled the '78 camaro through twenty backyards,
a rile and a ruckus all fucked up,
tearing the air with angry sounds, rippin stars,
alarmin' all who saw us we had such scared looks,
fear sucked up from the bases of our beings
til all I am emerged in my high screams.
No way I'd be goin in there now again.
Shoot me here, Psycho, but I ain't to budge.
But that Monster she talk about, if that
anything to do with this man here, well then,
I'd be piecing him into my future plans
and not tearin' him out at all. No sir.
No disrespect to you Mistah Monstur. No sir.

PSYCHO SIXTY
You talk like that to me again, Spliff,
I'll have no care that you my li'l bro,
none at all. I'll put a cap in you
and not wait to hear the whap your ass makes
hittin' and disintegratin' against the pavement.

SPLIFF
Don't be makin me go back in there.

PSYCHO SIXTY
You ain't worth takin.

MONSTER
I can give you entrance into their madness.
Would you like to see such ecstatic faces up close?

PSYCHO SIXTY
I did NOT tell you to talk. Keep shut, fucker.
Spliff, go get every last asshole you know;
I want all the troops scooted to my front yard;
any riot within my range goin to be by my hand.

[Exit SPLIFF and FAST MATTHEW.]

PSYCHO SIXTY
Now. What the fuck were you insinuating?
What off-the-wall plan you think you capable of
that can't do myself for myself twice as well?

MONSTER
Nuthin'. Ain't my way to be tellin you
how to do and how to be-- that's best
left up to you, Psycho. I don't know no-how nuthin.

PSYCHO SIXTY
Yeah. Your ignorance clear clear enough to me.
But I can see my way clear far enough
to listen to your stupidity in clarity.
Don't let nobody say just my hands and not my ears
has brash audacity. I'll listen. You speak up.

MONSTER
It's not me the women praise and kill for;
it's what I stand for; to unify the tribe of man.
The wicked things and endocrine surges deep in us
that make Crip and Blood divisions a mere whimsey,
and false dividing of one big WHAT IS
into two lesser what's nots. I'm the frenzy
and the rage; I'm the gorilla in the cage,
his wild black heart, his jonesin for the jungle,
brother, nothin else. No more than a killer's 
operatic score. I'm the leopard makes the zebra fall.
I am the tooth. I am the claw. To that feelin'
there's no known way of rightfully denyin.
For that, they'll slice up their sons,
coin treason in their loins, eat sperm
and make strangers' blood fountain for their cause
instead of your petty internicine rivalries.
Crip 'gainst Crip is cursed. Even Bloods
can be unified in the chaotic tide whereon I toss.
Got to give this idea its fealty, Psycho,
or for the rest of your 'hood its no go.

PSYCHO SIXTY
Make chaos my cause! Aii and to it quick!
I'll toss heroes and enemies' heads upon my prick!

MONSTER
You goin' lose big time, that way.
Your bike wheels be spinnin' skywise at the night.

PSYCHO SIXTY
Everything I say, you say is wrong.
I must always cease in silence, while your talk
plunges on strong, strong, strong.

MONSTER
You command these kids. Its all
still up to you to give in and win, or gall.

PSYCHO SIXTY
I just have to give in to their wicked kicks
and kick it, is that it? Hmm, shit-for-brains?

MONSTER
Naw, not at all! I'll git the wommin' an'
others back here without a nick and explain plain.

PSYCHO SIXTY
Yes. First I let you go. Then you come back attacking.
Can't play that trick on me, I'm too much a prick.

MONSTER
You want th' right to kick all and be all
but don't offer nuthin' more'n a fist to worship,
and that high fist must be your own. Ain't enough.
I'm tryin' to help out, and you pull your attitude.

PSYCHO SIXTY
Get the flare gun, Spliff. Whiff this!
I'll light up your heart in argent mists!

MONSTER
So you want to see the revelry there on Noir-Mandy?

PSYCHO SIXTY
Yeah. Crazy broads squallin n' all. Suits me.

MONSTER
And why is your heart suddenly alight for the sight?

PSYCHO SIXTY
Naw; it'd hurt me had to see Shaneesta and MOMS
workin' hard for the Bloods' cause in the splutter-light.

MONSTER
But you'd get a quick-dick in that ripping sight?

PSYCHO SIXTY
I guess. If I could stay away in the shadows,
deep in the dark recesses, myself a doe.

MONSTER
They'll sight you, however ecstatic-blighted;
they're supernatural in this state of excitation. Quite.

PSYCHO SIXTY
I'll go with my boom-box under spotlights, by God!
You're right, where I walk a God must trod.

MONSTER
I know what they all jazzed about; should I help?

PSYCHO SIXTY
Take my arm; I don't wanna stumble, whipped and whelped.

MONSTER
Take off your Crip's crippled reds. Instead
wear the blowsey blues of the Bloods, arm and head.

PSYCHO SIXTY
Snare myself in my enemy's cold colors,
drop my hot reds for the low blues of the others?

MONSTER
Unless you can take a teflon-coated in the cortex,
consider what I say to be your holy text.

PSYCHO SIXTY
Yeah, my ass is grass. I'll do what you say, an' pass.

MONSTER
Wise.

PSYCHO SIXTY
There's a bag a rags in the kitchen, some blues
just my size.

[Exit PSYCHO SIXTY.]

MONSTER
Everything's straight and steady. At the ready.





The hounds mad, chewing their chains,
whines gone up from their darkness,
compact bodies aft of Pentheus,
Pentheus aware now of the wine-smell,
delicate waft of the wine amid mountains
and the howls at first indistinguishable,
grey in the viney greyness, no more,
now unsure wind-whine, now stiletto voices.

Murder's moment is so nearly come. Attend.

Voices arriving out of midair
Pentheus showing his face over his shoulder,
the beard worried, glint in the eye-spots,
this out of darkness, not else, a breath
abstinent, unclouded mind of wonderment,
and hounds sounding like arrows thru the foliage;
thru the foliage, racing, racing,
and Pentheus half-turned to hear them.

Murder's moment is so nearly come. Attend

Musty singing through the still cypress
"Evocci! Evocci! Io Zagreus! Io!"
Slurry chants and maidens singing,
torchlight, shadows crawling upwards,
yellow shapes on the naked maidens
cuneiform bodies in constant motion
by the deep pool throwing the sounds,
strange stabs of light sheeting blackness

Murder's moment is so nearly come. Attend.




SCENE FOUR


MOMS
Get this to the Bloods: all Crips
is either to our side or quits.
Their troops move to disunity,
but not to the chaos that makes us free.
My son's one. Psycho Sixty, they leader.

CHINA DOLL
Electrify his entrails.

SHANEESTA
Strike out his cancelled eyes.

MOMS
Leave him to me. I got him on his Pops,
I'll lop him out. Sisters, keep company,
these displeasures I'll visit on him
are fit remembrances we shall later sing.

[LESLIE and EXACTA enter.]

MOMS
Now where's our Monster got to, you two?

EXACTA
Psycho Sixty, who had him locked in a box
is sneakin into this wild conjuction,
Normandy and Florence, just this minute.
But he actin' all weird n' all. He doth
bend his eye on vacancy and converse wit' the empty air,
Mrs. Sixty. Nobody wants to get in his way
he seem so crazy, talkin' to the air that way.
But I don't see no Monster with him.

MOMS
Fetch out my straying seed from the wilding field,
cross concrete, leap ditches, fathom fires,
smell him out like a martyred fart, anything,
then joyride him back here like the whore he be.

[Exit LESLIE and EXACTA.]

MOMS
Justice comes in chains with pain;
each hurtin put a truth to triumphant test
til all that was silent caterwauls
and the forbidden or hidden leaps clear inta words.
Victor and victim move in unison,
one thin ribbon of blood pulled out by a gun.
Psycho, that boy done earned my curses,
thinkin he could put such a power of violence
into his striking arm, and not have it strike
beyond him. Once a hit has started it,
all the world must bruise and come to our blood blues.

[Enter PSYCHO SIXTY, held at gunpoint.]

MOMS
Who that? That the traitor a my poignant loins?

SHANEESTA
Nearsighted tyrant, it's him.

MOMS
Hog-tie his raggedy ass.

PSYCHO SIXTY
Moms, what you meanin at here? Sweet momma, think
this my 'hood you doin me in in. Hold off,
and love me a li'l.

MOMS
Use the wire there. Now, I says.

[PSYCHO SIXTY is tied down.]

SHANEESTA
Tight, like he say he like it at night.
Tight, tight.
CHINA DOLL
He a traitor staight.

PSYCHO SIXTY
Ain't no traitor trait in me, I'm clean,
merciless ladies.

MOMS
Snap him to the hood. My bastard,
you gonna find out----

[SHANEESTA punches PSYCHO SIXTY in the balls.]

PSYCHO SIXTY
By every kiss we twisted, it ain't fair,
you hittin me down there, Shaneesta.

SHANEESTA
Such sweet wishes risin from a shitpile?

PSYCHO SIXTY
You a bad woman, Shaneesta, givin me lip.
My balls'll stalk your nightmares and accuse ya.
I'm the one that done says what's what in this hood.
Your creamy hands gots better things to do
than strip me of my dignity. What else you to do?

MOMS
Truth time. What right you got hoppin
on our Monster like you done?

SHANEESTA
Tell it straight, cause we know it all.

MOMS
Why you keep him from his connection, son,
makin an enemy outa the vileness you prize?

SHANEESTA
You an' he the same, but you buck his blood.
How come?

PSYCHO SIXTY
A stranger came to me strangely. Scented,
and with a swagger in his swayin'. How I
s'posed to know he was the Incartion? I ain't Karnac.
Somethin' strange about him. I saw that,
him talkin tall and walkin the walk. I stopped him
knocked my questions against him, and that
the finish of it, sisters.
MOMS
Smart.

SHANEESTA
Lies.

MOMS
Where you gots Monster now?

PSYCHO SIXTY
Wherever he got hisself to, I swear.

SHANEESTA
Answer straight. Where wherever? Ain't you locked him---

MOMS
Yeah, where's wherever? Let him speak to that.

PSYCHO SIXTY
I'm blooded, and don't see nothin but wicked fins 
in the troubled waters that surround me.

SHANEESTA
Where's wherever?

PSYCHO SIXTY
I can't gatekeep his blackness, its fathomless.
He tripped from my chains a dozen times;
he turn me to a fool under my own rule.
Gots my own Moms hottin' after his ass;
how he do all that? You treason your sense.

MOMS
Enough. 

PSYCHO SIXTY
Yeah, enough. I'm tired a play-actin' for your pity.
Kill me if you wants, you witches and snatches.
I killed him already, ladies; he dead as ashes.
Glad I done it too. He beggin' and sweatin,
an' running his hands all down the sides a his bald head
I had shaved naked not a hour before,
just before I came out here to get y'all home.
My boys are soarin in even now. We got you.

MOMS
Ain't no seein in your crystal ball.
China Doll, Shaneesta, hurl him hard
to the ground --now hold, hold, while I put
my fingers in his seers, and pull, pull.   
  
PSYCHO SIXTY
Cruel goddess-- you blight what you brought to light, 
throw your own kitten to an ocean night.

SHANEESTA
His balls will make his eyes look awry,
we should shorn them also.

MOMS
No seein' and no breedin' for thee.

SPLIFF
Stop it now. Oh God. I never saw what cruel was
til I did this injustice now allow.
Shaneesta, Mrs Sixty, wait a minute
this angry mist in your eyes will pass by
and you'll see your son in the clear again.

SHANEESTA
What's that, Spliff?

SPLIFF
If I was strapped, I'd snap you out cold,
Shaneesta. It's Psycho there, not some anonimity.

MOMS
Coward boy!

[MOMS strides over and chokes SPLIFF.]

SPLIFF
Look to kill'em all while you can look,
Psycho. Now I'm gone.

SHANEESTA
Dumb scum.

MOMS
Let night be your nightlight, my son.

[MOMS plucks out PSYCHO SIXTY's other eye.]

SHANEESTA
I'll pluck his other nut.

PSYCHO SIXTY
All lost and heartless. Where my posse?
Soljers, jerk awake and let all L.A. burn
til night shames the day with its brightness
and every mansion stares with the hovels
in the emancipated rubble.

SHANEESTA
Die, rebel-lover. Your troops looted
your house first on this night that takes
all down. This town a sensesurround earthquake,
darlin'.

PSYCHO SIXTY
How little harm was in my harming, then.

MOMS
Let him lick his blisters in the streets.
If we hazard into him again, I'll lift
his head spiked upon my fist.

SHANEESTA
Kick him in the balls whiles he pukes
against the ravaged wall, scribbled red with Crip script.

[PSYCHO SIXTY crawls away. FAST MATTHEW follows.]

MOMS
Teach him to walk. I regret that I ever did.

[SHANEESTA toys with ball and eye as earrings.]








SCENE FIVE


[Enter BLIDEYE and ROBBER G holding PSYCHO SIXTY's
headless corpse between them on their bicycles. TVs
and other loot are balanced on their shoulders.]

BLINDEYE
Sad this fate, and slow lows the mourning horn
for Psycho Sixty, for he is dead.
The clear hood which was his home and rapist's habitat
clouds now to the divinity of violence unleashed;
Psycho first yelled the killing note,
robbed and shot to build on human souls
his bone throne. His terror ruled the roost.
But the human heart can't be caught in the cage a fear;
when your bullet-bought superiority
most nearly really real that when it spill and fail.
Every clubbing gun can kill its winsome owner,
no rage obeys even a maniac's harsh rule.
They more in us than our reason can fool.

ROBBER G
O let us cry at th' tongue, and make tears
ruin our hot faces. Let us mourn and torture
those who from Psycho's Sixty's terrored grip did slip.
Let no spoke pop from his deadened hub;
Let all Crips circle him in his absence still.

BLINDEYE
You know that not to be, Robber G.
Can't ration our future days on the past, no way.

ROBBER G
You right, Blindeye. That, I see.
But why Psycho got to go from us the way he did?

BLINDEYE
Psycho out way beyond our rumor and obeyance
both now. This you know. Love done gone hollow
long before this night catched fire.
Extinguish the pity that pisses tears down your face.
Close up your vents of sorrow and see what real.

ROBBER G
And what that? What reality is here?

BLINDEYE
No longer the calculation of skins and winces,
the Crip grip hard-line that Psycho held.
Monster's monster parties are what fallen to us
to behold and motion our current hearts to.
The ashes this city is this dawn fit into his hand
like cig'rette ashes in a ashtray. No maybe.
Why this new sway and danger? I don't now.
Its zappin chaos seems to be what was at center
of all the robbin and high times we had before tho',
that existential clash of wish and disaster.

ROBBER G
Here come a emblem of all hates unhinged;
his Moms has climbed to violence's apogee.

[Enter MOMS and SHANEESTA. MOMS has PSYCHO SIXTY's
head spiked upon her fist and raised high.]

MOMS
Eternal church of the worst of the worst!
My dark griefs I bury with the stone cold hopes
my son's blind fly-ridden eyes symbolically embody.
My joys, like vampires of the night, burst to unhearse
and frighten the skyline with their terror.
Pride riseth not from its golden home, my soul,
to course the darkness with personality.
Neither beauty, as its commonly understood,
nor the apocalyptic treacheries of sincerity
are given root in my dark places, my swaled basements.
Out of my hollows come swelling songs of lust,
trim triumphs, rashnesses; my arias are mighty
and stones leap up from where I spit.
The streets are torn where my vengeance drags
and death adds his weeping to my keen sighs. 
Chipped eyes insinuate the night, daily.
For I have come to the hole of tornadoes in myself;
my voice is no voice, I am witness and doer,
my veins ascend like flowering founts into blood-bloom,
my dooms are meted out to the righteous and iniquitous
with equal vigor and violence. I am no-face,
and voids hallow my passing, a black star eating light.
God's remorseless course is racing through us;
Mother night reclaims what daylight lent us.




No work in the hood,
nothin comin up;
violence is drunk by us,
violence makes us drunk.
Pistol, Whippets, China Doll,
Tammy, Shakedown, Dog, Larry,
Monster, Crip-boy, Terri,
Linda, boyz and girrls all;
As men and women we must fall.
Toke it, smoke it, better not choke it;
hammer comin down all over dis town.
Back on the street, I is Fleet;
killer nigga witha attitude,
killer stare killer cool;
my hatchet will wack it,
PCPs in my blood will hatch it.
Mayhem is my plan,
Chaos is my tool;
rod and rocket,
fuck you we gonna lock it.
Tribalist hate, lying in state,
Crips whip sissies,
sissies gotta take it.
Make it, can't fake it,
my blood is buzzin
cause your death isa comin.
.44s, .32s, sawed-off righteous,
teflon bullets come'n kiss this.
Workin down the alley cool as a cat,
our feet like moonlight, light like that.
Nevah mutha-
fuka gonna fuck ya;
cap in yo nappy head
lickin asphalt dead,
my rule is crimson
hatred is my brimstone;
walk this world stone alone,
put a cap in my enemy befo I's gone.
Victory, victory,
chaos gettin inta me,
wildnight action,
adidas-fast traction.
One dis and you get this;
muthafuckin nevah gonna miss.
Handy, dandy, my colt .49;
effortless, endless,
these scraggy streets is mine;
highest, wiredest,
my flight's so tragic-magic
I paff out the rest best;
I kite it, I bite it
no matter how windless.

This which is in me
is my only kin, see,
nothin else can win me.
Violence, violence,
put its crooked root in my tooth,
grow outa my shadow
to shatter the vacum.
Outer space gonna waste
when my god give the nod
and unleash what's within me.
Up from the Dime,
down to 299,
all the way I'm gonna riot
ride it, abide it, alla that fly shit;
nothin ain't no sin, Jammers
just so long as you win, Bamm!
John Wayne Gacy, Dick Tracy,
they all say it and lace it
inside like a sidewinder,
just a little reminder;
Like a Medusa, we'll reduce ya
until you crawl in hip-deep;
make your little sister weep.
Yeah, yeah, yo mamma gonna cry
river a tears, bye n bye.
Ain't no offer, I'm gonna off ya;
no amnesty served up with your tea.
Wackin and swackin
and crazy-ass crackin
is all you're gonna get
from the boyz wit the hit.
The God a Din
growing mighty within;
I puff him and huff him,
I'm down with the dragon,
your blood, my religion.
Deflower is power
and I get it by the hour.
Every tear of your fear
I lick until it tickles.
Runnin with a Mustang
chillin with the Gangsta gang
baffin' with the master man.
Yo, color! Yo color!
A militant flip-off
is enough to get ya knocked off.
Adrenelin
rushin in,
flamin it
never taming it,
my juice is a mighty tower,
my snakey spine's a howler.
Whip it, drip it;
cordite smoke, I lip it.
Givin every sign
I'm possessed by the most divine.
Yes, it's spastic
but the girls dig my brass stick;
unwavering they savor it,
gettin humble just to flavor it.

Now this night is diving
like wine from a shiv in
somebody, a stranger,
a kid in a manger;
don't matter, it splatters
its darkness that flatters,
making me restless;
I'm up and I get dressed.
Night combat black
to match the sky's black attack;
Under my old stereo
my hand spans, there it go,
just like in the rodeo;
I pick up my pistol,
neveah gonna let it go.
Oh no, ho no,
out the house, I'm on Patrol.
Who's dat comin
My heart starts thrummin;
whatever's out, I'm in.
Nothin's ever prettier
than me and my boyz sittin sure.
Our waistbands are packin
when we start the dragnet
It's an old old story
rosy, erect-reared phalloi,
testosterone to the bone
bring tha muthafucka rollin home!
Pot smoke, ropes of dope,
crack-smackin, our heads be whackin
with honey-nugget naked dreams, oi!
We smash with the mastering noise of the Boyz!
Our eyes like blazin .38s,
heaven's angels at the gate,
satan's flamethrowers just can't wait
so we shout
while our arms sparr routs
pickin up the little ones
to teach em all the killin fun;
In our enemy's fear
our hearts sail clear;
our dreads sled better
when they're deader and wetter.
Snortin and flarin
wild and darin
like some high-wire act
we dance in the flak
hotter and hotter,
demented as otters!
Mighty in our joy
boyz among boys;
Holy loud-proud
our hand signals make the rounds
til every fucka in the hood
just wishes that he could or would
throw his hand around his heart
and break it flaming like kindling wood!
Jul 162020
 
A rhyming adaptation of Sophocles' 'Antigone'

Antigone stood up like a periscope,
discerning truth, descrying hope;
She was battered, borne along
by Time's monumental stream of wrong
until into truth's white crucible
she sullenly withdrew.


their minds on matters of philosophy.
Yet, for all this, Elric's thoughts were forever
turning to Zarozina and the fear
of what might have befallen her.
The very innocence of this girl,
her vulnerability and her youth had been,
to some degree at least, his salvation.
His protective love for her had helped to keep
him from brooding too deeply
on his own doom-filled life, and her company
had eased his melancholy.

---- Michael Moorcock, Stormbringer

SCENE ONE

[ANTIGONE and ISMENE are sewing shrouds.]

ANTIGONE. 
Whose is better, darker, Ismene,
of these silk parachutists' shrouds we weave
to float our brothers Hellward while we grieve?

ISMENE. 
 By our industry and fair eyes
they shall be made to rhapsodise;
Your shroud itself's a masterwork
of timely love and deep-felt hurt;
in its lacy and lovely weave
you help your glimmering eye to grieve.
And its perfect, or nearly, dear,
with but one lose thread... there.

ANTIGONE. 
Oh, yes. You're right. I'll need
to even up the stitches with the needle.

ISMENE. 
 Let justice weight up her scolding scales
with equal wonder where two lives have failed;
with equal equanimity just this once in death,
let our doughty fighting brothers' breaths
the golden grace of their spent days exhaust
as before in the lives which they have lost,
misplaced, they strode in double, loving arms, they two,
alike extraordinary above the common view.

ANTIGONE. 
Are you done with that little needle yet?

ISMENE. 
 Almost done, Antigone, yet
Eteocles' E still needs a flirting filigree,
a flourish to please Charon's craggy eye.

ANTIGONE. 
My shroud for downcast Polynices must
be nice enough for him to win love from dust
and steal Persephone from Hades' heated side;
less success than that in the afterworld he won't abide
who for his own hard-garnered self-regard has died.
Upon the crooked little field of death he stood
with brazen eyes defying, how proud,
the tatter-rattle killing tricks
of his enemies' glittering sticks;
In Hell he should have the bride of Spring
as the smallest help for his pride's comforting.

ISMENE. 
 Eteocles too stood like a god,
as though he were made to live forever, trod
the mangling hazards of our civil war to stuff
and never shiver with the common guff.
Two brothers, both alike in greatness,
now a double duty for two sisters' neatness,
sewing tidy shrouds to twine their griefs
worn by weeping to terminal unbelief.
Here's the thread. Now, watch the needle!
You'll spike yourself if you're unheedful.

ANTIGONE. 
If this needle, potential sore,
yet light enough for maids' endeavors,
could be forged a sword by hate and sorrow
strong enough to decapitate tomorrow
or spark some mercy by a trick of light
from my war-hollow heart poured stiff concrete
I'd lay it in my side though God himself forbade;
I'd consecrate it's bald bold blade
with my every drop of virgin blood
and never sew another shroud.

ISMENE. 
 Don't talk like that! Your heart must yield.
....We're almost at the battlefield.
Here ghosts that died so full of vengeful victory
in the height of useless hubris yesterday
will hear your vow and be offended
that a woman's words so warlike sounded.

ANTIGONE. 
Two brothers, our brothers, who were to rule together
but couldn't manage it, mangled now in heather.
They have died, but the State survives the scrum
and decrees one a hero, the other a hoodlum.
What are we to do with that? What's next?
Calamity,  calamity unending is the great text
our sisterly sorrow-sighs must punctuate.
Sisters in misery, we fare not well
under this hard hail from Hell....
Who's got a better right to cry for vengeance?
The dead have lost their old intemperance
and lay in rotten equanimity all day---
it's us, we need someplace to throw our hearts away,
some bloody spot of ground to shout alone.
Soldiers and women both inter the bones;
but only women have no place to vent
the things with which their hearts are bent.
Our heads are rife with greifs we can't delouse,
while men make all the world a charnalhouse
and for their killing get crowned as Kings,
with ruby wands decreeing royal things.
We women in our low office may only weep;
unceasing calamity, dear sister, is ours to keep.
Oh, that of the royal house of Oedipus
I knew nothing, and cared less!
Topping it off, a rape has rasped my ears today,
sharp soot from the dragon's-mouth polluting lucidity,
dark words evilly twisting the clarity of air,
the few clear things we've scraped together
from the stark wreckage of our hates and hurts.

ISMENE. 
 What words, Antigone, can nail me worse
than those our father Oedipus' horrors
hammer in my nightly terrors,
repeat and echo in my heart's herse?
Keep your words and roarings terse.
Coursing, ribald, disrespecting war
has rivered me from myself so far,
it is the only blood moves in me now;
unceasing seas of inclement reds allow
our brothers' bare bodies on the killing field
no time to mend, or my heart to yeild.

ANTIGONE. 
You have not heard, then,
of Colonel Kreon's creeping dictum?

ISMENE. 
 The battlefield's lousy with lost bones,
kinsmen skinned and left ungroaned;
here sightless eyes may scratch
all night at the stars' hard latch
seeking entrance to a dignified heaven
their unburied state keeps them exiled from.
This I know. This I have seen:
rummagers and mummified mourners
lost among the belladonna
step toe-careful through the loot
and lornly bawl, and to no boot.
This I know. This I have seen:
lovely Polynices
embracing a bruised Etocles
in limitless suffering of the dead
come at last to their simple end.

ANTIGONE. 
Here's ETOCLES. How grave
and graceful are the things death saves.
This solid ground has held long enough
the weight of which I long to feel the crush;
Soon enough the earth in her ruin will get
eternal possession of all I loved, and love yet.
Come, Ismene, help me lift him that I may serve
the office of the earth in brief embrace. Observe,
I hold the brave beauty of his body
that proved too frail a home for his immortality.

ISMENE. 
 Brother, ...

ANTIGONE. 
The soldiers too will shout like lovers,
beat their bronzen breasts, pull out their hair,
toil in tongue-tied oratory toward God's lair
to gasp their grief, and blare upon the air
with trumpets in their lumped throats. They'll tear
and cry for what all their pride did first inter
beneath the dirt with Etocles together.

ISMENE. 
 It's right they should. Oh, brother
let such honors as our customs connive
hold you above the loam awhile, alive
in cheating eyes still blurred by death.

ANTIGONE. 
And Polynices, out of breath,
whose lagging sails and body's ship
the punishing waves have stripped
breasted the selfsame oceans of this war
that Etocles and ourselves abhorred
and from his topmast is drowned as deep
as ever our own Etocles did sleep.

ISMENE. 
 Yes, Polynices, you too shall we wrap,
with balm and comely unguents trap,
until our love-touches may render
your wounds shut up with heavy lavender
that opened such holes in us. But wait,
dear Polynices, just a bit,
while we bind and bandage Etocles,
whose priority in these housekeeping deeds
lies only in that he lay over you.
Thus our one atom of love's made two.
Although in life and war you two stood
on the bitter spectrum of faction opposed
and picked out, like boxers, opposite colors,
yet in death shall you rank together.

ANTIGONE. 
They say that... God curse these crows!
Dread harbingers! That Kreon... No, no!
You'll bear no bit of human meat
obscenely heavenward in your black beaks.

[A trumpet is heard offstage.]

ISMENE. 
 Kreon...? Here comes his motorcade
with flag and bright insignia displayed,
an annoucer reared on the back seat
bearing a scroll that must yet
announce some new decree of law,
applying peace to these new-finished wars.

ANTIGONE. 
Let us attend.

ANNOUNCER. 
Let Etocles be buried with the great,
for Etocles has served the state.
Polynices must rot, for he did not.
Military medals will drip from Etocles' chest
since for the State alone he did his best.
Polynices did not, and therefore must rot.
Tuesday's parade, led by this motorcade,
in triumphal, sumptuous march down ol' Main Street
will shill the war-orphans a special treat.
Polynices, however, our bitter enemy,
stays where he lays for all to see.
Let no hand touch the such-and-such
whose dark swat at our metropolis was too much.
Let no hand in his burial play a caring part,
the State decrees itself quite pleased
that dogs should eat out his heart.
On pain of Death, it is decreed in Thebes!
The hollow longing of his staring skull
will serve as warning for one and all.

ANTIGONE. 
Ismene, here's suds, in this sweet water jug
to lave and love Polynices when we've dug
his gravesite in this battled clay
and put him to rest for the rest of the day
and maybe wrote a poem to help arrow his bones
past the pearly death-gates where he'll roam
half mindless in his fulltime Hell.

ISMENE. 
 Antigone! Perhaps you don't hear so well.

ANTIGONE. 
Public announcements are for public
consumption. I am a person, and shall always click
my consciousness to seperate, private stations.

ISMENE. 
 But that decree means our cremations!

ANTIGONE. 
Ismene, listen. We are just dust.
Cremation's only one more formality
confirming our transient humanity.
Its your own mind you must listen to and hear.
Help me or don't help me. Whichever, dear.
But there is no middle way.
Not yesterday, not tomorrow, not today.
I know this world is muddy, obscure with fear.
But some things that were clear stay clear.

ISMENE. 
 Help? What...? I don't get it. Nothing's clear.

ANTIGONE. 
Help me bury Polynices, of course.

ISMENE. 
 Bury... but... Kreon... the decree....death, and worse!

ANTIGONE. 
A person has to bury their brother,
I know that deep as I know nothing other.
Although no dictator's pen has written it,
yet no monarch's censoring eraser can efface it.

ISMENE. 
 But the risks are hideous! We'll die
and rot out here with Polynices, catching flies.

ANTIGONE. 
Are you coming with me to the farther wall?

ISMENE. 
 But KREON. 
He's so harsh and all.

ANTIGONE. 
What tank could ever outflank a daisy?
The State gears forward, making lazy
figure eights on its rotored treads
searching for enemies and loaded with lead.
All his messerschmitts and schnausers
haven't the justice of a single flower
willing to die to bring to new seed
the blossom of truth its sap decrees.
Political ideas have gone to their heads!
My future estate lies with the dead.

ISMENE. 
 Sister! Our troubles are already triple.
Oedipus in love with his infernal riddles,
ripping his eyes out to see terror better
in the acknowledged dark where life is bitter.
Life's a mess on the family plan,
Jocasta axing herself out of our clan
as soon as she knew just what she had done,
giving incestuous birth, fucked by her son!
Snatching a curtain cord, screeching "umbilical!"
she twisted her life out by the empty sill
full of sunset's exploded glory.
And even that's not the end of the story.
As she lay there, remotely moored
by Fate's crossed strings to the livingroom floor
there came the muffled scuffing of a hundred drums
announcing the pronouncement that our end had come.
War rolled in like an incinerator, wild
to burn up the last dry leaves of our lives.
And when Kreon marched smartly from the officers' barracks,
you laughed impolitely and said he was garish.
But Kreon's was the only steady hand
careful and regular under Etocles' command;
and summer had flashed all our land to one whiteness.
And then Etocles and Polynices
still handsome and young, fell spitted like pigs
playing their opposite numbers, sweet brothers, sweet figs,
tossed on the glory of each other's swords.
It's been enough for me to foreswear the Lord.
You see my point, sister? Our life's a bust.
And now who's left of our whole clan? Just us.
Want us to go down the same way, with a flare and a fizz,
unsure of everything but our own righteousness?
A pair of girls! We aren't part of the army,
we left that to the men; it's far too alarming
to think of fighting them now, all alone,
---not all the men, all the army. Antigone!
The law's a strong word whose only
counterpoint's a punctual "I obey."

ANTIGONE. 
If that's your opinion,
then I don't want you. Shuffle on,ISMENE. 
When exciting multiplicity
withers to single simplicity
from all the coulds imagination displayed
we humble humans inevitably degrade
into the choices that we've made.
I'm not too good at making demands of others,
the dead are best at that, our brothers
whose twilit, silent insistence,
incites a kind of conscience,
knowing we live a little while in pleasure
and that in cool death we die forever.
Go on, go do as you please,
set up a life for yourself, it's a breeze.
I'm burying my brother. Seems he's got
one less sister than he thought.

ISMENE. 
All this battle, and now strife between us.
These offerings of the gods lick of bitterness.

ANTIGONE. 
These offerings offer us a chance at passion,
a head turned to kiss what's now out-of-fashion:
human Justice touching the immortal Right.
And more than that, ex-sister, we can't ask to get.

ISMENE. 
 The gods I know how to honor in their temple,
the repeating seasons each recieve their sample
of my ceremonial devotion on the burning altars.
What I don't know is how to break the law, or alter
the one and only thing that's made exactly the same
for all of us, no matter who we think we are.

ANTIGONE. 
Every renegade must have reasons,
every anxious stay-at-home excuses for her treasons;
Pardon me, Ismene, please excuse me
while I get on with burying Polynices.

ISMENE. 
Antigone, I'm afraid.

[ANTIGONE gives her a look.]

ISMENE. 
So afraid. For you.

ANTIGONE. 
Don't bother. With fear I'm through.
All these furiously luminous fairy tales of yours
scar the dark so serenely that they bore,
dwindle to a blink, and then blink no more.
Your concern is touching, but doesn't reassure;
Got to think about yourself. I understand. Sure.

ISMENE. 
 [Looking around.]
I'll keep your secret, Antigone, I won't peep;
I won't tell a soul, not even in my sleep.
Maybe you'll get away with it, who knows?
Then everyone can be happy, like the first day of snow.

ANTIGONE. 
Happiness is like a dream which passes
out on a punctual pillow, and doesn't hear its glasses
shatter on tiles' evil configuration;
your concern for me, like a strange inauguration,
comes through haphazarded by static, fluffy, wrong, untrue.
Don't stop youself talking. Tell 'em all. It's true!
If you race around the Spanish esplanade
you can probably catch old Kreon
discussing troop dispositions with the gods.
Go on, rabbit after them, go, go on,
chatter with the evil beings posing on the lawn.
Just reason to yourself about how distrustful
Kreon'll feel when he knows you knew it all.

ISMENE. 
Aren't you afraid at all? It makes me cold
to think of being so breezily daring, brave and bold.

ANTIGONE. 
Just doing what's got to be done, is all.

ISMENE. 
But can you really do it, simple as a song?
I bet you can't. Not really, not for long.

ANTIGONE. 
That's a point. When my strength abates
I'll give it up-- when my bones break.

ISMENE. 
 But why should you die for what can't succeed?

ANTIGONE. 
Get out, ISMENE.  Before you know it,
I will be the one hating you. If death bites
for honoring the dead, it will be for me
an honorable death. Get out, ISMENE. 




SCENE TWO

[Battlefield previous day.  ETOCLES and POLYNICES.]

SOLDIER UNDER ETOCLES.
Two valiant brothers in titanic conflict
clear a field of foes with gigantic fists.
What Etocles becomes, Polynices counters;
each for the other's drunken army is the bouncer.

2 SOLDIER. 
Their angers are the rawest in the field.

SOLDIER. 
One to the other will never yeild.

2 SOLDIER. 
Those two conquer countries within:
the soiled uttermost of brother-hatred is their sin.

SOLDIER. 
Etocles becomes a fury,
thousand-armed in his bloody hurry,
and settles widows by the swarm
with every dainty swing of his mighty arm.

2 SOLDIER. 
Polynices no less---
with each great step he kills a mess,
plantations graveyards, and swamps
our alfalfa fields with bloods beyond our mops.

ETOCLES. 
Fore, fore, to the fore!
Let every backward heart cower like a whore,
flailing backward and bedward which should march more!
Let feet be geared to onward use alone:
rearward gapes a retracting cliff.
Fore, fore, to the fore! No ifs!
Let onward men view virtue in the face
of dead enemies whose valor we debase.

POLYNICES. 
Oh worse than night, you bloodblack men, away,
that slow the righteous rising of my day!
A fallen Etocles must my horizon be
or no new dawn shall roar aloud in Thebes.

1 SOLDIER. 
Etocles, ever onward! [He's slain.]

POLYNICES. 
Slave! fear justice and her terrible sword;
I think there are no men that fight for Etocles,
but these counterfeit counters.

2 SOLDIER. 
Death to the invader! [He's slain.]

POLYNICES. 
I do believe the world's all heads
and limbs stuck in its crust; my foot's in a sea of reds.
I should switch my infantry for gravediggers
to get a single square yard of land clearer
that I might convincingly contest.

ETOCLES. 
Brother!

POLYNICES. 
Etocles!

[They argue and kill each other.]

KREON. 
Two mighty hearts in turmoil contest
and beat each other to silence in the sand,
absent boastful besting. [Aloud.] Victory, Thebans,
mounts on lightning wings to our defended city!
Let none say, however unpretty,
that the will of God was left undone;
here you see where his terror shone
upon these dead brothers he once enthroned.





SCENE THREE

[MERCHANT, soldiers, widows, others.]

MERCHANT. 
[From list.]
Funerary candles, fifteen-hundred,
silk shrouds for the cadavers, ten ton,
fifty priests of Zeus with tough knees to say
everlasting prayers, tend everlasting flames all day,
ten days of mourning drama-shows
depicting heroic deaths, and their lives below,
three-hundred twenty-five epitaphs we commission
to give grave-visiting a fab frisson;
a wailing crier to sing out the names
of our honorable dead, numerically arranged.
Other minor matters, too small to mention,
but included in the contracts. Sign here, Kreon.
[KREON signs.]
Good, good. Now everything is bought and paid for;
The last detail of every victory's a funeral.

KREON. 
Dead hands pull palls
to curtain our dark State
which yesterday had bloods full
enough to race in headlong gait
heedless of the finish ribbon that tripped us up.
Now our old dignities, due for a checkup,
steady themselves on the doctor's treadmill,
pausing after the last pant up the final hill
that seemed a topless, insurmountable mountain
inaccessible to our steadfast intent. Yet, citizens,
your dear devotion and plauditory patience
reap hard reward's overdue benificence:
Peace in every suburban hedge is what you've got,
just what unhesitating obedience has brought.
To Laius you bowed in lauded rows;
To Oedipus presented contented countenances;
When he was exiled by the windmills of the gods
to be blown across creation, a poor old sod,
your loyal hearts embraced his kids,
rare exemplars of our Greecian Ids;
dear Etocles and mighty Polynices
accepted loyalty oaths of your future services.
Yesterday, in battle royale, Polynices slayed
Thebes' defender Etocles, who had strayed
from his command post too youthfully enthused
by the sight of his old school chums oozed
across the battlefield like football players
a vengeful god half-massacred, a bluster-
ing coach too tough with his exhausted team.
Yet success' sunlight still on Etocles' shoulder beamed,
and he took for his post-game winner's trophy
the useless life of his traitor-brother, Polynices.
They met in an embrace of bloods their tomb,
who once were pried in sequence from the womb.
I, as uncle to these great ones,
to the inherited mantle of good government have come,
politic, conservative, yet in full power
I walk the corridors of State in a direful hour,
enchanting to the magnates, and brave to the plebes,
I ascend this long-contested throne of Thebes.

MERCHANT. 
Law distributes the rights our leaders construe.
Someone has to know how to
know and what to know and how to do.

SOLDIER. 
Without a body, the lolling head rolls useless;
Let our arms be your arms; our legs, your Zeus'
thunderbolts against rebellion,
dissolution, and damned disunion.

KREON. 
Remember that. Your loyalty will be tested yet.

MERCHANT. 
We're behind you 100 per cent.
But we have to keep an eye to profit,
not every public service can pay the private rent.

KREON. 
Fine; but that's not quite what I meant.
Sixty sentries already walk the bloody quad
and six sharpshooters practice for the firing squad;
I have a plan for an enduring peace, of course,
that I simply want my citizens to endorse.

MERCHANT. 
100 per cent; what more could we say?

KREON. 
It's what's done, not said, that will win the day.
Harbor no lawbreakers in your uptown house,
the State is a dog when its home to a louse.

SOLDIER. 
Disobey, and incur the risk
of sharpshooters six ready to whisk
our souls into idiot oblivion?
I'm not that brave. Or that dumb, for one.

KREON. 
Most solemn comes the State's sharp pen
to delete the life of a citizen.
Yet, coin jingles bright with money's delights
and deep indifferent wisdoms have often been
seduced by its tinny attractions time and again.

[ENTER SENTRY.]

SENTRY. 

Colonel, although I risk my neck,
my breath held steady and my mind a wreck
I have a report that I must make,
though twice on my way here I did a doubletake.
I turned around. Once, just at the gilded door.
Once, when I overheard your passionate disparagement pour
on apperceived disloyalty in basso counterpoint
to your praise of death selected by the State Adroit.
My knees went backward like a bird's
hesitant and repentant at such hard words
to push forward through atmospheres of fear
churning in my gut's hurricane as I neared.
"Go back, you imbecile, why won't you listen
to me, your mind's sinuous apprehension!
Don't go whistling to your deathtrap, halt!
Can't you hear Fate's gears grinding to gestalt?"
So I paced, then heard your soldier's solid loyalty.
My heart took heart, and my stomach calm,
I arrive ready to reveal, as I was ordered,
what my senses in the State's employ recorded.
Although, it may not make much sense, my senior.
So, then, when I got---

KREON. 
Spit it out you crippled idiot.

SENTRY. 
Hey! I didn't do it. Didn't see who did.
The battlefield's a forest of the disloyal dead,
desecrating the State's impersonal decorum,
with faces frozen stiff by death's intimate abhorrence.
But don't you worry, sir, we didn't choke,
we left the cold unburied in the rain to soak.

KREON. 
You should be an advocate at court,
the pertinent is absent from your report.
Just what was this something-nothing that you saw?
I'll need all the details. You know the law.

SENTRY. 
Dreadful... ghostly...
Um, strange, livid, nearly unearthly...

KREON. 
Spit. It. Out.

SENTRY. 
No need to shout.
Beneath, between, the mists that purled and paused
upon the obscure battlefield like first-aid gauze
the corroded dead continued, rigor mortis,
to shout about the pains that caused distress.
But time's silent stuffing fingers in their mouths
gagged to windy whispers all their howls.
Out there, near Polynice's end of the field...
Well... Seems a touch of dust had begun to build.

KREON. 
Dust?

SENTRY. 
A thin, really thin, layer almost, of, of--

KREON. 
Dust?

SENTRY. 
Dirt, sir.

KREON. 
Surely the dead are dirty.

SENTRY. 
And what they smell of....

KREON. 
Dirt....

SENTRY. 
Someone was trying to bury him, sir.
All about, the close-packed earth was stirred
as if Polynice's ghost had rose up in dirge
for his unburied body. This they tried to cure,
whoever they were, spilling wine and soil
over the indignant dead man Etocles had spoiled.

KREON. 
A long battle. Dried blood looks like grime;
sweaty work, things stick to the skin, look like crime.

SENTRY. 
Someone had put him under. Handful
by handful. One foot was neatly buried, the sandal
packed under neat handprints. Dirt in the wrinkles,
not fallen or scattershot, but lovingly sprinkled.
A last ablution of earth.

KREON. 
WHO. DARES. DO. THIS? THE TRUTH!

SENTRY. 
I swear I don't know, Colonel Kreon!
Sir! All that fog. And we boys was tired, gone...
from the battle still; all that fat feasting after.
My ears still rang honky-tonk tunes and laughter.
We looked for signs, but couldn't find none.
Just Polynices put under, not another single one.
Silence all the night. No talk amongst us,
too weird with all those blue bodies in the dust,
some brothers to us, our places so close
but so different. It'd be strange to be verbose,
their restless ghost tapping in at will
from the other side; moon baleful on the fog, a veil
of nothingness smothered in absence, and then,
before long, dawn trundlin' up from Apollo's pen,
staining our apprehensions with day again.
The corporal saw it, not me, I didn't notice.
A small... a extra limning of darkness on the premises.
Somehow Polynices seemed just more not there,
if you know what I mean. It was quite a scare.

KREON. 
I do not.

SENTRY. 
I wasn't me, I swear! Didn't see nothing.
Nothing there, not really, just a thin layer,
of, of.... something.

KREON. 
Dust?

SENTRY. 
A sort of something that the nose
perceives as musk or musty, clottish, knows
mostly from an unread scroll, an eviscerated crust
common sense and experience dub as dust.
But on the wide, absract, identical terrain
one thing by its very absence marked the plain:
scattered among expressive corpses lacking tact,
no indent or dusty comma of a paw or track
appeared, there was never the least sign at all
of even the remotest type of animal,
and this, like a magic trick, to our soldier's acumen
revealed the intruder as something human.
A nest of accusations when I returned to post;
things real quiet for a sec. Boys on my shift,
well, I gotta say we started finger-pointing promptly.
Visciousness on the parade grounds where we'd stomped
or whispered confidences, little things, sought
private views on public topics, where we fought,
such like. All came to nothing, rude
fear in our voices morphing to instant certitude,
rapid logic making airtight cases,
calling back swear words and rushed excuses.
Whole jurisprudence process was rather crude.
All came to nothing. We didn't know who'd
done what, if anything. Bad news, all of it.
Then I have to see you.... sir, tell the tale, spill it.
I mean, someone had to go to tell the Colonel.
Stared the graffiti meaningless in the barracks urinal.
We stared hard at our feet, restless, restless,
and I drew the short straw... my luckiness.
No happiness in the news, none in the bearer.
Nobody shines to see a bad-news man draw nearer.

KREON. 
And you all saw nothing?

SENTRY. 
Absolutely. Not a thing.

SOLDIER. 
Maybe it was the gods did it. A sign.
"Ferocious prophecies first often seem benign."

KREON. 
Gods!? Money! You were decieved and bribed!
Sentry-- you'll wish that you had died
eviscerated on a poinard, if this damned corpse
gets dunked in dirt again, like they taught at church.
Watch steady, night ain't too long. Keep your poise.
Money turn your heads, boys?
....I'll twist 'em off!!

SENTRY. 
[Aside to himself.] Dumpkoff, dumpkoff, dumpkoff.




SCENE FOUR

[ETOCLES and POLYNICES before their troops.
One day earlier, morning.]

LIEUTENANT. 
Where's Polynices?

SOLDIER. 
Gone to view the defenses.

2 SOLDIER. 
Their men are nearly double ours.
For every four grunts they've a dozen howitzers.

LIEUTENANT. 
Praise Zeus we have two arms each, then,
to double up the dead and slain.

SOLDIER. 
It's bad odds, Lieutenant, and what
we've come all this way, tramping at night,
the rutty road waterlogged, horses slipping
and men crying crumpled under 'em, then stilling....
Too far from home or victory to change our places;
tomorrow's unlucky dead today have breathing faces.
Who knows who? Today a riddle's all they'll tell us.

[ENTER POLYNICES.]

2 SOLDIER. 
These warlike jaws that snap around us!
If only we could plant their dragon's-teeth
and grow more men!

SOLDIER. 
         That'd be a relief.

POLYNICES. 
The jaws that snap!
Why, Euroborus, let them trap
on air, or, like the dragon of your name,
engulf its own tail in hungry shame
--- before it slither-slumps away!
Who has the greater cause today?
The greater work to do, honor to win?
Our victory will change the world again.
Nature bites at changes, dogs fleaed,
like sleepy dragons, snap, once stirred
even if by an angel's foot. Such teeth
we do not need, nor would I have them,
for who would so late desert a cause,
even were it the wrongest flag on earth,
him I account of no-account, a less than dirt, no worth,
a thing, and not a man. O traitorous hope!
I hope Etocles doesn't pull back one
ounce of spitting venom. But let us win,
if, by the gods, we are deemed and fated
to win this great contest, against all we hated!
The harder fought, the more our fame's assured,
the greater the odds, the greater god's grace purrs,
moving though our rough ready human limbs
as does our very blood! Roar on, great dragon!
We'll cheer merry swords into your gullet, snake!
Thus your awesome voice shall be slaked
by the loud levity of our shouts, all of one
coiled killing intent when your death comes!
[The lads all cheer.]

ETOCLES' CAMP.

KREON. 
What's that?

HAEMON. 
It seems a boisterous roaring
from Polynices' camp is coming.

2 SOLDIER. 
My heart is struck with fear,
pouring ice for my veins in by my ears.

KREON. 
Courage, swayback.
Here comes Etocles to enhearten us, fool.
Let your cold ears hear his incendiary flak.
Let him pour his dragon's soul into you.

[ENTER ETOCLES.]

ETOCLES. 
No speech given out by the top dog, sir Sir,
ever made a lesser cur bark louder.
No talk, however eloquent, however electrifying,
ever shocked a coward into bravery,
or raised a drooping army to vigorous attack,
or gifted a man with cause to fight who lacked.
Yet it is customary for a commander to give a speech,
and so I will. I guess another usual reason's
to get to know the troops, strangers shanghaied
into some State affair for quick reward.
Maybe that applies to Polynices' troops,
culled from the barbarous Spartan mobs
coming to loot our houses and rape our Moms,
but not to me and you it doesn't apply.
We grew up playing war together, low and high,
wrestling in the same sandlot! Yet,
it is customary for a commader to give a speech,
and so I will. Our enemy, too, is our intimate,
kicked sand in your faces, twisted my arm,
laughed with us and pledged love to our faces,
which love he now demeans and disgraces.
Let the measure of our former love
dole out the extent of our hatred now. So far
as you were his friends, that far
is he a traitor. What's to say? Our
mute hearts are eloquence. Yet, it is customary
for a commader to give a speech,
and so I will....



SCENE FIVE

[KREON sits for 'royal' portrait.]

ARTIST. 
Is it with an awkward moral cognizance
that in the rising star's dark presence
I feel myself, almost, transmuted into trance?
An artist's only error is lack of diligence.
Decay, corruption, malfesience spur my palette
as well as hope, triumph and glory on the mallet
of the supreme sculptor sit calmly folded as a wallet.
All's art an echo of the poised, Platonic Reality.
Chaos and the curule chair both indispensibly
litter the tones and values of my smudger's art;
the frowning brow, the virtuoso heart,
both play, unto rerun, their artist's miscast parts.
Draw your face into a helmet, til resolution
alone still fits on the immortal face of Kreon.
Excellent, excellent. That's it.
[Sounds offstage.]
Is that the lithe Antigone I see? Come in and prance.
Quite a face, ethereal, yet in charge, a strangeness
as if she'd seized the world in a single glance
and found it wanting. A greatness... of arrogance.

SENTRY. 
Colonel! Here's the one who... hey,
is that a crown on your portrait there?

KREON. 
Report, Sentry. Artist, turn the picture.

SENTRY. 
Right here, this one, caught her
carrying the dirt in her skirt, trying to twist
Polynices up in a silk shroud, better his condition,
gentle him up for the far side.

KREON. 
Antigone...?

SENTRY. 
God throws the dice, we play the numbers.
Man alive is born to wonder.
I'd've sworn I wouldn't be back
to see you! ...That ramrod back,
that thundery brow, the artist
got it pretty good there, way it twists....

ARTIST. 
Thank you, young sir.

SENTRY. 
Well, one look at that, sure....
I was shivering half the night, my spear
rattling against my breastplate. Kept me wide-eyed, though,
I'll tell you that, Colonel. Things you threatened....Whoa.
Well, how'd I know she'd prance right up,
kneel by his side, praying and making sup
with drippy libations. "Solved the case," I told myself.
"Arrest the waif, handcuff the little elf."
No short-straws this time: I ran, by hell.
And Antigone kept up with me real well.
She didn't seem shy at all out there by Polynices.
Go on, take her, question her. She'll clear me.

KREON. 
Antigone? A woman, and Etocles' sister?

SENTRY. 
She was heaving the dirt over him, yessir,
I tell you!

KREON. 
IS. THIS. TRUE?

SENTRY. 
What else? Unless my eyes are liars,
what else can they say that saw her?

KREON. 
Details, details. We'll see if your story tallies.

SENTRY. 
[Gulping.] Uh, well,
after all that shouting last time,
me and the boys raced back to Polynices' body,
holding our uniforms over our faces from the smell,
his face going awry; brushed him clean,
touching lightly as this personal grooming
might look itself like disloyalty; knew him
from his place on the field,
more than from his bloated looks, deep stinkpits
for eyes, a blackness of mouth, lips torn
from a skull, not a smile, of course, but
an irony there about the jaws. We sat upwind,
wary and awake, I can swear. No celebrations,
just us scared out of our togs, hearing the mind's moan.
We'd spear each other awake, for the State
must guard its prerogatives vigilantly.
All day nothing, and the wind getting hairy,
seeming to scratch a rash on the land,
dust into our watching eyes harshly fanned,
big afternoon sun obscured, dark as a bush,
plain, trees, debris, all snuffed out in one whoosh,
a whirlwind! That should keep him clean,
we figured. Can't bury no one
if the earth's up and on the go!
Whirlwind lasted a long while, everything unfixed, so
blurry... A dream it was, but, as with dreams,
it passed on into clarity, a semi-obscene
picture developing like a polaroid in the trees,
stars starting to peep out again, colorless clarity,
everything in our eyes pale as a corpse.
Saw a scuffle in the rags, a nervous torso,
and it was Antigone! She'd let out a start
to see her previous day's work torn apart,
Polynices made naked by the night, no cover
for the sake of respect. He's a traitor,
like you say, and I don't hold that he should
get the honors a patriot'd command;
but it was right pitiful, laid out so careless
when we'd all had a drink with him timeless
times before, before it all. She was crying hard
crying, crying over Polynices, and then we heard
her curse us, curse the damned hands on him
that undid the respect she'd risked life and limb
to wrap him in. Then, from her skirt, more dirt, more!
Blessed by a priest I reckon, and three or four
sprinkles of fine wine, our mouths dry as dust
watching her give over for his itchy ghost
the libation to quieten him. That's when we grabbed her,
and she as calm as a kitchen matron,
and she didn't seemed surprised at all, not at all,
but had a calmness in her eyes, "seeing though fate"
my grandma calls it, even when we charged her
with the desecration of the law, she stood steady.
Put me out of sorts, I'll tell you.
She gave me a slug of the wine, held me up.
Told me to take her here, so I did.
Feels good to get out of a death threat,
but lousy to give over another to it.
But she held my hand, said it was alright,
knew what she was doing, that it was her doing, etc.
(Personally, I think she was grief-crazed.)
But, here she is, and I'm safe out of it... right?
Nothing so safe and sweet as your own skin.
KREON. 
Lift up your face. Do you confess,
Antigone, to this tryst with lawlessness?

ANTIGONE. 
I deny nothing. I did it.

KREON. 
Dismissed. [SENTRY exits.]
Tell me. Tell it all. Did you even hear
the proclamation in the tramped agora, dear?

ANTIGONE. 
You saw me standing there. Shit,
when you broke the news to your loyal lieutenants,
lining up your whore-score of votes,
I knew you were a man to whom god's dignity was remote.

KREON. 
And you defied this decree?

ANTIGONE. 
I defy. Resolutely.
God wasn't there chewing the fat,
just you and your poor cohorts.
Justice stays exiled to Hades, deep below,
while men still prate and gape above. I know.
Our laws change with the electorate's indifference,
die when we die, and fail along with us.
Ask Etocles, he'd agree with me.
Your edict, tricked out in consensus,
withers when the Eumenedies fix their eyes
upon its temporary littleness.
How brief a space has man, how great his pride!
An underpaid tailor in a greenroom wardrobe
takes the godly measurements for his lonely soul,
trimming Fate to the requirements of his starring role.
Spotlights add a little glow to the final disaster,
making pride and hubris consummate faster
in the fourth-act pathos of the story
where pride of self consumes the glory
a humbler noticing of exacter circumstance
would assign, in careful retrospect, to chance.

KREON. 
Well, don't you take the prize for pride?
A woman's coarse voice roaring from a child.
Honey, when you, like me, are little older
you'll submit to the wisdom of your elders.

ANTIGONE. 
I won't grow old enough to know.
The edict predicts death, and I go
gladly to my exile. To the state,
my life, I won't hesitate;
to the gods, all that made
my life my life-- an even trade.
I knew that I was doomed to die, even before
that stuffy proclamation of yours.
You think you invented death?
Not so bad, not so tough,
dying after being born.
Death's an eternal grace malingering life adorns.
Life is so filled with evil days and acts,
deluded Oedipus' and Jocasta's sex pact
concluding in the numb triumph of this war
of brothers once equal even in your love, Kreon.
How can Death be anything but my friend,
my darkly needful helpmeet at the end?
Death will free me in its final shout,
while guilt will bind your conscience in a knot.
My death's a footnote at best,
astericked on a forgotten page in jest,
a silly ancillary to the argument
of which your horror will be the trump.
I'm a nobody. A little girl
underfoot about the house, unreal,
who only knows how much it hurt
to see her brother crest the dirt,
cursed by each official, proclaimed word,
and left unburied for the birds.
Each evil beak whose gnaw I followed
bore me aloft and left me hollow.

ARTIST. 
Oh, Kreon, that ironic smile, hold!
You have all the spiffy dignity of a god.

ANTIGONE. 
You think so too, Kreon? Really?
Kreon the Eternal! A fool convicts my folly.

ARTIST. 
The daughter shows her father's scorn,
alike as acorns; hard as acorns thrown.

KREON. 
I know your personal passion
seems necessity and not fashion,
however, what is and seems is a form:
absurdities decreed elevate to norms.
The horrid, undateable hunchback
given public dignity, which he lacked,
goes in moments from abhorred
to Cosmo's 'most winning bachelor.'
And so I tell you that your passion
is naught but a sixteen year old's whim,
come to your head, no doubt just lately,
from late-night reruns of some Greek tragedy.
But if with this smote emoting you persist
not even trying to resist,
I warn you, in your ignorance,
high in your insolent tower of pretence,
that very soon you'll start to teeter,
then the long fall, in timeless millimeters,
passing tidy, illuminated rooms
to one dumb girl's luckless doom.
Even mustangs, in their western estates,
their stiff-necked necks must break
if, once beneath a knowledgable hand they're lain,
they hesitate to obey the rein.
If you go on breaking laws
with no excusable why or licit because,
and then grant a primetime interview
undercutting what I'm trying to do
saying sound bites like "God's
word is my heart's sole command,"
etc. and so on--- damn!
That's when the shit hits the fan.
And all because copper Kreon was nice
enough to let you escape with your life.
If I let you live, let you go,
the law's prestige in the popularity poll
will drop to zero. We're
in a delicate way right now, here
in Thebes, the way things are;
room in our small sky for only one star.
Who's going to be telling the populace
what's what, which regulation face
to wear, how to act, what to do?
Difference 'tween me and you,
when moms gab in the produce aisle
or clerks smoke by their empty files,
well, that difference gets pretty thin,
slim stuff, mere wordings;
the way a phrase aligns, sometimes,
can decide what's cruel or kind.
Me, I need ultra-loyal ears
hearing what I need them to hear,
minds thinking what I need them to think,
Thebes is shoved that close to the brink.
Right words do justice to the State,
give the man in charge, myself, a break.

ANTIGONE. 
What's this got to do with my choice
to bury my brother?

KREON. 
              Your voice,
and not dirt on the dead,
your voice is what I really dread.
[To ARTIST:] Damned girl's bitched in the head!

ANTIGONE. 
My dying going to make you happy?

KREON. 
I'll dance to hear hegemony
honored by the plain folks' horror
shuddering respect at the deathly-whisper:
"Antigone's dead, dead, dead.
Against her right King's rule she rebelled."

ANTIGONE. 
In that case, kill me. Enough!
Talk tires me out, wears my ears off.
Bad taste in my mouth from all this palace palaver,
and I'm sure you're tired of me in a lather
shooting off about the gods like a prophet,
and me not hedging me bets by mandate,
not so half unsure of myself, not cutting it fine,
to increase the temple donation down the line.
These soldier-stiffs propped around here
like clay Kreons-- even they'd agree with me
if it weren't for your mania
for cutting the gods out of the power structure.
Not everybody can shoot off his mouth
like a King.

KREON. 
Only you think that, ANTIGONE. 
Truth.

ANTIGONE. 
Are you really so naive?

KREON. 
The guilt is yours, not theirs. Believe.
They obey, you defy. They are good,
you are not. They shall live, and you would....
and will die. There is no overlap.
You are too naive, perhaps.

ANTIGONE. 
I honored my brother, as any would.

KREON. 
By spitting on the memory of Etocles?
Polynices stabbed him in the heart, you see,
while Etocles was defending his city.

ANTIGONE. 
I wrapped Etocles in his shroud!

KREON. 
Are a traitor and a patriot the same?

ANTIGONE. 
Death has made them brothers again.

KREON. 
And you are their sister. Join them.

ANTIGONE. 
Let the gods be my judges then,
for in every sign that they gave me, in every
inner feeling fallen from heaven, they told me:
"Go on, don't go back on what we ask of you."

ARTIST. 
Her reasons are inspired, true,
every artist must hold them valid.
What are your reasons, sire, I mean colonel,
sir, for prosecuting this difference, so ephemeral,
between the dead and the dead?

KREON. 
Rebellion, you idiot.
That's my reason. Don't you get it?
There was an enemy army
out there day before yesterday,
and a bloodletter of the royal house
waving at its head, leading the grouse.
What am I to do, ignore such spectacles
as if they were parades, spectaculars?
Ring the boring barracks, call out my troops
to stand by and watch the show? Ridiculous!
If all my men need to help 'em think
is inhale the indifferent stink
of your dead brother, a dead enemy,
in order to discourage mutiny
do you imagine I'll hesitate
to let Polynices disintegrate
and whiten into a skull out there?
Don't cry. See here, see here.
It's tomorrow's bloodshed I seek to avoid;
Against that future cost, I'll endure the goad
of all the gods and holy men
women have ever kneeled to. Amen.
And now, when at long last
I think the danger a minute past,
what happens but that there springs
a traitorous viper at my heels' wings.
You, my dear Antigone!

ANTIGONE. 
Me, a threat to the State! Hardly.
I'm barely old enough to get married.

KREON. 
You're old enough to disobey the law.
Should my first edict command guffaws?

ANTIGONE. 
Do you really care about the crowd?
Should pollsters legislate what is allowed?
Is that what makes you more just,
or less. More Kingly than common? It must!
Is the approbation of the mob what's destined?

KREON. 
One must always listen to the winds
stirred up in the crowds' hurrahs, keep close ear
on their early nays and niggling whispers.
A king cannot afford to isolate himself for long,
expecting distant dictation to master the throng.

ANTIGONE. 
But won't the wise and good citizens
suspect that you relented for the dead, their kin?

KREON. 
The mass of men....

ANTIGONE. 
The mass of men don't really matter.
What happens with them is chance and chatter.
They never make a decision for us,
or themselves, in either calm or crisis.
If they did, then they really
would make a difference, the scales reeling....
What a heaven we could engineer today
if alabaster could be made of clay!
What vast paradises of the common will!
The State would be awash in wisdoms, swill
the Dionysian inspiration at the cafeteria
in plastic cups, manufacturing the poet's hysteria;
foolish things and idiot schemes, curtains
of mauve and turquoise, would be an oddity unknown.
But what they do does not matter, for they
know not what they do. And they
cannot be forgiven, no, no,
for what they cannot decide to do.











SCENE SIX

[Outside tavern, fencing several weeks before the battle.]
POLYNICES. 
Oh, what hot work! My throat's the worst.

ETOCLES. 
These make-believe battles fight us into thirst.

POLYNICES. 
Indeed. Let's get back to the tavern, fast.
Haemon! Set us up with some liquid relief.
[Drinks.] At last, I feel a little clear of grief.
So long those funeral trappings held me shut
into my own mind.

ETOCLES. 
             Perhaps our emotional glut
will help to make us mothers of the wounded state
so we can band-aid the hearts tragedy made us inherit.
To Polynices!

POLYNICES. 
To Etocles!

ETOCLES. 
Let's trade bouts of drinks as titans
traded tirades with Kronos long ago.
[They clink cups.] Requited!

POLYNICES. 
Yes. Let's drown out Neptune's trumpet
by the hollow ringing of our tankards' clunking.

ETOCLES. 
Barman, fill, fill.

POLYNICES. 
Haemon, my closest friend still,
besides my brother Etocles, stand us a toast
to prove our friendly happiness is no boast.

HAEMON. 
Which of these golden suns, now glistening,
will rise above our State as King?
With this bright pair my love to dual love has grown;
Let craftsmen dovetail two elaborate thrones
joined at the arm as your two strong selves
are joined.

ETOCLES. 
A dual kingship?

HAEMON. 
                   A salve
to punch us from our crutches, brothers. [Drinks.]

ETOCLES. 
I hadn't thought of it, little brother.

POLYNICES. 
Why not? It seems a good solution.

ETOCLES. 
Solution implies a problem.

POLYNICES. 
Well....

ETOCLES. 
I am the eldest, POLYNICES. 
This you know.
That will not change, although Kronos
was overthrown. You are as special as a lover,
and will continue so, a valued advisor.
Thus trusted and kept, even as you are now,
in the office of brother.

POLYNICES. 
Office of brother? What rites or
prerogatives has that? What armies can
"brother" raise, against a cry of "king"?

ETOCLES. 
Armies? What nonsense are you speaking?

POLYNICES. 
You know our neighbors in Sparta
are ready to invade and divide our
fractured State which tragedy
has already so nearly sundered.
We must have a solid front and ready display
to out-face them.

ETOCLES. 
Kreon has courage enough to confront them.

POLYNICES. 
Kreon is ambitious. Kreon....

ETOCLES. 
Kreon? Heamon's father? His ambition
extends no farther than his duty, surely.
Isn't that so, Haemon?

HAEMON. 
So it seems to me. Up in the morning
polishing his boots and buckler, drilling
with the soldiers back of the barracks at four....

POLYNICES. 
And yourself, Haemon? Is your
duty so small itself? Do you see your life
given meaning by such small-minded stuff,
such meaningless circumscription?

HAEMON. 
Etocles is the eldest. Tradition
would choose him, and so would the law.

POLYNICES. 
Good God.

HAEMON. 
Your sister, Antigone,
as you know, is promised me;
but how should such a promise hold
if all the world of laws were sold
to Hell? My love is with you, Polynices,
but my duty augers
I should support your
brother in this quarrel.

POLYNICES. 
[Aside.] Perhaps I ought to
mosey on along to Sparta
where my arguments, and not my years,
will find more amenable ears
to hear what I have meant.







SCENE SEVEN

[KREON is being measured for a royal gown and crown.]

DRAPER. 
And so, the folds will flow thus and thus,
the sharpest, latest fashion for a king's a must.

KREON. 
I'm not the King just yet.
Coronation casts the only net
that catches rightful kings, and labors
to haul them kicking to the rulers' table.
Law and tradition place on the mind
a subtle weight of story, of a kind
that helps to keep the chessmen of the game,
however shopworn, virtually the same.
And now our story's of a death,
my son's betrothed, and the comdemning breath
must be my own, for all the rules arrayed
are never by king or demimonde betrayed.
I shall play my predestined part.
No kingship thrives that at the start
quakes uncertain as the king's own heart.
Learned that in the army. Taught it, too.
That's not going to change anytime soon.

DRAPER. 
And now the measurement for the crown.
Let me tie this ribbon right. There we are.
Speaking of your son, here he comes now.

KREON. 
I've said my last word on that girl

ANTIGONE. 
Do you march in here loving me, or hating me?
Haemon, you've always been good.
Obedient, chipper. Don't change your stripes, bud.

HAEMON. 
I come as your son, my father.
I remember marching into the long strides
your own footsteps made in the dirt outside our house.
But when you jump into a palace,
I must stretch myself another way for solace
and find my course by some nearer means.

KREON. 
Let that way be the law's way, Haemon.
It touches you as it touches any other citizen.
You are nearer my heart and council than any,
but if you alienate yourself from the law,
you make yourself a stranger to your father
and walk beyond my helping.

HAEMON. 
Won't go that way, Dad. The thing is,
you've always been my guide; you clear things up
for me, turn me straight when I would wander.
I just had to come and see you. I felt confused.

KREON. 
You did the right thing. Good you came.
Obedience profits. Disloyalty consumes itself.

DRAPER. 
Good sense, your majesty,
and done up with braids of dignity.

HAEMON. 
Dad, remember when we walked to the temple,
sizzled the entrails on the ample altar,
knelt, asked about what might god decide
after Oedipus' exile and Jocasta's suicide?
We waited a long time to hear our answers,
Tiresias clickering over smoky coals like a geiger....
and he hedged on several key points, moreover,
shaving himself some room to maneuver.
Wisdom, he called it. Learning how to listen.
You agreed, and said that we in our mortal condition
should never push the gods for sureties.
That reason is the one gift of God to man, you see,
and so damnably easy to be given the shove.
I agree when you warn my reason's lost for love.
It'd be a stunt for a child to engineer
his Dad's tragic fate into the clear,
or show him how to act and think. But,
if my reason is God's gift, hear it out!
Let whatever divinity shines at my lips' brim
light on you, illuminating what's within.
Its reasonable to learn while on your ass,
knocked there or in a paid chair, class is class.

DRAPER. 
My chalks and knots encode my sire's height.
I mean, sir, sire. But, the boy says right,
no uniform complements even the most strict
officer if it pinches in too tight.

KREON. 
A Dad get spanked by his wanking kid?
Oh I'll wail back to my mother's skirts in a trice
before I'll listen to such childish advice.

HAEMON. 
If I'm not right, I'm wrong. Fair enough.
But if I'm right? What notice takes the right
of youth, or age, or anything but being right?

KREON. 
What's right? Right to be on the side
of damned anarchy, boy?

HAEMON. 
No, no I don't. I don't truck with crooks.

KREON. 
Ain't that little girl a criminal?

HAEMON. 
A criminal girl? Because she grieves?
The entire city populace would deny it.

KREON. 
The city, eh? They to teach me how to rule
who's been commanding men since I gained my age?

HAEMON. 
Your shooting off teenage-like enough now.

KREON. 
From one voice comes rule, comes clarity.
Didn't we have enough confusion already
with those two tawny brothers grasping
for the one solar spotlight, both together gasping,
grasping and tearing and muddying things?
One voice alone can bring things plain,
help straighten out scribbled melodies again,
erect all things aright. You'll see.

HAEMON. 
One horn don't make a symphony.

KREON. 
The conductor is the symphony!
I am the State. Way it is, way its got to be.

HAEMON. 
Yeah, if the State's a deserted isle.

KREON. 
My boy... selling out to a mere girl,
the most powerless member of the community.

HAEMON. 
If you're a girl, Daddy,
then I'm a sell-out, proud to be, the only
person I'm worried about now is you.

KREON. 
Worried about who?
Write "love" on your fist
and strike my gut, sinking to the wrist!
All you're worried about is getting even
with the man transformed into Antigone's demon.

HAEMON. 
Is it better that our new King wrestle
against Justice in the streets? Is that your stance?

KREON. 
All I do is within my rights as ruler.

HAEMON. 
Dosen't that attitude strike you as insular?
Rights of the gods don't start from you, Dad.
You're only right is the right you always had:
to listen if the conscience of Justice is speaking, sir.

KREON. 
Shit of a son! Sucked from me by a fucking girl!
What has she done to you? Have you two slept....
I'd have you hung as an example, but hate
the cost of a court marshall, and demure.

HAEMON. 
You're not my Dad, that's for sure.
Out of remembered honor only am I terse
and keep from calling you utterly perverse.

KREON. 
Seduced boy! Pussy-
whipped! Don't you bandy
blank words with me!

HAEMON. 
No. I'll let you be the talker.
After all, you're the State. I'm the gawker.

KREON. 
[To GUARD.]
Every great leader needs a great obeyer.
Now get on out of here and slay her.

HAEMON. 
I'm not taken in by any vileness, father.

KREON. 
But every word of yours is hers!

HAEMON. 
What did she say to you?

KREON. 
That she would gladly give her life
for the sake of the law! Better answer than yours.

HAEMON. 
My answers look after you, seek you.
Trying to find myself, my meaning,
in all of us. Where are the gods in this room?

DRAPER. 
Sir, if I may....

KREON. 
DISMISSED!!

HAEMON. 
Dismissed?

KREON. 
You will never marry her, you know,
not while she breathes. Her only marriage bed
will be the dirty earth.

HAEMON. 
Then she will soon be dead;
but her dying kills one more, now.

KREON. 
One more? Who? Senseless son,
are you threatening rebellion?
Would you hold your life in opposition
to me and your own bleeding reason?

HAEMON. 
How can I oppose my father?
He's already dead. Cancelled, rather,
a prime time TV soap opera type,
glossy victim of his own hype.

KREON. 
I hope you live to regret this son,
regret these airs you're putting on;
in your ripe old age is where you and I
will finally agree, when we lay side by side
in the military graveyard of the State.

HAEMON. 
Yeah, Dad. Yeah. It's a date.
And when the long sullen hearse
glides to the curb in reverse,
I'll load your corpse with tidbits,
honors and flowers and all that shit,
just as much, and to the same degree,
as you bothered with the body of Polynices.

KREON. 
You are nothing. I am the State.

HAEMON. 
Rave on, with your insane mission;
you have no friends who'll listen.
You won't see me again. My eyes,
King Kreon, shall not see her die.   [Exit.]

DRAPER. 
This doesn't look right, my leige.

KREON. 
Doesn't look right? Will you instruct me now
on how to run the country, toga-maker?

DRAPER. 
Sire, I only....

KREON. 
Not anyone's sire yet, ay?
Antigone I will carry far, far away
until she becomes, like an enemy over a cliff,
a worry discarded. Out in the walless wilderness,
sealed in a vast vault of living stone.
Honor the dead, she says? We must atone?
She wants to honor the dead so much,
let her join 'em. Oh, well, I won't, as such,
condemn her quite to death. Requiescat?
Let her gods' laws do that.
Food in the tomb, some vinegared water,
as the custom has it, freeing the State
from the killing cobra-strike
of her demise. I bear no spiking spite.
Let her pious declamations
ring in her ruined tomb unheard, unquestioned.
Maybe then she'll learn-- too late!--
that piety and pity shouldn't be wasted on the dead!
Then let her prate.










SCENE EIGHT

[Four months before the battle,
betrothal picnic of Antigone.]

JOCASTA. 
Let's toll up our tipping pile of lucks:
Plague, with its slopping vomit-buckets,
disinfectants, crosses and cadavers,
has changed its intrusive thermometers
for warm milk, gingersnaps, and peace
how many happy years ago now, Oedipus?

OEDIPUS. 
Enough for the dark daughter of our nights
to have blossomed up to betrothal height
and look on the plauge-sick infant, Haemon,
with eyes that dare tramsform him to a man.

JOCASTA. 
[Ironically.] Then let us give to the nodding gods
good thanksgiving, who might marr our odds
or dog our days with devastation and death's disgrace
if we forget to hide in hands our grateful face.

OEDIPUS. 
Normal joys are worn away by lapping lassitude,
the timerous ticks of waves, days, ingratitudes.
Let the playful peace that we have got
stand a statue, eternal horseman, who trots
forever on his shining, prancing hinds.
Don't throw rotten rocks at his high behind.

KREON. 
Amen.

OEDIPUS. 
And then,
you know today our dear Antigone
is to be betrothed to Kreon's Haemon.

KREON. 
The great gods in their cloudy watchtower
demand our vital vigilance each turn of each hour
or else all our feasts and bridal fetes
decay to fatal famines.

JOCASTA. 
I won't forget.

KREON. 
I lived here through the plague a boy
and discipline was all that held us steady
until you came with your magic words.

OEDIPUS. 
Well... I did what I could.

KREON. 
And were well rewarded with a Kingship.

JOCASTA. 
We were all so glad you gave Fate the slip.
Even you, Kreon, who stood in line just after Laius,
acclaimed our savior Oedipus to the dais.

KREON. 
He who has use of the law must be
respected and obeyed by all, your majesties,
everything you say is quite correct. Never otherwise.

OEDIPUS. 
Here comes your Haemon now, Kreon.

JOCASTA. 
On his armored arm, Antigone.

OEDIPUS. 
And her brothers revelling after the pair.

JOCASTA. 
And teasing them.

KREON. 
While she twirls her glistering hair.

ETOCLES. 
Why don't you loves swear your vows
and stitch your poverty of two into one double dower.

POLYNICES. 
Hold your dovetailed hands like Spring and Winter,
then summer's transcendence we'll truly enter.

HAEMON. 
I'm too young yet. And Antigone's younger.

POLYNICES. 
Oh come on, don't be a stickler.

ETOCLES. 
Leave that to your dad and his hoard of orders.

HAEMON. 
Dad's right about more things more
often, than anyone else I know, including Tiresias.

POLYNICES. 
Oh ho! Colonel Kreon out-guesses
prophets now! That's some soldier's discipline there.
Must be all those camp-outs peering at the stars.

ETOCLES. 
Don't mock, Polynices.

POLYNICES. 
I know, I know. It isn't "nices."

ETOCLES. 
It was Tiresias' boiled-blind eyes that saw
the kinks of Kreon's fate in a shooting star
stitching quick through six constellations
before it flashed and faded out behind the yellow moon.
That forebodes high office and fabled towers,
control of men and fates on earth. Much power.

POLYNICES. 
That's ancient history. You make your chance.
That's what all philosophers of free-trade
in the agora say all day, if you pay your way.

[Boys laugh and go off.]

ANTIGONE. 
I would swear my soul to you today.

HAEMON. 
And it is here, in warm human awe,
that true blue duty shifts wish to law.





SCENE NINE

[ANTIGONE's tomb. ISMENE is decorating it,
funeral-bride style.]

ISMENE. 

Lupin, verbane
leverets, eyebright
kingcup, cockscomb
pennywort, soapwort
speedwell, groundsel
cottongrass, scabiosae
yarrow arrowroot
chervil, marestail, teazel....
Sweet flowers, brighten this tomb around me,
give my eye a safe place for retreating reverie.
Although here is so much of what's beautiful and best,
I cannot think of her but hurt.
I see Antigone, and I cry. Oh flowers,
ephemeral, eternal, sweet, idiotic powers,
how can you still be cheerful, and not crack,
trading all your rainbow looks for black?

ANTIGONE. 
 Do you look at me with pity, sister?
Do not, although the Archeron flow faster
for the down-draw of my downfall.
My voice mixed with Death's will all
be mumbling sleepy night-talk soon,
as I whisper in the ears of my brothers, gone
into that eternal, ephemeral, emerald glade
where all flowers are of nightshade.

ISMENE. 
 Yes, you'll die. Its the common lot
of all that lives to consummate in rot.
Down in your dirty grave, the final horror
of decayed, vampirish, drear decor,
there will shine a kind of honor
alien to those of us who die at random,
killed singly, or undone in tandem---
for you have chosen ruin with willful love
and with brave lonliness all human law
denied. You never bowed before a tinsel sword.
Even to the dead, you never went back on your word.
ANTIGONE. 
Endless rain in the underworld,
they say; limitless drippings, whirled
beneath bone-cold feet, while grave ghosts stare
demanding to know why they are there.
Gathered darks and frozen omens,
the dead themselves only half-sensible
as in an interrupted dream. I feel
the loneliness of death all too well.

ISMENE. 
 So, all glory for you is gone?
None in this world, none in the one beyond?

ANTIGONE. 
You're laughing at me, Ismene.
Tell true, you can't wait until I'm dead, can you?
One less trouble under you legs,
racing to my disaster impelled by dear ideals
the law mocks, and you feel
too self-indulgent to be real.

ISMENE. 
 Far past that brightness where
human hearts alight and dare
your high heart has taken you, Antigone.
Look around. To the halls of justice you have come.

ANTIGONE. 
Trees and rivers of this Thebes,
weep for me, if you will, I have seen
your gods, obeyed, and was unjustly judged.
This is the place you pointed out. I didn't budge.
When I came here, I came flying
to the stone hole of justice, grieving, dying.
Now  I'll sleep in the abandoned bridebed
where my father and his mother did
it, and made me. Crime, crime, deep infection,
bleakness beyond what we see of meaning....
Their marriage worms up from the grave,
eating my hope, killing my marriage.
And now I'm the stranger in my own home-place,
homeless.

ISMENE. 
 You came to death at your own pace,
nevertheless.

ANTIGONE. 
Let me go, let me die.
Truth is a hard word to hear, to say.
The sun removes itself from my eye,
leaving everything vast and cold and sick.
Lead me to my last vigil, quick, quick,
before I dissolve, empty
of lamentaions and of loves.
My passions have drained me.

KREON. 
If a dirge-ditty could keep death back,
the first man would still be wailing at the crack
of the first grave ever made.
Throw her in; the place is prepared.
Distribute the honeycakes. If the gods,
determined to to distribute unevely the odds,
give her sustinace as they impelled rebellion,
she shall live. Our hands are clean.

ANTIGONE. 
Our family darkness gathers in the tomb,
Uncle, pressing every instance of light out of the room
execution has made too suddenly, awkwardly cozy.
I die unbrided, my children locked in me as a rose is
locked and loaded into its miniature seed.
How easily discarded are those things once known as need.
Now deep, too deep, within ungerminating rock
my designs to be a bride eternally are mocked,
a Michaelangelo statue giving me the finger.
Never let my loving Haemon linger
here where all my hopes are bedded,
writhing within the stone that I have wedded.
Be witnesses for me, thin, effectless ghosts!
I poured the holy libation, I covered Polynices,
departed Dead, according to your laws and ways!
My own hand grows spectral before my face,
I dissolve and all my future intent's replaced
by a story told and over with. Remember, Ismene,
my story, although you have opposed me.
Say what I have done, and repeat it carefully
all your days, for the dead forget, they say,
and wander in dimensionless mist,
always moaning on about old crimes, listless.

ISMENE. 
 O passionate heart!
As unyeilding as tormented!

KREON. 
Guards!

ANTIGONE. 
The voice of death!

KREON. 
I can't say if you're mistaken, Antigone.
As these guards bind you, so my duty binds me.

ANTIGONE. 
Last sad daughter of a string of kings,
damned by the confusion of confusing things,
a maiden butterfly bereft of wings.
Unhappy kings, all unthroned to Hades,
where already in thought my thrown shade is,
you will recall what sadnesses have occured here,
here, in my heart. See what I've suffered, dears,
at these hands, incautious, abrupt,
but always royal, even when they cuffed
a girl curled against them in her ribbon stuff.
And still, after all, they think themselves human,
but I kept first the ordinance of Heaven.






SCENE TEN

[Years earlier. ETOCLES and POLYNICES are
children, rollerskating. ANTIGONE a babe.]

POLYNICES. 
I cry with a wild cry.
You chase me just to waste me. Why?
High-speed, here's ETOCLES. 
I feel
in my neck the rollerskate's solid wheel.
Monkey's uncle! Mercy, Etocles!
Your foot is really squishing me!

ETOCLES. 
Say it. Pray it.
This dog's day isn't over yet.

POLYNICES. 
Oh... Etocles.

ETOCLES. 
Say it.
POLYNICES. 
Please... please....

ETOCLES. 
Say it.

POLYNICES. 
You're just as meany mean
as old Unc' Kreon.

ETOCLES. 
Fiend.
Say it. Or I'll make you double-time
march until... until dinnertime!

POLYNICES. 
Dinnertime!

ETOCLES. 
Say it!

POLYNICES. 
[sing-songs.]
When we're ready to be princes
beloved in the world's embraces,
plastered on the summer magazines
kept in adolescent dreams obscene,
poked and prodded, adored, implored,
by the tired mechanics of Fame's one door,
it's Etocles, not me, who'll be
the glass of fashion, and king. You'll see.
It's Etocles, not me,
not me, it's Etocles who'll be....
It's Etocles, not me,
not me, you'll see, it's Etocles
who will grow up to be
king of everthing he sees.
Etocles, Etocles,
not me, not me.

ETOCLES. 
OK. Good enough; get up.
It's almost time to wash and sup.

POLYNICES. 
My neck is cricked
you prick.

ETOCLES. 
Wanna play "soverign and his councillors"?

POLYNICES. 
Nah... What a bore.
It's Antigone I wanta check out.
See if her bunched-up face is normal yet.

ETOCLES. 
All right. To the nurse! Double-time!
POLYNICES. 
You said no double-time.

ETOCLES. 
Did not. I said double-time til dinnertime
if you did not crown me king. That's not
a promise of no double-time, it's a threat.

POLYNICES. 
Same thing, silly.

ETOCLES. 
Not really....

[Enter NURSE and JOCASTA.]

JOCASTA. 
Today Kreon returns with his forecast.
I never saw anyone so certain and self-assured
so anxious about the half-sayings of the prophets
and fortune-throwers.

NURSE. I'd have thought it would fall
beneath his dignity to get any advice at all.

[Enter OEDIPUS.]

OEDIPUS. 
Don't let crass Kreon fool you girls.
His crew-cut style hides feigning wiles.
Half his dignity's his uniform,
pressed and polished, that's his norm.

JOCASTA. 
That's the visitor's pipping trumpet.
Let greedy ears hear what the prophet said.

OEDIPUS. 
Yes, let's.

[Enter KREON.]

OEDIPUS. 
Well, Kreon, what news from on high?

KREON. 
Such news as might make stone men sigh.

NURSE. Oh, sir, look at his face! I, I....

OEDIPUS. 
Here, take a pull on my flask.

KREON. 
A dark and dirty task
has been assigned to hard-pressed Thebes.

OEDIPUS. 
Then we'll launder it to light's reprieve.
KREON. 
Its a pollution from long ago.
A splotch that necessities did throw
from our minds. Can't think about honor
on an empty stomach, or you'll double sorrow.
Nor when half the city's sick with plague.

OEDIPUS. 
The Sphinx gave me a promise. She did not renege
when I solved her riddle about the legs.
I'll do the same for this problem. And simply,
now that I'm the King, and it's my responsibility.

KREON. 
Well, it's a real riddle again, right enough.

OEDIPUS. 
Hmm. These augers often play with double tongues
and curse those who most expect a kiss.
I'd rather not be a patsy in their plots.

JOCASTA. 
But what choice have we got?

KREON. 
None.

OEDIPUS. 
Such is the whim of God. Let's hear the knot.
What can we do, but be good guessers
and attempt all the obstacles in life, the greater and lesser,
tripping and leaping by turns?

KREON. 
Shrewdly said, sire. There is a stain....

OEDIPUS. 
So you said. Make yourself plain.

KREON. 
A blotch... a murder.

NURSE. Murder!

OEDIPUS. 
But there is no murder, unless I err.

KREON. 
Brutal and ruinous, and the culprit
still at large. "Laius," said the voice, I still hear it:
"Laius; find his killer, or mighty Thebes is no more."

OEDIPUS. 
But he was killed long before
I even got here!

KREON. 
Oracles can be pretty rough.

OEDIPUS. 
Oh, this makes the puzzle tough.
KREON. 
Murdered on the open road; the man
and his entire entourage..or, nearly. And
now the gods, going through the oracle's cold throat
command we track the killer or they get our goat.

OEDIPUS. 
Why wasn't this matter devined
time out of mind, long sad years ago? I mind
a regicide loose in Thebes!
For all I know, I could be next!

KREON. 
Anarchies.
That's why we dawdled as detectives.
Wasn't looked into because of the plague;
folks passing out in the streets, faces greyed,
dead as the weather in yesterday's papers. Dead inks.
No time then for any riddle but the Sphinx's.

OEDIPUS. 
Once more it seems my task
to disgorge these dark things until they bask
in the temperate light of day. To my head,
it is good and lawful to honor the dead,
never too late to set things straight with heaven,
blot out evil wherever it lies hidden.
In my own mind's quiet self-report
I can scan nothing more important.

[Enter the children, screaming and running.]

OEDIPUS. 
Children, enough! The time
for play has come and gone.







SCENE ELEVEN

[Coronation of KREON.]

ANNOUNCER. 
Let this chosen of the gods
be shown of special promise and strictest bond
to guide the stray arrangents of our state
with kingly competence, and put no bad act
before the eternal temperance divinely given
when gods attempt to teach justice to men.

KREON. 
Beneath this State vestment I must frown
and find my fellows lacking as I turn round
viewing the world from the gold hedge and ground
of your principle endowment: this crown of crowns
or haughty scepter whose powers enforce
a king's singular essence of moral choice.
These tidings and these trinkets
I accept without a blink, yet
I acknowledge they were only theived
from you, dear citizens of Thebes.
Having so lately defended yourselves
from a most horrible attack upon your homes,
I take it in victory, and in sacred trust,
that civic will and private itch keep us robust.

TIRESIAS. 
Above me, a pretty speech cries out.
Who speaks? He has the rough measure of Kreon
of old, but talks of citizens and kings, not men,
horses, battle, and such warlike use of words
as was his common way when I knew him good.

KREON. 
It's me, TIRESIAS. 
Your boy has eyes.
Doesn't he tell you when to bow before a king?
TIRESIAS. 
King? King? I thought you just said
you were KREON. 
I know your voice. You are.
Now, how is a Colonel a king? Tell me boy,
for this Kreon is trying out a jest.
I guess for everything there's a first.

KREON. 
You've stumbled into a coronation, prophet.
Were you looking to sadden some widow before her time?
Please, don't let me detain you.

TIRESIAS. 
There's many I might make sad today.
Yourself not least, KREON. 
Listen to what I say.

KREON. 
I don't recall ever NOT listening, Tiresias.

TIRESIAS. 
Good. You've done one good thing there, wise.
A good start for a new king, indeed.

KREON. 
Yes, yes. To you I'm indebted for past deeds
and prophacies. But what new fate comes today?

TIRESIAS. 
Listen: Kreon, once more you sway
uneasily on the bladed edge of some great fate.

KREON. 
What's this? Your words discombobulate.

TIRESIAS. 
Kreon, Kreon, can't you tell
from the trembling insistance of my prophet's yell,
I'm giving you a chance too oft denied
by Fate's roulette wheel busy spinning in its pride.
The gods who blinded me are blessing you;
but they've handed it off to me to tell you what to do.
You know that little chair I've got up on the mountain,
set wildly high, where geysers shrink to fountains,
and the humungous ocean is reduced
to a puddle children's feet traduce?
Well, I was sitting there, feeling the sunlight
and the air, and the birds that make it to heaven's light,
and back, swirled all around me, all set a-chatter
(nothing too unusual in a prophet's business matters)
when out of their beaks there came contrasted
this sound that just, well, it sort of blasted
more than anything else; human in that screechfest,
like a child being dissected in an eagle's nest,
a person's voice set alight by the gods and burning,
a bonfire of consciousness, pure flame roaring
out of the anonymities gathered there.
There was a fight set off between 'em all in the air,
a seriousness of division like a war, wing-whirr
and furiousness. I put my hand out for the boy,
got him to swear up and down what he tol'
was what was happening. Didn't trust the, the
extraordinariness of it at all, too uncanny,
I thought, but the gods've left me dangling,
and brought me round to stranger things.
Here's what he saw, the boy, what my ears witnessed,
and no mistake: some of the bigger crows had hissed
a little dove over on its back, flayed out the wings
while a series of flyers looped low to sting
at the virgin breast, ripped and ripped, ceased
when a human voice leapt out of the distressed beast,
far louder than its size, a widow's moan
that in that violence was a sound alone.
When all was done, and no more to be heard,
I put my thumb in the open bowl of the bird,
trying to feel how the heart made out, what state
it was in for the augury, and I gave a start,
almost put my old thumb through that dove's ribs
and out the back, felt liver, and lungs, some greasy tid-bits,
but the heart, well, that was pecked completely
out, an absent mansion in my hand waiting
for it to flap back and start pumping. I was lost!
What could it all mean at this point?
Didn't know what to think, retreated out-of-joint
to my usual altar fires and such like.
But Hephastos failed me. Fire and no smoke,
no sign rising from destruction that should choke
black the heavenly skies. That's a fact.
I was in a panic. All the earth was out of whack!
Sonny, some things start out serious, stay that way
to the grave. This is one of 'em. What I say.
Everybody makes mistakes, no matter how exalted,
diligence is needed to see what the fault is
as well as to carry on with a difficult chore.
The gods chortle at our morose doings, none more
than our puffing up in pride and staying puffed.
But when goodness licks out of a man like holy fire
and by its light he sees his wrongs, and does
something, anything almost, to fix 'em up in gods' eyes,
that diminishes the evil, sets it at naught,
if done timely and with a sincere heart. Kreon,
think about things, who's standing up for the gods'
old ways in spite of man? Don't conflict
by policy with what moves above us... Ain't politic.
Ordering strong men to swim in armor,
march a million miles; orders have an issuer,
but results are not guaranteed. Kreon,
this Antigone thing.... It goes against God.
I've seen it, and ran here. Best tell Kreon, I thought,
he's always kept a level head on and whatnot.

KREON. 
Birds of Zeus! Are you sure your boy
didn't whistle while you dozed in prophetic joy,
perhaps sipping too much of that bacchic wine
that brings insightful frenzy to the near-divine?
Can't my coronation day, in a country wide-
open with a peace we've earned, be free
of these nasty natterings and edgy anxieties?
No, Tiresias, even if your lauded eagles
carried Polynices up to heaven, regal
bit by stinking bit, I'd not yeild at all.
All my life I've put up with fortune-tellers;
He defied me in life, let his death be the exemplar!
I didn't pollute any temples, was always solemn.
The gods themselves are immune to us, no man can smack 'em.
You'll have to go elsewhere, go away
with your filthy business, I won't pay
to have my brightest day ruined by some
sour old blind man with his abacus of curses. Come,
Gather 'round! Tiresias sells his wisdom
to the highest bidder! Worthless words for hire!

TIRESIAS. 
Is there no man left inside you to fear the fire?
Are you so completely withered to this length,
a single conceit of earthly power and tyrant-strength
that you, an armored prawn, would defy augury and all
that heaven gives in grace to the earth? It appalls!

KREON. 
All right. Give us the phony aphorism.
Here's a dangled drachma for your boy-whore jism.

TIRESIAS. 
Is there no man left in you who'll
know that wisdom outweighs any wealth, you fool!

KREON. 
Right. And bribes are baser than any baseness.

TIRESIAS. 
Bribes leave both the giver and taker with less.

KREON. 
I would not presume to counter a prophet
who's so good at counting what's in his pocket.

TIRESIAS. 
Do you still say my prophecy's for sale?
That for some monkish junk I'd sell the Grail?

KREON. 
Prophets have always thought it a touch too keen
to catch the sordid future in a drachma's gleam.

TIRESIAS. 
And kings have always loved warrior's brass,
and the brassy brayings of their own voices!

KREON. 
Watch it! Your king stands before you.

TIRESIAS. 
I know it. I prophecied that too.

KREON. 
You, Tiresias, are not without talent.
But foreseeing my rise may not be thought
too spectacular. No one worked so hard for their fate,
trimming my sails, and staying up late,
stabbing back at intrigue, watching for my chances.
Face it Tiresias, a lucky guess. And now my guess is,
well, now you've completely sold out.

TIRESIAS. 
Sire, fatal words are in my throat.
Do not unclasp their lock. There is no antidote.

KREON. 
Here. Place this coin under your tongue,
that useless lock for those flapping gums,
and unburden yourself of your bleak words.
But remember, no matter what is said or heard,
no further coin will I give you for defiance,
although maybe I'd pay for some uncommon silence.

TIRESIAS. 
Although these words charge your life in fee,
yet, you cannot afford my silent tranquility.

KREON. 
No doubt. No doubt. I'm listening.
Your audience stands attentive, prevaricating performer.

TIRESIAS. 
Very well, then. Take this, Kreon,
and take deep to heart! Not much father will
the days advance upon your royal time
when you shall be charged to pay all
back that you have taken: corpse for corpse
and flesh of your flesh shall pay the price!
You thrust one wondering child of light
into damned antechambers of soul's night---
innocent Antigone, who kept to the gods
and did not stray, into Hades too terribly sudden,
living in night before she's made a shade.
Also, you have perversely kept above the dust
another soul, marooned here on the earth's crust
that should have been with dignity interred.
One graved before her death, the other denied
holy sanction of a burial. These are your crimes,
Kreon. Fear the Furies and the dark of time.
Fear the great, dim gods of Hell:
Their punishment is moving swift and fell.
So swift and sure their flight at you
that you cannot even hear the fatal arrow
fletched by my prophacy. Are these the words,
Kreon, for which you wished and paid?
Soon, soon, as night and day revolve again
around your guilt, targeting in,
your house shall know loud lamentations,
men and women wandering eyeless from tears,
distant curses will come up close.
Cities grieving their unburied boys
will bend in ill will at your policies,
pushing the sink of the dead into beautiful Thebes,
even as high as your palace. These are my words,
Kreon, free of charge. Now you have heard.
[Throws money at KREON.]
Come, boy. We have seen enough.

SOLDIER. 
These words work in my heart, make me cough
like a plague unleashed. Tiresias is gone,
but his bitter knowledge lingers in the air.
Old as I am, I can't remember him lying ever.

KREON. 
Ah. It is hurts to even think whether....
But I cannot remember him ever lying either.
Damn it!

SOLDIER. 
If I may advise....

KREON. 
If not always very wise,
you at least have served me. How could I woo
that troublesome Tiresias and ignore you?

SOLDIER. 
Thank you. I am worried. I think....
KREON. 
Yes? What is it? Speak.

SOLDIER. 
Get Antigone out of her tomb,
and put Polynices in there. Trade 'em.
Maybe the gods will take the hoodwink.

KREON. 
Friend, of all my campaigns, I think,
would you really have me do this?

SOLDIER. 
As old as I am, I'd hate to see
new sorrow bring my old captain down.
Now go at once. You heard how swift
it must be done! The gods are never slow
to punish men who wrong 'em. No.

KREON. 
All my heart's against it, all.
But, yes, all right. I'll
not wrestle destiny for a corpse.

SOLDIER. 
And go yourself,
that's the right way with these things!

KREON. 
I will go. Servents-- fetch axes,
pull shovels from the farmers' hands.
To Polynices first, he's the first thing
I'll take out of the gods' sight and put right.
Quick, quick! The gods are stonger than us
and all our little hubris of polity;
a man must serve them till he die.





SCENE TWELVE

[OEDIPUS in Thebes, answering Sphinx.]

OEDIPUS. 
It's a hard day full of light
as opposite a cramped, paranoic night
as a traveller'd dare to care to have, or get,
until it seems that that old soul the sun, cart-
wheels just for fun, rolling toward oblivion.
The road's all dust, and a plague, they say,
kills a city, Thebes, just one cross ridge away.
There the Sphinx, flinty singer, stone muse of mystery,
riddles every passerby to intermit the plague
but none who've answered lived, or answered as a sage.
But as I was born a wanderer with swell
feet, I might as well
attempt what answer I can make, or makeup what I can't,
--for what use is life without a little of romance?
Life's philosophy's eternal whim;
too much permanence must make us grim,
seize our sighs to breathless glaciers
and put our passions on permanant vacations.
I'll try my maybe answers to get the golden pouches
proffered by the populace. There she crouches....
Now let me take a chance; she's overheard!
Time to make my stand. Sphinx! Lion! Woman! Bird!

SPHINX. 
I am SPHINX. Take counsel, and be afraid.

OEDIPUS. 
Be afraid? And drill myself to silence?
I'd rather be an inquisitor in your presence.

SPHINX. 
Time mocks men that mock their fears.

OEDIPUS. 
I came to ask you what your riddle is,
to delve it out or die.

SPHINX. 
                 I am SPHINX. 

Take counsel, and depart.

OEDIPUS. 
[Aside.]         A jinx.
Take counsel and depart? Where, sorcerer,
would I go, a homeless wanderer? [Aloud.]
I am ready for your riddle, Sphinx.
I'm after this city of Thebes' rink-
y-dink reward. There's advantage for my risk---
enough to allay my fears, maybe, sans mock's 'tisk.'

SPHINX. 
Prepare for death, mortal man.

OEDIPUS. 
Lay it on me, sister.

SPHINX. 
             Answer, if you can:
What walks on four legs at dawn, two at noon,
and three legs when the sun is gone?

OEDIPUS. 
Beats me. I give up, what is it?

SPHINX. 
Your life and soul are forfeit.

OEDIPUS. 
Hey, I was just kidding! Man!

SPHINX. 
Man? Make your answer clear, or soon....

OEDIPUS. 
Yeah, yeah... Man, that's it. Dawn
is infancy, crawling on all fours; noon
is adulthood, when we walk upright, and....

SPHINX. 
I have seen the mighty of all nations
look appalled upon the pit, and die at these equations.

OEDIPUS. 
And evening... evening is, well, uh, would be,
that is, or would be, would kinda haveta be,
well, you know, old age and all that. See?

SPHINX. 
An old age you will never know. Prepare!

OEDIPUS. 
In old age man walks on three... three...
[Aside.] Stick to it, OEDIPUS. 
Stick to it, stick, stick....

SPHINX. 
Stick? Your answer now, be quick!

OEDIPUS. 
Yes! Evening is old age, when man
walks with the aid of a crutch, a stick, when he can,
you know the deal. Well, monster, that's my guess;
am I dead, or delivered from this mess?

SPHINX. 
Live.

OEDIPUS. 
Now to see what the Thebans will give.





SCENE THIRTEEN


[Inside ANTIGONE's tomb.]

ANTIGONE. 
Already I am done with waiting.
Already I wish to be my consummation taking,
and with these waters and flowers sweet
end my too many days in this rock of night.
Never again will the sun come unto my face
unless it be in chinky disfigurence,
rough oblongs that obscure what they set upon
as much as may illuminate. This bride-bedecked tomb
differs less than many might have thought
from the airy daylight world I left,
filled, as that world is, with sights obscured
by ambition and prideful puffings of the self
enough to make this dismal chambered
dark, bright as the broadest noonday to myself.
But already am I done with its smalls charms,
and though it make me a respite from harm,
and all the corrupting rack of earth outside
that seems a more populated dark of brutal tides,
I am done. You have directed my feet, O gods,
to this place, accept me to the afterworld
as in this harried round of menace and ambition
you disgraced my simplicity and devotion.
I am done. Now I'll tear my veil
and shread my neck from breath as well
who should pant upon her bridal bed
like a wild leopard left unfed,
saying "Haemon," and "love" and such smallnesses
as this, which new-marrieds will make to pass
their days in restful glory and in bliss.
[She hangs herself.]

HAEMON. 
[Outside.] This is the most desperate spot
Thebes or the entire earth has got,
which everywhere else has such unequalled good;
This ruined landscape, flat, devoid,
measures well with the harsh expectations
of my empty soul. You, and you, drop your rations,
and tear with me at these false-risen
obstructions obscuring my life's business,
these stones of earth that cage my heart.
My father is the supreme head of State
as well you fingers of his power know
whom he posted here. Now, let's go!
Would you deny me, men? Think on it:
would you deny his son and risk the worst?
Good. Now, to it! O State that makes such men
so concerned with their skins and not what's within.
Antigone! Since I cannot from
the blasted blankness of this rocky womb
deliver you to life and light again,
which life lacks light without your presence,
I've come to bury myself with you
where my heart already lies entombed.
There, it is done. When I am within
this inky place, seal all up again the same
and I shall thank you as though you were my saviors.
Antigone.... do you sleep, or in prayer labor?
My adjusting eyes are hard put
to see you or anything in this murk.
Here's a cup of brackish water, a cruelty condoned
by my father to hurt your last days alone.
What's this? Soft... flowers strewn
almost to heaping! I thought is was yourself, Antigone,
nothing else. Now the chamber's darkness dies
and starts to glow like lurid moonrise
over sandy wastes; things appear,
but not in their true character,
but merely, as it were,
half-aware of what they were in daylight.
I seem to see within my eye, and not without.
What in the very center of this chamber floats?
....A ghost! [Florishes sword at Antigone.]
O spirit restless
whose place I trespass,
greet me as a younger brother born
to share an immortality like your own.
But wait... Oh, I am done with waiting!  [Slashes.]
Collapsing on the stone floor? What? A weighted thing....
[Discards sword.] Now I own again my full sight
to look upon the desecration of my heart.
O Antigone! Were you so impaitient to be hurled
from this sinister fascination called the world?

[ENTER MESSENGER.]

MESSENGER. 
Guards, stop your lawful punishment.

SENTRY. 
This is a trick. We're ordered to finish it.

MESSENGER. 
KREON. 
He's changed his mind.
He spoke to Tiresias, and decided,
better to gamble with the gods than against.
The state is not the only arbiter of mens' estate;
he grasped some greatness within that helped him
do one thing great. He rushed off then,
spade in hand, to bury Polynices' properly.
I had helped, starting out over there with 'em.
We had to... to.... It was awful...
Then he thought it best to post me onward,
here to the tomb, to bring tidings to Haemon
and ease his troubled mind. Haemon!

SENTRY. 
You'll have to shout considerably louder.

MESSENGER. 
Why? What evil is in your laughter?

SENTRY. 
Haemon's in the tomb with Antigone.

MESSENGER. 
In there? Why? He was not condemned.

SENTRY. 
He wanted to be with his bride
to break-in the bed.

[A cry is heard from within the tomb..]

MESSENGER. 
What's that? An evil sound of lunacy.

SENTRY. 
Let's give the honeymoon couple some privacy.

MESSENGER. 
But Kreon orders them out!

SENTRY. 
I'll await Kreon's orders. Don't pout.
You know what a hardhead he is.

MESSENGER. 
He sent me on ahead to tell you this.

[Another cry.]

SENTRY. 
Have you ever known Kreon's mind
to ever change? The man's adamantine.

MESSENGER. 
Out of my way then; I'll dig them out myself.

SENTRY. 
Not while I have breath....

[They prepare to scuffle. ENTER KREON.]

MESSENGER. 
Sire!

SENTRY. 
This man tried to break into the tomb
and undo your orders, sir. You're under arrest. Come.

[Another cry.]

KREON. 
What's that? From the tomb! Those cries!

SENTRY. 
Just Haemon saying his goodbyes.

KREON. 
Haemon! Haemon! Are you in there?
What is this crying out? Dear,
son, speak to me-- I come here on my knees
begging forgiveness. Unloose me
from this parental nightmare of regret.
Let me see my son again obedient
to a wronging father who corrects
himself by the forgotten love he recollects
---I am as new-made as light
within a sharpened diamond's made more bright
by the outer hardness it discards
to redouble illumination's shards
and give back twice to the paitient eye
all the glory looming in a summer sky.
There, through this hasty chink
I see you in the center of the rock,
lying athwart the darkest spot.
But beside you, what's that you've got?
Something white a little to your left;
It looks like Antigone's veil, bereft
of her fine face and flung awry.
I've buried Polynices, Antigone!
Washed him up with my own hands,
first with holy water with my own hands.
And then into the mellow ground, you see,
now all the grime and dirt's on me.
Tiresias knocked sense into me, until I saw
I've no war with the dead, except how
to honor them more highly. Haemon!
Shall a father not be answered by his son?

MESSENGER. 
We're almost through, sire. Here's an entrance.

SENTRY. 
Watch out, this heavy stone is losing its balance!

KREON. 
Haemon-- voice of the damned dark, talk!--
Is Antigone dead, did her body balk
when I criminalized her love?
To my sunken ear her light voice dove,
deformed by aquatic harmonics, till
I only heard her mumur against my will,
my will magnified by water into The State.
I'll dash away these tears and wait
to hear her voice again from under shale.
She has hung herself with her unwound vail!
Haemon, Haemon, let my grief
reverse engineer her death back to relief,
and may my taut repentance
rekinkle our cold aquiantance,
for a father and son should be united;
then her death might be less blighted.
O my son, let my sorrow, my tears, impart
by my new-washed intent, a place in your heart!
Forgive me! All's done ill.
Here, take my hand. No! This chill
and evil fiction in your eyes!
Haemon, the father in me dies
to see you see me through such lies,
a vail of hating falsities.
Nor can I expect a blink's reprieve
from the long stabs inside your sight
that show me as I am, not as I might
have been: a father loving and alive
to all his only son might give.
Ah! now he's stabbing at my face,
stabbing, stabbing at my disgrace,
the delineaments of age and error
that no longer awe him into terror
nor any obedience any longer.
Son, o son, I wish I had been stronger!
and known the fictions of renown
make their victors victims of their poem.
Now... No! No! Haemon, slice
nothing of yourself for your father's vice!
Turn the wild knife's erratic
attention back against the vatic
idiot who forgot his only duty
was to tell his son to love his beauty,
and let young Haemon, and pretty Antigone,
live and love and be.
Come out and kill the wretch
who held a burecratic pen to sketch
a tyrant's tragedy among the stars,
and cut his heart to a hash of scars.
Come out and kill me. Oh fair boy,
whose rose of blood lays unalloyed
on Antigone's dead and paper cheek....
You have won your bride, even as I speak,
and I have lost my son.

[The stone is rolled away. We see
HAEMON and ANTIGONE dead.]

End

Jul 162020
 


a tragedy

by Gregg Glory
[Gregg G. Brown]

Published by BLAST PRESS
copyright 1988




SCENE 1

HAMILTON Cornwalis has overwhelmed our Gates In South Carolina at Camden-town Where the crepey willows hang their sad limbs In liquid embraces that clasp the air Incestuous summer's sultry melting Clots with riotous cries of our defeated. This, and other engagements that went Against us begin to bind the free determination of our course As with water that cannot choose its level But drops indeterminately to the base They that cannot see to steer their courses Funnel blindly to black ends. But we are men, and do not flow unwillingly But rather march our rivers to a sea Of our own devising. Hortatio Gates Being the main hand of our forces south Should bear some load of blame for our flank's wounds That were insufficiently defended. ADAMS But Gates is a good man. HAMILTON But the gate was weak. And others have proved false before this. This is the worst dark year of war Criminal monarchy has knighted on us yet. The British boar gores our youthful state, And the foundling nation bleeds dangerously. ADAMS Each honorable drop the unaccepting earth Will vomit up at warty faces And drown their fatal squeals in innumerable floods Rained so fast dizzy sanity must think All the weeping face of nature broke blood sobs To gape on woeful corpses of Americans. HAMILTON If things stand as they are, we stand defeated. [Enter Messenger MESSENGER Sir, the British, in sharp ambition To retain their sovereignty in these states (Which, by God, and by my blood, they shall not) Have cut the French fleet off at Brest, The harbor of our hopes, with a deep blockade. WASHINGTON It seems dry powder has stopped up What otherwise would flow to our advantage. [Stuff missing...] England has bottled France's valor up And you would launch this tirade instead. Rashness makes a gentleman look ill; It spots him with the indecent cheek of youth Heated by inconstant purposes boiling all at once To make intemperate kettles sing and pipe, Fuelled by logs from his own wayward eye. You have me at a disadvantage in our fencing That I must sit by and seem to straddle it. Congress will have much to say of this. I shall not send a commendation yet, Forced to the narrow end of our sharp argument By outward circumstances. Be at peace-- And know that I shall meditate in state On this grave, vital matter. And I think Even our hissing Southern fires must wait To be quenched in decision's cooler hour. [Exit all but he Discord in these linen ranks does not suit; A more polished rupture in our debate Will make itself felt presently, I fear.

SCENE 2

FATHER Welcome, gentlemen, to all our royal roast. Feed on what your appetites have pleasure To consume: piled tables, music's sweetest note, And ladies liberally dispersed Twitch skirts to the fiddler's cricketing. Formality is left tarrying past sundown. Put out your worries of these flashing times In our pooled merriment which chills those heats. A shooting star is the only shot we'll fear. So, men, summer's last dragonflies let's be: Clip on fancy's wings and navigate these smiles That tell of rustic silence in a booming mire. Ladies, attach your sultry glows; Flit lithesome and into dark rushes blow. [Aside] We've had our country quiet ripped by war Instead of the fiddler's jumping saw. Too much death leaves pleasure at the door. MAJOR ANDRE Cannons sometimes are veiled, and soldiers sleep. FATHER To dream on drums' martial melodies. MAJOR ANDRE Perhaps it is so, but while our joys can stir Drink up the entertainment you have poured And put on the evening's delightful gear That must mask our more familiar faces. FATHER Major Andre, although you must visit Secretly, in deepest danger to your self And of your loyalty make some pretense As might a spy, you've determined me to laugh. I'll speak no more of war. Fiddler, scratch! [Goes off MAJOR ANDRE While my honesty must dissemble here I'll study out how to read these masquers' looks And trace tracks of deer in these confused woods; There's one white hind whose heart leaps plain And in colonial marshes wears a crown. His wife, obeying some royal cue, tips Her antlered wine glass and prepares To hoof. But here walks a man among ranks Makes a solemn clowning of our license; Dignity in motion, with shoulders to bear his crown; Among the jumping minions of these woods He bears a royal poise. Who is this stag that makes such noble browse Among the rude reeds offered here? FATHER Arnold. Pothead, leave off that lady's slipper Unless you'd have a flower trod on you. POTHEAD Aye, sir. [Aside] Although it'd be a pretty bruise would bloom. MAJOR ANDRE Benedict Arnold? FATHER The same, He who bravely saved Saratoga from retribution's whip With limping victory. ---Cullion, Scissors, Fetch the rich broth and tar it on their hungers Need makes misbehave. Mr. Andre, I must knock skulls or find no brains; pardon. [Goes MAJOR ANDRE Perhaps my secret purpose, burning low, has here Found some powder for its hidden light. FATHER Peggy, lift a leg, and show these ladies How to reel that never hopped before. CULLION Are women frogs to hop like that? POTHEAD Hop-hop Is too lewd for frogs, but not too loose for maids. CULLION You stuff ears rudely, salad-maker. POTHEAD There's dancers behind the kitchen fires Stomping on a flat spot. Cullion? CULLION I'll dance you to shards. MAJOR ANDRE She dances with the tempered grace of one That never made immodest show before. FATHER You shall come to know my daughter hereafter. [Benedict and Peggy dancing BENEDICT Let these soulful travelers quit travail On your cold lips' firmament; restful earth, Let me stretch out my full measure on the ground As final mortal toil all lies down to do Even to this last particle of desire. Taking the measure of my life's content, Stir still contentment to disclose a love Close encamped in his stilted tent, Ready as a pilgrim in the wilderness To study out the flowers how they bloom Or how dull whippoorwills take punishment of rain, Or anything, or nothing, or any service give Beneath the starry barbs fixed in your glance. On this grass field that tombs up men And builds no further monument of dust But wild everlasting weeds I'll lie down And become myself some substance of the grass. FATHER Daughter, daughter! Stand on ceremony And sing the saddest song you know to out-weep These egregious wars. BENEDICT The willow song. MRS BENEDICT ARNOLD It goes against the gladness of the hour. BENEDICT Not while you have breath, or the song power To enchant sadness, opposites must turn As one divided face in a mirror meets Itself; antinomies, reconcile. [Peggy, soon to be Mrs. Benedict Arnold, sings the Willow Song MRS BENEDICT ARNOLD [Aside] This weighty general treads a heavy slope; Hard walks shorten the breath, yet invigorate The breather--- so he takes his duties with this death--- A heavy slope, but always tending upward To a rarer air his appointment will survey. If I tend him in this most grievous hour, My fortunes with his merits will incline. [News of Benedict's wife's death is given to Benedict MAJOR ANDRE Someone whispers her death to him. WOMAN How does The news adhere? MAJOR ANDRE Like some sad Pan of the woods Forcing spring sighs from melancholy pipes He makes some measure of polite delight Blow through the hollow of his sorrows And excuses himself from festive faces. WOMAN Wistful already on a new continent Greater than the ocean for men to make Discoveries on. MAJOR ANDRE These woods are already Old in blood, and familiar death will make The strangest places home. Let's call ourselves Poor Arabs under wandering stars and moor our sorrows To the nearest ditch. We've sunk a fen in heaven. [Exit Benedict FATHER All good things must have their ends Or else in surfeit cease to please. Goodnight, and God bless the king!

SCENE 3

LAFAYETTE This is a bad way to growl the hours off. HAMILTON It is unmannerly of me to drag Our nation's fatherhood into question. But had we all so many fathers Inheritance would grow old waiting For their departures. Death's bounty granted, Half a world would fall under coltish feet. LAFAYETTE What a mother to lie so foully seeded By so many men it must change her hue From virgin white to heavy ripeness green apples aging against the frost That splits the skin. HAMILTON We must modify this Tacky image that sticks unwanted In the guileless minds of the people. Pick another has not so many heads To breed confusion with; one sterling man To break this slavish earth from the tyrant's chains, Stamp freedom on her rejoicing heart, And tie themselves like lovers in Silken bonds of holy matrimony. ADAMS That would save us. LAFAYETTE And make the country's sons Jump to destroy their mother's naked foes Who, all unarmed against their laying on, The weak wailing enemy they'll tear apart As a bear a babe. HAMILTON George Washington Is a man who may stand the test of this. LAFAYETTE He has virile character enough. ADAMS He is Cato enough to make modest Any citizen. ____: And the people love him for his wisdom. HAMILTON Is everyone agreed then? LAFAYETTE Washington! ADAMS Washington. HAMILTON No one could elect a better father. ADAMS Washington it is. HAMILTON Thank you, gentlemen; We are all well bred in this.

SCENE 4

BENEDICT Will the state have me for a general? I have deserved it before this, but redcoats Like the march of blood to a loving heart Carry my cause forward, past timid debates, To a blushing estimation. You hold In a commanding purview all my cause And, as a coursing eagle, have reared up One equal in sinew to yourself Tipped with wings to caress new heavens with. discern and decide, sir; As a man, I will not buffet you from The nest of our mutual resolution But I may resign. WASHINGTON Seal up your thoughts. Tomorrow Flies at us out of a boundless night infinite in hopes, uncircumscribed By today's pace, universal In expectation, beyond scope in device, Past description, assignment or fixed state To which at dusk it narrowly returns. Threat nothing, and train shrieking councils silent Until this weaning cause bears some issue. BENEDICT Will the state have me for a general? I am not softly barbed to this extreme Like some tender babe crying at cold hands That tender only its own fostering But I must know. Will the state have me For a general? WASHINGTON I have no idea. I must shut myself up, priest-like, In meditation until some crowd of thoughts Clamorously emerge. From my chamber I'll then proceed with the curative For these uncertain ill expectations That have unhoused sleep from your breast And stalk night for comforts. Until then Go in the company of good thoughts And take what peace you can from this: my love Which, like a small warden following your thoughts, Walks with you in this indecisive hour. BENEDICT Do not let the public censure of my Private house weight anything in your Fraught deliberations, sir. WASHINGTON I shall not. Controversy could not so mar your wife That I would not recognize her merits. I may have wooden teeth but not even An oak leg could make me forget her dances. BENEDICT May the night give you happy dreams, sir. WASHINGTON Thanks. May my gracious wishes give you some cause To rest. Dismissed, and good night. BENEDICT Goodnight, sir.

SCENE 5

[Four skinners on the road]

FIRST SKINNER
Is this the way into the fort the lady said?

SECOND SKINNER
In the way or out of it, either way is a safer way for us.

FIRST SKINNER
How safer?

SECOND SKINNER
If in the way, we’re on our way, and we should discover the fort, and that’s a safe place; there beg food, and that’s a safe thought for our bellies.

THIRD SKINNER
If our bellies could think.

SECOND SKINNER
Why what’s man but a thinking belly?

FIRST SKINNER
And if out?

SECOND SKINNER
That’s safest. If out, we’re in ourselves, which is to say by ourselves, which is to count our four selves. And if for ourselves and by ourselves, then that’s a proof of choice, because of self-election. And its better to be choosers than to be beggars.

THIRD SKINNER

Ay, and out of harm’s way as well.

SECOND SKINNER

And, if in the harming mood, out of the way of catching ears.

FOURTH SKINNER
Wait. A horse. Hide yourselves, you bellies, if you need necks.

[Enter Major Andre


SCENE 6

[At Benedict's Wife's graveside] BENEDICT Quiet, heart. Here is one has stored Her mellow contents in the earth. Quiet earth, That such a mellowness would burst this confining dirt Fallen on it! And like the repeating sea Surge to cover me and with blessing waters Wash my guilts. All my dead grief lie Congealed in thee. Too-bruised a soul To bear out her mortal term one more day. When you took breath, you breathed me in And, feeding the brief sustenance on which you fed, Held me for a breathing moment consoled In every breath, and banished with the last. Expelled into a harming world, all wounds, And this the worst. What made these small ones, Inspired their dust or molded their forms From nothingness, what set the skipping creatures up to Kick, weep, damage, sing, race, trip And make all manner of motions on this Pocky flat of weeds and mud? What gods play With us so that our shadows throw a pattern That makes hearts break? O to wive the earth Is better than marrying shadows. So you this inanimate steadfastness wed And be content. There's material to shift Into a dying memorial for thee., There's ivy glosses the weak side of the hill, And a blood-touched cowslip advantages the root Under a guarding tree's solemn nod-- And here's a peck of bruised violets Nature's quiet weep may keep fresh. [Enter Andre BENEDICT Here comes one will give my ambitions Weight to lever the barricaded world with yet And pluck it from its setting. MAJOR ANDRE Mr. Arnold! I have had letters of you of late, sir. Shall we unfold their contents in this Windy place? The bed-moans of ghosts make me unquiet, And many shelved here have died of the pox. BENEDICT For the least sick inflicted me, I stand Ready to ill the world with maladies. These inmates of the earth will understand The business between us better than most That caper naughtily above. MAJOR ANDRE The price Last given in our correspondence suits His majesty, General Arnold. BENEDICT Thanks, sir. MAJOR ANDRE Do you accept these terms, sir? They are yours. The commission is affixed by lawful Signatures in every degree required. [Holding paper BENEDICT A bloody hand upholds it, and an impatient vengeance Urges me to it! The subtlest wrongs Have I undertaken to prosecute. Dead crimes Moldering forgetful ages in the crypt Demand witnessing airs; I'll unpack them And render the impaled, drained corpses up To the forgiveless justice these times impose. But I have more recent instances To prick me into action. Pale Washington, Whose stiff demeanor showed him a boy In his father's boots, prating in a voice More fit for Christmas caroling than these August hours, has refused my due promotion Among the motley rebels.

SCENE 7

BENEDICT Continent Liberty! Blasphemous child Whose maternal love curdles in your teeth As though the very hour of your conceit had soured, Die on this rock of tribulations with my curse To salt your sweet breath of youth. What chainless father, deep in thought upon this present brink and brood of time would shed one precious drop for pity's sake on this old infant famished winds have sucked empty of moist life? Its fist of face turns mummy-looks to the patient mother gasping down her tongue. What man would claim the irreconcilable absurdity of so puling and morose a babe That has not his presence in its features Anywhere, no habitual grimace Or thoughtful look, or any other sign Of the slightest lending of his blood? Stand that man before me, if he lives, Who can love such a one as this--- Sprawling, unconnected and like to die--- And I'll make such yeasty homage to his paternal gore As will feed a teeming wilderness of orphans Nurse the bitterest pebbles to airy peaks Play uncle to the wily crocodile Hold all-hated basilisks for sons Declare strange fish for grandsons, never eat Of anything possessed of eyes again And name a father for every drop of rain.

SCENE 8

WASHINGTON These slim letters give much base for great fear, As much, indeed, as if they stood rampart Against the unbearable ocean. My fear, God save us gentlemen, builds much on them And sees the whetted sword of treachery Rise from coils of fog too-late burnt away By this papery light. Over us treason's blade Hangs from a thread as slender as was Our hope to escape hanging, gagged and cauled. LAFAYETTE What is in paper to make us shake so? WASHINGTON The blackest ink that ever poured From a treacherous heart. LAFAYETTE Treason! HAMILTON Black words to a loyal ear. [Wash. reads aloud the price agreed to, when and where first treachery to take place, at west point] HAMILTON Blacker still. [aside] I fear this charge of thoughts May unseat his gallant reason Ridden so hard upon. To see this Safire of his eye that he prized so much Cast in the mud. Reason thus cast down What skeleton or scarecrow fear, tremor-stuffed, Will sit enthroned in his usurped crown? WASHINGTON Cold, my heart, now that all your blood has left you? The bleeding time's unstopped, and far must race The most precious element the cistern Of our state had cradled-- until the gripping ground Rip open and crush it darkly to its breast. What wrong word struck him from our chambers, Outpacing fear to fence a globed ambition In the circuit of a crown? Did we scourge Our hero of Saratoga from us? Have I mistaked myself? To hold a man Properly in discernment, to neither Increase his credits at too dear a cost To the creditor, nor to hold him a purse Prematurely empty, discarding what May pay a future debt, is wisdom's trick. It seems I have lost gold in this business, Fumble-fingered in early mock of my Witless age, still all unhatched before me. HAMILTON Who has hands enough to catch all the dropping Sorrows of our state? LAFAYETTE Still be still. He is Still in the rapture of his puzzlement. WASHINGTON It's lost; it's lost. Our cause Undoes itself. With this grave loss, all that's Bright becomes confused, and a smoky film Dulls all our polished reasons to one dim; And honor's high name is beaten down. The absolute model of fierce virtue Cracked from our estimation, falls splintering Manly sorrow and war's roaring griefs To flooded tears that overwhelm our breasts' basin Once so full of hopes to baptize ant with grief Whose tiny hearts great nature never taught To that sad purpose. HAMILTON This is not a grief Supports our purpose; justice leaves us If we infect the least. Therefore, proud men, Despise this traitor who abandons hope For the small prosperities of the minute. God floods the sickly flea with perpetual Renewal of its blood; so much more shall we Find medicine to prop our valors up In this bountiful land. Let's look to us To remedy these debilitating griefs Unwarranted disaster prompts into our eyes And dryly try some healing action That'll cut the killing cancer from us And toss it blackly in a surgeon's basin. Noosing thus foulness to it pit, this snip Yanks us, pulley-like, to blind justice's Equilibrium. ADAMS We stand at the point Of this deeply ravined matter which may fall out To either side. HAMILTON Slight starts have great effects. LAFAYETTE Then let us start. WASHINGTON He holds towards the fort. LAFAYETTE We follow first who shall lead him later. ADAMS It is a most unlikely daisy-chain Where causes fly barking after loosed effects. HAMILTON This dog has changed his master. LAFAYETTE Live, justice! ADAMS If Benedict die, it shall. LAFAYETTE Live, justice! HAMILTON The horses stand prepared, and wait by the post. WASHINGTON Now that the operation's upon us, Let us feel nothing, and act as men. [Exuent

SCENE 9

HAMILTON A dangerous silence infects his tongue Who should speak plain truth, carry victory On winged speeches, and subvert defeat With heavy damnations thundering down The most buoyant enemy. What canker Shifts his emphasis from plush can and must To lisping cautious coulds and sighing shoulds? What ocean of doubts in his mouth has drowned His fighting spirit? That such a bravery, Corroded to a speechless face of rust Puts tin ears on to frustrate [muffle] other's pleas That still richly ring his former note [out loud] Mocks love's gold syllable. [Enter Washington] Quiet! Dead steps Echo after us. WASHINGTON Mr. Hamilton, I shall not grant your wish this day. ... HAMILTON Are these alphabets worthless that you grant My letters nothing? WASHINGTON I have thought it out. I cannot sustain your current loss From this office. You knot the cords of revolt To this controlling post, and keep strict leash On blooded hounds which, following too close On boorish hooves in the heated chase, Would nose themselves to slaughterhouse hooks. That knot I dare not let slip to looser ends; But must keep my tight designs circumscribed Within the pre-dated orbit of success. HAMILTON Leadership reads men, not stars, sir. WASHINGTON Alex, Take this: my good will, from me, and be dismissed. I'll call upon you presently. HAMILTON Aye, sir. [Exit Washington

SCENE 10

BENEDICT Where did you spy out dead Andre's death To carry back this sad report to me To break my eyes with your tragic witness? MESSENGER From the crowd. It is a story shortly told. That taught one how to weep for nobleness [Andre in cell sentence here That never cried before. Hamilton's final plea, Stopped by great Washington unflinchingly, That the man be proudly shot to his face Instead of hung like a spying dog, Arrived at a late and useless hour; And Washington, praying for ignorance To support fortitude better than resolve, Let him languish in hope. The gentleman Ascending the scaffold at crooked dawn, Let nothing of fear touch his noble looks But bore all patiently, until the taunting crowd Taunted itself to silence, and then Forgave his murderer's hands before they struck. But when the pressing moment was upon him, Distasteful of the executioner's vile grease, Cried out: "Black hands, off!" And sweetened the thin rope around his neck To smooth his own way to death. Sorrow sweated From us below, that the baleful sun should glare On a sight so pitiless. He swung too long Kicking in the evil heaving air Till stranger hands helped press his case To a choked end. BENEDICT It's said death's a great corrupter of things, Robs men of their looks and makes all smiles hang From one jaw; the contrary sexes are mixed In death's crucible, and in hell all's stirred Indifferent alike. Death sweetens a little partridge That's left a-hanging, left too raw by life. Here's one dissolved to a simple skull Stares from its breaking handful of bones. A feather's stir Indicates the meter of life still ticks Its pulsed spur with indifferent vanity Towards an undiscovered conclusion. Some worm is in him that yet eats his breath. Evils do die when their prosecutors perish. Where the maps end, there ends England. Not before. With the royal fabric stretched out so, We'll snip the lists And trim ambition back from its massy sprawl. There is no martyrs in our woods, who for this Ghostly union still unprecipitate Will surrender up to heaven in a breath Their moist souls. Salve, salve! My conscience burns! Sweeten this wound a little With healing oils. It was left too much alone And began to rot.

SCENE 11

BENEDICT When I see my love Some acuity in my blood, unrepentant still, Shakes this house of bones almost to death; Flesh unclasps its shape, good meat from the sticking ribs Lightly falls-- and all that in some portion Added to this man to make his body up Retract their actions. Not one stands with him. No or conjured ghost Fostered by the blood within this quaking vessel Nor sempiternal spirit more real than brass Flashes forth on this moment's dark haunting. Probing lights through the dim forest come And the stately elm and oak, made ghastly Cast cold apparitions against our hearts. I ran, But the sudden presence of the light Cast after me its searching fingers in the dark Distorting what bright day made plain, so that Furled shadows opened and hung empty in the air.

SCENE 12

[On the Hudson River BENEDICT Men, that have rowed half over This watercourse, join with me and the king To teach this upstart nation to better learn Their duties to their betters and the state; They cry 'freed!' that were never bound, salute boys Who mock their royal parentage out of house, And declaim against a sinless king Its grammar and its graces. Speak, lads, Whose tongues were corked with enforced oaths. Will you come to me, England, and reward? FIRST SAILOR One coat serves my turn well enough. SECOND SAILOR Perhaps we'll have to let it at the neck. FIRST SAILOR So long as no foreign leash can make me speak Against myself, I am content. BENEDICT Not one of you for promotion, stern coin, And the king? Poor farmers may find some use For a headless body stuffed with paper To augur against crows, but men cannot. What is this feather to beat back British lead? Row on, lost sons, into the middle distance Of the lapping Hudson. BRITISH COMMANDER Hoist up; gaff them! BENEDICT Good, sir; these men are your prisoners That pulled me, like a drowning lark, From the snickering jaws of an American fox Rabid with its last victim. BRITISH COMMANDER Secure them In the pitchy hold. For your comfort, sir, We're straight for Hitchings in New York.

SCENE 13

[West Point FIRST SOLDIER It seems a lean defense. SECOND SOLDIER We cut it from a calf Staked to feed a royal appetite For weak veal. FIRST SOLDIER We are too ready to lose The teeth of our defense. A broken picket Smiles southward, and there by the molded canon And wet fuel, the captain's dog trots through it For his bacon at the fire. O it's An airy ward stops winded cherubim And no rat else. SECOND SOLDIER Silence, I see a man Festooned with generalship marching up Who's not our thin minister whipping hence Flailed by some impertinence in his blood To scourge us to our duty. FIRST SOLDIER [enter Washington] Sir! SECOND SOLDIER Sir!

SCENE 14

BENEDICT To come on an enemy in the wilderness Defines bewilderment. O excellent Andre, though you death's quietus keep Your boot speaks my death. What will next cry out For drenching revenge? Indifferent nature Puts on accusing looks, great trees scowl down And wronged rivers overwhelm their banks with blood Seeking to break me liquidly into The general woe. Stop your welling mouths Bloated arteries of the live world's heart, That foul blood may not stain your cheeks of innocence! Fouled with blood. Do not stain those green cheeks Of innocence! Matronly nature herself parted pursed Shouts for a traitor's blood with her wounds. And mothers instantly their infants disembowel If in their crying time, drop signifying dews From eyes that did their future life contain Encompassing guilty acts weeping manhood Grows to perform, dew-nourished at the root, Until a mighty traitor's bloody orchard Bears black fruit forth. What element Will not shout against it? Speak, stones! There's solid hatreds in you; And stern-faced hatred may be returned, like for like, Would you broach this raging flesh with timid gags? Sooner would the executed leaves Rush up to weight winter branches down, or false day Cast man's shadow backwards into the sun Than true hatred be separated from its object. Our animosities cleave to us like sons That grow to hate us for our past defaults. Nature opposing nature, we two Titans will grapple at the earth's stone root To provoke a universal chaos That makes mountains moan, and the pinched sky Descry against these red violence until, Rock-like, one lies down and dies. So will I Overturn this time's natural course ... Preternatural cold, this killing heat, All this inconstant, unnatural weather Has tolled men and flowers down in equal numbers; Dislodged the heads of innocents in a rain of blood ... These unnatural heats oppress a man Yearning to breathe free. Vegetation Bursts its flourishing colors like a drunk Fiery juices set roaring in the dark-- Battering daylight objects with as fierce A scorning spirit and ten mens' strength As blinded Cyclopes yeowling Ulysses to the sea. [to some group, Brit soldiers(?)] This elixir will uphold your doubtful bloods Against charms adverse and curses magical Bolt cannons in your glance, whose wounding loves Shatter my heart. Such fires stir there now That would topple Troy again with their lashing sparks And call from her harlot's lodgings out of bed Dark Helen to her reckoning before Kind Greece's mild forgiving princes Who would pay the devil's pension For his forty years of effort with a pitchfork.

SCENE 15

[The Mad scene, 4th act pathos MRS BENEDICT ARNOLD Martha, can you not take cold tongs and pluck This blazing iron from my head? Dear God Teach some one of your creatures to act pity: Even if it is only a docile doe, whose hoof Brains it from me damagingly, or a mouse Whose small eye, even though no more Than a moist berry in the corner But shows some drop of pity as I die, I'll die comforted. Ah, ah, the transparent pain Burns my wits away, and I am left Confronted with visions. Wild orisons Whose surmise uninjured wits may make out With lenses undimmed by smoke Foretell injuries with images That ghost truth forth. This man's come To steal the laughing goodness of my pure child To some killing block, whose flaws, Now all filled up with blood, Open thirsty wounds again that gasp For some oily balm to close them up again echoless as graves. For the sweet closed cordial Of my child's life, they gasp. Such essence, Indiscriminately poured, heals the world. Precious beyond belief, my rapt child Forgive your mother's lunacy; she bought truth With the furious coinage of her burning brain And thus dissolves to ruins. Smoke, smoke, Boil out your impure entrails, so I get some light To view my wretchedness; my impure self Is almost entirely gone. Your dear father, Universally reviled, will crawl the globe To inching death, and creep quiet down All unhallowed to a markless grave. HAMILTON She does deeply wrong herself. Some tempest Has spilled her sanity past its bounds, Overfull... WASHINGTON I take it ill; These corrupt imaginings smell of truer woe. HAMILTON O her forging brain casts mad shadows on us all. And madness has a power to pour out such images As will make a spider weep.

SCENE 16

BENEDICT If I could regain the native virtue Of my lineaments, add leg to leg again And rise to my accustomed height once more Then this limber body would be base enough To vault the starry gates of fame, writ large In the fiery pages of the sky No hurricanes of chaos could erase. The day spills out. I would dance the time away But am lamely played to play out other tricks. ... MAJOR ANDRE Do you join victory. BENEDICT I join a fault in nature these tinkerers Of belling liberty cannot mend. MAJOR ANDRE Let us commence an act that will take off The head of grief that cries these times awry. A grizzly mane stiff with blood looms above Sleepless rings under pale festering looks Nodding dark affirmations to vilest thoughts The skull of man ever clasped within. Worms Have eaten out the eye of judgment That rested there; discernment by these acid times Is all dissolved away. Strike the vitals Of this lizard death and, as with an angel's Ministering sword, burn the socket clean. Thus much of a doctor may a soldier be. BENEDICT Your words stir new bloods in me that disturb Settled causes and stony truths long-held Since the credulity of childhood Propped my eyes wide. And for my new child This world, fire-lit with war and stories Of war, must put off catastrophe's dead look And assume [resume] its former virtue, wood by wood. MAJOR ANDRE Wood by wood, we must pursue the fight. The lark's high spirit casts a contagious eye Over the sorriest mule that ever paced its slow way To unlikely death, to make it dance. When our resolution into dullards' ears Darts, then mules shall dance, and take head, and start And every croaking revolutionist Join a royal choir. BENEDICT You hit a rich note That makes my exalted spirit begin to chafe At rebel strictures, heavily laid on. Are they God's anointed to dispose Of my several talents with one roared No? The washing mob may break huge stones at my feet Until eternity dims, and their angry sighs Disappointed sighs at last fall down In cracked earth's foundations laid Like so many birds robbed of their song Before I'll dissolve into their Ocean of souls. Eliminating Death Could not nullify individual spirit More than that blank anonymity. [Could not with its sleeping scythe nullify Individual spirit more than that Blank anonymity.] BENEDICT Should this herd of tax-cheats, stampeding fate To magnify their base estates in this Grave matter, gain all the best and my child Nothing at all? MAJOR ANDRE Poor sensate thing, To take the breathing impulse from a father Deserving more in though and consequence Than this startled nation, all wobble-legged, Dropped bastardly from lowing Liberty. BENEDICT An infant hydra, milked on rebellion, To rise to hissing victory in mother's blood? Damned abortion, that lifts its unfinished shape To bawl the devil's accusations in Her face, return to the womb and sew up Your premature pangs with gentle growth So when next your tottering independence You declare, similar fond looks Will beam down on a mannered child to help Its infant steps' solitary tread. Cannot a man cup the sun in his eye And conquer it by blinking? High moments make men proud To build to those epiphanies out of stocks. These grievous injuries, connected With a base ambition to be great ...

SCENE 17

MRS BENEDICT ARNOLD Husband, though you prepare a plan of blood, Draw peaceful melting looks like modest cloths Softly round your warlike visage, more grim than Jove's contentious heats which rend heaven's peace And break rocks in simplest expression. as when unformed infants in surprise mouth "O!" You dismembering looks in rude appraisal Flat opposing mountains,___ Suck the nodding crests from ambitious waves, Cut the lusty growth of vile anxious weeds And stop up the natural flow of breath That emanates from man. Composite totem Of all fears, your living words draw graves and tears Unbidden from the peaceful earth. To preserve your countenance against this Pruning time, put on shielded bloods. Prepare Looks of adamant and a brow of stone, turn Such a paleness to the world as will turn shears. Pull over your spontaneous face, which shows The least effect of bloods with red alarm This mask of paleness and lack of heart So arctic deep that lively eyes, sheltered Under ice-pale cliffs, betray nothing of your sense And cast cold fire on the ambling nothing beneath. [on B's love for England] Dislikes are usually petty, loves profound. An angry man is all in the moment Concentrated, all his scattered fury Dwindled to a panting second's Yes or No. Do not dwindle to an instant's rash act. Let sedate pity quell your breast, Injecting action with some placid drop of care To instill silent thought in the loudest hour The roaring voice of fury can fill out. Take these soft words softly from me still. BENEDICT Love, MRS BENEDICT ARNOLD Being much in love, he is much dissuaded Of this war's virtue against its mother state. The rebellious child must bite the mother's Fountain pap and dry the succor that would soothe the woe Of outrageous actions born in a wrathful breast That, all out of color In its new-found foundling solitude Berates the stones for heartlessness And starts ungentle wars against the skies For proving dry of mercy and comfortless. But no chilling brand is he Whose flame extinguishes into slender smoke Removed from the warm burning of the hearth That tended his fearful spark to a declaiming fire That spoke well of the father embers of his origins And grew rosy as the healthful sun In the still rising jets of their old flames. [unceasing jets] Dutiful boy, he has brought his bouquet home To a mother's watering hands, a father's caress; Due reward for his glory in the field. That which nature holds in dreadful sequestration Unpalatable secrets, more somber than loved affairs Shut from bald reasons prying eye And with hoarded dread ceremony made great Beyond the open capacity of its locked strength As an untold nightmare will breed day-dragons Before many days after the mournful child First started from his bed, so too Is this trick of treason, which once made plain Is a loyal toy with which even dogs may play And not bark and back away with guilty looks. This trick treason is a most palatable device--- An ornament to my soul's wide estate Which in its offices is like a tree Whose tap root touches the foundation stone Of the deep weeping rivers of the earth And there sucks such dark nutrition up as will spur Sap into these branches, well arrayed, And enlarged by careful thought as to their duties That sit kingly in the sun. This ornament, Sharp to its purpose, and placed to its perfection On the swaying top of the Christmas tree! So do these branchy arms of my intents Spread withering shade above my enemies And gather up my loves and those principle To my ambitious thought's success and true affections In one sweep casting both comfort and distress. That tree is England's empire, not some Upstart stock that tenderly clings To the merest rock, but a mighty, tall, And all-compelling oak that surmounts The hill o the world. And I, in my white treachery, Am cut from this new, unnursed, tender slug, This milkless bud that tears from the gangling rock ---O weaker than a babe emptied of its blood!--- And am grafted to that root.

SCENE 18

BENEDICT [of Mrs. B?] How can you, o cruel gods, This incorporeal spirit take and bind it Thus damagingly in the body's glass house? What whisper of reason upholds your airy whims? The body in its bottle may drop with age And end itself shatteringly, or let The slow work of beetles strip it piecemeal To naked death.

SCENE 19

MRS BENEDICT ARNOLD Constance, go and gather up Your master's traveling necessities And assemble all here. [exit Constance The hope of life Rides upon these measures. Other action Or tension's inactivity might tighten him Past his valor's breaking. A ban's as good as his bones, But bones do break. Silence must attend this crying hour Or else all will lay revealed, and the sky Wail for its bloody cup of justice--- For every creeping creature in nature knows Treason's an abhorred thing. [Enter Constance, with provisions Thank you, Constance. You do better duty to man. who's one illness Death is, than you can know. CONSTANCE Grace take you, ma'am. [Knock at the door WASHINGTON Where's your lady, ma'am? CONSTANCE Laid sick in bed, sir, And will not stir. WASHINGTON Steal into her presence quietly And give her our healthful wishes. CONSTANCE Yes, sir. WASHINGTON Is there any breakfast for these cold patriots Tired with long riding? CONSTANCE Warming in the kitchen [short list of breakfast items]

SCENE 20

[Benedict on Battlefield as British General] BENEDICT Drag the abject prisoner forward, sir, To let his fates engulf him. [Enter prisoner, with flag American, You are bound to the hour of your death Beyond the alteration of pleading mouths So speak the truth. How am I perceived By my former countrymen? AMERICAN I see the rope Being readied against the jaced spruce And shall speak my mind before it departs My trunk. BENEDICT Say on, say on. AMERICAN General Opinion Has you a monster, a pale worm Of your mother's and her brother's bed. And when she was too much charged with the Resentful pus of your sullen babydom With wicked cabal knives she tricked you out. Whereon, you stood, a babe still regal In his own mother's blood, who new-lunged shouts "I am Judas Iscariot, come back To damn an innocent nation, if I can." So much is said, and worse believed. With this as index, the charade of honor You have these past two-score years perpetrated Is laid as open as a raw skinned hare. So much is said. And it's promised that your leg, Shattered at Saratoga, we'll bury And hang the rebel (filthy) rest. [Throws flag in Benedict's face BENEDICT Bury the leg, bury the leg And hang the engine that drove it? Corporals, Drag the dead here. [Exit prisoner &Co. Face the judgment of the dead, damned Washington, As I these living lashes must forbear That more than cut my more than sinning flesh To harrow out of hiding this howling soul That afflicts me. I'll arrange these slain ones All arraigned in gory robes of blood And set their cadaverous wisdoms over him To condemn his sutured testimony Sewn from old rags of homey truth Into this motley American.

EPILOGUE

MAJOR ANDRE In the torn house of contemporanity Dull, fitful plays drag and start across the stage As like a play as is a surgeon's map to man: Packed with dry, expository words That bleed nothing, nor rend themselves, nor laugh, At the rich mystery of a discovered action Or apt comparison appareled in a rhyme. And so, to patch our playing with the critic's Attentive needle, we must first amend The base material with which we may begin. Silks, then, for sails to take us high and far, And leave the burlap for the butchers of good words, Glum comedians of a farce other wits began. Having studied my false part With diligence fit for an infant art That rages a mere moment and is gone I ask you, elders, to learn your bit And entertain yourselves as befits your years--- For, as the magic dark of love allows, Which, in this spotted theatre we may half sustain, To erase our faults and increase your youthful powers Each clap will grow you backwards by an hour. So strain, and clap, until you reach The lying cradle of some honest sleep.
Jul 082020
 
Televangelists square off against Satanist Anton LeVey
in a rollicking whacked-out play.
 
 If any God can survive the crucible of my will, then I'll bless him.

in.seang.un yu.han.han.dae
si.ram.do ku.ji.op.ta

Life has an end,
Sorrow is endless.

"Listen to this. 'Life has meaning but no theme. There is no truth
we can assign to it that does not in some way lessen the bright flash
of being that is its essential matter. There is no lesson learned that
does not signal a misapprehension of our stars. There is no moral
to this darkness.' That's some nice shit. Extremely profound.
But the man who wrote that, he's not watching the water for sharks."
                --- Lucius Shepard

"You're drunk on God, Sandoz."
               ---The Sparrow, Maria Doria Russell


 DEMON-WALKER
 The Story of Walker Railey, 
 First Baptist, Dallas, Texas 
 
 SWAGGER
 The Porno-Panegyric of Jimmy Swaggert 
 
 ATHIEST PRIEST
 A Morning in the Life
 of Madelaine Murray O'Hare 
 
 JOB'S JOB
 A Modern RENDering 
 
This pleasing insurrection erected by
GREGG GLORY

ROGUE PROTEAN PROLOGUE


[The scene. Procenium should be made up like a giant TV screen.
ANTON LE VEY is kicking the edge of the TV screen as the curtain rises.]

ANTON LE VEY, SATAN'S MINISTER

ANTON LE VEY
I am that anti-holy bastard Anton Le Vey,
Satan's minister, and revel revealingly within
my Mephisto-philosophizing and turmoiling role.
Oil me, adore me! But whatever you do, don't ignore me!
Hollywood's first, and most restless, rule-- the fools!
I'm a proto-atypical American success story
prostletyzing Faust for cash. I'm tired of TV's "seems"
and ache for the intermittent hurt of reality.
Technology draws our attention nearer, tweaks our brains
to the frame its making, and not to the God-analog
of the wistful fistful of substance glow-glowering within;
after all, this is simply air dosed with ions,
a gamma ray whisper the same as a chunk of God's snot,
a radio-detected and iron-cored meteor, senior.
Another rum Sunday's come on, another day to delay praying in,
sick with my universal wish to WANT to pray.
Ah Hell; Hell's the nearer circuit to salvation.
I wrote my ruminative book about it
writhing in a pentacostal pentagram of flame,
a cheap, thumbed paperback beneath the weary mattress
of every teenage metalhead in my America.
My plangeant, Satanic Bible, a gun of wrong
(perhaps!) to knock the righteous fuckers on their ass!
Sin is kindness in my thin grin
and under my black, rancid Elvis hair,
every evil takes on a certain sainthood in my eyes.
Let's see what choir-hummers will come upon
the electric scene-scenario my wattage has conjured here.
Click! Rearrange, my derranged mirror-ministers,
this hissing cathode ray to your boring dream;
I sense they sense a certain something in the Cosmos
they can't shut up about. Five televangelists are scheduled
to prate their aching minute beneath my wary stare--
the competition! Against 'em I'll win
or burn my own bible on the waxed hoods
of their long Lincoln Towncar Continentals.
.... Ah, my soul's all of charcol and chafes to dust
with my wiry able body's little wreck.
Antony Levy or Anton Le Vey, hey heh heh hey,
I am whichever face my tongue has the strength to say.
So saint or sinner be, but be be be! Whichever's wiser.
But half of both is none of neither.





-

DEMON-WALKER


WALKER
Blind on my righteous high, and erectly ecstatic after the miraculous,
I am Pharaoh here in Dallas, commanding the irreligious
from my grainy height of pyramid, the sandy pulpit
splashed by your unretractable prayers and spittle-bits,
my breath a Lazarus of chile peppers this sunny Sunday morn.
My divine invective flies out to scrutinize and research
the wicked hearts slumping in my pews, you, you, and you,
flogging the bishop, and grinding your lecherous sins
into your bad rear molars, sin-silvered, as if
the Judgement Day weren't razoring in on us all,
God's stukka narrowing on your brown-nosed nose.
And mine, no less targeted, but perhaps a touch divine.
Happy Easter, greetings, fleshing blessings from God,
the incarnate mystery rolling back the stone of Death.
Once again we're gathered in His absence, post-Ressurrection
apostles and wayward acolytes each and every one, flung
to our Dallas cathedral here, the seven, stiffened
concrete arches marching backward larger and larger
to the dwindled pulpit; says something about the human scale
of all our small things and doings before the huge,
ubermensching sanctity of God, don't you think?
But where would God be, in His gigantic, out-of-scale heaven,
if we myopic mortals hadn't the vision to see Him?
Think, think, think, continually on your knees
while you pray at the dais, my humble, cowboy tribe.
Now I know that the circumstances of this sermon are far, far
from the very best, but we Methodists are used
to setbacks; we deal with what we get, and put
God's hard-won trope of hope in our hearts,
our faces staying as masked with rapture as any
kid giving his Satan-grin on All Hallow's Eve,
thus proving His saving success. Puts me to mind
of that squib about God the Potter, all thumbs
thrust down and in to hollow out a soul, the golden goal.
But what blind foot spins the wheel? I'll confess
my account of hope's been bled low as trench water,
but seeing you, this spate of loved and loving faces,
my endless sea of congregation gathered to my rock shore
as if your righteous waters clashed eager
in timeless lines of divine and crinkled light
to subsume and crest my dry and alien land.... Well, folks,
lumps my thick throat with gratitude; my tears begin to wear.
A touching stone stands loaded on my chest, a milemarker
staking my heart.... Was it after midnight's witching minute
that I collapsed with my gasping Mustang at the house,
edging into the blacked-out garage, a sinister raider
of my own home, the nesting place; two eggs had hatched
and blossomed at our backs, my wife and mine's,
we hardly knew that they had come, and there they were,
alert, alive, not us, changing our lives forever,
stays against the hideousness even now. Did you ever see
us three at Galilee, my two daughters, those robbers,
and me? I felt like a rinky King Lear
lost in the sandlot of God. There was a presence,
almost, I'd swear, extraterrestrial, an angel in the desert
beating my timerous existence towards the Lord.
I was caught in the backwash of whatever
those extending wings were heading toward
and blinked against the light, a more morose, dour,
plunging and self-unloving Eugene O'Neill type guy
than I had ever planned or prayed on becoming.
Still I felt and followed where the wind twisted,
my own tornado of demons beginning their whirligig
within me. Yes, demons. I am not unannointed by the vile,
I only live towards the light, a humble heliotrope
barely better than a weepless cactus; I do not stand revealed
among the high mercuric scrolls of God's good clouds.
I am lost. I am dark. I am in the dark.
Rapidly praying here in Poe's peachy pit, tick,
tick, tick, as our waiting clicks towards the Lord's arrival,
pawing in nerveless, yuppied and active ladies' hands
an abacus of rosy Methodist rosary-bead Hail Mary's,
forgiving ourselves the sins we witch-hunt the neighbors for,
the one calculus of forgiveness I still can't get straight.
If they're guilty, why not witch-hunt them to Kingdom Come?
A guilty gilt of sweat slides off the bulbous forehead
I use to think at God. Oh how morosely now
do I retchingly recall how I drove over
my knocked-out spouse's blue, endearing, enduring, blue,
splotched face and quivering sexless body.
Paramedics told me it was the usual dum-dum response
of a body in rictus after a near strangulation event.
I swear I arrowed straight from the seminary library,
I told the officer, "go ahead, write it down, I ain't scared;
done nothing wrong myself I wouldn't tell you and Jesus both,"
snaking down the out-back highway lit-up as Lucifer
extending to innocent Evie his evil fist of peach,
my dank crankshaft grinding at the amoral fog
into which I like a Nazi paratrooper had so slyly descended,
my rubber wheels steel-belted and invisibly bouyant,
carrying me undiscovered through it all.
Not the best circumstances, all that just three days ago,
the fairy tale of Good Friday still pasty on my drying tongue.
Prescient as my years of hard-won prayers had made me,
even I couldn't see all the mistakes I was about to make.
Oh Lord, o lousey Lord, and my simpering parishoners,
forgive me.... spiralling my children to strangers,
our dear friends who looked at me and never guessed;
I taught them to worship me after God's goitered image,
and then, all at odds and ends, drifting at speed,
bouncing barbituates down with a stray beer, one handful
too many, until, like Lazarus gone sour, I turned
comatose on the ashen carpeting, a dumped urn of wormy regrets;
just one more stain in the two-star hotel room's history
of blobby emissions. Today, well, I guess I'm better.
Now pinned to the pulpit in a Bulletproof vest,
(did I tell you I recieved a death threat typed at this office,
right here where I slap my mincing madates
on the cherubic cheeks of my lazy cleric clerks? Well, I did.
And still my heart's not right with it, I can't forgive
those who haven't properly executed their sins as of yet,
now can I? Could you? Don't answer. Silence is golden---
I heard that passed between the spatting officers
in the squad car as they pulled me up to Booking.)
I ask you to reconsider the Ressurrection correctly
like I learned to do, straight from God's leaning lip
to my wimpling ear, He told me Jesus was evil,
knew the awful trickster to his snaky core;
His aquaintance with the abyss was everlasting,
his gospel a spastic chant to save his own erring soul,
trying to congeal in peace the ten thousand faces
he himself had drawn and erased between his birth and death.
Maybe those Romans had done our doelike soldier of faith
a favor, nailing him to his final expression,
and not the million guesses at finality his parables assumed.
Our Lord God incarnate plays solitaire with the whole universe, y'know.
Ten thousand faces had our hero the Lord, like you,
the ten thousand faces not unlike your blinking faces
staring there into the abstraction of the nave above,
that kleenex-gleaming, glass-vaulted, sanctuary air
of Heaven sparked with flecks of tinsel, marking stars
that arrow-out the Bethlehem in our Dallas, Texas hearts,
our toasted community of the wounded, gasping here,
burn-victim parishoners to mercy, every one,
as indeed we need to be on this one-hundred degree
Easter sunday. Check your faces, ladies, there's the Lord.
Unpack your compact vanity mirrors, and let your lounging husband
see his own careening demon there, yes, a demon
in each and every one of us, Jesus knows;
see the alarm-red horns peeking past your ears?
See them, see them? They won't melt back to skin or nothing
like the candy eggs you fob off your lambing innocents with,
melting uneaten in your Armani suits and snapped-shut
Betsy Johnson pocketbooks before they're even littered
to the kiddies after church, all your holy goal of extra-credit
generosity reduced to a choclately smear where our worn
hands end, and not much else. Now what kind of blessing
to hand up to Our Lord is that? Manicured, uncuring
fingers knitted in abject prayer again today,
Dear Co-Pilot, we ask you, please, whatever you may
make of us dullard mortals, squirming to sin
on the infinite blue of your homey globe, please don't
crush us too hastily to your downy breast. I'd die
if I had to die , Dear Lord, before I'd gotten just
one more score on my horney, dear Lucy Papillon,
the faded butterfly, my mistusted mistress, delicate,
irridescent, dying in her over-hasty haywire
of father-hatred and off-angles adoration, turning
and turning in her flittering yearn
to please the world and be left alone.
When I saw my honey twitching back of the Chevy....
skipping home from the SMU library, making choice this sermon
for ressurected Easter Sunday, after nipping in nappies
into my mistress' house for a quickie, three days ago,
Good Friday.... I turned into her driveway, following my car,
its hiss of whispering gasses, suggestions
I was too inertly normal to resist. Spectral trees
loomed like shades in the unappercieving headlights
luminescing past the gritty grille, my prison grate
holding back a two-hundred horsepower, fuel-injected lust.
I was Lucy's father-figure who told her what underwear to buy,
and checked the ribald purchase with small, inistant fingers
assiduous as the fabled Haynes Inspector number 17.
My lovely lady Lucy Papillon, the flustered butterfly,
how many hours had we downed, skimmed from conniving Fate,
to worm around and warm our skin-close, closed coccoon
in spendthrift, near-ecstatic flight!
However bumbling our new-wet wings-- they worked!
Remember consummating our tremble-tumbled liason?
Your palpitating lap dance, The Ressurrection!
The Ressurection! a tap dance for the gospel-praters,
breaking the bread and bone at Emmanuel's,
flesh and blood divided like a TV dinner on a tray.
Now I look up and recognize my savior too;
my mortal sin winks at me, wearing its Jesus-beard.
If I were given just one more chance....
Reporter came to see me yesterday, timid, tricksy,
asked me where I got off, polluting the plummeting union
of God and man; let me know, I said, the last time Jesus
gave you a blow job, and I'll holler all my God-spelled gospels
at your ratty, tattered alter, you ass-licking Jimmie Olsen.
Now get the piss out of here, and take your trash with you,
and, no, I don't care how high-profile, either to save or damn me
in the bought and sold wink of the national media,
you think you are, just get. Get! Christ,
an inveterate smoker, had a nervous capacity to unify
the most disparate instances of things, and all the cold
non-things of God, too. Do my parables break into a patter?
Well, consider that the one, final stroke of luck.
If I can sell enough people on the idea I'm Christ,
well, maybe I could step into the stuttering floodlight
Jesus Risen keeps X-Raying on my brain, my hidden conscience.
My conscience, an obscurity even I'd forgot.
Maybe then I could arise at dawn and memorize myself,
a maze of christnesses obsessively traced
into the answer of myself. You know, I feel schitzophrenic
whenever I'm forced to not be the Living God.
My mind like a white lightning Molotov fries itself alive,
each brimstone whiff a sweltered reminiscence
of the God I lied aloud and still couldn't deny,
a broken image of my own internal withering brought to light.
Now I am rising, like Jesus on a white pillar
of Yosemite steam; I rise, I rise....
My darkness spatters backwards at its cracks,
and I rise, rise in lightness among bright lights,
rise, rise, until I am in the light, am the light, all light,
nothing but that out-of-reach simpleness, that absolute blank.
I am made blind in the glare of sin I initiate.
No god wrapped my hand around my young Ryanna's turtle-neck,
I did it! Not God pondering from his inert sphere,
not you, alone and well-fed in your cloned homes,
not the six-pack of alieviating demons who'd howled
my soul though as if it were cheesecloth, or tornadoed up
my riveting memories like hurricaning hosts of ghosts
to churn my attacked senses into a tragic hash.
I know I am not God, or His Jesus next-of-kin;
I know, I know, and will give you the same revelation:
Look on my despoiled loins, my habit for disaster,
sinners, look, peer where a heart inches toward oblivion,
stare these essences to their ashes, and be appalled!
I whipped close to my zeroed black hole, and loved it
with all the loving lashes a bullwhip might make
against the uninhibited darkness of that obsidian,
my own stung, stone heart the universal center.
Like a drunken Hopi, hoping, I lay the tracks in black,
lash myself relentlessly with unforgiving cordage,
cut to stunned emptiness, and in that absence find,
discover once again, afresh, like a confused child,
the horrifying losses I had made mine.
My father never touched my crew-cut head approvingly;
other parts, otherwise. Perhaps that's true;
a shread of verity gives the worst lie some hue of truth.
If I can make-believe I'm innocent, so can you!
The mind is what we make of it, my fellow-man,
my homilies come blustering like Custer, custard-covered
only to be soul-edible to only sweet-tooth you!
Don't you believe me when I swear I am the raving Truth?
I am the Way, the Light, and the Glory. I am the tenth story,
from which, once jumping, treads Down into our only
imperative narrative Road. Ha, ha. Walk with me!
I am the Walker who makes mere gravity my whore,
I have such sure-lightness in my shilling touch.
Oh my paratrooping minions, dive-gliding at my heels
through the taxing Texas heat after my own, my true
paraphrasing parables, look, look into my mirror
and see yourself squinting for the afterlife in my rainbow-light.
Come, come. Oh, Lucy, swished on those sinning satins,
you're divine, your legs conceal the Book of Revelations,
arising and dividing like Satan's wild horns, faster, faster,
I swear you crooning sighs will be my epitaph;
the sheeny aftertaste of my own sweat makes me mild.
Is something wrong? You orgasm at my groin.
There, you're settled now, wing-weary, my monarch-mistress,
and status-satisfied. Yes, yes, I'll marry you after....
No, no, don't cry, don't cry. All better, my divinity?
I've wiped your distorting tears back to flesh.
"Walker, dear," she said, pupating on the pillowy
divan her rotoring thighs subsumed in frightless whiteness,
a white of sinew and renewal. Oh my Whiteness! When I touched
and stroked her emergent from the tomb, my monarch-angel
flying from her cracked chrysalis to the cathedral bell
we'd sighed aloud to pull. "Walker, dear,"
she said, pupating Papillion. "Again."
"Your flushed face is puffed, you know how that disgusts me;
I'm going to trundle to my loving home now, Lucy.
Lucy, next time, make it better." The sporting door
shuts hollow at my retreating back, my cross pin
glinting as I unstick it from my hanging tie,
given me by Lucy with a note: For the bishop.
How many times have I told you now of my arrival?
In my mind I keep coming to where she wallowed
on the gas stain, each asphasic, contorted
fish-mouthing of her drowning mouth an accusation:
"Walker Reily! From this damning shame, no running!
No speed or rearing chase of dream-desire can take you
away. Here's your destiny, the one, the fate
you handstitched against my neck and failing brain."
Wife! Wife! Every time I think about it
the flowing car seems softer, more cloudlike,
my gleaming feet floating through the door
to tap-land on the concrete apron where a chalked,
white, hop-scotch was scrawled by our dawdling daughter.
Oh god, god.....
I know you never abandoned me. I still feel adored.
Now, ah, where was I? This heat is enervating!
I stand accused, and still you come! I arc up
recovered from a suicidal coma, and still you come!
It seems my unending tribulations have laved me,
in name, at least, as the most popular preacher boy
in society's old, corroded high-school heirarchy.
You know, the dilettanting prosecutor, at ease
before his easel of low crimes and high misdemeanors,
would paint my paling contenance with a harsher brush.
Oh God, he might say, how I gloried in the blue, blurred
cord my righteous Ryanna remembers. She got strangle-altered
in the struggle to love unabatingly too, you'll recall.
I'm sure you've read all the papers, and will buy up
my three books, to be put out by Random House this fall,
my season for winnings and windfalls, a choice time
to tackle the passions that nearly strangle one!
How blind to the divine we are, your sinners, oh Lord,
crafted in thy crafty image, we regret
our inability to step back from the plaster finish
and crash the masterpiece to splinters! I, I regret
that my aiming hand was unsteady in the pinch.
Neither my gum-tongued wife nor I knew how
to consummate our finishing. How by the divine
we are squeezed until we are forgiven! Or forget,
our brain-mass a lump of dumped cells, like Ariana's,
my putatative, however unloving, tournequet-necked, wife.
My charming potato sack, my dropping star, my life!
Let's sing, choirmaster, after this fashion,
dink the triangle in rebelling praise, sing high:
"Mine eyes have seen the blackness of Satanic habitats...!"
Oh, when you're down, my listeners,--- on my coat-tails,
child and mother, and wastrel husband, come, come!
I am the Spirit of Christ-Mass present,
an imprecise arbiter of what's nice and not-so-nice;
when you're at the black bottom, come, descend,
follow your plunging heart in my eviscerating wake,
come, come, plunge to its thrubbed nub of nastiness.
Revile thyself! and expel the strength of Spirit;
are you here with me now? It is dark. In the dark,
your nose itched in filth and the fat lack-of-faith
I've described: no savior, no heaven up above,
like in that looney John Lennon song, then you know,
athiest on a tightrope paralleling no earth in darkness,
the death of Life, the death of Hope;
but the death of Death, no, that does not come.
In the trough of the abyss I've lain three bleak days,
the sun or God an unanswering dialtone in my ravaged ear;
an accordian of demonic voices demanded their ribbed hearing,
expanding and contracting throughout the vile Escapade,
and I gave them my whole soul in that blistered,
listening liason with the very Devil. I know, bone-hard,
I know my fractured pact was blissfully consummated
from my gibbon-narrow skull to my cracked nuts, not a jot
of whatever insists on being me omitted, not a jot.
Each assuaging, persuading, suede or harrassing voice
came tri-toned and insinuating: "Why not?", "Go ahead...."
I tried in my trial to deny that denial, but could not.
God wot! I was in a sulpher-crimson brimming stew,
my dick the stirring widget, as with so many of you, too.
When I had her corded against the kitchen sink,
my enormous erection at the small hollow of her heaving back,
vomiting a vile black blood bile, until her tongue
nearly came undone enough to follow her slipping supper
like a starving snake between her bruised, contorting lips,
each syllable of vatic ache she spewed sounded
like my own christian name. But it wasn't,
I was not present, I swear. Who is it who really dies
strapped between uprights in the electric chair?
The guilty man? Or guilt itself? Or is it our own fears
we charbroil into non-existence? I was not afraid.
Shadow of a cat, shadow of a cat, black black black
as the shadow of a cat, I came behind her without a whisper,
simmering in my new wardrobe of sin-wishes....
Slipping in the overspill of my jimmied Ariana's spit-up,
I nearly lost my grip and let her breathe. Easy
to make a mistake like that, I guess, I'm only
a part-time psychopath, not an Old Testament pro
like that yattering Yahweh. And, anyhow, my state of mind
is still no good excuse, I think all that Fruedian crap's
just a sloppy cop-out; even when the demons were in me, I knew
it was my triggering fingers on the jerking wire
I had harnessed at her limp, uninjured neck.
My trying eye does not understand the I of sin.
Doubting Thomas with the halo knocked off,
I speared a tear with my little finger's little fingernail,
from her bulging, suffocated, near sightless left eye,
drank deep its shallow Red Sea salt, and felt myself divided.
I stand birth-wet in the unbearable glare
of my own blistering sinning like the sun.







SWAGGER


JIMMY "JAMES THE SHAMELESS" SWAGGERT

SWAGGERT
I'm ripping this twenty dollar bill in half: take it.
I'll fork over its disfigured sister half when we're
all done here. Ooo Honey, Honey, shaking on the cheap springs
all Primavera against that cheesy flowered print, knees aghast
atop the dimpled bluebells and spattered Jack-
in-the-Pulpits squealing wildfire to your ham-handed,
rotoring and rugged, dry sweat masturbation!
Flail your sweet innards pink alive like St. Bartholomew
for masturbating me; my spanking Jack, a flogged man,
creamed against my satiny, jerking jogging shorts
when I first spotted your sultry ass hitched against
your Airline Highway and rust-sagging whore door Sunday
after the big preachment when I took that sinner Jimmie Bakker
down as fast as he'd had that plastic Jessica Hahn
on the oinking office chair. Hell, his ass was mine.
God had mentioned in my red ear he had a guilty dick,
so I circumcised it, cut his tongue off at the bled bud.
No one like that should be broadcasting to the people about my Lord;
his wife's white eyes black fountains of mascara tears....
These are my wicked ministry's secular resources.
A shameless shaman telegraphing desire on a nickering wire,
all taps and dashes and long undulant pauses.
Yes, yes, that's it. My cloven hooves clicker when you whinney.
Every heaven-minded man's bathed in sin. That's where, dear,
our molten ocean of knowing bubbles up from in spuming spoils,
this boiling pit of blisters I call my holy soul,
a cancer-hankering for the groin and heart unveiled
the total tumor pulsing revealed in an unbridled, raw,
rancerous and pimply pornographic tour de lux! No lie.
Christ himself died naked and afraid. Who's to say
Mary Magdalaine's sin-oiled fingers didn't flex and give
his little suffering man-in-the-pants one last lube?
What unshriven figure did her weeping hips lave and save?
She was a whore anyway, thumbed more times than my
filtched Gidean. You understand. Can you, can you... Ahh!
Blank tears tickle-wiggle past my roaring nose, and I get
the harsh, salt lick of death against my moaning tongue.
Hallelujah! I'm gonna die someday raving and saved,
my doughty boxer's sheeny limbs will roll folded in the Rapture's
swooping shroud, as backlit in heavenslight as an MGM production.
Little Lord who made me, I am but a wad of cotton
waiting to be nimbly picked and soul-raped by your risen fingers;
I kneel in the twister-riven fields until you're here,
UFOing from Paradise among the slashing stalks,
rare, terrified and adored. I won't want to click
my sin-pinned nazi heels like Dorothy and go home, Lord,
I swear I won't. I want to be in heaven with a silk dress
like yourself. But I cannot wrangle back to blessedness
the wayward ears of my mew-mooing parishoners in the pews,
let them wriggle as they will! Down among the dull swabs,
I alone hear the ballooned, importuning, heroic, vatic,
hollow on-high voice of my triumphant God.
O invisible!
Before thy stemming mightiness, I am as a twig!
O how unwell, I reach into the rancidness!
How rancid and entrancing I am, raked flailingly alive
here in the televised tent of my po' south,
evangelizing my crossroads roots. Here I twist and simmer;
everybody all weird elbows and sweat-dank shirt-sleeves
---room for everybody in this christ's-body tent---
I reach out to covet and knuckle your rearing ass....
Some siren of sense is alarmingly rebelling within me.
Jesus the Savior is knocking on my soul's house's doors.
I am ready for the charnel confessional of the truth.
At last, at last....
Daddy spent his time before the war and my birth
trapping furs, "a gettin' the little critters afore
they get the snap on us," as he brayed, and I still can see
the godawful racoon goo on his black fingers in my eye,
punctuating the florid story for emphasis. I see him,
picking pecans in due season, hard labor and unloveable,
playing the fiddle hard for whiskey and merriment,
and fucking mom. He had his crooked finger ditched deep
in every possom pie of our lazy days hamlet,
my little beleaguered, divine, divided, and deciding town
sweet Fairaday. The yokels he'd swindled loved to squint
up at his six foot five inch Ramses face and call him "The Sun."
God, with a bootlegger's simmering snigger, had seen
him baptized as Sun Swaggert, my righteous-assed Daddy.
There wasn't a dirty trick in the Devil's book
he hadn't learned to rue. Darlin', slower now, we're almost home.
His fatal eyes stared past death, stone blue.
I peeped up at him with a drooly infant's grin
from the slick backwash of Momma's powdery collar-bone,
first time, and cried. My first memory is of the briars
in his eyes. Momma chuched my rump and kissed my dew-lapped pate's
sweet-pea pompadour. Where could I hide my innocence
and watery, thunderstruck eyes? He was a big bright man
full of sweat and gumption, never met his like,
nor any doppleganger unlike of his either; he slapped
my candy ass with a bible-hard hand and quoted Deuteronomy.
I knew in my soft-soap bones I had been born to an immoral man.
I myself was the raw result of most degraded sin:
quicker a bit: baby, baby! Your sour rose undoes my crooked worm
flying all afternoons into one evening's ashes!
How could my blanching existence, however white,
however benignly pale about the bleeding knot
of my diapered umbilical and squalling, toothless mouth,
ever justify the spattered blackness of my setting forth?
I swooned, a marooned baby-bit of conscioussness,
against my mother's loving tit and pinched nipple.
There was no way. I had stared into the sun and eclipsed myself.
I, a midnight-eyed ape mendicant still too young to swing
himself out of evolution's tarry jungles, my swamp of self.
And Father's own wild life was set to atone;
Yes, he beat me to the savior's raptured punch
and heard the word of the Lord before speech sneaked into me.
He always knew how to change himself before he got too bored,
contracted the clap, or got L'isiana crawdads down his shorts.
He'd get even with all the quicksand world
that'd sucked him down, dragged his scanty white ass
past the precipice and nearly drowned, in mud,
the slick silvered areofoil of his quickened spirit
in this hissing trash of sex and life! Never, o never!
would he let any of his sin-spawned progeny dodge
the cold knowing of his gospel-doctored heart:
we needed his gracing spate of light to save ourselves!
He looked at Mom over his gilt-edged Old and New Testament
one searing evening at dinner, and let her know
there'd be no more of that "kissing business upstairs"
from here on in, even unto the erected Ressurection!
I sighed into my peas, whacked off in the attic, and prayed.
With Daddy's magic conversion, all the apocalyptic world
had to get its camel's ass into the reviving
revival tent too: none were to be eschewed, or God
Himself would thrash His wavering son Sun
straight down Hell's alley like a flaming bowling ball,
all fire-mottled, there to burn, incomplete, eternally.
Daddy had gathered us in the driveway at dawn
to disgorge his night-attack of vision. We knew....
Momma's face was black and blue with praying.
We would be battering-ram Daddy's little evangelistas,
his heavenly icicles nailed into the Devil's stew.
My poor dim-watt Daddy, I see now, was a sure-fire
hellfire and leather-strap man: whap whap whap
on my little brother's wicked little ass-- never mine;
I was the sunshine angel of our brood that Granma had prayered for
when out popped my righteous Papa; she saw he understood
sin too well to become beatified before the Lord.
But me, well, my powdered neck drifted in from heaven itself,
shiny-clean in my new haircut and perfectly white white shirt.
I gave all the townsfolk their sermons with a smile,
secretly defying deified God himself to knock me off
my pederasted pedestal; I was one hot holy-boy
steam-rolling sin out of our southern gospel town.
Fair-a-day, For-a-day, Fair-this-day, Far-a-way Fairaday,
my little beleagured, divine, divided, deciding town.
Your loony hopes had roped you to God's creation,
lashed like Ahab on his unabandonable whale.
Remember how, at nine, I prophecized Hiroshima
from the swept tabermnacle of my bedroom?
The ashen mushroom cloud bloomed from my small-boy's mouth,
tender as an eyeball one might refuse to eat, or see with.
Too gun-shy to talk Allied English for three days afterward,
I howl my moronic mish-mash of scolding German
and Axis Jap until half the state had made it
to our rickety outskirts church to touch and behold me.
Funny isn't it, how, sometimes, the whole world
shrinks itself to a cheap, tin pinwheel, glittering and flaring,
circling back on itself in a spanked child's little [baby] fist.
My steady hand never abandoned its blessing wrath
to administer any spat of doubt unto my simple people,
staring at my washed and clarified features as a proof
about how the days of future Rapture had come down
to prowl among 'em now. Yes! I was that
condemnifying angel at hazard in their midst;
I was their very conscience in my sunday best,
given a nickle a week to preach them straight,
administer old Sun's sallied broadsides until they loved
to hate their own twisted, purgatorial souls,
unsunned and sickened shit-black without my tongue.
And how they loved it all!
Each sin-grimmace flashed ecstatic to pulpitted me.
Nothing like eternal damnation to wake up the sleepy day,
and really, as we say, put a new curl in your pie-crust!
I recall being rolled awake one meek midnight by
my brother's raspy hollerin' in the next room;
it seemed some beery iron-clawed sin-demon had nabbed him!
I shook in my thin bed, sweating out the August dark.
What could be going on in there in the other, nearby dark?
Was he still quarantined in his skin, to scream
and carry-on like that? He sounded all blood and lesions,
one tortured and torqued voice, all maimed and baying boy.
Each slap echoed out louder than the last had crashed,
like a beaver's damned angry swap! mapping terror
out over the alarming waters-- have you ever heard it?
Miles it carries, they say, and they're right.
I hear it still.... every other night, or so.
But that was coming from my own brother's body and back,
rack after rack of hideous slaps
and whappings; the ceiling distorted with my tears.
I could hear him squeal his prayers bible-page thin walls:
"O Lord, O lord, come and rapture me afore Daddy
ever has such cause to revile me again....I don't care
if I go to hell, just don't let him be so mad again."
I arose at clear dawn to see the blood-vomit at his neck,
his face a knot-- hate and real fear combined there
as he slept, crunched into a curl so tight it seemed
he never wanted to wake up again. I prayed,
there and then, for God to make me a little wicked too,
put some touch of Satan in my makeup, smear my clearness,
so that Daddy's smacking hand could get a little tired
against my face and body first, before he'd beat
my brother to the grotesqueness of a bruised rainbow.
And the Lord did it. And I believed.
But my tired-eyed Daddy never blamed me a lick,
let me carry off every sin as if it was a medal o' honor,
like from the war. My guilt! my guilt! my guilt!
My ruse of bruises won't convince myself---
I am the one who should be undone by what I've done!--
I am the guilty party, and I rock in self-hate,
crushing my sweat-fat head back against the velvet
headrest in my royally on-rushing Rolls.
What argosy of incidents might unsettle me before the Lord?
Those were the glory days; Jerry Lee Lewis, my cousin, and me
revelling in the little pleasures of the flopping flesh:
My life at the pious piano had twenty flicking fingers, not ten.
My own hands and little boy Lewis' happily combined
to play our childhood souls to an amiable blankness.
No, that's not right, but I forgot some spiking hurts,
seated crosswise-ass from Jerry Lee on the sotted lawn;
there we were, a trembling terror of tenors
flying from low to high, rolling the black keys
like drunken niggers with our plaster-blanche palms,
rolling the black keys like the rut-wet whores
on our side of the racket-making tracks, fluid
under strangers' paling knuckles and loving fucks.
Our shoes were kicked off to feel the sweet, wet aspect
of grasses rustling under folding chairs pinned to earth
by the meaty buttocks of the congregation,
First Spellbinders open-air sitting church, too poor
to afford even a rented tent's swaying steeple.
Our wired hearts floated into the uppermost of the air,
winged by our rude harmonies and gospels,
there in the swart, flat field we scrimmaged in,
rummaged this sunday by a million faithful footfalls.
Marooned in paradise by our weird croons
and baptist mass, we gospelled the ringing keys
and made those disintegrating eighty-eights shine
and tremble before a scornful God and all his high pack
of quack magicks and Cecil B. DeMille screen-effects.
How passionately we dreamed to die angel-hearted,
registering our fatal love at the Lord's illuminated doorway!
Heaven was a honeysuckle we could pull down and chew,
no abstract majesty but our fingers could pull it through,
no mere fart of honor in a lackland backwater
like our already forgotten town, but the real deal,
opium-gold and landed among us: each impoverished, pie-fat face
communed with scripture, tortured word by word,
like removing a tattoo, and on each humble aspect
there in the spasmed grass, you could see the scar-shadow
faith had palimpsested upon the prayerful
like moonlight through a torn screen.
How our roused fingers impinged on sound to whorl
all those imploring buttermilk souls flooding loving
from their uneasy chairs into the ghost-crowded air!
The holy ghost itself, down for a cameo role,
broke out upon the parishoners' ecstatic faces
like a sweat; they moaned their own, lonely orgasmic assent
to each trembling tone of our stab at divinity!
Yes, yes, they cried, we are the afterwash of the Lord,
the mudflats and swamps that received drydocked Noah,
the fizzled helium ballons of aereonaut angels
crash-landed in Louisiana, wandering dead drunk
and light-headed at our nearness to God. Yes, yes!
We put off the creamy blazers of the Devil, never
will be his limber minions, or stumble lumberingly
among the downed lines of that master puppeteer,
a fallen luminescence forced by the purposeful Lord
to hold his own black threads above his knotted head,
careering blind-man's-bluff through his perveted dominions.
We made the heat-rich air itself shiver to our fingerings,
like that wild Sally Fletcher at the Corn Pone Fair
beneath the jilting ferriswheel earlier that same year.
For us alone in all the rumored world, the very air
split and lived to the rapidity of our quizzings,
as if we'd asked for nothing other than to know all ourselves,
there in the abject field, honeyed by daylight.
All eyes the stoned eyes of Eternity inflicted
on decaying heads, argent looks that out-shone the dead stars,
gave the lie to all gravestones, and all death's
dissolute dissolvings of the flesh at a flash.
To know and see, truly see, each and every
one of ourselves as we were and as we are,
kneeling there in the field with God himself by our side,
the one absolute we had engineered a syllable for,
the rest made up by passionate guesses we'd timed
our heartstrings to plink out of the cheap uprights
dumb luck had donated beneath our detonating paws.
Our battered harmonics were laconic: lazy
L'isiana's high-powered answer to St. Cecilia.
Our own young notes had spiderwebbed these green folks
up to choiring Jesus' highwire electric netting:
two billion volts straight through the admiring spines,
the small fry swivelling like the million eels
that fattened Mr. Pike's steel net in the bayou
out back; his tobaccoed, cajun-thick accent
the provenence of tongues, inspired Non-Americanese.
Come on, my tender wings! Ascend! Jiggering Jerry Lee and me
would bend and bend, helping each uncertain passenger on-board
our hunching backs as we dazzled the rearing keys
to Kingdom Come. It wasn't easy, but I felt fine;
fine as if my heart had never given out
to anything other than these implorings of the Lord,
Our Father, who art tugging me home by my scrotum.
And now the anxious nails come singing from my wrists;
when I cross them in pain, I get a sightline
viewing the eternal bastardy of God, The Abandoner!
I peer into the soul-ruining firmament until I'm blind.
Eyeless cows plough lowing through the fields,
their bony hips magnetized on new seed;
the ploughman's work-bitten hands dash pure wheat-golds
into the filthy nurturent ruck to make it yeild and breed.
O I was a carpenter of sorrow, and built my sadness true,
the unerring blueprint filigreed vein by vein;
In my house, all sky-blue verity's reduced to muralled pain,
Come hold the shivering brush, push clouds
into the plaster muck, or turn a humped
harried black blot of demon in the white, or make
particular however the haunted paradise you hunt:
I guarantee whatever evil thing you rush to caricature is you.
The child's wind-mastering pin-wheel stays stuck
on dreams and dreaming rainbows in this wind's created wake.
Now nailed, and dying once again, I ache
a waterlogged winter-soul anxious for the summer floods
to quicken and float me quickly to the top!
Of Heart! Oh, revenging, evangelizing heart, stop, stop!
I am whatever color is the color of my blood,
which bleeds, invented afresh, by these kind, expulsed
voodoo wobbly pins I arrow away from my skin.
How shall my charring shame come to its surcease?
A waste of rest to refresh my wreck! Spare me despair,
O Lord, whose source I cannot knowingly unknow,
--I have seen the ripped insides of my own bewildered heart,
the furious, angry engine where generating Destiny carooms.
Kneel by me, jerking Jezebel, weep, cry the fabled tears
that freeze the eyelash and shread the sight. Blindly tear
every wonderment of looking down to our longed-for nullity!
Here in the dark we drink, and we ourselves are ink,
our wanton souls the dry blotters for each sin spilled
by anxious, trembled hands upon the snowy fields.
Pray by me, a crooked man low-kneeled, afeared
in my hot polyesther and thinning pompadour....
Baby, baby, aspen-anxious in the creaking pew,
I'll tear the living God's cradle to flinders to shelter you,
weave a semi-sacred arch in our ruined southern woods,
shaded beautifically now in Proserpina's pagan spring;
I'll set you up as my new Madonna too, a thing all of gold
and enamalled blue, a Byzantine bitch, whose frail
white hand shall masturbate me through the wrenching gale
of all this wicked world's spitting storms.
Come, come. Let us adhere together, and sail in my grand
       cadillac
--luxurating on its mounded pouch of fake leopard skins
like your straining leotards, my friend in christ--
to our Airport Highway Motel Paradise.
Arch, arch, yes, yes, like that, like that, I'm saved....
Let me sop up this pus-sy holy water, spilled
where your manic, gracing hand had raved.
Who wouldn't grind a little gracelessly, and twist
to the the rainbowed aura of your halo when you pissed?
I was, my non-virgin Virgin, slutty Queen,
with your near-perfect lipstick, Carnation #12,
not quite right a little afterward. Small,
hallucinatory blushes blurred beyond the outline
of your cookie-cutter smile. I was, and am,
your most devout and devoted Vouyer votary,
peeking past your wise debasement to my wild depravity.
It seems that my personal Hiroshima, all legs and ass
and steamy profusions of eggy emulsions, to exist,
must be tele-evangelized. I quake. I speak.
I wait, in the abnegated space of the cathode tube,
for the exchanging rain of the flames' flakes
to hiss into my sin-wicked skin as soul-hot ash.
It seems these votive forces are forgiveless of my sins.
My guilt I may not expiate, not by gospel,
not by harried grace, not by the sweet swirls
of knowing notes we pounded on the warped piano,
rocketing Jerry Lee and I, out-facing Destiny and Satan
in the perverted revival tent we inverted to a Honky Tonk.
By none of these escaped likenesses shall ye know me.
I am the guilt of getting-away-with-it personified;
maybe one day I'll be more, be ill, a simple,
willed and living human being without a mounting boundary
I can't find the dirty eraser to efface.
I am the smeared line of lipstick on that girl who blew
me until she herself was blue. I am the target
for which I feel the awful lure. O Fisherman of men!
Drag your swept net however low, however down, and get me!
I shiver in my meek blackness to be once un-dim
to my own electric self. Surely Maureen, or Doreen,
whatever your tongued name is, my pimped up, dear
Madonna-Whore complex with the stereo too loud, surely
my lifting of you into the temporary-Eternal
will have some blistered bliss of effect
on me too? I create the icky sin we stick to
by flying, adult maggots, into each other's fly-eyes:
bumped heads and hearts and groins, all staticy
shynesses swervingly combined in our one minute's shine.
Now, my mopey sweet, to create this freak feast
as a true looming eminence-emanation of the whore-adored,
I shall unwhip these seven crocodile skins, the sins
my Daddy razor-slashed and wired to his sculling
birch canoe way back when, and wear them like a face,
one for each day of the terrified creation, snaked
out of the swamp and history of our putrid damps;
then I shall dance a dance to the murderous Word
like a circus-act, your sweating worshipper here
clowned out of the bayou woods and backwaters, myself,
and I'll pull them over us, still slick-shiney
in the apocalypse-light, like backlit clouds, silver
and mirrored in the rictus-center of your divine eye,
the true object of my aim, or almost, and I'll plunge
in naked abandonment until I uncover your undercover heart,
your bleeding, suffering, roiling, rancid heart,
and eat it out like the Last Supper with my jaw.

WHORE SPEECH, INSERT ABOVE
Aw, honey-baby, when I peer at you,
your dew-boy darling hair goes so cutely askew
viewed through the inverted V of heaving me...
Your swizzle-stick dick sure looks awful lonely
dandled in your ham-hand, darlin', whyn't you just
bounce your horny cornpone ass yonder and stir
my primordial crotch-broth?








ATHIEST PRIEST


MADELAINE  MURRARY  O'HARE


O 'HARE
God bless fornication's force! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!
My well-heeled grey matron's bun shows off
my shiny-sheeny shins to good effect, ay? Ha! Ha! Ha!
Pretty Betty Grable of me, huh? I'll say.
Perch my aching legs above this steel steering wheel
and drive me home, Elvis! Doo wop me pop til my top flops.
Ugh, uhh, ugnh. Oh, I'm sorry, Sonny, I didn't mean to speak so
in front of you, to use that toothless dirty-bird word,
God; but I want you to understand you're an animal
or crawling onion with a buzzard's vagrancy-enhanced
turn-the-tide on the vouyered worm brain, a thinking something
to pick out the dead eyes of the nurturant lot with,
an animal, man, just like the sexually mixed rest of us, by damn--
And as your damn dam I oughter know of what I squwak!
And, yes, I know, since I tol' you, Damnation's just a game
we play one syllable at a time in this primal scream scam,
so-self-called Life. Get it? Here's a new tune for you;
tiddly-tum your bum tummy when you sing it, and you'll
feel better, I forswear swearing it, other than with
a ruinous blue tongue, my salty sucker, so-called:

     Little Lamb, who made thee,
     Dost thou know who made thee?
     Whitely do you buck and gasp
     And expire upon the grass.

     Little Lamb, who made thee,
     Dost thou know who made thee?
     Little Lamb, why am I free
     To create the God who created thee?

You know, don't you, untutored one, that I'm responsible
for every bluebird word that comes pecking at your tow head.
Little boy, and termagant of not, whenever I spoon some jejune
green food in you, at least, you are that not knot I can't unknot,
well, I won't back back from my eternal-maternal charge to teach you
sweet and sure out of all this world's altared whoredom
just what's what, and where that what stops at what's not.
Here, hold the wheel a minute, I gotta light a cig'.
Sheeit! You near reared that fool's-gold El Dorado, boy,
my elvis-headed mischevious princeling, freewheeling
these backward-ass Texas streets, spinning fast back
to the school that'll no longer make you stay and pray
just to get an education; smart's smart-- and that's not.
Leastways, not to my Baltimore-poured concrete stammering
brainstem and swizzle-stick stiff nerveless backbone;
I was a rocking rocket on those cement docksides of quay-graves
a double-barrelled Pelican bagpipe anxious for tripe.
I blacked-out once because I wouldn't shut-up to catch my breath;
if only I could make an audience so catch, heave and tip!
Har, har! You know, double-loved one, my algebra boy,
I couldn't have those scolding soldiers of Christ,
martinets of ministry, naybobs of cloudy hob-knobbing,
knocking your naked knees out from under you to reel kneeling
on the squealing gymnasium floor toward some awful God. Gad!
You're my genetic inheritance, not some other slob's.
Thanks, hon, I got a good drag going now. Let go!
Contrariness is in you too, I do avouch, each ouch
you cause this recalcitrant mother's heart earns a sob.
How joyous when you'll be your own owning tower of oneness
in this sway-backed, wildly wired world of the
perpetually new.... My one egg whirred you upright too,
evolution's goy, self-replicating without God's nod,
a wish mixed with groin's groaning, purloined insistence, dear.
And so now you're here. I love you; you know that dontcha?
This screwed universe can move a lonely heart to sceam.
I tear a damning blackness from my heart and start to dream,
the images a flicker-rash of happenstance and desire.
Maybe you'll listen to others as you grow old
and the acuteness of your hearing starts to go; I don't know.
I don't know. How could I? And that's the plastic
glory of it all: each one of us invented fresh
from the artificial mesh of our own dear doodled imaginings.
I am the spawn I propigate, nothing less.
I am all splashed flesh and wish, a nymphy fish
paddling my four-cornered heart with limitless desire;
what I may dream my weaning self to mean gives me all the excuse
I need to belch and be. Birragh-urp!
Life's a spermy-paisley expressiveness, I insist.
Ayn Rand and me, Lesbos' sisters of the anti-trinity!
What is the religious Want? To manifest the immanent
Individual into the public Something, not to dissolve
our arrival into invisible archival. I don't respect
religion's wry psychology on that point yet;
it keeps me from the parade of things I can be here and get.
Come join the rational revolution Ayn Rand and I spawned,
the founding bitch-hounds! Your religion's all of twigs....
I build my fading eternities faster:
a mass-produced inspiration that includes a universal joint.
What're you? A squirrel? A chameleon too?
My pleasantly plump Proteus riding shotgun
to my ribonecleic essence, sweetie, you're neat.
If I thought you sucked or weren't worth the breath
I nearly lost to get you, would I have you here?
Hell no! Sixty miles per hour over the cliff-face, baby,
and no shreadding gears in regret, neither.
I'd watch you go diapered into the abyss and never blink.
You know how I am; but I take my parenting
with a clear seriousness these painty-waste preacher's boys
can't begin to hanker an imagining for: my each
action has its impact in your bio-reared brain;
your brain is the basic basis of the consciousness-wish
of life as presently understood by those
who bother with any mirror of understanding, therefore
our time together is the everything
of which you breed your appalling all; you see? Sit still,
as long as the taxpayers here demand it, I must
jettison you for eight blue hours a day from my side,
a hurting birth that alienates our intimacies.
When I first looked down on fuzzy you, the red spot
squalling on my church of lurching lap, I wondered
at what new-born notion you would hug to you
to rip your life apart upon; that's the only question.
Everything else is a matter for spastic dandies
who neither build nor burn, but merely cease to be.
My non-God God is me; I am the Deity I elevate!
In America I shall assert my non-irrelevance ecstatically!
How do you explain your life to yourself? Sweet teat-sucker,
my poisoned arrow found me grinning in the target's shadow.
I had lashed my tarred ass to an unfashionable mast
and tarry weary there still. Dear, dear,
it wasn't fate that pinched me to an athiest, but God
hovering stony-loving above the sidelines
in an insanity of paitience, a waiting hail-rain
waiting for the precise aesthetic moment
to reveal His benificent magnificence as we died ugly.
O that arrow of thought struck deep! Its feathers brim
my knocked-in skullcap still. See, Cochese?
We're the wild indians to these slowpoke cowboys
and choose the ambushed height of thought we shall purvey
upon the diminished plains scuffing at our ponies' feet.
Grab the wheel again, Tonto, I need another piffling puff.
Left, left; how much drunken time do we have left?
I'll use the laws they make me pursue against 'em, I will.
I'll unfurl my victorious pinions until light fails,
and all their reaping crop of stolid citizenship
cringes atrophied to dust. I'll do my dessicate best
just as dad who had me on the kitchen table,
prayering the rapist out of himself against my skin.
The fuck! He would tear at the bandage on his scarred chest
and say I stole his heart from Mom and God.
Me, the Temptress! That's a laugh. My tongue's
too widow-withered whetted and sharp to out-harp God;
hard enough to find a man who'll keep near me nowadays.
A foul mouth can out-howl the saintly any day, too fey to growl
when old wolf hunger's at the door anyhow. A parable.
Thank your mommy if you feel a reaching need to pray.
Look too lovingly long at heaven, and I guarentee
that the paster's got his palm wormed down you pants, baby.
Pluck the wings off angels, and let them wrestle on the sill
with the unrested self-testing rest of us, dammit.
The world's changed from when I first kicked into it,
squallin' and shittin', foul at both ends
if you read the papers. But things are different,
people squiggle after their little worm of grub
and shove on without a thanks or a thought. Who thought life
so pitiless for the enganged brain and mind? Not I!
But I guess I was jest better at foolin' myself
in those young days; my glucose-count and intake
must've been a whirlywind few ticks greater then,
I suppose. I just don't know! Words you'll never hear
from that pinned and powdered, periwigged and
gem-jimmied besprinkled pope bunkered down on his
divine acres of palatial Italian paradise.
Money's just a sin unless it fall
from the golden hands of Christ! Har, har.
Irony will have its winning tickle-effect on me yet.
You know that hard-molded statuette atop my desk:
fucking bull and fucking bear? An image of
fruitless gain, fruitless loss: Money is as Not! Ahh,
I can't be as long in the tooth as the eternity I feel.
Do you have your biblical diorama ready for today,
How Pontius Pilate Served Justice in the Roman Citizen-State?
I just love the way you made Jesus look aggrieved.
And remember, don't pray on the sly with the others,
that'll reflect poorly on me. The newspapers'll get it
and rake me ass-ways from Sunday over the Newcastle coals
they'll bring to my public burning. Lucky I'm not stoned,
and you the jew-orphan out to start a Texas cult.
Stranger things have happened, blast it! You watch out,
not everyone who says they love you bleeds enough
to mean it. I have bled. I have established my credentials.
Well, here's the school, and all the yellow buses
cowering against their low white foot of curb;
remember, you are the nurturant Lamb yourself
among these protein-poor puce wolves here,
you're your own solace and sanctuary until the day's done
and I hie you to our groaning home staked on the sand flat
against the harrassing hurricanes the smoking Gulf
moves in huge ruin against us; there we'll play
at our atom by atom perfection, or notions and motions
silly-simple as Newton's dropping a bible
into a dirty pool, and then unwiring his equations
from a thus unilaterally uncluttered mind.
Just remember, God's an athiest, for he needs no faith.
Here, here, your grey diorama's queered
against the misshapen oblong of the turned-down window.
Hand me back my cancer sticks. I don't want to
outlive my wretchedly religious times into an Age of Reason,
that would shorten my horns and trim my grin
too much; an old heiffer like me's got to have
her flowery field to play in. I'll keep on,
no need to pull that long old face with me, Jr,
my loud cowbells dangle in my goitered wattle's shadow
with spoofing usefulness enough still;
I feel real well when I make my world feel ill.
I'll keep on just as long as I can reel assured
that my manure has use, and still stinks in the chapel.

 



JUST ANOTHER JOB

 

[JOB lies in a hospital bed, dying of AIDS.]

JOB
Here I am, laid naked to the braziers,
thin tin licks of flame spray me open to pain,
my spine's a garland of knotted hurts and worse.
Sunday night, and nothing on the hospital TV IV.
I need some holy words to spur my moans to prayers,
some heavenly-other spliff of righteous insistence
to puff my spaghetti-boil of turmoils back to simmer.
Ah God, drug, drug! I've been buzz-buzzing
for that spastic, ironed-neat nurse for half an eon now;
my rotten thumb crumbles against the button;
my broken hands stain the bedsheets.
With my high-flying dose of roasting AIDS
I've contact contracted that blue biblical ill
leprosy. Yeah, in this day and age. What's the year?
Look at me! tremors of the vast ecstatic float through
my vetted veins no more, no more. Call me Morte.
Morte Totality. Pleased to kick your ass on the way out.
Look at this shithole. Pardon, if my more expressive
rhetoric has tongue-tied me back to agued zero. I'm sick.
No hole of mine does as I would wish it.
Now God has shut widom from my mind
and the portals of understanding open not to my hand,
and wisdom is fleet before me, though I do run after it;
all is clouded in my sight which now sees farthest;
its limits clearly in sight, clouds are drawn before me
and a heavy darkness obscures from me what I might see,
horizons are foreshortened although my steps are tireless
and I lie in a grave's-den opium of ignorance
although I would ask to see all that I may behold.
But God's hand is against me, and his works shut me out;
his dominions rally against me,
and the elements become my enemies.
Where in this is Justice? I can smell what it is
and annotate with a bitter heart its absence.
To give a capacity for love and deny its object....
If God Himself ain't somehow Just, then what's the point?
my reason razors itself into me repeatedly.
And ain't God GOT TO be just somehow?
The seventh son of a seventh son, I learned
to be by rebelling, a rapturous repel
down lofty logic's cliffs, a nordic
sword-saga revealingly reversed. Down
to the gravity-well black hole nadir
instead of ascended into snow-blind heaven.
And if God ain't somehow Just, what's the point?
How else we going to count the ticks on this
tickertape parade? What other way we got
than to know a noble God lovingly unfurling our souls?
God: does her voice belong gonged to the annihilated ages?
Is she a sage that can whisper comfort
to my radiation-washed atomic-barraged sockets?
Pierce the wish, divine the desire, deem clean
the weird deeps of the dream, and THINK before
you answer, oh my how well unwell auditors!
Will your troubled verse last out the rhyme?
You're being insincere with me. Death is all
you get. Forget this prism-window
of jewel-lush Life; its crush-touch is past,
or nearly so, the empty suck of a train gone away.
To be alive and not to lie, that's a challenge.
Am I condemned to repeat the makeshift mumbles
of my sire-soverign, God? Then let them be
true sounds of Liberty! Oh if, if this injustice is His
and I a fish in his ocean of wishes,
shall I not as innocently-unjustly condemn
my wry maker with the crooked implement He's designed?
God's hollow thumb has fashioned a boomerang,
KA-Tang! Whang! I spend my whittled spittle
against his craftily cranked downward and
steel-engineered cranium; oh my porus Lord!
to let your wavery undeserving servent
be poured through your baffle and exit thus!
I am not so crossways-wise as Yourself,---
And oh the skin-mist rain's a prayer
God has flooded against us feeble ones
drowning for that love of another our skin can't supply.
Whyn't you shuttle down on an airfoil, Lord,
and shoot the breeze with your targeted marked-man,
one who has been roused to a beggar's indignation
by your prayer-piss rouse-- I look
at every poor face and see death's injustice writ
therein; every fabulous face of wealth is cankered over
with a deceit of life, a something given
they haven't yet thought to throw away
with last year's diadems and cadillacs
into the glittery trash.... Why have my man's bones
been stolen upright from the stony earth?
They shall lay there again just as soon;
flesh is misery, wherein I apprehend delight!
What's Justice, and how can I feel its scab-plaster
on a skin so ripped open and acid-fragile?
And yet, and yet, some bullet in the brain
is making its hacking exitus, the gun of conscience
revelling in its unrivalled use of explosion's force
to come to some energy of purpose: I'm fucked!
I am narrowed and nailed to my railing life:
my syllables have come to put sinews to this use:
God is unjust! God is unjust! God is unjust! God is unjust!
Yet how may a man imagine his creation
and imagine a justice while living in it,
and still that justice own no home in the Architect?
Great are the sheaves that feed us, and yellow with life.
Great are the moments that meet us, and make us
this life despise. To be Just is to know all things,
and merit each iota to its final place;
to be Just is to know the place of Place,
and to know when the course of things is overturned,
and when they must return; to be just is to know
all potentialities and discern the best,
or discern that "best" is a falseness in Eternity.
What feeling has justice for us, who cry for it?
My hair comes butchered from my ripped-open head,
my face is a wine-cask dark with weeping, flush to busting;
I thrust my hands before me as in darkness,
I search every blankness for hope.
A legless man, I stand, a drowning bruised torso tossed
armless in the tempest that sends these waters above my face;
my raft has surged over the departing swell
and the greenness that hems me in is baleful.

ANTON LE VEY's voice:
And then God, whirly-winded, bespoke
out of his temple-tempest to the pest:

GOD
Who's this wondering thing? My claustrophobic creation
whose dumb damned words blacklight my shining design?
Are low-witted and dull-watted you the thing you spew,
Der Mensch in Der Mitte? Hahr, I larf at you!
Pluck up, and stand masted like the man I made you!
I shall ask the questions here, on my real world,
and you, poor doomed plume of flustered dust,
shall answer:
Where were unspooled you when I cement-spit
the splendid foundations of this earth,
its rumored basement of gems and curtained caverns
of crystalline stalagtite might? Tell me,
daring dunderhead and worm supreme, if you know
what you know; if you understand, what understand.
Has meaning heaved cleaving into your hammer-clawed skull,
or is it the murk-mist of insistence merely
rinded like margurita-salt behind your hind brain?
Who settled the roaring sea's sway-dismaying dimensions?
What hand sharped the coral and bladed the triagular wave?
Somebody on the bus whispered that you, yes you,
would know the spasming answer to my God-query
so let's hear it, zit, explain it plain to ME,
let me in on the gimcrack gist of it all, small one,
give me the replete lay of the unland ocean, o Man.
Whose plummet-line zipped past the seas' wet limits?
What divine line appeared from nowhere, repelling past
that place where spinning world and womb had stopped,
giving begotten ground and spermy earth its swollen span?
All mountains that spume up as dust-splash cannot last;
what thing rings kite-string past them to dissipate their peaks?
Where are the roots of the wind's pillars?
Who bludgeoned from naught the cornerstone nut of ground
down into pounded permanence; who engineered its wicked kick,
lullibied all rumor to rucking rest
where stars spur skyward to speak (this is, I mean,
the wicked wick flick of your self, selfless-- for what's
a thing as dumb as you to do with willed selfhood?);
who gave place place so some scarred start could start?
When all the morning stars sang together
and the thousand sons of nodding God shouted aloud,
what besotted face before the infinite presented thou?
Who peered angel-eyed upon the pinking wink
of the reccusive sea's restive entrance, when she veered
jellyfish-floodlight from the drumming womb of sand?
I it was and I alone, know thou, thy great God, alone
(in all the universe of tones the Tone), I alone
who was so moved to discommode surging ocean's
squallorous spread and spry sprawl-clawed-crawl
from its icy gasp and washed swipe at Eternity--
I it was, and I alone, who subsumed its movings in fine fogs,
I alone who stretched a stitched coverlet
of roofless clouds to down its bounding. I alone who said,
This far, o ocean, shall you sway thy ton of suds, no more;
here's land to become a door to halt your waltz,
give your infinite swish its slaking brake, redound
your emerald turmoils in coiling spoils upon
themselves, all in hissing backwash burning as if fire---
roil thyself in vast confusion, ocean, and no
further step shall you steal upon the large.
In all your limp dick-inch of life, punter, have you ever,
my good and growing knowless human, have you ever
arrowed up the dawn from its vault of heart,
or laid red the barbarous target for its arrival?
Did you, ruminative, teach a speech of light to the day-star,
rivering its run of tongues upon bleed-born earth,
or rebel-bell the morningglory from its weak wilt?
Hast thou shaken away the dog-star to its appointed oblivion?
Do not lie to me, but speak out plainly and be plain,
I hear your withering things, your unshrouded shrinks
to blinking nothingness, void moving over void,
your small coward's ice-whispered self-melt, o man,
quavering a snake's nest of shivering quivers
beneath your sheep's bleat-cloak of might's and mightn'ts,
too small and dull a dodge to slow my all-seeing eye.
Didst thou ever slip'n'slide to the sea's one source
or walk awake in the unfathomed deeps, sleepy one?
Doth the gore-loaded lore of all-lording LIFE
unlock at your wicked picking? Does it, must it?
Have the serenely pristine and aquiline gates of dear DEATH,
all a pearly curl of skeleton-enamel above a waste plain,
been thrown Hercules-aghast to welcome thy breathing form?
Have you gone, heart heat-beating, through the soul's wheatfields?
Do your heart's valves saloon-door open backwards
from death to life at your ticking beck? Hmm?
Have you yet God-spotted in you high-res com-sat sights
even the tipsy hat of one of the all-tall doorkeepers
kept at that lowest place of places, or is it all just
a smash of myths and mumbled fables for you still,
fabulous trash? Has your poor comprehension and low-score
SAT serenity ever compounded to blank the vast expanse?
Come, come, you garrolous old lung, fun bunny-girl
or more serious, AIDS-diseased spoiled boy,
tongue aloud the sum total of all you know to me alone
now I've an unvanishing eternity of timeline to spare!
Thy moored core is pourous, o softest squish of wishes!
Speak, speak, and hesitate not to detition's tripping,
tittering, tip-tip, halting and troubling timing--
I'll understand your oogle-bugling ululations well, mortal man.
Can you photon-skate your willed way
to light's first residence, or may you neon-out
the ultimate Not where weary darkness dwells?
Can you take a sunbeam by the hand
or hold all-eternal darkness in your mouth?
Escort a satr upon its twine-spineing path
or beath out of nostrils the universal bulked black
through which its loops its lone way along?
Yes; yes you can, I'm sure of it.
You're no lowly trilobite, mister, centipede-pedalling past
stone muds to a proffessor's lab-table 2,ooo years hence,
are ye? No, no. You're a human man, and know all--
weren't you the thing rich-birthed before the cosmos-smoke,
and don't you exist after its wisped finishing?
Spandexed man: of your screeching skin I hold the measure
and of your every diminishment, I carry the past expanse;
clear squeals of your eeking spit and spirit
flip from the tittle-pip of pipping pipe ripe at my side;
your commodius mind's my small-change purse, slug-bug;
your wide-window view zooms to a luger-sight
narrowed on nothingness compared to my barrenness,
so vast am I.
Have you stepped into the storehouse of the snow
or kept slickly afoot among the proud arsenals of hail?
Who indices the tuneles rumor-mongering of the avalanche?
Who's silver sire of the swept-kiss of this hissing rain?
Who has zephered slipstreams for the holocaust,
or made blank space appear before the roaring downpour?
Who has axed a passage for the high-hurdled thunder?
Who birthed bastard land's aridity to eat up the moisture,
who commanded its derelict loins
to spurt to an annointing greenness before ye,
whereof ye eat sweet-fingered figs in the wilderness?
Can you bolo aloft the Plieades, master-man,
or untie the stars to open Orion's white belt?
Do you, o lame and sour dewdropp drop-kicked here,
proclaim with loud sound-surround the governance of heaven,
or do you put obeyed law into the everythings of Earth?
Who has taught freedom by the destruction of chaos?
Can you stand demanding distorted forms of clouds
to cover-up your foul flux with their weight of waters?
If you bid the limber shins of lightning streak the dark
does it say to thee: "I am ready"?
Who poured airy wisdom into obscure, unscoured dens,
who laced up understanding with the spider's web?
Does the unleashed ox nose open you shaken tent
and consent to serve you without slavery?
Did it stand beside your creaking crib before you learned
how to shackle its wildness with thy cunning?
The stunted wings of the ostrich twitch proudly,
but are they the pinions and plumage of love?
Have you carpentered the horse with his sweet strength?
Have you clothed his neck with thunder,
who says among the battle-trumpets, Ha Ha!
and smells the whiff of war afar off?
Are you stiffnecked enough to dispute the Almighty?
Should he who picks sticking arguments and quests questions
with God Himself, should such a one talk back?

JOB
Behold, I am of small account.
What shall I answer thee?

GOD
Arise on your hind, hidden, wooden legs like a man,
stand brittle and apart, my little, from the rest
of my mazed creation: you, worm-turd, are a human!
Does your wrecked face dare deny that I, I am Just?
That the wayward tumbleweed turns to my true word?
Are you unhinged enough to put your crossed Lord
at the witness-stand defense's stable table so that you,
blue-suited in thy skein of veins, might prosecute?
Would you crow-crowd me with cried-aloud Wrongs so that you,
silent as a null sentinel,  might rise as Righteous?
Do you bowl me to the see-saw's low-tided side
that thee and thine might vaunt up even one mite the higher?
Do you have a mighty arm as God's arm is mighty?
Is your snoring voice coiled in the thunderclap?
Patch your pride, undim your dignity,
robe in pomp, and spark with splendour--oh my little
tittle-bit and wolfed somnolence of utter dust!--
do all as best you may and if you may and as
you may: scatter acid-sharp the fantasic attack
of your planet-racking anger, let your poured fury
undo the wicked and disincarnate the fiber of him,
let it glance kings unthroned into the dirt, let it
look on the proud regent and take no fault of fear,
ignore thy tax and spend no worry, scowl thee
at the broken brow of the high and proud
and humble them to stumbles, throw down injustice,
hide evil in an inconspicuous grave, and shelve
their catastrophed bones in the shattered earth
with your looks. Do this, my mini-kingdom man,
and I'll whirl pirouettes to your great greatness,
bow soberly all day to your drunken mein,
admit like a matted wrestler, crying sweating
to the invisible weight hovering over his pinned shoulder
that your own right hand can grace ressurection
on heal alone your current littleness of crippleness.
Man is in such a desperate case,
churning headfirst into his disappearace!
Yet how fierce a morsel he may seem, when once roused
to the snarling stature of his testosterone!
Who's left to stand aloft against his impaitient measure?
What creature bears the rainbow veins bright enough
not to pale away to extinction in his tincts?
Am I myself to be the animal I send against
his self-titled mightiness, his stumpy lunge
at the greatness he sees conveyed in my being?
I am Leviathan.
Can you mince-meat my skin with whipping fishhooks,
or hood my awful head with the sharp hawk's?
Who will pass over tongue-tied the manyness of my limbs,
or ogle unawed at me in contemptuous silence?
In powerful grace I descend, and graceful arise;
who has scratched by a micron the least scale of my hide,
or pried open the storming portals of my face?
I am all shields, my impenetrable eye sheer flint,
my spiring breath is ice, or charring fire;
stars' cauldrons chuff from my mulling hum;
no stop makes good before me, and inevitable energies
rear me on forever; eternities dance before me
like fireflies; my firm heart weaves lavas
through its rock, a millstone at home
in my grinding ever-onward design, eversteady....
Iron and stiff steel touch me as straw against a strong
thing, all crumples; millions duck at my merest passing,
warheads phase out against my skin as chaff
fritters after the buffalo's passage; the harshest club
is as a bent reed near me; sabres and F16s
fashion my heart for laughter at their launching.
I sprawl in my God-awfulness upon the drubbed mud,
I am Leviathan.
I charge hurricanes out of the chapel-water heart
of Lake Michigan in a wish, whipping its deeps
like cudded fluff in a spinster's mixing bowl;
all trails shine at my going on, and my wake
is stardust; the great river everywhere is made mad white
with the furious apprehesion of my feafulness;
my equationed equal resides not upon the earth,
I am so terrible; forests flatten at my shaking dry;
no part of my magnificence has a single stamp
of the least tremulous timorousness of fear at all,
I am so unassailable and sourceless.
I glare down in infinite and terrible happiness
upon each and every creeping creature of the dust,
even the highest; king of the king of beasts am I,
without a sparring breast to beat my great chant upon.

JOB
Omni omni omni;
I talked without understanding of great things
too wonderful to be wondered at, so smashed
is every brimming thing with thy
dawn-spawning awfulness.
I had only heard of thee with my ears,
wild tales and fables torn from books,
campfires and stray table-talk,
songs at school, and the passover prayer....
Now I see thee in my very eye,
in my very eye you appear, and I see thee:

Therefore, I melt away;
I repent in dust and ashes.






Top


End

Jul 082020
 
A rich re-telling of a Chinese ghost story in play form.

                          the gods corrupt
us; though I never suffered their abrupt
seductions, shattering advances, I
too bear their sensual lightnings in my thigh.
I too am dying.
                      ----- Phaedra, Robert Lowell, Racine


DAUGHTER
Human beings are to be pitied!

OFFICER
You've found that out!

DAUGHTER
Yes. Life is hard, but love conquers all.
Come and see!
                     ----- A Dream Play, August Strindberg



****


Top^


SCENE 1

[Mrs Chang's visiting room.] MRS CHANG Dear daughter, Chien-nu, always tapping at the mirror, always sighing and saying, with infinite regret repeating: "When will I be taller! Breasts, come out now, now is the time for Wang Wen to arrive, dropping his glory into my life under the plum trees, transfiguring the house-garden with romance." She does not know what she says! She is not ready for the love of a man, his mysterious speeches and strange allure. She is not ready to look such high excitement in the eye. Not yet, not yet. [Enter SERVANT.] SERVANT Mrs Chang! Mrs Chang! There is a stranger at the gate, and he has the look of trouble about his person. He is smiling and whistling at the strangest things. Chou-chou the old pup came running up to him, biting his silks, and he smiled as if he were being licked and kissed! MRS CHANG He is too happy, for certain, whoever he is. The years are too evil for this lightness of heart. Fetch him in. I will discover his fancy plans and spit them out too; like these plum pits. [MRS CHANG spits out the pit of a plum she's been chewing into a lacquer dish. SERVANT escorts WANG WEN in. CHOU-CHOU is chew-chewing his pant leg.] SERVANT I am announcing a Mr Wang Wen. WANG WEN The seven austerity-slackening courtesies to you, dear lady. What name's this rascal go by anyway: Nevah-been-fed? MRS CHANG The thousand fanning how-dos due to a houseguest to you, Wang Wen. WANG WEN Thank you. May the bones of your ancestors never be played upon by your enemies. MRS CHANG Thank you. Why are you here, Wang Wen? I did not call you out yet. But like an irreligious owl who forgets his devotions in the dark, you come blinking to my house in this early daylight. WANG WEN The early thaw this year is uncustomarily gracious to travellers, and I am anxious to see the delights of the world. Even the most studious owl must sauce his books with sunshine now and again. And I was soon to be on my way to the imperial examinations anyway. So.... MRS CHANG What have you got there, under that sly smile? What are you doing grinning and walking in here as if you owned the town? WANG WEN I own myself. I guess that makes me happy. Not a lot to worry about, if you've only got yourself. MRS CHANG You are a poor boy, now that your father's dead. Your inheritance fell to your brother, who is off in the shipping business in Peking. WANG WEN I guess I came here to increase my sorrows and collect a wife promised to me before my birth. ---No matter, I'll honor my familial obligations. [CHIEN NU pokes her head into the doorway. She watches silently.] MRS CHANG Your politeness covers discourtesy. Stand there. Be silent. WANG WEN [Aside, looking at CHIEN NU.] I am watching her. Is she seeing my heart? CHIEN NU I keep my careful eye upon his hands, not regarding his face of moonlight unless he is turning away. This way, I keep my modesty. Oh, if he could only see how my thighs and eyes are wet with sick waiting beneath my embroidered silks and blue eyelids. MRS CHANG [Aside, to SERVANT.] What is to be done! His family's penniless! SERVANT He's got a cocky tilt to his head. The proverb is: Be bold in all things. MRS CHANG He's that, alright. WANG WEN Eyes, eyes, how shall you master this brightness? CHIEN NU Each day, I shall end my day swaled and scented in his dark, consoling silks. Yes! MRS CHANG [Sharply.] And you have not passed your exams yet. Is that right? WANG WEN The great mystery is before me. CHIEN NU I am so tenderly made, if he looks at me again with those oceans of his eyes, I shall dissolve! WANG WEN [Closing his eyes.] Eyes shut, mastering their darkness.... MRS CHANG Everything's too uncertain. My first obligation is to marry my daughter well and increase the family wealth. WANG WEN [Not bearing to look at CHIEN NU.] How is your daughter, Mrs Chang? She looks well. MRS CHANG Chien Nu! Take Wang Wen to see the garden. CHIEN NU Yes mother, right away. Please, sir, this way. [Exit WANG WEN and CHIEN NU.] MRS CHANG I've decided. No marriage until he passes his exams. SERVANT When he has the prize, he will be a prize, and Peking's embroidered ladies, who buzz the examination's chambers and with beetle-brows overlook the winner's list will attack his new carriage on the instant in the street like june bugs on a gorse bush, madam. MRS CHANG Still, I've decided. No turning back now. What else can I do, hmm? Damn it all. It's not easy being a widow and running things. You try it. SERVANT I am but a poor servant, and have no great household to run. MRS CHANG Nor any prospect to get one, like that. Stop your stropping back-talk, at once, or you could have the grandest roof of all --- under the stars. SERVANT I am silence. **** Top^

SCENE 2

[The garden.] CHIEN NU Our green garden is not so dour as my widowed mom. WANG WEN However dour, I see she is yet adorned by her daughter's heightened blossoms. CHIEN NU The love-eschewing yew breeds darkly in her eyes. Her stunted, wounded earth is gashed wide alive only to welcome cold coffins now. Even the bearded pinecone's winter seeds (accustomed to bring forth life in harshest seasons) are blown ungerminating across her lap of snow. She'll have no other children besides myself. Her dirt heart's gone under with the onion, spaded sourly beneath life's sweetness, layered away from our mutual doing light of day with bitter remembrance for her only company. WANG WEN There seems some wrongness in those so aloof (as a maiden bee that flies highest for her mating) that they from Nature's sweet open treasuries can receive no honied cup of succor for their peculiar thirst, although the honey is such that thrives the busy, common hive. CHIEN NU This sensual glade is yet a pleasant garden, and for all the world I know none greener to foster loving endurance and courage beyond the razing, raving times of grief. When summer's hushen heats proclaim the healthful virtues of this quiet place loud as whispers, where this sun-bussed bank of daylilies blows, such tiny trumpeting as sounds out of the azeleas' muted throats soundlessly aglow almost, until shy silence herself does seem to break her convent quiet and speak her matin prayers into the dawn, such triumphant trumpeting, I say, ---though silent as ashes else--- in my willing heart does find a hearing ear. And their beauty, their happy silent song I carry with me where I go. WANG WEN Strange story! What's the shadowy history of this horn-crowed garden abrupt with trumpets that find their choir in silences? This garden that in busy brightness is so loud against my eyes it shouts the rainbow back to a single color! What has caused this prismatic miracle to occur back in some dark stretch of place that I can't see the reasons now, and plain as burning, of how this singing garden takes the light so sunningly it outdoes the petalled flamings of the sun? CHIEN NU Here my father's buried, a spirit interred, that gives to common dirt a holy aura (for they say a dear death makes questioning Life more lucid for that afterlife's backlighting). Many cold gone dawns ago he broke his back upon his miller's waterfalling wheel and stopped their grinding gears with his grinding agonies. He screamed, as like to pierce the sky in which he hung, harmed and helpless above us.... And then he came pulled back to ground by six men (forever calm and sage in peaceful death as in roaring life he was agitated) to lay like a firstling leaf inside a unplucked bean in his lacquered box beside those tumbledown graves. O he is not so restless in perfect heaven now as to come ghosting down among us again in any form of visitation. No, we never see him at all, although I'd swear some acre of light in this garden knows him. And so my mom, guideless, assumes her more awful guises, frowning at strangers, and repeating worn advice like a pastor's long-memoried homilies, and stales her conversation. What masks we wear to visor our eyes from frank sunlight, hiding in our pretending skins! So she buries all her old hopes in old rituals again and again, inferring comfort from repetition. WANG WEN Lead me; let's walk a narrow furrow farther on unseeded by death. CHIEN NU Every inching step of life takes some print of poison as it goes-- WANG WEN And yet here what's buried does come again, and fragrantly inherits the air that closets us about. CHIEN NU True. The crocus bud no matter how often shovelled under always erects itself to find the spring again in fresh-gilded progeny, and stalks the new air first of all the flowers, although it is the earliest dier too. WANG WEN First in death and first in life renewed. CHIEN NU All mirror-backwards, this procession that might be as easy as life to life, and life to life again, lacking blank death's heavy intercession. But come; over there the weighty willow hangs in lofty ease, and makes even bouyant Spring an occassion for yawns and couches. WANG WEN It seems a pleasant way away. CHIEN NU Is it always the singing lesson of a fable to aria forth what artless nature shows us plain, and double in mirror-mangling singing the simple doings of simple nature thus? WANG WEN If we could tell ourselves a story as awesome as a sun-headed daylily peers (and in humble glory out-judges the wildflower field that hedges its soft nobility, adjourning all the meadow's mellow whispers with its sigh, in easiest happiness as ignorant as joy) so that merely to look upon its open hues or hear it shush the air that waggles it steals the laurel from our painters and leaves our poor panting poets breathless, why then, I guess we could fable our existence from a syllable, history roses with new scents, charm the sun to darkness with a black chant, river mysteries from a melting stone that first grew soft to hear us sigh, or any other catalog of impossiblities make true by the plangent puffing out of our sole breaths in the self-interrupted tossing cough of talk.... well, then we'd be a god and garden unto ourselves, and sunder thunder from its scariness with our kisses, make peace with the twisting agonies of death, know that all roads led home again, and never stir an inch, or desire aught, but that we already had it, and in quantity, in ourselves in this our place-- complete. CHIEN NU I myself am nearly told over in your telling and nearly convinced that such a power as lingers in the daylily has touched your lips and put some unused tongue of its mightiness into your very speech. I would that I could curl into your mouth and find myself reinvented in your breath. Speak again and I'll bend an ear to know if sassing nature does not silence herself to hear you. CHIEN NU[WANG WEN breaks off a willow branch, begins playing with it as CHIEN NU talks.] WANG WEN Chien Nu....hold this wily willow-wand a moment between your fingers. CHIEN NU I will. But why I should, I don't know. WANG WEN I myself will with continual grip apprehend this distant end, and between us will arise a rainbow of but one greeny hue touching us both. CHIEN NU Yes, I feel your hand, almost, within the tender writhings of the wand; it is a curious connection. WANG WEN And one in which nature is complicit, for she herself first shot forth the tie drawbridged between us by our different pressures. I would swear I have your pulse's measure in motion through the sap. CHIEN NU I too, almost, would swear the same. WANG WEN And here we are, without abridgement, our whole selves entire and with all the enterprise of our minds engaged using nature for our metaphor, our touch in transformation changing what is into what was not. How like a pair of autumn-dusted trees stand we, whose overlapping branches by continual nearness of quiet years in shared garden shade have grown together, making of two tough roots one gentle bough. CHIEN NU And that bough.... MRS CHANG [From offstage.] Chien Nu!! [The lovers are inclining toward each other, but at MRS CHANG's cry they accidentally break the willow switch.] CHIEN NU ....happy. **** Top^

SCENE 3

[Chien Nu's room, and the open road.] CHIEN NU Since our hands have parted, bitter fingers curl open as smoke, as empty. Vanishing to the horizon, my heart sighs for our hour in the garden, past times and harnessed laughter. Vanity! He shall not come. Not today. In the spring wind, the double gate knocks against itself: stone and iron, a terrible clanging. Wound about like the ivy, my hopes and sorrows together; grievy and drenched, I slip to stillness, my hempen shoes go mossy, and I wait. [We see WANG WEN walking along the road, to his boat.] WANG WEN Sorrowful plum-leaves grieve the road red; black branches mourn at their lightness. If only my arms were weighted-down with Chien-nu! How truly sad I am only a great architect can know. Planning one thing, I accomplish another, my designs become dusty memories of unlived utopias. Expectation cancels out reality, and I cannot be where I am. And yet, I must depart. Desolate sounds scurry out of these absences around me. My feet follow the road like strangers, each following the other out of mistaken hope that one or the other knows where they are going. [We see CHIEN NU in her room, mooning for WANG WEN.] CHIEN NU My heart is entranced with its own beating, my pulse is supported by thunder. Seeking love, I have doubled my sorrows. Now I shall try a remedy. Think of small things and narrow ways, my heart. Don't look at the sky too long, as if it were another shade of his eyes. Seek corners, confer with baby spiders about their miniature hangings, white portraits in obscure places. Fold into a chair and let the armrests serve as Earth's four corners. Let your nose out-scope the horizon. Quiet, quiet. Oh, to anchor my meditation in a sparrow's house and not among the wide world of his wanderings! My heart, be still. Condense, contract your fistings--- titter and hymn with the mouse, modestly, and all will be well. And yet, and yet.... I know; I will drink this yew-berry brew [[nurse had gathered in black lace stockings [[don't use]] with knowledgeable fingers plucking only the thundercloud-colored ones at midnight,]] and sleep, and have no dreams, for this potion kills imagination. [We see WANG WEN in his boat, paddling upstream.] WANG WEN Deep abiding flies from my heart. My white feet wander where they will. The ghost of Chien-nu visits the marshlands, her heaven's breath a freshness among all these rank things, her absent eye a beknighting diamond lighting the cage of stars that falls upon this heavy dusk, and I am lonely when her spirit stirs. How can this be happening? Why this aching and betrayal of joy and justice? Has my imperial wish to succeed and be a bride's man clouded the clear lake we were to sail, fracturing its clarity with this turbid dirtiness? [In CHIEN NU's room, we see a second CHIEN NU arise beside her bed, in ghostlike solemnity, and pace in peace through the window into the quiet countryside.] **** Top^

SCENE 4

[WANG WEN is drinking wine on the river, bitterly missing CHIEN NU. Her soul appears, they talk and embrace, they make wild love, and she dissolves as he goes to drunken sleep. He is wild with grief, but is overcome by desperate exhaustion.] WANG WEN Whatever's in immortality, that's not in this wine I declare insufficient to the causes of infinity. [Pause.] The time is gone a little by when I, a studious boy, threw down curious books to pull a blackeyed yew-berry through my hook and perditioned afternoons to pull up a trout. Night herself is losing her closeness, her darkness as I remember yesterday afternoon, which glows how strongly in my lit recollection. How simply she took her limpid tea to her tipping lips! [Pulling on his fishing-line.] My silvertongued hook pulls at the blackeyed yew-berries, dipping in triple-time to get a dripping fish. [Hoists up an active trout.] As hard to hold as a girl's attention! Chien-Nu! My muscular wriggler, how I have tried-on your whapping thighs in my whole heart's thought a million searing times already! Chien-Nu! CHIEN NU Wang Wen! How callous your hands looked as you left my side, your face open to the open window. How quickly you have leapt away! How barren my days and hours since, nothing in the garden to delight me, no walk but your steps echo after mine, empty and emptier. Now I stand, all soul, and move past riverbanks, sashaying through skirting mountains as if they were no more than magic lantern images thrown up in the theatre. Ah! If I don't make it to the riverbank by dawn-- how far will Wang Wen have floated! When will he race back to our sandlot on horseback, the wind prideful in his hair? Silent, faint, high and quick, my ghost-steps dissolve to frosted banks, walking the river's edge in tamped moonlight. A thousand mountains, a thousand streams, dash past my marauding eye, and are gone. Heart, heart, remembering the sad eyes that parted pair by pair, like gingying birds to distant nests. Sweat pearls against my aghast face, I race to his silent boat on the moorland, my hair gone a thousand ways in the air-stream. My faint feet are bruised with running. What tavern is he carousing at on the Chi Huai? Sudden horses, calm voices, night, night, indistinct commotion opens beyond these willows. My heart yatters at me-- speed, speed! Is that you beyond this solemn grove I've come to, beating on a ch'in board and dropping soaked lines for fish? Here will I crouch, and hear what the west wind brings. Insinuations of my love-- float through this torpor! Grass at the sand's edge is slick with frost, my green skirt hangs water-weighted to the ground, my steps heavy and drenched slip to stillness, my hempen shoes go mossy, and I wait. [The sound of a ch'in board being beaten is heard.] WANG WEN How like a picture is everything now to me! The bleak river at twilight, moon and moon in sky and on the river's flat: Heaven over my sad head and under my slow prow. How like an icy jar brimmed with water, a jade without flaw. On the far bank, a wild duck, green head and blue wing, whirls alone his evening colors. Dry vines tangle the darkness, old trees, ancient figures in the mid-dark, ravens accosting the dusk. Listen: the solo note of a flute, or is it a girl singing? Her tender timbre is like that of my Chien Nu. Is it you, Chien Nu? Chien Nu? Ah! how idle is my heart in this black. CHIEN NU [Singing.] Hear the lonely whippoorwill he sounds too blue to fly; if my heart can't touch poor whippoorwill, I'll be so blue I'll die. Softly, softly, whippoorwill, oh can you hear on the valley's blue and lonely rill, softly, softly, whippoorwill, my voice to yours is coming, dear, no need for sadness now. [We hear CHIEN NU singing.] WANG WEN Talking to ourselves, we hear another; introspection resolves into remembrance.... my tongue cannot tell a tale, but is caught kissing you-- the whole object and instance of its incessant wagging. CHIEN NU A thousand feelings have a thousand voices, and all of them sigh away like you on this river to me. Nearing happiness, we confront blunt dangers; sharpening our hearts for ecstasy, we bleed raw tears. Whichever way I turn, asleep or wandering wakeful your immortal countenance confronts me; I hail my nursemaid: Wang Wen! Talking to mom, I spot you laughing over her shoulder, making faces. When any feet approach me, first I hear your sandals, the sho-wood resounds with your coming and my heart knocks hollowly in time to the traffic. When I dash my face to my pillow in bitter disappointment, your face is already there, and I can smell you; Deep in my pillow you comfort the fresh onrush of my distorted tears. WANG WEN Is there some spirit left in flesh that I feel the winds' chill run thru my bones so, a march of air upon my skin, and a march of upright gooseflesh answering? [CHIEN NU comes in sight of WANG WEN.] WANG WEN Why are you here, and how have you come, dear thing, out of what darkness is this vision resolved flooding my fouled obscurities with light? I cannot see you without thinking myself too soon blessed with daylight; I who had thought it shut and dungeoned from his sensible being in the eons since our leave-taking. How, how, how, how, Chien-nu, are you here? CHIEN NU A desire asks me I seek not the reason; when a love that held me fast pulls me after, I go, were it even to damnation. WANG WEN But Chien Nu, how are you here? CHIEN NU Do not ask again, for I myself do not know. [They kiss, etc., etc.] WANG WEN Why this unspeakable clarity in the light's playfulness? Pleasure's leisure and simple lease thus rapturously released? CHIEN NU Our bodies fell into confusion when we asked for love. Felt apparitions of some drumming weather smote our bones, and now we arise skin-lashed from these matted grasses; WANG WEN Desire came, swift to enter, turbulent at egress, sessions' cessation, the met wept hands palpitant, tired, CHIEN NU worn smiles renewing laughter; WANG WEN our thrown robes unioned on the peach-branch, impatient for our bodies' return. CHIEN NU [Satiated.] Now I know my body's body, that shape wherein my imagination molds me. How does a tree hold itself up against the blue immensity? The watchword of root and branch, bole and soul is this: I dream myself a tree, and therefore come my buds pushing sugared airs away, sap and barking back hurl from seedling on to ancient limb and lightning'd hulk by the mute power of the dream's suasiveness, not otherwise. Were I to blink and think myself an agile fish nervous beneath the agate stream, a mere sixty white years, a death, a body's lapse, and I would wake re-sheathed in those glamours of new flesh, and gaze with sideswiped eyes at a world submerged; water-reeds would chasten my agitations; my slim fins would cling to air only for the dim length of a breath held, and I would die fossilized in the muds, my skeleton the dream's only remembrance of having been dreamed. Oh spirit, oh self! Give yourself the will to recall such a strength of dreaming when unconsciousness sets thee in thy sick-bed body again. Victim of this pernicious illusion never be again, nor drape your longings on so frail a hope as flesh. [CHIEN NU sighs and disappears.] WANG WEN Ah! how I am thrown, a rose into a furnace, and disappear in ashes. Eyes, curse yourselves to have gazed so longingly on love, to be revenged by its absence to this nullity of night! Hands, clump and curl, wither back to stumps of somethings, to have touched a radiance you are now denied. Oh every sense is by its saturation overthrown and burned when that fulfillment, though all unexpected first, slackens, and we roil lost in our new amplitudes of searing wants. My love's contestless softness sharpens every rearing dagger of that hurt which stabs me now. Uncoil, heavy soul! and into this shattering night disperse, as a campfire's disturbed smoke goes from greyness to nothingness beneath dull stars for your final gladness. Cheating Time has put all my tossing future in his bone sack and knotted the lot with the garrote-wire remembrance. Absence inflicts! Courage comes not to these empty hands nor recalling eloquence to these lips--- Oh nothing do I know, I know, except what from me slips; when even my shapeless shadow from my body falls, dissolute as night, how shall I rise to you, Chien-Nu, my shut light? Top^ ****

SCENE 5

[Chien-Nu, stirring awake in her sick-bed.] CHIEN NU A miraculous moment.... NURSEMAID Here's gingsing, a spice to brighten wide recalcitrant eyes and ease them into day; and here's tea, to uncrumple a stomach fed on nothing but a fever-pallet's madnesses --Ach! what a ferocious crowd of hours you've spent in the naked solitude of sleep! CHIEN NU An exquisite minute.... NURSEMAID Three days a-bed; not even in my howling youth did I maelstrom the bedsheets so! CHIEN NU There was a storm pouring toward us from the horizon's crescent when I passed from daylight to my private dark. NURSEMAID And your hair is all a storm of tangles, lady, as if the city of your virginity had been sacked by handsome Mongols all these starry days thru. Well, there's a story I could maybe tell you: but dark eyes keep their secrets and twinkles longest, honey. Ach, enough! CHIEN NU Has the storm harmed aught in the orchard? NURSEMAID Swill to the level of the laurel-daubed inner decoration on this proffered cup, my bug. There, there! Your hair's a little less like a wild galaxy now. CHIEN NU Is it day or night out? Whenever my eyes close out the cloistering tapestries of this room, and these hanging gazelles bound beyond my being's business for one second, I see him, I see Wang Wen, stretched in ecstasy on a pallid riverbank, the near grass melted back from its frost-freshness by some plenitude of his dreaming tears. Ah! Wang Wen! This love-sickness is killing, my crushed chest an aching whirlpool among your bruise-black torrents. [MRS CHANG enters.] MRS CHANG Do not drown in such nothings, darling. I know we treasured imperial hopes of his appointment; such apportionment may be ours one day, or it may not. Sigh away your breath too long, lithesome one, and one day it shan't come back. NURSEMAID Oh, my poor possum; upside down, and unconscious with dreaming when the day is busy beneath you! CHIEN NU I cannot stand to lie unalive without him one drugged moment longer! The cures I need are stronger, ladies, than the soups and roots you proffer me. Wild lightnings in dragging air, Wang Wen! Come touch forever what cannot be possessed! Caress an indomitable thigh, and tongue a woman's heart damned to interminable daylight without you. Oh, those words, those crow-moans, without you! Where's the root of a longing purloined from the gods? I thieve ecstasies from your too-absent face, Wang Wen! MRS CHANG Appalling, this bitterness. [Aside.] Nursemaid, double her dosage. I'm scramming to get the old priest. He'll tie her spirit in a knot so she cleaves here, and to us, once again. NURSEMAID Oh, my poor possum. CHIEN NU Since our hands met in a last goodbye, all's vanity and is vain; sight, that comprehends him not, vanity, ears that hear him not, vanity, touch that touches him not, nor is touched by him in sweet return, vanity; eyes that close to a darkness absent him, vanity, eyes that open on a world unseeing of him, vanity, lips that open and kiss him not, vanity, my dumb tongue that may taste no remembrance of him, vanity, vanity, vanity, vanity. Every sense is emptiness without him, and yet Bhudda-enlightenment escapes me! Sure the bitterest cheat in life is leave-taking. The thrush knocks not against the abyss of night when her lover dove is snared in the hunter's net with one note more of longing, than I. When I speak, my breath is limp, no force follows my utterance, nor am I heard. Inside myself, I am too weak to concentrate. When I lie down, I cannot fall together enough to even sleep. Fine wine is bread paste against my palette; spiced things come to my tongue tasteless, not even their effervesce survives. Medicine's effectless; no cure emancipates me. I know well when this hidden ill began, when his face evaporated from my approaches, I dreamed, and his arms held me not, I fell to the ground, hard on a tilted hip, and he was gone. If I am to be well again, it will not be until full sight of him is restored to me; my sundered senses re-soldered, my million divisions viced to singleness and glued. One minute, I am sheer lead, nailed to the bed, the next instant, I am floating over the roof, viewing ruined landscapes that contain not him. Next, all is clear, I am myself again, my body my body--- then all is confusion again, I float unroofed, rootless, aghast in terrible airs, black winds, endless night, stretched agony, my unattached spirit searches past each infinity blisses get mixed with heart-stabs, ecstasies moil with rotten longings, diamonds flash to ashes in my uninhabited chest, I seek, and seek again, invisible, fragrant, dispersed, all Eye and no eye, and I cannot tell the Heaven from the Earth. [CHIEN NU falls asleep.] MRS CHANG Child! Wake up! CHIEN NU Sick already, what new sickness wakes me to appall? Is it my death? Come, black charger, and let the dark thunder of your monsterous hooves consume my aching soul away! I am faint, faint, a disappearing ink under thy trim nib, and am nearly cancelled from the lists of life. This flustering weakness that I feel can be nothing else than sweet Death hurrying near, kneeling to take his incisioning kiss. MRS CHANG The priest is here; he's to heal your soul. CHIEN NU And if my soul is elsewhere, on what shall he lay a hand to effect a cure? MRS CHANG I send for Wang Wen. I'll send somebody to ask him to come back. Pass or fail, I'll have him come here. Perhaps seeing him will fix you up. CHIEN NU Too late for your regret, your repentance, Mrs Chang. Death has made me his mistress, and I am charmed a little by is forthright solemnity; he's a sad child holding forth his one cherished clump of posies, how could I refuse him? MRS CHANG Survive, child! He laughed at everything, and now to see how you grieve and wither. It's, well, its sore to me. CHIEN NU I close my eyes and find happiness. I see him. Wang Wen! PRIEST Stop it, child! You are not to talk this way and aggravate your case. Until Wang Wen is returned to the precinct, you must rest and let others pray for you. CHIEN NU I see from your grave habiliments, Mr Priest, that you have endured a thousand deaths, a thousand ends, held the hands of mourners by the ditch-edge until tiredness brought oblivion to mourning; what's one more slip-up, one less human remaining still all a-stir above the dust that engulfs us? PRIEST Dominae sanctum, tortoise purposum. CHIEN NU I am touched with a burning hand; My life is in my mouth, my mouth ingests the sky. Love falls to sickness in this wicked world, like yesterday's drunk-high, asleep under the spring willow, like cattails a-whirl over the meadow-path, swallows lofting the east wind, vaulting the pavilion small as childhood beneath them. I am young and I am cast away. I can't recover myself. Who cares about one's youth when one is in possession of it, even if one is throwing it away? Perfect days go shunting blindly by; my longing blossoms darkly, sadness increases, frost on the loved bud, blight against beauty. The larks offer a most charming intensity, their lyric chunks against a wood head, my own; Nature delights herself in display, not me. Simple sounds startle my sorrowful heart. Let me die today, avenging grief by shortening its tortures. Let me die while Spring is whistling its merriment outside and my argent soul may follow awhile fleets of flying flowers. PRIEST Dominae sanctum, prolixus verbaenum, verbosus. CHIEN NU I am struck down, if I am struck down, half human, half a ghost. Oh, go away, and let me sleep. Top^ ****

LAST SCENE

WANG WEN I sit, and with concentrated brush put my flung tongues on the calligraphy paper fluttering under my flat palm here. Soon I shall pass or fail these travailing exams. My conscience is scrupulous as the wax that hold the wick, a condensing tightness of melting colors hungering themselves liquidly around a flame. What shall be the outcome of all this light and smoke? Total happiness, or misery unendurable? All holds to its purpose; my mind is firm and my hand turns to this effort alone. I shall not wander from my scholarly concentration nor discourse with any darting dreams of Chien Nu while I make this exam cubicle my ruminating room. All thoughts, marshall to mastery! Confucian mysteries sing! Knowledge hard-won and encoded, see here, chirrup when I carol you! [CHIEN NU appears.] CHIEN NU Come and burn with might and immenseness! Throw down your books, your lives, and fly! This empyrean stream invites an everlasting life, an aching socket for transcendental fire. Come, come, my one, my desire, my flame and fame, eternity echoes emptily for me without your name! WANG WEN Chien Nu! CHIEN NU Look, your hand is cramped with knowledge, your future life a tense battle of expectations, myself prime among them. Help me throw both your hand and your hurt away forever. WANG WEN Chien Nu, you must tell me, how are you here? CHIEN NU I remember the river. I came. I am all at my spirit's lifeless bidding now, and have but one hanging body's fragment of myself dying abed back home. My body's dying, immolated in a fever; it was too weak a thing to touch so strong a desire as mine for long. My insistent spirit discards its lilac casing and soon will blossom against the gasping stars alone. WANG WEN To die, to cease. You ask this of me, you invite me to my own destruction? In such a hurricaning leavetaking, love, what simple willow wand could stand assured that it would whip back to the mate that left it amid such hurried circumstance and rush of death, in such an overwhelming wind? CHIEN NU None, my love. WANG WEN None. None, none at all? CHIEN NU No, my love. Not a single assurance may slipstream from my ghost-mouth now, all drawn to you and the truth. And yet, I ask. Come to me, die to me, my love. WANG WEN My body's a tissue against wishes so strong! CHIEN NU Then flash it to a thinness of ashes and step these airs and fires your breath insists I inhabit. WANG WEN There is an adoring glory in this agony I embrace to taste you again, Chien Nu! CHIEN NU How can there be agony in a flesh dismissed to inexistence by our twinning wishes? WANG WEN Is there a human summation in this finish? CHIEN NU Never, never, never, and never! There's only us, silvertongue. WANG WEN Chien Nu.... CHIEN NU But step to this certain synergy, sweet sweet one, and all's a tasteless ecstasy tongue's absence makes. Divine the radiant choice you uplift in joy to take and all else swirls away from you into 'below.' Here, first burn your exam. There. It is easy, see how the light takes the paper? WANG WEN I see. I see. CHIEN NU So shall it be with you. A touch of immortality and all your mundaner self will wither and resolve to such a miniature sun. WANG WEN A sun. A day I shall never see. CHIEN NU A central intensity, certainly. My dear, here, give me some dark lock of your hair. [WANG WEN cuts off some of his hair, hands it to CHIEN NU.] CHIEN NU A handful of raven's feathers. It is well. There. See? It is you I burn here, and it is not you. How easily will the rest fade to this spirit's lightness. Do you see it going up and up, the drifting smoke, while the flared hair all vanishes at the line of the brightness? WANG WEN I see. I see. CHIEN NU Take this oil lamp's instructive illumination, now, and pound it open upon the coarse reed mat. WANG WEN Shall I do this? [WANG WEN takes the lamp and smashes it upon the floor. All goes up in immense flames of destruction.] WANG WEN I can barely speak into this black brightness: spoken floods of germinal loves choke black, underlit by your wordless countenance's unifying perfection. Look, the fire talks along my ink-stained robe, all whispers and insistence; its not too late to snuff them to deafness.... Oh, Chien Nu; oh I long to be with you! And yet my heart, like a double-drawn bow that has two arrows fletched and at the ready, one marked white for life, and the other black as death, I would live and die at once. I'd have both arrows knock against the rattling target. Desires spike my anxious limbs, and a rain of heavy nails, my devouring fears, frame liaisons with this flesh, entangling neurons against my spirit's unbinding willingness to die, and so live with you. Oh the strings are at my back, and I am prepared to fly all ways at once. CHIEN NU All ways move my way always. WANG WEN My heart is dense. Why do these motivating tensions of a free will tied to my body's estate harp on their unknotting as my own loose end? Must it be so? CHIEN NU Will it be so? WANG WEN Have your spirit's revelations becalmed these aching wires of unknowing that burn within my chest, pulled tight in anxious apprehension of my future state? What will happen to me? Shall we meet on the other side, to picnic upon that dread and death-rich turf as carelessly as children after school? Or shall I ravel back the whole, sweet fruit of my life to one dark, shucked skull teneting an unhosed hole? Shall I die to be free? CHIEN NU Shall you? WANG WEN I do not know I do not know I do not know! CHIEN NU Move to me; as light must beckon light, I ask. Dearest, the conflicting flames that your body throws but backlight your more incandescent soul. Sweet let the light I am indite the darkness that your kneeling body crimps to feel; one touch and all's a raiment rayed in peals of laughing light where not one shadowed echo of a shadow goes. Move to me; as cool water tempers a burning bone, let my love's assuring peace and quiescent licence touch some momentary quaver of yourself, sweetness, where no fleshly feeling, precursing ecstacies, goes. I gospel a romance that shuns infirm grace, devouring reticent roses in its holy, violet spires of spuming firelight once held in living vision's sparse intensity. You die, and that which once had moved and loved only on the lowly, sodden earth, restless for intensities, now all in one glory resides among the rafting fires of eternal shine. WANG WEN Have I done this? CHIEN NU Yes. END NOT USED: The day fall off to badness, and time starts to see its own bedraggled face in eternity. Would you have all your golden corn robbed, gnawed to a raw cob? WANG WEN Powerful over the prow of my unsteady self came this unmastering impulse MRS CHANG Well, Wang Wen is on the road. He must return with the imperial stamp on his lolling forehead, or no Chien Nu.
Jul 082020
 
Racy adaptation/theft of Sophocles' lightning-lit play 'Electra.'

 A VERSE TRAGEDY

 SCOLDING SOPHOKLES' ELECTRA

 TO A NEWNESS



       ULTRA

       renewed by

       GREGG GLORY


People spend their lives trying to exercise control
  over others, or trying to give up control of themselves.

No philosopher eats his metaphysics.

All material education consists of learning how to manipulate this or that:
Hands On.
All spiritual instruction can be said to consist of the injunction: Hands off!


 KLYTIE       the Old Bitch
 AEGIE        the Lover Boy
 CHRYS        the Bullshitter
 ULTRA        the Whiner
 ORESTES      the Young Bastard
 TEACH        the Old Fuck



Top^


ULTRA'S FIRST STATEMENT TO THE AUDIENCE

ULTRA I stand naked in front of you. I can't lie to you for one second. This is my story you will see. I see it as one of redemption, Justice. But how you will see it, my thousand eyes transfixing this darkness, I do not know, and I cannot say. I only know that you have entered it, my story. You will feel it in my blood as I feel it. I do not accept that any distance can exist between us. Not any distance in space. Not any distance in culture. Not any distance in time. Not any distance in language. Not in blood. Not in hope. You are me, in this. Who you will be afterward even you do not know. I stand naked in front of you. I can't lie to you for one second. Oh, my thousand eyes, my thousand eyes.... Top^

SCENE ONE

[ORESTES and TEACH among high rocks.] ORESTES Vision is tested at these rocks. Visibility nil. Anxious air. A mist hazarding the white peaks, all blasted and devoid of any flourishing touch of nature. Seems to have been for all time, this bareness, this timelessness. Was it always like this, Teach? TEACH Long as grown boys have attempted to repeat the careful words their fathers tried to tell them while they crawled; a long time, maybe. ORESTES Dawn's obscured. Night's infiltrations linger. Tell me: at daybreak, when christened by the uninterrupted glory of the sun, how is it then, this land beneath me? Doesn't burn then like the visioned Justice? TEACH Nope. Stays bleak like it is now. Same bleakness held in front of men's eyes. ORESTES No change from shade to sunlight? What a parable on inconstancy these changeless rocks reveal. Hold still, heart, and let a steady purpose roll you to a rock that may run these mazes unamazed and find the finish you imagined at the start. Say, that marketplace over there, in that ditch of rock, resembles what you told me about the Lukeum; but is that it? Is that the Lukeum, Teach? TEACH Used to be. The wolf-god Apollo charmed the spot, but the spell's faded. Only traders and merchantmen bare their canines to each other there now. ORESTES That's right. And that big temple on the left, what's that? Got to be Hera's holy place, right? TEACH Right. Everybody's heard of that place. The wife of Zeus, and she can bitch your fate if you're not careful. Jealous of her rites and due praises, she is. Like any wife. ORESTES Then we must be near where my father landed home from the war. Is that scythe of beach it? TEACH Damn, but you've licked up your learning. That's it. ORESTES And down below this curve of earth I see busy Mycenae, a trade capitol, barterers for all things gold; whatever human ingenuity deems transposable, there is bought and sold. A wind's chasing up from the enfolding ocean; it steals the soft mist from the hillside. TEACH Salt tang in the sniffing air here, very full, very full. Salt preservative keeps meats eatable, and many things past disuse. These grievances we carry, salted by our care, come to an appropriate port. ORESTES Now it stands clear in glittery miniature, there, in a thin wrinkle of the mountain, white as any bone, Pelops' palace, my home. I was born in that fleck of light. TEACH That's where I picked you off your dad's bloody body. Had you straight from your sister's hands, you know, and packed us into exile. ORESTES Yes. That's where the murder was done. A dirty story. TEACH Time's helped us circle back to your Dad's wet footsteps, from Trojan blood-sweats to this cliff; war-exhausted, war-driven, war-enduring, he limped here, thinking only of home and his sweet wife. ORESTES Damn her. TEACH And she's still your mother. Nothing simple in looking at her and putting the knife through. Braver than you have gone weak, a failed hand spatting away tears and not mopping up blood-stain; so swallow hard before you start. This business requires a finish, not a botch. ORESTES Let her maternity rot with her stinking bones in eternity. TEACH All the rites must be obeyed. ORESTES Kill her! TEACH Prayer insures good luck and success. ORESTES Fuck her! TEACH First, go to your Dad's tomb, pray, get the gods on our side. ORESTES I'll bury her! TEACH Give over with the proper libations and all that. ORESTES Dawn has come in blood-floods. Enough clear light to see my mother's face by. [TEACH hands ORESTES a dagger.] TEACH Here's a mirror for that face. A gift from a loving son to a mother beloved. ORESTES She will see herself in this. TEACH Fifteen years walking here, and this your last chance to wrestle back thy primacy of place, get the glory your Dad intended should be yours. Fifteen years the length of wait imposed by law, remember, before contested kingships cement to certainties. ORESTES These hourglass laws shape our acts, each sand grain ticking us forward to what's next. TEACH The process, the process, all things change but that, the way learned things get stuck in your head and stay there, make you do what you've got to, the process always staying the same, men performing acts boys get spanked for, seen it forever, women growing into their mothers, same belt cinched about fresh hips, Fate binding all things close that'd fray and rot otherwise. No forgetfulness in nature baby acorn rising into an oak, and not otherwise, flimsy birch seeding-out like offspring, spacious grapes shooting out tendril after tendril and every vintage tasting the same, or near enough, same stock same result. Vengeance dawns, and a human day grows up; wrap your man-sized sinews in veined revenge around the killer's throat! All the things I've seen, I've taken to nursing hatred, see the sense of getting even, nursed a solid hatred in your tenderness, boy, since from your father's peaceful garden you were bodily ripped. I thumbed the seed of your selfhood in new dirt, but loved it with the old blood, the old stories raining down day and night to bloom in dreams as evilly as nightshade. Sweet the scent! Baleful moon, nacreous sun, loom over all our plans, our hopes! [ULTRA wails or shrieks.] TEACH What high wailing was that? ORESTES A shrieking ghost. TEACH Restless dead. We came for them, and for the living also, settle the old scores, right things up in the gods' eyes, make some sense out of the fate we're doled. Some unquiet shade may be about. ORESTES Let's find out. TEACH No, no. Due sacrifice first, first business for you to go out on. Hike on over to your Dad's spot, pour the libation, quiet things down on the other side. I have to go into town and deceive the slaughterers. Nobody'll be looking for you if they're convinced you're dead. ORESTES All right. Top^

SCENE TWO

[ULTRA, at palace steps] ULTRA Sorrow! Sorrow hard-bitten and unending; grief's mountains do not yield to sun's kiss, all heavenly redemption in living love's cancelled, gentle rains by bitterness are gripped each tear turned to frost-nail, increasing the unendurable mountain, dark weight added to blackness; the grief, the grief! O father, o father, fallen between the still pillars of our miserable house; you, who raised them up crumpled like trash at their feet, wild with weeping, war-stoniness gone out of you, screeching for mercy, your man's voice out of register, hysterical through your gray beard, thinking to end your days in kingly peace. But, see, Aegisthus stands fast above you, ax across his shoulders brass-sharp as sunlight, inevitable as nightfall, in his grin no tinder of mercy, only lust-sparks burning for the rose-hipped bed, the sex of your wife! Your bed, your bed defiled! How many times? I conceived there, and my brother also, soft words in the house when we were growing up, how many caresses saw I and Orestes, saw us flow between you and your caroling wife, father and mother harmonious as sun and moon all the days of our childhood, bringing us up to love the gods and accept what's given. Ah God! Ah me! Grief! Grief! Night after night tearing my heart out, each star a rip in my skin, forcing light where I can barely abide midnight. Father, you are with me; the stars hurt us, I cannot look within any longer, all there is devastation, coal-black ruin, loving memories sharpened to tortures, blank space where a million joys had resided. [Pause.] And down whirled the ax. I saw it fall a thousand times before it fell. A million times every hour since that hour. Brains spattered everywhere, and a body on the flat stone, the life gone elsewhere, just a body there, a human body, a ruined thing disastered on the pavers; all life flown. And nobody else in this house seems to mind. [ ULTRA goes very near the entrance unseen. CHRYS is arranging flowers on a table in the palace.] KLYTIE How wonderful. What wonderful flowers now grow here. Thank you, Chrys. Don't you think they're wonderful, Aegisthius? Wonderful, wonderful. CHRYS You'll make me blush. ULTRA [Aside.] Ought to blush, in shame, damn shame, living with your father's slayers this way, bringin' 'em flowers, doing small chores, small things, keeping things fresh over the gravesite, while our father rots in Hell. O neglected shade, rise up, with all the earth gowned about you! All the air shall take up your vengeful measure and cry with your cry in a single heave: Death to Klytemnestra and Aegisthus or else in this hard world there is no Justice. CHRYS I grew them myself from dry discards. I gathered at tranquil dawn from rock sills dew-drops to water 'em every day. It's not impossible to keep any place looking new, no matter how it's used. Nothing's impossible with the right attitude. ULTRA O sisters' blood, that flowing from such opposite hearts can find no common good! I must find my father's grave, and interr my spirit there for some time of meditation and plain quiet. [Exit. Sits down near steps.] KLYTIE Don't you think they're wonderful, Aegisthus? AEGIE It's an absolute miracle, my dear. KLYTIE Wonderful, wonderful. CHRYS See you at dinner. KLYTIE Thank you, my daughter. [Takes off earrings and hands them to CHRYS.] And here, take these, a little gift, a silver thank you. It's a bull calf and a pregnant ewe, sacrificial stock, and handcrafted too. Silence. Enjoy them. [CHRYS dawdles unseen near the door.] KLYTIE Chrys is such a nice girl. AEGIE Not like that Ultra. KLYTIE She's a scratcher, that one of mine. AEGIE She doesn't seem fully enclosed by her own skin, itching at everything like that, feeling everybody's hurt worse than they do themselves. KLYTIE It's all just slights against her, the way she sees it, whole world against her. AEGIE And now the lovers are alone in the room. KLYTIE And to think, a little deed of death and all this was made over to us. AEGIE Come to bed. KLYTIE Here's the marriage altar so recently soaked. AEGIE His blood warms us. KLYTIE My Agamemnon's blood! Who knew how much there was, how much there could be, running to the bed-edge in waves of blood, getting between the cracks in the masonry, making every sure footstep slipshod. AEGIE I remember the act. I put the ax squarely through his brains and don't regret it. KLYTIE Oh Aegie, you wicked wicked darling, to do all that for me. AEGIE I'd do it again and again. [They kiss.] AEGIE One last round of negotiations with our neighboring states and all shall accept our rule of Mycenae as legal. KLYTIE But what about Ultra? She throws her voice as if she had arisen bearded from the grave, crying out to every visiting dignitary: "My father! my father! You trade with his killers! Can't you trade in justice just this once?" It makes their consciences almost as heavy as their purses. AEGIE We're in the clear, the fifteen year moratorium expires today. They've heard her claims,-- who hasn't?-- but if they were going actually do anything about them, about her snipping out, they'd have done it by now. And once they are finally assured that business, all business, will proceed as usual, with a little extra thrown in maybe here and there, the ghost of Agamemnon, and all of his old mercantile ties, will have been severed. Then we shall be able to settle down to a prosperous reign. KLYTIE Oh Aegie, it's just that... that.... AEGIE What is it, dear-heart? Come and tell. KLYTIE A vision has interrupted my night each night these last seven nights. Nightmare or hallucination, I don't know which to call it. All I know is I feel insubstantial when I wake, as if I were the imaginary thing, and not this horror imposing itself on me. Only in your arms am I myself again, gelled together enough to allow my throat to speak what my dreaming eye has seen-- the dread continent my drowsy heart has undertaken to visit. First time, that night of absolute silence, I could hear my heart telling lies in the silence. My blood coverlet was soaked when I woke. The quiet windows looked in on me, howling. Never thought I'd close my eyes again, clutching the amphora. And you so quiet next to me, a solemn air of vigorous detachment, breathing to breath, with no thoughts or fear about you; I, shaken with apprehension, touching the cold stone floor with my cheek as if fevered, your hand a normal warmness when I climbed back into the bed. That was the night after the big storm that took out part of the fig grove, and the dream-- well, I don't remember any of it. But that fear, a heart-hammer, that was something else. Two more nights I woke up like that, straining to orient myself on starlight, see the constellations, make sure I was in the same universe I had departed at bedtime. Fourth and fifth night I didn't sleep at all, trying to make the best of my fear, going over all of our doings with hard thought, retraced our steps with a clear head, arrived at the same conclusion as before. Still, each night, a trembling washed over my frame, like moving through a sheet of icicles and leaving skin behind on the points. We had to kill Agamemnon, had to, killing my girl that way for a whore, and our love so new, so real, giving me a human hope. The sixth night was a hellraiser, I'll never erase it from my mind, its in there, boiling away as furiously now as when it first erupted in my sight. I dreamed I stood alone in pure sunlight, a cross-breeze from the sea at my feet and all the land about me drenched in light. And the scepter of power was there, golden, in my hand, holding forth from my fist like a second sun and I tell you I felt at peace right then, seeing everything beneath me peaceful and prosperous. I was as white as Artemis, and nothing could touch me. Then it came-- ooooo-- that feeling chiming my ribs and turning my heart molten; I felt fever-weak, and the sunlight didn't abate, what I wouldn't give for a cool drink, my arms like a scarecrow's without the straw. I rolled my eyes every which way to see what was sneaking up on me-- but there was nothing, nothing! And all this time dread whining in my ears like a spool of wire being zipped out at top speed. I took the scepter in both hands and whipped it around in the emptiness, slashing at air until I stumbled, touching the dust with my open palms. And that's when I saw it --ooooo --that hem unmistakeable in sunlight, the cresting pattern handstitched in gold, wave on wave circling around to swish at my face abject in the dust. I didn't want to look up, but my eyes lifted of their own volition, and in truth I saw a resurrected Agamemnon standing, hands on hips, above me. And my heart failed, and black tears blotted him out. Then last night, after wine, my eyes failed and sleep entered me. There he was against the sky, same as before, grim as before, impossibly real. But now my idle hands gripped, as pulsing worms will curl and uncurl in the dirt. Idle hands discovered the discarded scepter, gripping it, arising to my knees with an airless scream, for no sound issued at my mouth, but all was most secret, most silent, and most still, even as when the murder had been done that threw Agamemnon revivified to my dreams. With the strength of ten living Agamemnon's did his apparition appall. My heart condensed, a strychnine of fear sealing it shut against all feeling operation. I hunched back from his terrifying face, eyes all fire in the unnatural face. Silent accuser! I was thrown to my confused essences, and I spat back! The scepter hissed into his chest, his face-- that I had kissed how many times!-- crushed itself into lines of astonished agony and as the scepter sunk to mid-chest, as I shoved its golden node through a heart I remembered had emboldened a thousand acts of courage, that face became transparent as an acid bath will show clear the skull within the corpse. He tottered at the shock. And every tottering emboldened my resolve, and I shoved, and I shoved, till he on his knees was placed, till he flung spattering with his last gasp to earth, and sunlight strong as truth over all. I stood back from the ghastly exhibition, smilingly alive, the thunder in my chest a drum of victory, and him all asprawl. The scepter, as you know who bears it most often, is delicately made, fine leaves and vines entwining a solid rod, as a sign of fruitfulness, a mellow hope encoded for the glory of the state. In this dream-light each leaf had glittered sharply, stood from its next nearest leaf in prim distinction, sharp as light, each goldenly alone. These leaves then, as I had noted, so sharp, so bright, turned all dull at once and lost themselves in a new profusion of that single stem. The rod increased in girth, branches and arms of long wood shot out from a tree suddenly grown tall out of the hole in Agamemnon my determination had created. Before two thuds of my heart had gathered together and gone, this tree covered all of Mycenae, and shaded dry valleys with sweet fresh globes of some golden fruit an infant could reach and pluck for sucking. AEGIE These vague makings of hallucination bear no force of fear for us. Dear, dear, wind your mind like a tightended bow bent to the final target, and now, even now, our destiny will fly to its center mark without obstruction. KLYTIE Oh Aegie, it's just that... that... AEGIE What? Do you believe in gods and ghosts and all-that-kinda-shit? Because I don't. Never have, never will. They ain't what got us here, honey. You know that. You know that. Whatever we did is whatever got us wherever we are. And right now that wherever's a not too disappointing status quo. KLYTIE I know. It's just that.... AEGIE The reading of your dream is simple: Out of Agamemnon's death, we shall flourish. Time's come nearly past due for our fifteen year's attendance to this orchard to bear some fruit that we can eat. KLYTIE Oh Aegie, it's just that... that... AEGIE What? That Ultra? Once we produce an heir she'll be considered as nothing more than the minor annoyance she always was. KLYTIE Yes, but until then.... The amount of talk that pours through that girl! And every raving cry a call that "just one act of Justice be done." AEGIE Once I have the sworn understanding from Athens and Sparta that our rule is legitimate, fixed in the common sight of law, as this fifteen years expired will make it we can have her exiled to some no-account town where she may wail to her heart's content. KLYTIE And no one's dignity's offended. Well and good. O Aegisthus! You are wonderful! AEGIE We must sort a life out of all this chaos we have courted, or else what will have been the point of any of it? [AEGISTHUS crosses to door.] AEGIE And make a libation, that should put off the gods. [CHRYS races past ULTRA, who is a bundle of rags.] KLYTIE Is it impossible to want as much as I want? Does desire, which shapes us, mar our faces? Do two lovers rut snarling, like dogs? Have I been undone by accepting the reality of my own feelings and wishes? I thought what I thought, and wanted what I wanted. Infinite came those final feelings, infinite that wish that provoked them in my heart! ULTRA [Aside.] Your heart? Excrement! KLYTIE Such fresh air! Subtle mist, buff of pewters blunting the rockspar, obscuring, curing such harshness. I have my grand house, and I rule it. I have my young fuck in the old bed, my father's betrothal gift, satin sheets and all, and I rule him too. No ghost, no guilts! [Laughs.] And the birds come to freshen my doorstep with the clarity of their singing, my only judges, as if I'd made a better place for singing than their blue-varnished heaven! No. No songbirds this morning. [Notices ULTRA.] I might have known. Damn you, Ultra, out here shitting on the stoop again? Talking to the birds? Chased away by your caw I've no doubt. God how you grate! "Killed, killed, killed! Doesn't the world know how my father's brains were spilled right here where I keen, blue turds all over the walkway? And injustice smells worse than death...." Blah, blah, blah. And you condemn me with a spitting mouth to the hissing gossips of the neighborhood; you make complaints upon my virtue who are the first issue of it breechment! Is not a woman born to be loved? And am I not a woman, mated and in her house, obeying all the proprieties of the town, circumspect in everything, in nothing overzealous or unseemly, but chaste of face when a calm front is called for, making sweet oblations to the dear dead? Even now you see me walking with my wine headed for your father's hellacious rockpile, and after all the wrongs he done me! Leaving me alone so young, a widow in all but name, chafing myself at home, nothing to do but keep things tidy until he got back from that stupid war. Going across the seas for another woman, as if there weren't cause enough at home for him to lift his sword. A paltry relique it was when he came back with it, dangling between his leathery old grieves. A bolt of rust and not much else, I'll tell you! Hmm, well, enough of that. I'll start sounding like you-- in another year or two, if I keep it up. And you know I had just cause in killing your father. Who I did kill, I'll admit. ULTRA Yes. Who you did kill, you'll admit. KLYTIE Oh, Justice was at my back, Justice held my blade hand steady. O how I did prompt my new lover's manliness to the task! Nothing but righteousness could shell his heart with hard enough a determination to perform so ugly an act in light. And I had cause enough, oh I had cause! ULTRA Cause enough to kill. KLYTIE Remember little Ipphy, your sister, the other, the younger, setting sail to war? Gods in a whirlwind came down to the deck demanding her sacrifice in lightning, or else no Helen for Menelaus, uncle Menelaus who'd take used goods and send ten thousand to their deaths to get 'em, too. And your father, the great war leader, sweating before the cloud-face, not facing his men; clean in his conscience to kill her, to kill your very sister! Ah God, God, what bloody hours I groaned on her birth night to get the little wriggler out of me! Your father sighed and fell asleep when she was concieved. Made on this same wine I'm bringing to his ditch today, to spill. If out of the raving madness of the sea your dead sister could manage a voice, what would she say about him? Your Dada? Not as you cry would her aggrieved ghost cry, nor would render your father's sad accounts on my overburdened back. I'm too old to live with such cruelties anymore. Let your hard words harp against the dead, and let the living live. Put the blame where it belongs. ULTRA [Aside.] My tongue is a knife, and will part your heart soon enough. [Aloud.] I notice the cunning escape-work in the way you talk, letting onto truth by implication, and sideways, but directly saying nothing at all. Yes you killed him, but there was no justice in splitting that noble man like a hamhock, no respect, and him the founder of our lineage; can't have offshoots if the roots are plucked up. No blossom in the dry air, damp earth sweating to conceive to no purpose, the firm white seed removed by evil hands; I can't hang crucified in the air and have you sound me out like a treetrunk. Ain't gonna happen. My new roots require blood. KLYTIE Split him to the spine, and still not enough blood? Revenge ain't no way to justice, no how. ULTRA Lust-sweat won't help you skid to a steady stop, and that's all the reason you killed Dad anyway. KLYTIE Shut your whore-mouth. Shut it now. ULTRA Ain't gonna happen. You asked me to talk, so I'll rumble my bellyfull. Ain't often I get a chance to say what's eating me and have you do anything besides curse and walk away. KLYTIE All right then, all right. ULTRA [Misperceiving for another 'shut-up!'] No! No, you listen to me. You listen. If you'll make my dead sister stand witness to your crimes as reqium, then I'll gladly prosecute. Ten thousand men, you numbered them were locked airless between Illium and Troy, no way to stir the breakers in their direction, endless flats of water, tedium endless, grey-green and no let up in sight, 1o,ooo terrified, waiting for scurvy or starvation, not knowin', and not a breath of god-sent wind to puff them onward. Then the word came down from the gods: a sacrifice.... and that's what she was-- holy holy holy-- a sacrifice. Saved ten thousand men by her blood-let. A tough situation and a brave resolution, no less. What were they going to do, blow themselves to Troy? KLYTIE Agamemnon had enough wind for it. ULTRA So you don't agree with the way I see things? Our histories miss each other, each sailing off to separate destinations, distinct Troys; only sea's chaos the same, similar journeying, specks of thinking light lost in the greyness. KLYTIE Histories. Well, at least I know what I've done, the why of it not escaping me neither. And, no, I don't agree with you. Nobody does. You're on your own. ULTRA I wonder if that's because there's no sense in what I'm saying, or no profit in my being right. KLYTIE No profit? That's a nice thing to say to your mother. I've talked to everybody, and nobody's got your view except you. Folks know what's what, which heads hold up through storms, which banners can float undamaged. And nobody bothers to remember your father anyway, his ghost's just so much dust to us living folk, a fragment of folklore even the slaves won't sing anymore; dusts and ghosts of dust, nothing. ULTRA Can't you put a little remembered divinity in your looks, a spatter of real prayer against those yellow old teeth? Hissing and spitting against Dad like he was still here getting under your skin more than ever. KLYTIE Why you little bitch! ULTRA If I'm a bitch, I inherited it; no bark but I learned to crank it out from you, performing on your hind legs like that, paws jiggling, and another innocence slaughtered; you hopping through the right hoops in proper sequence. KLYTIE You're insane! ULTRA What's sanity? KLYTIE You can't go against the whole world, girl. Nobody has that kind of strength. ULTRA I don't need strength. I've got what's right right in front of me, no swivelling eyes abject to dirt, or saintly to mountaintop necessary just a straight look and a steady pace, get me where I need to go. KLYTIE But you don't obey what's right. Off on your own clamoring and throwing dust on yourself, practically speaking tongues to that pile of rocks that's got your dad under 'em. Hysterical screechings off every which way going on about justice and injustice looking every day dirtier and less like my daughter, less human, and taking no concern over it neither. It ain't right. You don't follow the way things go. You're a perpetual annoyance, and not just to myself. Nobody likes you. There's not even anything pretty left in your face. You're older than your own mother, Apollo knows! ULTRA What do any of these things matter? I build myself up out of my thoughts, no flesh about me, not the real me; built the house, live in it, my sound tower, can't see it from the outside while residenced within. KLYTIE You stick your neck out too far, somebody'll cut it off for you. I don't care what you think its made of. ULTRA Things you say, surfaces and meaningless frictions, no more, no less. What's right is right. Go on. KLYTIE Apollo knows I tried to rear you the best way I knew how, considering everything, terrible years, you and Aegisthus my only bright spots, and the obedience of the people was a blessing. They know how things are supposed to go, which way order comes down from the top and best obey it, that way's prosperity. The best way I knew how, considering everything, I can't be responsible for that shiv of tongue, though. That's all your own pure invention. ULTRA Apollo knows. KLYTIE You've got to pray for what's expected, dear, follow the rules, listen to consensus on things, see which way the cards fall, then play your hand, how else are you going to know what to do? What's permissible and what's not? ULTRA Strange advice, coming from you, you with all your murderous history, ignoring every force that would've stopped you, holiness and horror both. KLYTIE You do what I say. I know what's best. Experience hurts; and I've learned from the beating. Can't go on what you feel all the time, that's just chaos. ULTRA And Justice isn't to be expected? KLYTIE Apollo, No! If there was any justice, do you think your father would have abandoned me the way he did? Cruel as a tapeworm, the way that ate at me. But you have to take what's given, accept the lot as it falls out, deal with the contingencies, be flexible, pursue opportunites by scent, see when they pass by, not rush it. And don't go outside the acceptable, it's as simple as that. ULTRA And that's sanity? KLYTIE Yes, yes. It's what's normal, for god's sake. ULTRA Follow the rules. Like a circle of dogs going nose to ass, nose to ass, following themselves nowhere everywhere. Follow the rules, don't break the chain. Or else, how am I going to know what to do...? KLYTIE Yes, yes. ULTRA Follow the rules. What's permissible and what's not...? KLYTIE Exactly. ULTRA Exactly. KLYTIE Well, I have to go and make my libation now. ULTRA I'll follow you and make sure everything's done straight. KLYTIE God don't work save by letting what's to be, be, child. You'll see. Top^

SCENE THREE

[KLYTIE, making her sacrifice at the grave. ULTRA has followed her. Continuous with previous scene.] KLYTIE Drowned by all this circumstance: ungrateful children in a grinding land, no longer may my body dance that was wild under Agamemnon's hand. I've had my full load of suffering and no more may I take, I gave all I got of love and then that fountain found its brake. Dearly do I love thee, Apollo who handles the sun like a song; blood and wine in the libation ditch, oh I have prayed for long and long. Spare me if you can, Apollo, hard words that knive from this bitch--- One killing doesn't make me a killer. I live with a gentle fellow; though old, I'm no murderous witch. ULTRA Now I could get her with one of these rocks, kill her, throw her down with Dad. KLYTIE Hard words can knot the virtuous whether they've some truth, or none, come lick this libation, virtuous, obeying your laws every one. O Apollo Lykeios, decide! Your decisions must fall as a dream: if lucky, that dream shall I ride out of this narrow nexus, a stream carrying me to wider skies. [KLYTIE begins to exit.] KLYTIE [Aside.] But if some stream of evil should flow from your mouth to mine, I'll drown my enemies in evil and bob with what lightness I find. My cash shan't float from my pocket, obscure all cheaters' eyes! This house that I rule, now lock it, this scepter that I stole shall be mine! O Phoebus Apollo, you hear me now give me all that I ask; friends that I've got, bear near me;--- stay near me, my children, I ask: all bitterness in your dark breast refute, for we are strangers in such gloom; that spite in your eyes-- confute,-- it strikes my wild heart with wild doom. [Exit.] ULTRA I feel like Philomela, raped by the death-dealers unable to tell a soul my troubles, helpless to revenge myself or seek justice, filling my spendthrift days with curses and no hope of satisfaction on the horizon. Still, pushed to the limit, stampeded into the obscurest corners of howling night I don't need to stay silent for any reason. If time wants to shine on murder and grief and keep on shining, let it at least see the real thing. Can't stop the nightengale sighing interminably over her terminal young; can't stop me from sighing, right on the front steps of the place, making strangers stop and stare at my insanity, and hearing my cause. Let all the world become an ear, and I'll shout my grievance past hearing's capacity. O deep Hell, and drab Persephone who goes mooning about among the dead waiting for enchanting spring to free thee, if prayers or petitions, or any cause of right has ever followed the breeze of its intent and made itself heard to you, then let mine enter your ear but once, for I have with hurricaning bellows blown it down below: OO Queen of Avenging, O Vengeance! Hear me! You who see blood spilt, see murder, see tyranny, see promised beds flung adulterous to another, Hear me! Hear me and curse! O god-creating Furies of doom and revenge fly from the burning ground of these hot graves---- aid and defend the innocent with fires of wrath, flaming swords and daggers turn inward on the guilty hearts of killers. Avenge, avenge! Abide not my father's death, give meaning to hope, kill all.... [Giving up.] and send me my brother. I can do no more on my own: This grief is too heavy. [Enter CHRYS.] CHRYS Still wailing to the skies about Daddy's dying? ULTRA Tired of my fly-buzz chatter around your dungpile? CHRYS Well, yes. Yes, if you want to know. Don't you ever get tired of being so right all the time? ULTRA What's right is right. I didn't make it that way, but I'm not going to forget that it's right, either. CHRYS Oh look, an olive tree. ULTRA Full, dull green, heavy and ready. CHRYS Remember what a stripling it was? Planted that year Dad died, shivering so skinney against the wind. ULTRA Same age as Orestes. CHRYS Now it shadows me, and I'm a tall woman. ULTRA Yes. It's fat with dusty olives. Let each one be pulled and pitted with hot pimentos, then spiked in Klytie's gorge, and I will call it a tree fit for picnicing under. CHRYS That's horrible! ULTRA A grave feast, and a serious eating. Look closely, the fruit almost breaks the bough. CHRYS Another winter, and this tree will kill itself. ULTRA Perhaps the tree will find some comfort hacked up, the chosen wood for some death blaze, the funeral pyre of some pious woman about to die. CHRYS You sure have a cruel way of saying things. ULTRA Can't you see, if we let Dad go unavenged to oblivion, let things fall as they fall, no human opposition defining and raising us against the blankness, a shadow out of shadows, at least that, that we're nothing ourselves? CHRYS I just see how agitated you get over what seems like nothing. Been talking like this for years, now, bewildering years. ULTRA And through the straights we need to navigate will you take it, buffet upon buffet, roughed up by the circumstances, crashed in the rapids, a screaming skull moving ninety toward a waterfall, mother kicking me, and father gone to hell, you yourself pried out of your inheritance, washing dishes for the usurpers, smile if you feel like, smile if you don't, dishonest in action even if honest in heart-- will you take it, so much, will you take it, so much death, and such unknowingness? CHRYS Maybe its better not knowing anything. Accept things as they are, shove on. ULTRA A lesson. Dogs and death. No lonely howl of mourning; they bark and aggrivate the earth with their short claws awhile, and go on. The briefness of their grieving teaches me to cry longer. CHRYS A wolf will mate a wolf for life. Does that teach people to get divorced? ULTRA If it does, at least it doesn't demand that the parting laws get carved with axes on the husband's heart. CHRYS A dove whose mate is shot from the sky will coo long evenings with sorrow and not drink a drop of mercy or eat a crumb of kindness until she dies too. ULTRA Did the female dove construct the bow wait titivatting in blinds and twang the arrow onward with her beak? CHRYS Of course not. ULTRA Ah, how I long to have wings that adore the air! I would tangle myself in Klytemesta's grey hair like an evil bat, shitting and shrieking, shrieking and shitting, and lever out her eyes like rare eggs, eating the sight out of each as they stared at my eating teeth. CHRYS Ultra! She's still our mother! Say a kind thing, temper yourself, we hatched at her nest, not elsewhere. ULTRA Then let her discover what a cuckoo she fed. I will live for my revenge. CHRYS You are dangerously insane. Can't kill mom no matter what she's done. No beast eats its dam. ULTRA No, only heroes can manage that. Sniff out Justice, my dreams tell me, however faint the scent, and this my father's corpse stands a mountain of murder to scout out some Justice from its rotting peaks. It fairly stinks to heaven. CHRYS So, you're gonna sniff like a dog, scout about like a vulture, wive a corpse like a maggot and meditate murder like a psychopath. Ultra, my sister, stop, and think, even a dog, a bird, an insect, a psycho knows enough not to go up against the people in power. And Aegisthus rules here, Klytie is his instrument of state; this is where we live, this is our home, and its only staying that way because they'll allow it. They meet the executioner's payroll, not you and me. Dad and Sis are dead, isn't that enough for you? Do you have to send this whole family to hell? Use your head to think, and not just your mouth to howl, keen, snip, yawp, and wail: revenge! ULTRA I would rather be any zoo of creatures that could still remember Justice than a daughter that could teach herself to forget her father. CHRYS We're one sister short of a condemning quorum, can't jump the outcome, can't pole-vault to a narrow winning by just one truth, and that your own; reality's sandpit, just lying flat, will take your measure, your heels' imprint landing in a stiff spray among a million contestants', scattershot footsteps leading off in every direction, confusion of intentions, no mark deeper than another. ULTRA One sister short.... CHRYS You ever feel that way, missing little Ipphy, her delicate heart excited about everything, trusting Dad more than the sun, laughing on his shoulders, more expecting the dawn to blow out than Dad not rise everyday and love her. ULTRA Can't change what's happened. Don't expect me to start forgetting it out of venal convenience; Dad and Ipphy, well, what's between them's buried. Mom's another matter-- and I ain't DONE nothing yet; convey the facts, line up the truth, that's my point of view, then let judgement stalk the territory. CHRYS Ipphy knew how to talk to you, access your sweetness, touch you; to me you're a mystery, troubled, troubled, the past glowing harder in your eyes than today's plainness. ULTRA And the future comes up sharp against me too don't forget, a razor focus, drawing days near, getting things clear out of the present fuzziness. CHRYS Ultra, there's something I've got to tell you. ULTRA Uh-huh. Say it out then; we can say anything to each other. CHRYS Well, you know that the fifteen years' wait before the grant of legitimacy to Aegie's reign is over this year; this year he gets the crown, and everybody'll smile about it too. ULTRA Fifteen years; a long time to live with murderers, inside or outside of the house. I'm just glad he's not around today; one less hassle. CHRYS Well, you don't know this, but when Aegisthus gets back they're going to nail you shut in a closet. No eyehole for eyes, no slot for your supper. ULTRA Really? What do you mean? CHRYS Mom had a vision. Scared her, I can tell you, and it doesn't bring you any good news either. ULTRA Spit it out. But to one side, please; I don't think I want you touching me. CHRYS Aegisthus was leaving to sew up their position in Athens and Sparta, make sure that any feeling that you'd been slighted by their power-grab was dead, that commerce and trade talks could go on as usual, jabber and cash transactions as usual, all the ships in their slips. ULTRA Good, good. I see. CHRYS Good? I don't think so. Cutting us out it sounds like. But anyway, mom came out telling this dream; and her face was a mask of sheer terror! But anyway, I think she dreamed that Agamemnon's back. ULTRA And that scared her. CHRYS You should have seen her eyes, pried gigantic at a cloud that dragged as Agamemnon's beard had dragged. ULTRA Let her eyes roll out like dice, her age rake trenches for her false tears to boil down her face in heated rivets. Let her spinster's finger gesture hexes-- I don't care! Let her hair out-shriek an apocalypse of ravens, my indifference remains. CHRYS Your coldness scalds my skin. But her face-- her lips, her blue ruined lips if only you could have seen them you'd have cried, twisting and jerking in pain to give her noiseless nightmare even the substance of a syllable. ULTRA Her lips! Let them jerk and tear and twist, grimace and implore, shake straightness from their meeting, resign an infinity of smiles to a tragic, imploring gulp-- let them! For now she is on the hook, Agamemnon's ghost has gaffed her. Jerk and grin your little blood mouthfuls while you can O Mother, O Klytemnestra-- the wire of God's will still reels you by your skinned heels to Hell. CHRYS Bitterness, bitterness.... ULTRA This bitterness betters me, This senseless hating hates not to hate; un-hate is my only enemy, only lack of passion is a crime. In this, my mother and I consummate, sparring flares of hideousness, she and I. Our spasms and passions, alike as excised aortas. CHRYS To live and to kill, is that it? Stabbing and gasping, and stabbing and gasping what kind of life is that? ULTRA Life is where all the real killing happens. Look at me: I ache and subside. CHRYS But you'll recover yourself, and kill. ULTRA Yes. Yes, I'm a huntress. And mom is an absolute bitch, a pure whore lifting her skirts to Dad's attacker, rubbing her white cunt in the blood. CHRYS God! Can you really think that? You are a monster, a catastrophe, fed on the bled bone of an eyeless justice. How can you see any rightness in suffering? Ultra, Ultra, sister, sweet sister, show some pity! For your own sweet sake! ULTRA Pity is no part of divinity. CHRYS Even a cat will bite the head off of a fish first, before eating the heart of the carcass. ULTRA This is our millionth winter of living here, under the stone house white and alone the stone portico sloping over the wreckage. Mom's god-eyes enlarge and shark at us: we swirl under her, white, small, vulnerable as pebbles. She is an old stone Gorgon fishing for stone fish with her petrifying glance. I am trapped. I cannot shrink again to the necessary slenderness of escape. I cannot go minnow-thin and disappear again under her exploded nova stare. Can you? CHRYS You look at me too much. That righteous stalking stare demands bibles. My faith is small and personal. I don't have any spirit to spare. Your quest's inquisitive ripples backwash my silk silts to ashes. [ULTRA begins to protest.] CHRYS My altar is subtle, a dim thing, quiet velvet comforting a minor god. An incendiary substance, your 'Justice', pushes me towards sulfer, a raucous avalanche of religious lights and bonfires; your cause and my cause burn clean together. We are sisters of a single slaughter, of a single murdered deity, the twin daughters. But I cannot flare and brighten as you do: you are my sun, my sister, gigantic, I am a dwindled candle, dully lumed. I cannot wake in a dawn of pure injustice and increase myself to avenging horizons, a sheer bloom of dooming illuminations. My gown doesn't shout itself to starlight, my dark heart doesn't ache for rightness. What is justice to me-- sister, listen!-- What is justice to me who cannot hear the wind's grace when my new earrings mingle their silvers? ULTRA Add your little light to mine and how much greater we shall shine! ....And when Orestes gets here, CHRYS Well he's not back yet, is he? ULTRA You should just see how mom goes all pale and trembly when I start shouting that Orestes'll come back and fix her wagon. CHRYS Oh what's the use of talking trash: "Orestes'll this, and Orestes'll that you wait till Orestes shows up and then you'll see..."? ULTRA But he will come. And dread and holy will be his coming. No holds on Justice then. What's right'll come out. You wait and see if it don't. CHRYS There you go again. [Pause] ULTRA When Daddy died, I slept and dreamed on his grave, called him up, all the things I love that get ripped away from me, my hands a girls', my love unforged by grief, by harshness but getting the anvil all the same, hit, hit, hit, getting put through it, and no choice about it as if all that harm wouldn't change things forever. But I kept to my dream, seeing things my way, steady, trying to rescue heaven by the way I think about it, keep meaning in the stars, our touches, not letting that fade and wander fixing it in memory and attaching it in act so that my decaying substance might accomplish one thing, one thing against the eternities. CHRYS Language strains, can't carry the load experience gives it, breaking our thoughts when it fails. ULTRA I've tried it, stuffed the sun and moon in my mouth, a saved heaven, and every star still shining, all the loved things communing together, and it doesn't work; failed, failed. Tongue's no replacement for the things it speaks of. The weight, the heaviness of this life, burden unbearable and no groan to unload it; ferry ourselves to escapeless death we must, grinding all our livliness to the one dust. [CHRYS tries to hug ULTRA.] CHRYS Damn it, why won't you let me hug you? ULTRA Nearness is difficult... there's a death between us. If I find it too hard to touch whatever it is that surrounds me now, for a kindness, say it's because I touched bottom as close as drowning once. CHRYS If Orestes comes back, it'll be in poverty, and alone; he won't come marching with an army at his back. I'm sorry, this truth isn't meant to hurt you, but your chances of finding 'Justice,' spying out what's right, discerning the circumstances, knowing fog from danger, and doing right when you see it, with this family the way it is, won't be any better then than now. ULTRA Oh no. No. There you're wrong, and I know it. When death hatched spitting and attacked Papa, swerving Mom's warped skull like a snakehead, Orestes was nursing on a new, venomed egg; his teeth grew points and he raped its innards, sucked down vengeance and remembrance in the same ragged gulp as his existence. Then he sucked harder on his human thumb, dumb rememberer, and chose, like a lion, or an angry crow to grow and kill. And now he'll come, bloody and bloodied, an embryo gone wrong, stalking ashes in the chalky womb that once upon a time had burned and made him. Oh and then-- what a chloroform halo he will cast! His glance will strip her to the viscera, his fingers transfix to the knuckles in her undressed chest, feeling and stabbing for the cancerous worm of her absent heart. God, what a death! And he will come. He will come. And dread and holy will be his coming. CHRYS Something's happening back at the house. Let's check it out. [Exit CHRIS] ULTRA Come to me my justice, young man with a straight look, straight eyes screwed into a face unafraid to look, look and see things they way they really are. Come to me my Justice, ratchet back the skin that veils the hidden heart, shut out self-seekers from your clarity arrive with a stance of pride, and leave prideful head snapped straight up on young shoulders walking into the mix of things and not quailing or looking back in dark doubt. Come to me my Justice my Orestes risen and beatified my Orestes unmolested by years or by hours the tall sun still sharp in your glance no moan in your demeanor, no mope, but quick truth firmly grasped, thought strong and right-minded, action following as the incredulous lion follows the lion-tamer, as water follows the waterfall-- how could it not? action well-disciplined and reasonable, a strange thing on these acres these days everything flowing out from the center, truth established in principle and the tenets laid out plain. O Orestes, my handsome Justice! come to me and wash out these crimes see that the evil gets pent back up in Hell and free creatures can talk in daylight greeny asphodel under no shadow night and day spliced back together in peace not as daymare and nightmare rudely chained but as a joyous circut linking light and its lessening never the utter black again as now, ichorous eclipse at siesta, noon run out of the sky drabbled in filth.... Maybe then I could sleep some at night no more screams at moonrise. And come soon, come soon my brother I am in such need of thee. Top^

SCENE FOUR

[ULTRA goes to join CHRYS near the palace. They overhear TEACH's story. Continuous with previous scene.] KLYTIE Tell us your story, strange man. ULTRA [Aside to CHRYS.] Listen sharp! and tell me if you can hear any truth in his words. TEACH Didn't shill my story to strangers, await the kin, they told me, and I waited. Now here we are. Takes a stranger to tell a strange tale. Divination not my intention but straight truth unwatered. Come close. Orestes came into the city like a whirlwind, anxious for fame, never seen the like, dust up to his eyeballs, and a desperate glance, but dignity withal, he had it, dignity unshorn, and him with all his troubles, and an exile to boot. Came dirty and road-weary, came afoot many miles in a luckless condition, came with a grim determination to win all, reverse his losses, change his luck, "I come here for the Delphic prize, no less," he says, his eyes white out of the dirt-smear, and no friend to bathe his head or get his legs in shape for the race. So I done it. Clipped him short, washed him, put his name in the lists like any friend would do; and when the herald called the first race, a baritone and a herald, a low note over the fresh-raked track, and the runners came loping out, easy in their stride, I swear I could only see Orestes shining out as the sun clipped the stadium edge, god-fate shining through him, more than his share, conquering the moment, a dawn embodied, so high above his fellows was he, and the crowd wild with admiration that had been yawning and making chit-chat before, and the judges too, staring down, and he won the first prize, first race, like that, without panting. Never saw the like, wearing the crown of victory like an afterthought, an emanation of that prize face chosen for winning before they thought to scrape the track, before the judges thought to judge or the people gather to witness. His body followed the runner's form and perfected it, finished up before he started, no room for error or gracelessness. I can't tell all of it. Some things are too subtle for old eyes, some things not. But he took all five first prizes, faultless, like the general would've, spirit of Agamemon racing through young Orestes there. All saw it; judges slapping each other on the back, trading stories from before the war. KLYTIE Spirit of Agamemnon! ULTRA My Orestes! Now you'll come running home for sure. TEACH But the gods are not moved by mortal shows and keep a constant divinity in their wills, unmoved by our doings as by our wishes. Who would kill the unkindness of the skies that gods in wayward tyranny rain down on men must slay with prayers. [A SLAVE GIRL gives TEACH a drink as he recites the tragic events without really disturbing the flow of the story.] Next day was the chariot race; first on foot then high astride, that's the rule. They dragged out the regulation chariots. Little boys up before sunrise, giving them a spit-shine, putting all in order. And the horses were combed to a sheen, dawn burnished by the flanks a-tremble with strength, shimmer greater than on the chariot-works. Orestes got a white horse, a fine Aneian responsive to his whip hand, calm eye and a stiff pace, raring to go. And the bronze horn went off while I was fiddling with something, and I didn't like that: inauspicious. I looked up and saw nothing but a fumble of dust as high as the stands, all heads peering into the confusion, and the trumpet put to silence by the racket of the race, hooves and harnasses loud as Hades. Then a blinding wind came in, clearing out the skirmish, threw dirt against the far side of the stadium but I could see. Orestes leading on the inside track, not sparing the whip, but laying it on to get the job done, and I was glad to see it. Out of chaos came came his strong arm, sinew light and shapely, strong as stone, or like the pull of a vine toward sunlight, that living tension; him white, face all yeowl above that horse of blurr-blancheness. Then that man from Naxos came up on him, sudden, and a whole band of out-lyers jimmying him into the pillars, shove of axle against the ungiving pillar, sparks in the dust-bank, explosions of light under colorlessness, unruly light, and my heart jammed against my breastbone, but he steadied it, Orestes steadied his horse, hung back for a turn, watched it out like a trained hunter, too smart to lose all. No berserker, but a human being at the reins, thinking, thinking, quiet under the thunder. Then he saw his chance, the pack had spaced, the center still crowded, but on the inside a space appeared, where a skilled hand could dart in quick, regain the lead. Alot of any race is iffy, but skill makes chance favor itself. And he worked himself in there, steady, steady, himself between the pillar and the pack again, and the white horse shy from the first go-round keeping more to the other horses than before, swift in a squadron of swiftnesses, and then they were on the leeward side of the track and the dust offended their nostrils and the other fella's horse shimmied into Orestes and he took the flaw hard; brown dust was hollowed by his body's whiteness, flagrant against dark, and the blood dark, appearing from nowhere, head and legs airward at once, horses' legs and men's legs pointing up streamed with wetness, a simple wetness, dust not yet solemn over it, a black wet not yet obscured to road-dullness. And everything was a tangle and nothing was clear. And my eyes stopped looking, but the wails penetrated my senses. Awful, awful. A god in the dirt. And a team of athletes was sent, laurelled and not a loser among them, to carry the disastered body out and bring back the ashes. And here they are, in an urn too little to hold the shed tears. KLYTIE Orestes has been hacked out of my terrors; Aegisthus, come home soon. TEACH I won't give him an elegy, me, who's overdue for one himself. It was an awful thing to see. Nothing worse. And that's my story. KLYTIE Bring me the ashes. I need to touch him, somehow. Oh I don't know just what I feel! A mother first, and not a queen, you understand? So many sorrows come with a birth and no end to trouble. TEACH If I have given my thinking over to the grave forgive me, for I am old, and yet still see no hint of splendid consummation in my finishing. I am old, old. KLYTIE I'm still seeking some sign of sense myself in the undecipered texts the gods let fall to us. Top^

SCENE FIVE

[CHRYS and ULTRA walk toward the gravesite area. ORESTES arrives at the grave, and quietly offers his libation while CHRYS and ULTRA chant. Continuous with previous scene.] CHRYS God gazes on. ULTRA Eon after eon proceeds. CHRYS Stars drop like gnats against sand. ULTRA And the absolute zero of God's slashed face becomes a traffic-pattern of wheel-ruts, CHRYS each dark char a star-mark. ULTRA Meteors hack a passage down his august cheek. CHRYS Oh, Orestes! ULTRA Agamemnon and Orestes scale the lunar cliffs of his brow, a black ant and a red ant. CHRYS One carries a lit candle, one a snuffer. ULTRA God can't see us from his snowfield of heaven. CHRYS All things good, all things evil crawl along his eyelid like slugs, ULTRA sliming, humping, sliming, CHRYS on their irretrievable way. ULTRA God spits, and a sea occurs. CHRYS God smiles, and the earth sweats summer. ULTRA God winks, and infinite horizons snap shut. CHRYS God breathes, and the planets start their dance. ULTRA God pisses, and my heart fills with acid. CHRYS God cries, and a million spiders web and display the tears. ULTRA God kneels, and the outraged rise in complaint. CHRYS God barely concentrates, for a moment, and every soft calf stumbles to sacrifice itself. ULTRA Another moment, and all life storms the altars, every face goes lightless. CHRYS God shuts his fist, and annihilation is created. ULTRA God laughs, and justice is crushed in a horse-race. CHRYS Death, says God, and we all fall down. ULTRA You do understand! Are you with me? Everything'll only come out right by your action and my action, not otherwise. CHRYS I'd better go finish my chores now. [Exit CHRIS.] ULTRA God stutters, and words shake off the page. Mother and sister both against me, no way out. I cling to empty space. O God, O Vengeance, why have you abandoned me? Orestes, dear, you're buried deeper for every racing, rising hope I had. ORESTES No, I'm not. ULTRA But, but.... ORESTES Hush. ULTRA Now all that was drear is transformed to something dear, fear, not emnity, forgot; fictive fate forgives the harrassing dreams I've got, forgives them, Argives, nay, redeems the lot! Vengeance is Justice when Ultra has her day! Out of cold mind's dismissal a saving voice arrives, a missive from plundered hopes to one who thought all undone; Oh, my blessed Orestes, is it you who've truly come? Vengeance is Justice when Ultra has her day! If joy shall not break my ear, sustaining hope did never hear this living voice that voids all distress and leaves my happy heart a wilderness. Ahh, yes, yes, Orestes, it is you, I'd say. ORESTES ...Vengeance is Justice when Ultra has her day. Stay hushed, my Ultra. Truth doesn't need a gong. And even a just death requires stealth. ULTRA How much louder shall we crow and bay over Klytemnestra's grave, than today we may say. ORESTES Brother and sister then may kiss. ULTRA And howl! ORESTES Oh how much moreso then than now! ULTRA I've got a plan.... ORESTES That old fella who just told that whopper, that's Teach, brought me up in exile, my only friend. ULTRA Never saw such a beautiful old head, raising up a flat lie to serve what's noble. ORESTES Kept me informed about your sorrows too, every diplomat coming back with a sad story, every year something worse, travesty after travesty, and nobody giving a damn, not one hand extended down in mercy, or holding fast in solace, because it was against the will of the murderers in power, the killing elite. ULTRA A cabal of blood, running over my rights every which way, day after day, as if I'd inherited nothing. But I've got a plan to fix that.... ORESTES Nope. No time for that. Got to get on with it while the lie's still holding up, giving us a clear chance, an unfair plus. Is she in the palace? ULTRA [Nods.] Crying up a storm of fake tears. ORESTES Back over this way, isn't it? ULTRA Um. Yes, it is. ORESTES [Gripping dagger.] That's the way he taught me. ULTRA Father, I won't be back without Mom's body to stove up next to yours in the family plot. [Exit.] Top^

SCENE SIX

[Before the Palace. Continuous with previous scene.] ORESTES She's in there. I hear her stone step. ULTRA Oh, what should we do? What should we do? I can't tell which things are happening outside of me, which within. My head's spinning. ORESTES Do you know how many hard asses she's got working for her? We screw up, it's our asses going to Hades, Ultra. Straight sleighride to the shithouse. No reprieve from the reaper. Fuckin' A, she just senses I'm here she'll grind my ass into oblivion. ULTRA No backing out now, every tremble moving us forward. ORESTES I'm going in. She might smell trouble if she knows you're here. Stay outside, play lookout, that's safest. She won't be expecting me, thinks I'm dead, don't want to ruin the surprise. [ORESTES enters the palace.] KLYTIE So, you would kill me? Is this justice? ORESTES I am the word made flesh. KLYTIE Pity your mother! ORESTES Prepare to die. KLYTIE I am that which made you. No less. ORESTES Get ready to walk the hellground, bitch. KLYTIE If you kill me, you kill motherhood. ORESTES If all mothers were as you are, I would slay them all. KLYTIE Is there no justice in mercy? ORESTES Life is unjust. Only in death can there be perfection. All endings are sacred, or possibly so. But I think maybe you forgot I'm your son. Did you forget than I'm your son, Mommy? You forget that? KLYTIE I didn't. I didn't. I swear I didn't forget. ORESTES Yeah. I think your dumb ass forgot who's ass you was fucking; I do believe you are ignorant as to the issue of your loins, mother. KLYTIE No. No. You're my son. See? I remember. ORESTES Yeah, I see. But maybe you're just saying that to try and save your miserable self. How am I to know if you really remember or you're just trying to save your miserable ass? KLYTIE I remember. I remember. We... We.... [Outside palace.] ULTRA Aegisthus! That rising dust can't mean anything else! Got his whole gang with him too. Shit. Back to the disaster scene, and at a bad time. [Inside palace.] KLYTIE Who shall endure to bring forth children again? I have carried my executioners to term. ORESTES In my birth your death was inexorably encoded. KLYTIE My nipples weep to have fed you. ORESTES The terror of life has rushed me to this hideous reckoning. I betray myself if I let you live. I must destroy you, my source, in flames of justice to be able to continue to exist one more minute. If you made me, and I am some sick continuation of yourself, then I cannot live with that terrible knowledge. And to prove that surmise untrue, I'll kill you. KLYTIE But we are one flesh, one being. Cut me off and yourself shall suffer. Kill your mother and you have no origin on earth. Untouched, unwept for, no orison of history to make your own. O my unowned young man! Circumstance and fate are harder knots to untie than this. ORESTES I am a worm that seeks your flesh a maggot of death that your squalid life imprisions, and though I must husk your torso a thousand times in nightmare from this second on, each raving detail complete and bloody enough to augur madness in a saint, I'll do it. This knot of my life I shall not unknot; no, I'll do it. I will kill. I'll do it. KLYTIE Every drop you take shall be your own, for you are a weak stream of my mightiness, and shall cease as I lessen. Nature's inexorable source corses through me. ORESTES I was formed to live by forces of which you are an ill-tempered instrument, nothing more. Your pouch of womb carried a seed of fire and not some ruined homunculus of yourself. KLYTIE Your words attack me; my ears are filled with daggers. ORESTES With axes. KLYTIE Oh, my son! ORESTES Get over to the bed. Lie down on it. [Pause.] Now that I'm here, on the point of it, I can't kill you. My arm rebels, my limbs flimsy. Where's my cruelty, my determination? Is Dad's wet death evaporated by your hot face? I'd have thought such murder engraved for eons; and death was new on that blade, the cut unforgetable. Did Aegisthus' ax sit so gingerly-lightly in Dad's awed-open skull? Ah Mom, Mom, I don't know what to do! Is revenge no portion of justice? Do handless gods look down from their white ward and groan, having given me hands to be their instrument? God's a paraplegic. I am his thought brought living. Come. On the bed. Lie down and die. KLYTIE I grow a new inward eye for every word you speak. And they all see red. ORESTES This isn't what I was trained to see. Her new eyes, like poisonous orchids, float free in this scarring hurricane and infest my sight, teaching me how to see. Teach, did you serve me or yourself when you fed my childhood with all those angry words? KLYTIE I am praying now to die. My heart murmurs a death-prayer, and my own lips echo it. ORESTES What's this that lies beneath me? An old woman curled on the bed. That is all. No more, no less. What is Justice to this? A body barely breathing. No more, no less. The world must come unhinged in rioting bloods if I kill her now. Lying there, meekly submitting. Her killer's conscience examples me, the she-wolf learning the lamb how to bleat; can't beat human nature for surprises, revenge comes thick in my throat, a gross word full of heart-melt, spring ice flowing up by pity from a store of swallowed tears. I go rudderless in these bewildering waters, all my world one chaos, flux on flux human heads indecipherable from beasts shadow tangling shadow and the light of justice scrambled that had settled it. A waterspout, all wildness, knows more of its own way now than I do. A second birth I owe to you, dear lady, though you know it not. Be born again yourself by my mercy. [ORESTES exits, dropping knife on floor.] ULTRA Is she dead? Is the bitch ready to stick in the dirt yet? Orestes, speak! [ORESTES collapses to steps, head in hands.] [ENTER ULTRA, howling.] ULTRA Death, death, death, death, death! [ULTRA runs in, picks up discarded blade, and starts slashing wildly. KLYTIE is still on the bed; the bed cover gets ruined by ULTRA'S stabs and slashes. Then ULTRA scores a hit on KLYTIE. Both women stand silent, ULTRA panting. It is the first real blood of the play.] ULTRA There is a constancy of ecstasy in this tension. KLYTIE Ecstasy in death? In the engineering of a killing? ULTRA Can't you feel it? These ministering excitements of deep terror! The true lure of comitting some one final thing? KLYTIE Coldly I do eye you. Stranger, I'll call you, spawn of another's blood, not this. [KLYTIE indicates her wound.] ULTRA Ha, ha. Can't crawl away from this accusation: everything I learned, I learned by watching you. KLYTIE Kill, kill. I regret the blood I reveled in. ULTRA Would you spare me the same regret? A kindness is in that thought. As you have spared me the stolen comfort of lecherous gold, monies of the house brought by Dad home from Troy? As you have spared me the shelter of my ancestral house, gory now in heavy memory? As you have spared me even in the spiteful mouths of hypocrite neighbors, who pliantly tongue the coarse and filched authority you and Aegisthus wrenched from murdered Dad's scepter-hand. And how should I for this spare remembrance give thanks? Sparingly? I who have been made strong and determinate, decided as well as decided against, homeless in sight of my house, wandering, wandering pinched feet wandering days on unforgiving rock talking to sparring crows as to brothers. Do you love them too, as you love me? We sheltered equally well in your care, caw to caw in equal syllable. Here I stand no longer spare, nor sparing. KLYTIE When I go out of this world, what horrors will come walking in? ULTRA Justice, maybe. What's right is right. Can't bend that, Mom. Can't bend it for you even. KLYTIE Oh Ultra. Come and kiss me. One last one. ULTRA I am inexorable as God or a waterfall. Kissing you won't change that. KLYTIE Come, come. We must kiss. What else? We are mother and daughter. [They kiss.] Do you forgive me? ULTRA I pray every day that I won't. [Outside Palace. Enter AEGISTHUS and his lieutenant.] AEGIE Consider Ultra exiled. Or dead. Maybe I'll exile her corpse. Let her bones yatter on about her Dad, at least my ears won't have to listen to it. ORESTES Hearing the way some people really are, worst part about being born. AEGISTHUS [Sees ORESTES.] And who are you? ORESTES Someone I had not expected to meet. AEGIE I am Aegisthus, carrying urgent news from Athens for Queen Klytemnestra. Stand aside. ORESTES So this is what Aegisthus looks like, can't stand aside for that, not me, like a man fixing dinner for the one who'll rob him. Your news will wait a long time before it's heard. AEGISTHUS Klytemnestra's queen by universal declaration now, words catching up to the irreversible facts, and I'm no longer a royal consort carrying out dicta from behind royal skirts but a king beside her, engraved in name. ORESTES And Ultra your inked successor. AEGISTHUS No, she's a thing erased from the lists. ORESTES Erasing people born into the rulership game can get kind of sticky. AEGISTHUS I shall be the seed of new kings and queens for my Mycenae. So it is written. ORESTES Not as easy as supposed, x-ing out the living to make way for some hypothesis. AEGISTHUS Stand aside. ORESTES Afraid I can't do that. The queen is busy, taking a very important and long overdue conference with her daughter, Ultra. AEGISTHUS What's Ultra doing in there? She hasn't seen the inside of that place in fifteen years. [Pause.] Get out of the way. I won't ask again. [Inside the Palace.] KLYTIE I am ashes. Ashes. ULTRA I am ashes too. KLYTIE How can I die? I am too miserable to die. ULTRA Why can't the knowledge come clear, no obstruction, justice pure and simple, a slapped hand, and the right one applauded, not this intractable mess, my head full of thoughts? KLYTIE The heart requires an archeologist its sins are so old. ULTRA But you and me, here, we're clear, we're in the clear, aren't we? You're the killer who must be killed. KLYTIE I'm the killer who must be killed. ---This anguish is too strong to ever cease! ULTRA All things keep rolling. Death is death. KLYTIE Honey, I love you. ULTRA I love you, too. [ULTRA stabs KLYTIE to death.] ULTRA Now there is a fixation of horrors in my breast. I have added to their sum. Orestes, outside, you see nothing of the wretchedness that lies within. [ULTRA comes out of palace, sees ORESTES and AEGISTHUS.] ULTRA Now I feel true sadness, who sought true Justice, one act born right out of all this imperfect death. What we come to know about what we have come to do, well, its less than a candle in the vastness; I curse such decisionless dark, and stab at it, blindness, blindness, beating our way forward with a stick. [ORESTES grabs knife from ULTRA.] ULTRA No no. Orestes. ORESTES We can't go on killing. One death outweighs a million if its on your hands, slaughter sinking into the skin and not the righteous excuse for doing it. People need to change but can't manage it, fighting an interior tide, compulsive thoughts blacking out the thin ray of a decison cleanly come by. ULTRA But what's doing right going to mean if you can't trust yourself not to be flotsam, skittering everywhere according to this force or that, heaved back and forth by this desire and that willfulness, decisions unpredictable as guesses and no surety in the outcome: blood on hands laced for prayer death coming harsh to the meek victory seeking out wrong-doers marriage kisses exchanged with your killer hands clasping magnetized on what was to be avoided. ORESTES Nothing I was taught to be have I become. Blessed or blasted, I can't tell yet. [AEGISTHUS removes a hidden dagger from his clothing, dashes at ORESTES.] ORESTES [Killing AEGISTHUS.] When are you gonna learn the dead don't die! [Pause.] I look you in the face as you die. [AEGISTHUS' guardsmen enter, en masse.] TEACH The usurpers are dead. You respected murderous force before, that put them on the throne; you must respect it now. All hail Queen Ultra. All hail. ALL All hail Queen Ultra. TEACH Everything that happens has God's sanction. ULTRA Well, I have tried, I have tired. I beg my dreaming eyes to murder the race of man. END. for the little darling lord Top^
Jul 082020
 

Post-modern play about future technologies
conflicting with human moral imperatives.

Should I be rid of my R.I.D.? Like eyeless Oedipus,
go testicleless?
— Johnny, in deep dreamtime blackout

JOHNNY DEMONIC

FUTURE HUMANS:
TAKEHASHI
JOHNNY
ALDO
JIRIKI
XCETERA
JESUS
TECHNICIAN ONE
GREGG GLORY

SCENE ONE


[Johnny, strapped upright, optical wires spouting from his
forehead, is getting uploaded with illegally obtained data. He is
masked, with a mirrory sunglass type set-up obscuring his eyes; we
can see his mouth as he talks, the wires, at forehead level, his
hair, but nothing else; he is gowned from the neck down, his figure
invisible under the surgical green cloth.]

 JOHNNY
My harassing dreams are meaningless.
Stray formulae, hit-and-miss bits snipping
my sniping synapses to a rhumba beat
of ones and zeroes. No holy trinity
zings in to save me, beating seraphic wings.
My world is base-2 grounded. My skull's amorphous;
its contents, even in snore-storage,
bleat and repeat more pay-worthy information
than any other ten-thousand humans CAN carry,
burdened by the kludgey input of pubic ed.
I, however, am access-inhibited.
A closed Coney Island of iridescent graphics
and save-the-world synthetic cure-alls
circulates in my limitless skull, but I
can't touch it, can't initiate the flip-switch
that spills the light to some dark outside, anyplace
my frowning face inhabits, that my tongue triangulates.
I'll never know what I know; know-it-all
knowledge landmine, with my tongue unplugged.
But I can carry it, whisk it from here
to elsewhere. I can; its in there.
Incessantly at dreamtime, my miming mind
gets ultravivid vid-bits of wacked static.
Images. Gross sub-subconscious stuff, weird feels
spastic up and down my electric skin,
or weird-wired sequences of neon numbers
and zapping sounds. But meaningless, all of it,
meaningless, meaningless, all quite meaningless.
I would hazard that I'm disastered, at a loss,
but I've no way to calculate that fact.
I used to dream all the time, regular stuff,
lollygag days stealing crack from the local hook-up....
He was too trashed on his own white stash
to notice, half the time. A cyan-dilated
Heaven-high in his fixed-open eyes. I'd sell it,
get a corndog and six Mars bars, beat it back
to the old-time asphalt shingles on the roof
of my uncle's rain-ruinous bodega, splay out,
soak in the sunshine long afternoons,
doing nothing, sleeping and belching.
At least, those were my dreams, if they were mine,
if that's my childhood I dream and remember;
if not, well it's still pretty pleasant, and who cares
nowadays about a stasis-source for self anyway?
I'm whatever I make myself up as; that's a fact.
A fiction. Whatever. All that real/unreal talk
just gives me whiplash. Leave that for
the saliva merchants running the country.

[JOHNNY's mask flips up, lightwires start to flash off and on as if
winding down their operations. He has silver eyes, utterly opaque.]

 JOHNNY
Chrome eyes. Edged metal moistened by living eyelid,
delicate lashes moving over a silverfield. First thing
people notice about me. No pupil, no targeting
center for other eyes to eye. Where is the person
if you can't see how they see you, spy you out
into existence? My R.I.D. Retinal Input Device.
Let's me do my courier service work, aboveboard
or below; legit jobbing pays OK,
but when I can, I'll smuggle the odd gigabyte.
Not a customs service in the world
can decrypt the human brain; any kind of scan
they've got to buzz me with, I come up
normal pigflesh; my eyes scan out a standard
blind-eyes cure. You know, modern medicine.
No abnormalities flood up to their peeping screens.
Hey, they never could read your thoughts,
now could they?

[Lightwires fall from his forehead.]

 TECHNICIAN ONE
Download sequencing complete.

 JOHNNY
Lightwires slip out of my head like ejaculated
neon spaghetti, dangling dark at the slick ends
of motor arm that disappear into recessed wall sockets,
light into black, like always, even in those
cold Nordic sagas. Lightwires up the compression
algorithm geometrically, folding infospace
as distinctly and compactly as my emerald cerebrum.
Maybe it crowds out a few faces from my past
in the process, but, then, maybe I don't mind that
so much. It's an information economy, as they say,
and nobody'll pay shit for personal mem. Would you?
All this stuff they've got here, sparkling and dark
in this wild Hong Kong lab, very fine, very hifi.
A technician applies carefully and fast
a ring of band-aids around the top of my head,
where the lightwires exited, giving me a sticky
and dead red crown of thorns, automatic
antibacterial sinking into the incisions, as he
nudges me out of this sooped-up dentist's chair.

TECHNICIAN ONE
Bonnie banzai, rocketman. Good fucking luck.
Talk to Aldo before you bolt, though. This isn't
the usual zip and run, Johnny-san.

[TECHNICIAN ONE offers JOHNNY a disingenuous glance of
mock-condolence, then grins, his teeth a high-decibel purple, a new
craze on the vids.]

TECHNICIAN ONE
Bye bye. I'm going virtual before the Yakuza
snap the plastic on this little secret set-up
and spike my hard drive. So, don't you try
to contact me in any way. I won't be in touch,
so don't you be in touch. OK Johnny-san?

 JOHNNY
Before you wipe: I just want to make sure;
half the pay charge is in my account.

TECHNICIAN ONE
[Tosses what looks like a credit card to Johnny.]
Sure, Johnny-san. No problemo, lobo. Grand
Caymen account, locked on your vid and voiceprint.
Would've used a retinal lock too, but
you've got those crazy eyes.

 JOHNNY
Yeah. Drives the girls wild.

TECHNICIAN ONE
[Hits a button, a plane ticket to L.A. prints out, he hands it to
JOHNNY.]
Here's the plane ticket to your destination.
Fastest ram-scoop out of this piss-hole; you leave
in one hour. Talk to Aldo.

[ALDO comes over; he has been wandering around the set, helping
with small clean-up chores, disassembling the illegal set-up.]

 ALDO
Let's get scarce. That boy's going to be harder to detect
than a rat's fart in a thunderstorm. These insert jerks
like to pry open your skull, give it a lightwire fry,
dump their hump of illicit gigabyte, and then scram.
Very anti-human, like you're just one more output device.

 JOHNNY
Which, I guess, I am.

 ALDO
Hell of a way to make a living.

 JOHNNY
Man, my head is aching. What'd these geeks do to me?

 ALDO
Like narrow-eyes said, this ain't the usual zip and run.
You've been arced. Its a chaotic compression pattern,
running a Mandelbrot sequence encoded into heavily
drugged synapses so that the pattern is decay resistant.
The chem-net they installed infiltrates in micron-doses
your slumbering baby's brain with a dreamless wash
of thought preservatives, pickled like a dino-fetus
in some up-to-date modern form of rheumy amber,
keeping the natural chaotic decay of that hot archived info
to a cool blue minimum. Even so, some decay's inevitable,
that's the law of the world, every night our organized self
unfolds from neat daytime to the wildness of dreams,
each morning the face in the mirror's a stranger,
randomer and randomer until it wakes up dead.
Law of the world. That's why, on the other end,
when they catch you back to earth, my Johnny-san,
they've got a complexity adaptor rigged up somewhere.
I don't know where. Your contact knows where, and I'm sure
they'll tell you then, or take you blindfold to their nest.
That adaptor sees the pattern inherent
in chaotic decay trends, reads between the lines,
and forms a self-solving extraction-equation
on the spot. Very complicated stuff. They'd need
some mondo big machines, hombre, to do what your three pounds
of swiss cheese is doing. But let me warn you,
you've ONLY got twenty-four, count 'em, twenty-four
hours to get that gelled-in sequence out of your primate skull.
Otherwise, well....

 JOHNNY
Otherwise, what?

 ALDO
If you don't get decoded in that magic twenty-four,
that single day, well, then, then....

 JOHNNY
Then....

 ALDO
Uncoiling random lines of information will begin
to unleash themselves inside your head, synaptic leakage occurs,
and all of that archived information will start
to decompress. That much information would require
an aircraft carrier of brain tissue to exist
in an unarchived state; all that information unfolding
in a space the size of a small loaf of Italian bread.

 JOHNNY
But what's that really mean? What would happen to me?

 ALDO
Maybe you can't blink; some part of an equation
flares out and takes over the blink synapse in your head.
Can't blink, nothing much, right? So what, right?
Can't blink, your eyes dry up, get little itty bitty
dust motes in them, collapse back into your skull
irretrievably infected. Can't blink, you're blind inside
a couple of hours. Eventually more and more
of the compressed data will snake out
into the surrounding tissue, filling it up
with information that's different from what's there now
... your memories, what your name is, what planet you're on.
And it would progress geometrically, unfolding, unfolding,
each fold unfolding another flower to unfold;
after a few minutes, your life would disappear
in a clashing hash of indecipherable statics.
It's like Alzheimer's, except that instead of emptying out
your mind to some sun-blitzed Bhudda's zero-sum,
its kicking into hydrocephalic overdrive,
filling it with thin physics-ribbons of stuff
these techie-sans get hard-ons just thinking about.
Eventually, you just forget how to breathe,
you lay down somewhere, or are kept catatonically erect
by some wrong-wired misfire, but not breathing, forgetting breath.
Wouldn't even think to call out to your Mommy;
she wouldn't exist for you. Then you die.
Total information degrade. Nobody'd even want your head, then.
The Company's logo hardwired on your medulla oblongata.
Irreversible wet-crash, Johnny-san.

 JOHNNY
Can't I just keep micro-dosing this brain-freeze drug?

 ALDO
You could, but its kind of like curari; works by
paralyzing the synaptic messengers into a hardwired state.
If it didn't kill you outright, or convince your heart
to stop for a beat too long, I guess It'd eventually
just hardwire everything in your head pretty much
the way it is now. No new information processing could go on.
You'd be Atari Pong, stuck in an eternal Now state.
Might be some people's idea of Nirvana, but its not mine.
Same blip going back and forth between the same, two switches.
Whatever your last thought was before the curari
slammed it in its pasted place, that's what you'd be thinking
forever. If you were pissing, you'd be on permanent drain.
This stuff's poison to both human and rat anatomies.
It poisons you, but not fatally, not for, let's say, a week.
Of course, nobody's been on a micron filtration drip
of pure taxtaxinol for a week.... But you could be the first one.

 JOHNNY
I don't think I want to find out.

 ALDO
I didn't think so.

[JOHNNY presses a small hypodermic gun to his neck with the ease of
a practiced move. A small hiss escapes from the gun.]

 JOHNNY
Stim.

 ALDO
A real vim and vigor lifter. Give you a real
adrenaline sheen. Noticeable to the right eyes.

 JOHNNY
Or the wrong ones.

 ALDO
That slick shit'll jump you up higher than the Kwannon Towers.

 JOHNNY
I've got a feeling this is going to be an extended duty 24 in
realtime.

 ALDO
Hey, if you can't hack reality, you've got some real bottom line
considerations.

 JOHNNY
Yeah, well, reality's what you make of it, they say.

 ALDO
Test everything. Don't let anyone slip one doped chip past you.
Fastest way in the world to get fucked, Johnny. Ain't even gonna
have time to cap it with a condom. Test everything. One slip, and,
man, your cherry's gone.

 JOHNNY
Thanks for the advice. What's your angle on all this, anyway?

 ALDO
Born right here on the mainland.
Upright walking, jive talking, mother fuckin' chinaman,
Jack. Won't never take that back. A real
Hong Kong-born, majong-playing ace of spades.
Slipperiest citizenship in the world, and don't think
that ain't useful. Never been anywhere else--
and I don't need to go either. Whole world
plugs into Hong Kong, if they've got anything
to trade, that is. And everybody's got something
they'll give up for something else-- as long as
that something else is something they ain't never had.
They say dreams are priceless. I seen that price
get fixed every day out on the street.
Only problem is, sometimes
that price is more than you've got to pay.

 JOHNNY
Why's this information so important to the Tigris Company anyway?

 ALDO
I don't know. Maybe they've got a serious case of tech-envy.

 JOHNNY
Very serious.

 ALDO
Hey, it's not my job to know. I'm just supposed
to help get the info from one black box to the next.

 JOHNNY
Yeah. Except that this black box has got ears.

 ALDO
Like I said: helluva way to make a living.

 JOHNNY
Use my lauded head to ferry other people's genius.
Why not? Lotta first class plane ride everywhere.
Good money. It's easy. Get where you're going,
they dump you out, leave you high and dry, the way I like it.
Plenty of little free shrimp on those plane rides too.
Use your head, I heard that all my life. Well, what else
am I going to do with it anyway, right?

 ALDO
All these gleaming things. They don't mean that much to me.
Regular food and a sweet woman, that's my gig. Hell,
I still read the paper. Print it out. Old-fashioned,
hard copy format. Put my feet up. That sort of thing.
Pretty dull, huh? But you, Johnny, this stuff's
just a part of who you are, like a high-impact
ceramic skeleton, an indelible skull
like the ace racers hov-jet with. Another gleaming thing,
those racing shells fighting the 500 mark.
You, Johnny, you're inside the shine. It ain't
gonna catch you. You're lucky. You're inside.
All these gleaming things. I live with 'em;
I live near 'em. But you-- you got them in
your bone and brain. They're in you, and you're
in them, Johnny. You're inside the shine.

 JOHNNY
Why didn't you ever plug in, Aldo? The money's easy.

 ALDO
Do I look crazy? This head's gonna stay just the way
Mrs. Howard squeezed it out of herself. Call me
old-fashioned, but there's still a place for the un-
enhanced flat-Jacks like me out on the street.

 JOHNNY
I hope there always will be.

 ALDO
You ain't just laughing out your ass, digital boy.
Now just unplug before the Tigris Company's
Yakuza swat-team us with their late-night
John Belushi impression.

 JOHNNY
Samurai roadkill. You leaving?

 ALDO
No. I'll stay here. Like I've done all of my life.
Besides, these guys obviously need some help cleaning up.
Still gotta wipe your own ass, even if you use mylar substrate,
right? Now pretend you're a photon and wave.
G'bye. G'bye.

[Exit JOHNNY.]

BALLET SEQUENCE
[A troop of Yakuza enter, elegantly dressed. All strip to
beautifully tattooed waists, including women. Except Jiriki. Yakuza
kill everyone in the room, including ALDO, destroying machinery.
One data screen remains active. As destruction goes on all about,
Jiriki goes to the screen, inserts a small datapad, and types
rapidly. A kitten is killed, the left-behind pet of some
technician. After everyone is dead, Jiriki looks up from the
data-display with a smile.]

 JIRIKI
L. A.



Contents

SCENE TWO


 TAKEHASHI
My vision splays and jags. Hyped on hypnotic
displays day after day, I echo its electronic rush
and hiss to fulfillment, but feel a lingering emptiness.
Click on a dithered executive, ash suit, conned and conning
conservative attire, tired and still aspiring--
to what skyscrapered height, I don't know!
My Zen discipline isn't winning against this
info-loaded argosy a subsidized rice-farmer's son
hunched rice-ball bunched into as a sound career alt.
  [TAKEHASHI swings a beautiful samurai sword, beaten 500 times.]
Stainless steel, diamond-dusted edge. This jaded blade
cuts nothing that knows not that it is a blade.
Out of what air-blasted, time-lined avatar vat came you,
my thin insistence on tradition and razor-meaning
pressed swishing into the plastic circuit board
of my quantum solid-state and existential existence?
This filtered air riffs against me, nearly frictionless.

 SECRETARY
Sir, I apologize wide-eyed, but...

 TAKEHASHI
...Jiriki has arrived.

 SECRETARY
Hai! [Clicks off.]

 TAKEHASHI
A good Yakuza makes his enemies work for him,
slaved to his live and deciding PC.
This causes the enemy the greatest humiliation,
and is useful to the slave-owner.

[Enter JIRIKI.]

 TAKEHASHI
Report to me on the disposition of the data.

 JIRIKI
All of the smuggler's team have been executed.

 TAKEHASHI
They were traitors to their company. No flag,
no combine, no country even of the wallet.
They have no honor. There are of no concern to us,
alive or dead. We are the warring Yakuza.
Report to me on the disposition of the data.

 JIRIKI
They had stolen the information to sell to another firm.

 TAKEHASHI
You are not telling me anything I do not already know!
We lost the illicit bid for the illegal information
to a darker contender, and your team was to put that right
and get us the goods, honto-pronto! You are insolent,
as when you trained under me, Jiriki.
Do not let your film-noire arrogance betray you
as it has betrayed these slaughtered smugglers.
Arrogance has a narrow gravity-well; its multi-dimensional
slopes are error-prone honed to a slippery slickness
and may not allow any devious slant of light an exit.
Beware. I assume that you do not want to be
tripped and tipped into the same lamb's fate
they have met with.

 JIRIKI
The data was wiped from their equipment.

 TAKEHASHI
Word on the street is that the traitors
wiped the Zony mainframe before they began this charade
that has led to their deaths.

 JIRIKI
If this is true, Zony will no longer be a viable
competitor on the international market for anything,
except, perhaps, baby food.

 TAKEHASHI
Undoubtedly they are wailing like babies now,
surreally angry, and willing to crap on and slap
at anything and anyone that is between them
and their still-warm bottle of dada data
before their powdered milk of resources evaporates.
Do you have any intelligence confirming
the mainframe wipedown?

 JIRIKI
No. I apologize, Takehashi-san. I have failed.

 TAKEHASHI
Nevertheless, Zony will still undoubtedly be
quite anxious to recover their data.

 JIRIKI
Hai.

 TAKEHASHI
We must see that this does not happen. Our sources
happened onto their data heist by accident. A lucky coincidence,
allowing us to sabotage the saboteurs. By this killing
we may have already shown our hand to our enemies;
Zony will know that they are not alone in their quest
for the stolen data. We must trust to speed and ruthless
efficiency. Tigris demands that there be no failure
in this regard.

 JIRIKI
It is doubtful that Zony has even heard
of the execution of their traitors yet.

 TAKEHASHI
Don't be ridiculous. We must simply hope
that our own handprints are no too clearly distinguishable
in the flooded blood of the Hong Kong debacle.

 JIRIKI
All clean-kill procedures were followed.


 TAKEHASHI
And the data, the data was already gone....

 JIRIKI
Hai, Takehashi-san. I regret we were not on-site
quickly enough to prevent their strip-destruction
of the courier-insertion copy.

 TAKEHASHI
And the courier himself has escaped.

 JIRIKI
Regretfully.

 TAKEHASHI
There are only a sticky-handed handful of conglomerates
that could profit by receipt of such data.
But which sinning one is the courier headed for?

 JIRIKI
There was no mold of a clue remaining on-site.

 TAKEHASHI
Regretful that there is no one left alive to tell us.

 JIRIKI
It is best to leave no witnesses.

 TAKEHASHI
Secrecy is of vital importance.
Zony is a serious competitor.
I believe you will remember the last time.

 JIRIKI
Yes. My brother will not come back to life.

 TAKEHASHI
It was... regretful... what happened to your brother.

 JIRIKI
Yes. Our information was faulty.

 TAKEHASHI
There was no way to know that.

 JIRIKI
Hai! Yakuza-san.

 TAKEHASHI
Hai! Yakuza! [Pause.]
A Zony vendetta is to be feared and avoided.
If they do not come to understand that we, Tigris,
are involved, then they cannot retaliate until
it is too late. Once we have the data, and word hits
the market that Zony's mainframe is merely
an empty shell, their stock will plummet, and they
will cease to be a viable threat. To anyone.

 JIRIKI
I was able to discover where the courier was headed.

 TAKEHASHI
Tell me.

[JIRIKI pauses.]

 TAKEHASHI
Immediately!

 JIRIKI  [Shrugs.]
Los Angeles.

 TAKEHASHI
You must go there at once, without your team.
We cannot risk broadcasting our presence.
Take the next flight. Immediately.

 JIRIKI
I already have.

[The next thing we see is JIRIKI taking off her VR goggles; we
realize that she was holo-conferencing with TAKEHASHI the entire
time.]




Contents

SCENE THREE


[JIRIKI is revealed removing her vid goggles aboard a transpacific
flight.]

 JIRIKI
My highflying banzai eye skips the scudding
pacific effortless-- what a beautiful rueful day!
Takehashi's all frantic-splenetic at our catastrophe.
My failure to nab with carbon-based hands
what precise, silicon plans demand. Like Hitler diminished
to his third-tier Third Reich and subconscious bunker,
Takehashi sees his Pacific Rim's Tojo-Axis red
all over the watery map, arrowing out the victory track
past burning men still smouldering in their bombed-out Panzers.
His hyped holographic highrise of Yakuza supremacy
will vanish beneath his florsheim's one night
in a bit-instant, every at-attention one twisted round to zeroes
all unable to give purchase to his slick, stamping heel.
Takehashi's ghost of willfulness courses through his black
enraged eye, a collapsing star of small-mindedness
bending every rearing ray to its quicksand sinkhole
like VanGogh's one, sultry, sunken raven
punching through the blazing wheatfields at Ardennes.
Asian Ahab with a wooden heart to my
step-at-fetch-it Starbuck, we spit our spatting,
snapping histrionics on a tilting deck of pressed circuits,
themselves star-stuff like the rest of us, waiting
a rapid hint of free electrons to surge and shine.
My brother, if you can hear me from your lacquered level
of purging purgatory even now, burn knowing
that I will not be caught saluting that jerk
when his personal, vortexing apocalypse appears
reeling him to the crushing no-space of a quasar
by the torqued tongue-instrument of his own
freshly pressed tie.




Contents

SCENE FOUR


[JIRIKI sits at a bar with her back to the audience. We do not
recognize her until JOHNNY talks to her and JIRIKI turns around.
JOHNNY does not realize that this isn't his legitimate contact, but
we do.]

 JOHNNY
A charming establishment.

 JIRIKI
Yes. I come here often; its in the neighborhood.

 JOHNNY
Really? I've never been.

 JIRIKI
Well, then, welcome, Mr....

 JOHNNY
Oedipus. Rex Oedipus.

 JIRIKI
Mr. Oedipus.

 JOHNNY
Do you have the other half of the payment?

 JIRIKI
[Holding up paycard.] In this account. Do you have the data?

 JOHNNY
Its staring at you.

 JIRIKI
Ah. Yes. The so-called wild eyes.

 JOHNNY
You are very beautiful.

 JIRIKI
An irrelevant comment, Mr. Oedipus.

 JOHNNY
I've had one sweat of a day.

 JIRIKI
It is very pleasant to meet you as well;
I never knew someone who'd hollow out their skull
for a few dollars, or a plain yen-infestation
of their bank account. It seems a dirty thing;
a soul perverted to pay a bill. But I guess
some people are in paradise if they can sell
one kidney to keep the other one slummed in beer.

 JOHNNY
Yeah, well. Its real nice to meet you too.

 JIRIKI
Tell me,-- do you mind if I call you Mr. O?--
Tell me, Mr. O, what's it like to sleep with a girl,
do her, to fool your body into its measured, rhythmed
dick-tick of boy-joy and juice expenditure
and not know if that woman sleeping next to you,
a swollen lust-bunny and tired angel, was your
fucked mother or reamed-out sister? What does it feel like?
I have a squat, powerful curiosity.

 JOHNNY
What the fuck is your game? You some kind of
mag-lev perv, getting off by being so repellent?

 JIRIKI
Hey, whatever shoots your goose. Right, Mr. Oedipussy?
[Pause.] Tell me, have you ever hunted?

 JOHNNY
I don't really have the downtime. And, besides,
the preserves are smaller than God's Providence these days;
ten snapping Nikons to every twitching bush.

 JIRIKI
The killing attracts me. In parts of China you can still
buy out a bushido-style lancing safari. Very black market,
but the officials are as corrupt as cancer out there.

 JOHNNY
I've heard that they don't even have eye-in-the-terminal
bigbrother technology in the ditches there yet.

 JIRIKI
Some places in China are still very primitive.
Occasionally you run pell-mell across an entire village
that still believes in Mao's little Red Book.



 JOHNNY
The bioluminescent tatoo artist in this neighborhood is very good,
I hear.

 JIRIKI
Yes. Fine work.

 JOHNNY
He once did a bird-of-paradise on a sumo wrestler's
kicking midriff, with mating display air sacs
that could fool to wooing another bird-of-paradise.
Or so I hear.

 JIRIKI
I have seen it in photographs.

 JOHNNY
They say that the wrestler keeled over at Mickey-Ds,
trying to keep up his wrestling weight, and they
cut the neon-suave tatoo out of him there and then.

 JIRIKI
Yes. Its true.

 JOHNNY
They say its on display at the MOMA now.

 JIRIKI
Indeed it is.

 JOHNNY
Say, if you're from this neighborhood, you must know Aldo. Grew up
around here somewhere. Been in the business forever.

 JIRIKI
Oh sure. Aldo. Great guy.

 JOHNNY
Hey, I've got a splitting headache. Do you mind....

 JIRIKI
Go ahead. Don't take any aspirin, though. It'll throw the micron
readings off.

[JOHNNY gets up and heads towards the bathroom.]




 JIRIKI
Spired and alive on my freemarket highwire,
I perform fearless feats against the cold quartz clock.
Zipped from a split-screen meeting with holographic
Takehashi, I rocked my supersonic ass across the Pacific
doublequick. Speed Racer erasing this distance.
All the Hong Kong flights had their outbound relays delayed
by my chortling cohorts at HK International Airway;
the skyglide had some fractil gravel flipped
beneath its sweet, silver, sweptback wings-- cha-ching!
And now I'm here, and in the clear to zero-out
my Rex's rich head to a lopped-off nullity.
When he gets back from his piss and patented
head-tread massage-o-matic in the bathroom-- vvvvipp!
I'll bowling-bag back the crimson lump of data
to my restless master pacing his eterna-wear carpeting
back to pressboard. Ha ha. Life's easy, sinuous, and free.
Everything is possible with the right backer.

[In the bathroom.]

 JOHNNY
Shit. I've gotta get out of here. That's not my contact.

[JOHNNY presses at the edge of the sealed window; it gives.]

 JOHNNY
Test everything.

[A minute later, JIRIKI comes into the bathroom, dashes out the
window.]






Contents

SCENE FIVE


[Interior of vidiphone. JOHNNY has just escaped JIRIKI using a
hologram. He punches in, using a phonecard lifted from someone
along the way so its untraceable. Calls his X-girl. She's in a
rockband, but very sheik hi-exec type. Has serious Madonna-class
negotiation skills.]

 JOHNNY
Lean adrenaline shifts into me, giving Stim-shakes
to my wimpy limbs. Fetal-curled in my plastic cocochannel-scented
and probably soon to become tomb-- too soon tombed,
I punch for who, sweet Lord!, who to be my last treasured gasp
of the realistic-fantastic? I had thought my 24 hours
more blatantly impastoed than this fate's twisty titty-twist.
I need my gaping grave's immeasurable reveries
to be more fly-thick with incident before I'll
refuse to whinny and kick the presswood coffinlid
back into outer space, like that 2-3-5 proportion propulsed
icon-object in Odyssey 2001, hon. I've fobbed
this soggy callcard from a alley-plunked drunk,
some Stim-junkie swilled into unconscious bliss
in a cobalt drool pool two zagged blocks back.
That Yakuza semen-storage device gave chase, and I accepted.
A mistake. [Puts card in machine.] Who do I know in L.A.?
Memory, memory, work, work; this screen's empty as a lily,
pale blank, waiting for my shivering fingers to remember
some name. C'mon, guys, type! Here, I'll help you:
here's a mnemonic code I heard in the first grade.
[Sing-songs:] abcdefg-hijklmnop.....qrstu...vw...xy and z.
[Pause.] X, y, and z. XYZ. X! X! X-cetera!

[JOHNNY types, an instant later we hear:]

 XCETERA
You've rocked it in the socket and locked onto the X-girl. Have a
sip of saki and state your business or you're not getting on the
guestlist.

 JOHNNY
Uh, hello, Xcetera?

 XCETERA
Glistening.

 JOHNNY
Um.... Do you remember me?


 XCETERA
Not yet. [She looks at info offscreen, reads.] Howard Chicichigano?

 JOHNNY
Uh no, this is Johnny. I'm sure they're radaring the net for me.

 XCETERA
Johnny! Well, I do remember you. How've you been? Are you in
wow-town? Why'd you call me?

 JOHNNY
I'm not really sure. I remembered your name. Kinda flamed out at
me.

 XCETERA
Ought to flame after that game we played last time we got together.
Who's looking for you? And who's Howard Chicichigano anyway?

 JOHNNY
I lifted that card. And, I'm not sure who's after me.

 XCETERA
You always were sorta absent-minded. Absent mind, but what a grind!
Hey, Johnny, are you OK? You look a little shivery, out-of-focus,
you know?

 JOHNNY
Slightly unmanageable Stim-adrenaline overcharge. Muscleclature's
having trouble stabilizing in just three dimensions.

 XCETERA
Oh, baby. You need to relax. Is that vidphone VR capable?

 JOHNNY
Yeah, it seems to be. But what....

 XCETERA
I was sure it would be. Well, I was thinking, y'know, for old
times' sake....

 JOHNNY
Jesus H., what makes you so horny, Xcetera?

 XCETERA
C'mon! It's not like you ever call.

 JOHNNY
No, really, I don't have time for this.

 XCETERA
Do you want my help or not?

 JOHNNY
I need your help....

 XCETERA
Into the pressure sheath then. I don't want to miss one wiggle of
that x-tra cute bod of yours.

 JOHNNY
Xcetera!

 XCETERA
Velcro-up and initiate, toyboy.

[JOHNNY reluctantly slips into a superthin mylar sheath that will
give sensation feedback to the wearer. To us, it looks like he is
in a martian sleeping bag.]

 XCETERA
[Licking her lips.] Virt time! I hope you don't mind if I make you
an American Gladiator.

[JOHNNY's sheath is still. XCETERA begins horny monologue;
eventually his mylar sleeping bag begins to wiggle.]

 XCETERA
There it is, sinner, beneath an open, mesmerized sky
anti-aliased electric blue: Our white, sweet, antique,
chrome-loaded chevy Impala, baby, locked on automatic pilot.
I used to honk the obtruding horn whenever
our motions got too close in bliss during our
erotic rovings-- two self-willed adolescents yearning
to breed free! Remember its triple, Italianate accent?
Reep reep reeppii! Push back the leather strap---
there, there, no, there! Oh Johnny, jiggle over
and give us a kiss. [Pause.] Your hot tongue's the last
word in virtual thrill; my teeth must ai carumba!
for another shove and jangle just like that.
I thought a honed, rainbowed Nevada skyline
would smack of just the right, apocalyptic bliss.
See, the green, flora-chlorafilled cacti are all
erect... ripe! Spikes as sopped as tugged jugulars
against a radiant, pristine me. Lick
the tender effigy you see clean of sweat.
My smiles abandon fashion and curl into self-fulfilling
fractals now. Oh Johnny. Your wildly styled eyes
are x-raying a cinematic me to glory. Lord,
if your insisting gospels had half his
insinuating touch, I'd snake my way to mass
on bleeding knees to get your blood and body
in my mouth. Johnny, I'm transparent-ecstatic
beneath your advancing glance. Is there something
in this rush of fluids that has a spine?
You make me see myself rolled back to one
primeval ache. It must be love! Double-gloved
and lightwired, as we seem to be,
each compelling touch is rough-rouged or cozened
by the hot electronic mist this interface
imposes; I know that what's boning me
to this unreal glow is real-feel real, dear.
Can't you feel it too, my Johnny?
That dactylic riff, the idyllic lick I apply
in alarming lures to your swiftly constructed skin?
Lurid under the instant thunderstorm, and plowing
90 down the road, the rains, the rains, are hissing
lovish appellations as we reach our applauding finish.

 JOHNNY
That almost did finish me.

 XCETERA
Confess: you never could resist my wishes, dishy.

 JOHNNY
Ahh, phew. [Stepping out of sleeping bag.] Now, about that minor
assistance I was asking about. Can you safehouse me? I'm going to
require some major in-tech support.

 XCETERA
No can do, babearoo.

 JOHNNY
But Xcetera!

 XCETERA
Sorry, joyguy, we're just two halves of a double
helix that pass and kiss in the gene pool. Look,
I've got to go on tour in exactly 39 and 1/2 minutes.
All the Pacific Rim wants a twist at Xcetera.
Can I help it if I'm the most popular girl in highschool?
And this time, I didn't have to blow all the jocks
to get there. I'm not going to flummox
my own success for any brain-fry cadet, I don't care
how annoyingly vulnerable he is. [Pause; no response from JOHNNY.]
Hey, Johnny, you look seriously cruised.
You should check in somewhere, chicano amano.

 JOHNNY
Yeah, well, I guess I'll do that then. You know,
you can be a real harsh miss sometimes, Xcetera.
A sinister bitch.

 XCETERA
Si-- and I mean sigh-- onara.

[JOHNNY, drained, staggers down the street a few paces, collapses
near the bum who's callingcard he lifted, Stim-twitching in
restless dream.]





Contents

SCENE SIX


[JIRIKI has circled back to the bar in search of JOHNNY. Her
cellular phone rings, bleeps. It is TAKEHASHI.]

 JIRIKI
Jiriki.

 TAKEHASHI
Report.

 JIRIKI
Takehashi-san. Things... have not gone well.

 TAKEHASHI
Report on the disposition of the data.

 JIRIKI
The courier is at large in L. A. But he is weak, confused.

 TAKEHASHI
Where is the data?

 JIRIKI
Still with the courier.

 TAKEHASHI
You have failed me, Jiriki.

 JIRIKI
Yes, Takehashi-san.

 TAKEHASHI
This is not honorable.

 JIRIKI
Hai!

 TAKEHASHI
I shall be in L. A. in three hours. Locate the courier. But do
nothing until I arrive.

 JIRIKI
Hai!

 TAKEHASHI
Do not fail me as your brother did, Jiriki.

 JIRIKI
Yes, Takehashi-san.

[TAKEHASHI clicks off. JIRIKI's face is underlit as he punches into
the Net to find out where JOHNNY's scurried to.]

 JIRIKI
Bashed and abolished in Takehashi's ramping eye, I stare
a chastened tiger left to nose his noosing confines
and drink the grateful milk his captors trickle
to his imprisoned dish. Raarr!! I'll not confine
my blood-browsing to our target-flesh, but turn,
a battered parricide of sorts, on whatever
white-cuffed, pleasant hand has held me
to my permitted meats. My brother's lolling neck
was gnashed on monofilament barbedwire
that night we hit the chip printing installation
at our paid enemy's glass-towered camp.
Takehashi had rushed the singing wire blind
and sent out a piercing, high-decibel trill
beseech-screeching loudly at the starred sky.
I remember my dash-mastering brother's final act:
a silhouette against the nothing of the night,
losing an untouchable gush of blood
from his carotid... he still held himself lightly
against gravity and the light tripping
of the metal threat alarm. I saw him die
upright, trying to save us all in the spasm
aftermath of the foiled attack. And Takehashi
saw what I had seen. Their security satellite's
relay microwaved retaliation at our matt backs,
dull in absorbent black. We raced beneath our cheap,
starlight-reflective mylars through the burning grass.
I mirrored to the android submersible
to pick us up like sandfleas off the shore.
A mile out, through the transparent serpent
of the periscope I watched my hopeless
brother's body burn high on the midnight wires
like Christ deified.





Contents

SCENE SEVEN


[JOHNNY's X-girl finds him unconscious on the street of his
previous scene. She administers some sort of medicine to him.]

 XCETERA
Half-alive. You've got to live with all of your skin,
and everything writhing within. What do I keep telling you,
Johnny? This high-mem courier gig is for encephalitics,
not my sweet thing. Oh Johnny, Oh God. You felt
so nervous-alive in the Virt box. God. [JOHNNY moans, stirs.]
That's it, that's it, keep on rocking. I can't believe
your vital stats are so frayed and bad. You're boxed
in with the reaper already, nearly. You're in
the knocking room, the knocking room. Wake up,
Johnny. Johnny. Look who came to you.

[JOHNNY wakes.]

 JOHNNY
What the hell are you doing here?

 XCETERA
You looked a little albino around the gills;
so, I ran a simulation based on physio signs
picked up via vid, calculated a probable
knock-out radius, and here I am.
....You're the only horizontal thing on the street
besides that bum who's callcard you stole.

 JOHNNY
Quite a pair.

 XCETERA
Why, thank you.

 JOHNNY
No, not you. Nevermind. I thought you had a flight to catch, a
concert to lullaby at in Adorationland.

 XCETERA
You know, I keep telling myself: Beautiful,
stop thinking with your vulva, stop thinking
with your vulva, stop thinking with your
vulva. But, by the third vulva, I've forgotten
all the other words in the sentence.

 JOHNNY
All right, all right. I'm sorry. Thank you for saving my ass, your
highness.

 XCETERA
You should talk to me like that more often. I night be inclined to
do a little more than dust your sorry ass off and send you
monorailing on your way.

 JOHNNY
I hear you, I hear you.

 XCETERA
If I'm going to be involved in this,
I want to know everything. You'd better come clean
right now; dump your core, Johnny, or I'll
have to spacewalk out of this sorry scenario
right now. I can't operate in the dark.
I'm not going to end up in some Multi-User Dungeon
on the darqside just for you, screwball.

 JOHNNY
All right. Here it is. I've got less
than seven heavenly hours to eep and decompress
my utterly overly compressed brain, or I'll
splurge my neuron-trodes all over your
shiny shiny boots in one big ugly way.

 XCETERA
You've arced your meat hardcore.

 JOHNNY
Yeah. Something like that. And if I don't
unzip and download soon....


 XCETERA
.... its a lifetime winter vay-cay in lovely Catatonia.

 JOHNNY
Something like that.

 XCETERA
You know, I'm starting to not like you all over again.

 JOHNNY
It's like the first time again for me too, darling.

 XCETERA
As it is, I'm going to call a friend of mine who might
be able to hack your ass out of this mess, sweetness.

 JOHNNY
No. Absolutely not. I don't want to involve
any strangers in this. Have to keep a zip-ship
encryption-strict security girdle on this
or its a total no-go.

 XCETERA
Speed dialing.

 JOHNNY
Xcetera....

 XCETERA
Connect.

 JESUS
[Online.] Jesus Saves Refuse Unlimited.

 XCETERA
Can the salespitch, Jesus. This is Xcetera.

 JESUS
Hey, I thought I read that you were on tour.

 XCETERA
Well, I am scheduled to depart in 06 minutes.

 JESUS
Well crack my ass, you didn't have to call to say goodbye.


 XCETERA
Jesus, please, don't let that moniker go to your pretty head. This
is Xcetera, after all.

 JESUS
Well, then, what's the deal.

 XCETERA
My friend here is sick, real sick.

 JESUS
Put his head up against the phone.

[JOHNNY leans over, puts his head against it.]

 JESUS
[Low, appreciative whistle.] Wow. That must hurt like a
motherfucker. What'd you do, use your head to storage a
surreptitious copy of the entire human genome?

 JOHNNY
Something like that.

 JESUS
Wow....

 XCETERA
Can you download him? Jesus.

 JESUS
I don't know. No. Not with anything I have here.
There's no hardware to work on in there. Its all
just lapsed synapses fluxing in a steady-state,
tripping the same billion handful of neurons back
and forth, waiting to be read-and-released. Right?

 JOHNNY
Right. Aldo said something about the download device
creating a self-defining decryption algorithm.

 JESUS
Yes, that makes sense, given the encryption medium's
inherent chaotic tenancies. But you's need something
alot more sensitive than an MRI to read the initial-state
synapse status. I'm afraid there's not a damn thing
that I can do to help you.


 XCETERA
Shit.

 JESUS
You'd better find your contact person split-second fast
and let them wedge you out to download status pronto.
You've already got some pretty serious neural degrade.

 JOHNNY
Great. My contact was killed.

 JESUS
Go to wherever he came from then. But I can't
really help.... So, Xcetera, is your tour cancelled,
or just the first concert, you diva-vixen yeowl-howler?
I was kind of looking forward to catching you on MTV.

 JOHNNY
But I don't know what company my contact represented!
[Noticing he's being ignored.] Jesus Christ!

 JESUS
I told you I can't help you. I don't have
the set-up for anything nearly that complex
in biotech reach. You're fucked and hexed, rex.

 XCETERA
Jesus, is there anyplace around that might have
equipment sensitive enough to help Johnny out?

 JESUS
Well....

 JOHNNY
Yes... yes....

 JESUS
There might be one place. Down in the valley.

 XCETERA
Praise the Lord.

 JESUS
And pass the ashes. I did some freelance consulting
at this one place last spring, bringing
their trash facilities in line with Kalifornia's
new eco-standards. I remember seeing a sign in the valley
for an experimental decryption facility....

 JOHNNY
Oh great. And I'm going to let a garbage man root
around in my junked skull?

 JESUS
Waste management is very serious business, mister.
Mafia's all over that catshit. You know, though,
there's only x square kilometers of habitable earth
surface, and each squealing human being
in our present state of technological grace
requires y kilometers of that flatness to support them.
So, we have to minimize and manage our waste products.
And haste makes waste, my friend.

 JOHNNY
Yeah, well, in six-plus hours you can hump me
into the human parts bin in back of the medical
center; I'll be 100% waste then.

 JESUS
It would free up a few kilometers for alternate use.

 XCETERA
Jesus.

 JESUS
But I see your point. I guess I'd better
hack some facetime on this mission, miss.
Meet me here immediamente, Xcetera.

 XCETERA
We'll be there.

 JESUS
Stay clean and stay Green. Hate the Grid,
but love the Net. A crypto-Anarchic creed.
My personal praxis? Definitely.





Contents

SCENE EIGHT


[TAKEHASHI arrives in L. A. to cut off JIRIKI's thumb.]

 TAKEHASHI
Pilgrim grim in my IBM issue business suit,
I stalk my subservient, Jiriki, through the trick matrix
of his fuzzy deceptions, crashing from their apogee
in my high, black, blind eye back to disastered earth.
Her hiroshimaed shadow is grounded now to dust.
Her whiz-biz methods and black-jacketed audacity
have spent their new sheen to narrow nothingness.
Its time for the farmer's boy to pluck luck
back out of distress, save our sassy asses,
and then mount the pure air back to longing Hong Kong,
our clients, and one fat untraceable account.

[Enter JIRIKI.]

 TAKEHASHI
Oh Jiriki, your golden eye trapped like a whale's
flotsamed to the gritty beach, stares at the wrong man
for the wanness of compassion. I will not
pale and weep; I will not lose
honor to gain mercy at this late date. We are not
some harikari brat-pack with wise almond eyes.

 JIRIKI
Can't I ginger my disgrace with some saving gesture?

 TAKEHASHI
Too late. Avert your defeatist face.
I am tired of looking at your eyes.
You've crash-landed in the wrong century
if you want to meet the buddha face-to-face.
[Strips off shirt, readies blade.]
His peace is the peace of Nirvana-hounds, while I,
I only believe in howling hell herself.
Can't you see the skin demons that gird my arms about?
They are not there to laugh my soul to peace.
Pace, pace, is for Roman tongues, not mine.
I've sabered together my hatred and life-flash
from eons of culture-trivia, and know that the choice
was mine. "Garbage in, garbage out." This is all
the mantra-motor on which I will willingly rely.
Thumbs up, so I may like a marauding Caesar
mow it down, please. [Cuts off thumb.]
Thank you, Jiriki. Now place the blood stub
in that plastic forensic, mummifying cup
over there. It will preserve it to a blue, strained
stain-- a thumb lump of marble crushed
and petrified in mezazoic muds. Good soldier.
There's a generic box of aspirin
by the gilded Gideon on the nightstand.





Contents

SCENE NINE


[Before the door of the high-tech NAVUS company in Silicon Valley.
JESUS uses a video-enhanced fake head (perfect-register video
image) to trick the security system, which is totally automated,
and therefore can be tricked in this way.]

[JESUS pulls a mounted transparent head from a bowling bag.]

 JOHNNY
What the hell is that?

 JESUS
The Admiral's ghost. This is the head of NAVUS;
P. J. Spindt. The Admiral started NAVUS
on technology he smuggled out of the Navy.
The first tax break-in of many many for old
"teflon sides." This gimmick here's
a perfect register video image projected
into a transparent latex matrix. The high definition
video is indistinguishable from the actual,
since security never uses a high-res set-up
to grab their image. Too expensive. Waste of good technology.
We'll go by probably a thousand cameras
between the front door and the lab-- every one
standard issue; I guarantee it.
Even old P. J. Spindt's retinal pattern
is back projected behind the pupils.
And the fleshlike quality of the latex lets
lets the security computer think that a real amigo
is dawdling at the yipping gate, and not
some high-grade computer-simulation being fed in
mouth-to-nipple on the in-house video line.
That's how this kind of break-in would normally
be attempted. They know that. And that means that I know
that, and that I know that they know that.
So, I'm using a throwback technology that they
won't be expecting, and aren't prepped
to guard against. If the cavalry expects you
to use high-res lasers, throw rocks instead.
And, since there's no human operator in the security sys
at this minimal level (since human operatives
can be bought, or their caring families
held at nazi-hostage)-- there's nobody in there
to wide angle the camera and see that instead
of old P. J. Spindt standing demanding
that "these fuckers pipe me aboard," its just Jesus
and his apostles ready to rob the grave.
This plastic baby is a failed precursor of the hologram.
But it should do what we want it to.

 XCETERA
Praise be to the Lord.

 JOHNNY
All this is really interesting. But can we
get going? Pretty soon I'm going to have a headache
that makes Mt. St. Helen's look like a job
for Flintstones chewables.

 XCETERA
Jesus, plug that silicon monkey in,
and start chattering.

 JESUS
All I have to do is caress this indentation
and old P. J. here goes into ectoplasmic morph.

 JOHNNY
Do it.

[JESUS touches the button.]

 JESUS
Disney!

 J. P. SPINDT
Vox identification J. P. Spindt. Request entrance.

[The computer whirrs silently for a moment, the door clicks softly
open.]

 COMPUTER VOICE, FEMALE, PLEASANT
Identification accepted.

 XCETERA
OK, commandoes. Let's get the Encyclopedia Japonica
out of Johnny's head here.

[They go in.]





Contents

SCENE TEN


[In the laboratory. JOHNNY is strapped in, as in first scene.
TAKEHASHI and JIRIKI are standing there as the lights go up. JIRIKI
is silent, next to TAKEHASHI.]

 TAKEHASHI
OM. AUM. Son of the one and Sony Only,
I must have your head of you. Now now now.
This is the will of TIGRIS, and I mayn't be amiss.
Prepare for the honor of being included
in our non-delusional database, Johnny. Your head
has hacked a 21st century miracle today. It seems
you see with sweeping vision the rude suicide
of the future past. History reflects grammar,
you know that. And today's grammar lesson
conflates the stripped ego-I of yourself
into the near seamless industry of Us. It is
never too late to be appropriated by the debate.
A detournement? Perhaps. The powers that be are only
sad shadows of themselves; every grand god gets
his heaven from those who stoop to praise.
Not in any other way. Jiriki and I are the realtime
kneelteam forcing prayers and payment
from the buckled-in and reluctant. Lucent enough?
I know that my god needs me. Hiss blessing
will suffice my truncheoned and nodding know-node.
Every dent bleeds obedience. I gain my significance
by the swiftness of my adherence. By believing that
this solemn rumor of communion occurs, it does.
Each prayer completes its nattering circuit,
and I am pulled bootstrapped by my own, loved.
rosy and stolen prayerbeads into the heaven
I invented. Your death will bequeath a mantra
I will repeat in my flitting Porsche
by the datalight your own buzzing bits emit.
I regret that your death has gone the narrow road
to become our only saving solution in this situation.
But, I must have your head. It sheds
its charcoal and aesthetic side as well:
one man's death, and a billion billion numerals
and lines of running programming will roam free.
A very American phrase for this nexus
of a nearly Greek necessity. But, I must have your head.
Fate has held her high-watt candle to your egg,
and found you nearly hatching. But your data is far, far
too valuable to go flapping into the safe,
Pacific sunset. No. You must hatch bursting
into our neural Net, and flap to the flip profit
of the garden that makes a statue of you.
You will be in our pantheon a long time, Johnny.
Your headless honor will be long upheld.
A good fate for one as inherently insignificant
as yourself. Other gods have played
their flaying game with us, eons out of mind;
bitter centuries that spent their thin hours
defying time only to be once again defined by its
bright passage. So it is with us. So it shall be.
Formulated in your brain is a pro-rated program
that has discovered a new law of physical intercon-
nectedness. A law that will bring all of cyberspace
under one comprehensible rubric of imagination's fancy.
The company that owns that program will define
online reality by having a superior understanding of all
events that unfold there. Not a mere simulation,
or model of a model of the universe's perverse
halves soldered whole, but the complete
thing-in-itself, the face in the cybersky,
revealed. Einstein's spacetime for the inner real.
Root and website, floating point fluency
and the innumerable numinous.

 JOHNNY
Great. Just great.

 TAKEHASHI
Be content, not contentious. Your hissing spleen
demeans you. Did you think that you would never die?
That your morning's prayers would forever
cease in noon? That noon would trundle on
to night, and that dark bring back some waking
from the heralded nightmare of your sleep?
That the circuit that you ran and ran
was supercooled, frictionless, supreme?
Yourself the white electron of that
hyperborean dream? The corporation is the home
of our small-m mythic identities. It will harbor
all that any dim one may glow and give
in the synergistic many of its waves.
Geodesic sunlight will split upon its crests.
Light supplied, and light divided; prismed
to a startled pitch, a rainbow vibration
of significance. Electrons, racing ever, there will find
some rest. "Johnny" is the marker of one, just one,
sequence of surfing, superfluous bytes and bits.
Markers on a game the maker has forgotten
how to play. Takehashi is another marker, and hops
where he is shoved. This is the way of the Way.
And even your disobedience translates into
"Well, OK." Jiriki, your friends standing here,
the blank billions who dot the globe, all, all
are markers and dot their bingo cards
embryo-blind as lab mice. What number will
be called from the algorithm infected with
raw chance? The hollering caller is blind,
the corporate players have put out their eyes.
They play the final game every day
with giant thumbs that manipulate human lives.
Pretty, pink bingo pieces that may shove back,
but still are shoved. Our corporate sponsors play
this pink bingo daily, but never win.
The game goes on. Only their ferocity to win is real,
and gains its reality at our expense. Pink
bingo pieces smear the cards. the game goes on.

[JIRIKI, to whom TAKEHASHI has handed his ceremonial sword, beheads
TAKEHASHI, with a cry:]

 JIRIKI
Hai!

[Everyone looks at each other in total astonishment.]

 JIRIKI
The people I represent will perform a micron-depth vivisection of
your brain matter, scan the autopsied synapses, map them on a
computer-generated grid, model your brain unerringly, and then
extract the information we need from that model using decryption
methods already available to us.

 XCETERA
Can't you just yank it out of his aching head, like we were just
about to do just now?

 JIRIKI
The interests I am employed to satisfy are not non-invasive
capable. This technology is too cutting edge.

 JESUS
Nice pun. Just let us download here. I've got a handle on it.

 XCETERA
And we'll give you whatever we extract.

 JOHNNY
Hey, I'm under contract....

 XCETERA
Johnny, shut-up.

 JESUS
You don't even have the time to get him to any facility before he
goes critical. The data will be irretrievable when than happens.

 JIRIKI
You need him alive. I do not. I simply require his head. I hold the
advantage. I do not see where our goals overlap.

 JESUS
Even dead, his steady-state will begin an irreversible decay
process. The information he's carrying is extremely delicate, and
the cryptology more massive than anything I've ever even heard of.

 JIRIKI
That is a chance I will have to take.

 XCETERA
But you don't have to take it. The decryption equipment is right
here.

[JIRIKI pauses.]

 JESUS
We didn't set off any intruder alarms, did you?

 JIRIKI
No.

 JESUS
So nobody knows we're here....

 JOHNNY
But I won't get paid!

 XCETERA
Johnny. Shut. Up.

 JIRIKI
My company can recompense you.

[Smiles all around.]

 JESUS
All right Johnny, let's see some mercury. Open them twiggy peepers,
I'm about the read your mind.

[They attach eye-shielding, lightwires.]

 XCETERA
Just who do you work for anyway?

 JIRIKI
Soma-E. A subdivision of Zony.

 JOHNNY
That's who the information was pirated from in the first place.

 JIRIKI
They outbidded my loyalty from TIGRIS-eyed Takehashi.

 XCETERA
Pointless. This whole routine. Totally pointless.

 JESUS
One more iteration through the feedback loop.

 JOHNNY
Aldo said they'd probably be pretty anxious to retrieve their data.

 XCETERA
I guess "Aldo" was right.

 JIRIKI
Aldo was executed when my team hit the impromptu lab where you were
uploaded.

 JOHNNY
Did anyone else make it out of there?

 JIRIKI
[Insulted.] I am efficient.

 JESUS
Commencing download sequence. Now.

[Lightwires flicker on. A moment passes.]

 JOHNNY
Oh....

[Stage lights go down, except for a spot on JOHNNY, strapped in as
in the beginning.]


 JOHNNY
Who am I? Who amI? If I knew, would I tell?
I can't disclose those cancerous clues,
they eat identity alive, and, in this case,
that's mine. If I'd decide to die, this finishing minute,
who would I send packing to the chopping block?
What soma-droning and drowning boy have I become?
Was Takehashi right, have I no I in my lead sights?
What love or inspiration lingers at these
graphited fingertips? Zoned on overloaded silicone,
and trapped in one final, ecstatic Now,
I'll know my ground zero when I feel it, not before.
How many times can a man divide and evade?
Am I glad my face is melting as if it was never made?
A formless mess puddles into mercury, and drains.
I watch it slither after gravity, and laugh,
a fine, Stim-jimmied extroverted snort.
My moody mortality unmasks me. I stare
into its laser-licking glare and wince.
Who am I, essentially, once the last mask
is ripped back to skin, the final lie,
the lie of self, of something being me
instead of nothing constituting myself
comes up a blank cartridge, a recursive
syntax looping on zero.... What then, what then?
Who then, then what is all of this, this thisness?
What has all of this been? No memory to rudder
my oblivion in some self-defining and self-
creating dream stream self-fashioning; not
even the lazy image of an overhead-projected
story to go by, some ultravivid vid img,
some loved blood on the TV snow. No, not
even that, nothing. But still this head, this
voice, these arcite eyes, skin of antimony,
surreal interior visions and revisions,
still that, until the last moment, the cubed
solution. My question commands silences.
My pause is sempiternal, solemn.
Then, when the microtape fails and fritters,
a thumb on its steel reel, then even
the pause pauses. [Pause.] Pulses of light pass the cave mouth.
I am a sleeper asleep in his cave, in love
with flowing water, all light, the small,
serried series of wet ticks that compose
the human concept of infinity. That deep repeat.
I am in love with my dim cave, its shallows
of lights, its deep darks, the surprising
grottoes that give a sense of unexpected
distance under my suddenly suspended feet.
I pass hours the way an owl, still hungry,
overlooks a vulnerable mouse at the fir's
crowded root. I know the waters pass me
in the dark. I know I am space suspended,
a miracle bridge with no heaven or horizon
to cry out unto. My eyes attract small,
blind fish. They are suave and attentive.
A minute passes. They turn away from me forever,
suave and diminishing. Then they are gone.
I am alone. A minute passes. The waters walk away,
suavely evaporating. A minute passes.
And the cave disintegrates. I am alone.
Space abandons me. There is no medium left
for suavity to express itself in. There is
a darkness so dark that I cannot see it.
Pulses of light pass the cave mouth.
Somewhere else. I am alone.

 JESUS
Disney!

[JESUS pops a cd-rom from its reader, hands it over to JIRIKI, who
exits.]




Contents

End

Jul 082020
 

Comedy of twin sisters’ hi-jinks and envy.

FIRST SCENE

[JAN AND MARSHA’S APARTMENT. JAN IS ALONE, STARING AT THE PHONE.]

JAN
Ring. Ring…. Ring.

[PHONE RINGS. JAN STARTS VIOLENTLY.]

JAN
‘Lo. No, no. Marsha’s my sister. Yes, I’ll tell her. You thank her. A thousand thanks. Yes, yes. Got it. G’bye.

[PHONE RINGS.]

JAN
Hello. Expecting a call, actually. I have a life of my own too, y’know. Hmm. Yes, yes. What’s that, sultan? A limo to the airport, free tour of the United Arab Emerates? Great, great. I’ll tell her immeadiately when she comes in. Where’s she now? Oh, ah, binding feet in China, that sort of thing. I know, she seems so nice. Not everything is quite what it seems, is it?

[PHONE RINGS.]

JAN
No, no. Marsha’s my sister. Always likes to insert a helping hand, doesn’t she? You thank her. Yes, well, that’s very generous of you. Look, all she did was change a flat. Get over it.

[PHONE RINGS.]

JAN
No, no, I’m not. Well, she’s my sister, actually. Shared a womb at one time. Very cozy. Low rent, young kids on our own, that sort of thing, you understand. Twins, actually. Always being mistaken for each other. Zygote split, long long ago in the dim dark past, etc. Quite a nasty charade at times, really. Expecting one sister when, whoops, you get the other. Ha, ha, universe has played a quick joke on you. No, not everyone in the same family gets the same amount of niceness. You have me there. Must agree. What’s with this third degree, anyway, some sort of survey? With the census, are you?

[JAN listens to dial tone, looks at PHONE; hangs up.]

[PHONE RINGS.]

JAN
Hello. Oh, the Bronx Zoo, that’s very nice, you’ve got all those nasty beasts hunkered down in prisons or cages over there, haven’t you? Good job. Can’t help you myself. I’m a people person, you understand. What? Oh, you want to speak to

MARSHA
It’s Marsha that you want, is it? Well, I’m not Marsha, though, am I? So, get to the fucking point! You would like to thank her. Thank her. Yes, I get it. I’ve got it. Writing it all down, aren’t I? [JAN “WRITES” A NOTE ON THE AIR WITH HER FINGER.] “Thanks for reading the Chinese fables to Lingling and Yingying. Makes them feel right back at home among the swaying bamboo groves.” Got it, got it. It’s all down here on the Rosetta stone. Lovely, lovely. Yes, her Cantonese is perfection. Y’know, she had a pack of those greasy Tienammin Square exiles camping out here for about six months. Nothing quite as maddening as an apartment full of freedom-fighting computer nerds.

[PHONE RINGS.]

JAN
No, no. Got my own life, haven’t I? Expecting a rather important call, you know. So, buzz off. Thanks, that’s a good buddist. Free tibet with every meal. Yes, yes. Spin a prayerwheel for me then? Drop dead.

[DOORBELL RINGS. JAN PICKS UP THE PHONE.]

JAN
Hello, hello?

[DOORBELL RINGS AGAIN.]

JAN
Oh! [ANSWERS DOOR. BEAUTIFUL FLOWERS ARE DELIVERED.] Sign here? All right, then, off you go. OLR

[JAN LOOKS AT THE CARD ATTATCHED.]

JAN
Prince Charles! That Marsha doesn’t where to draw the line, does she? Damn well rebelled from Britain two-hundred years ago, didn’t we? Still, they’re lovely flowers just the same. [READING.] “In recognition of your outstanding services in re-uniting the Free State of Ireland.” Well, I’ll be. Quite the little diplomat, that

MARSHA
And I was under the impression that all she did was serve tea tuesdays and thursdays at the United Nations. The girl really has no sense of proportion.

[PHONE RINGS. JAN ANSWERS THE DOOR. PHONE RINGS AGAIN.]

JAN
Oh! [ANSWERS PHONE.] Hello? At last! What did you wait so long to call for? The line was busy. Yeah, well, I’m the sister of mercy’s answering service. Is everything set? It’s all go, then? Four p.m. The parade grounds. Two minute timer. Got it. Yes. [HANGS UP.] I’ve got to get changed.

[JAN EXITS. MARSHA, HER IDENTICAL TWIN, ENTERS THROUGH FRONT DOOR, HAULING A HUGE BAG OF ALUMINUM CANS. MARSHA STUTTERS.]

MARSHA
J-Jan? I’m h-home.

JAN
I’m in here, getting changed, apparently into a contender for the World Wrestling Federation chunky-butts championship throwdown, if this mirror can be trusted.

MARSHA
D-did I get any m-m-messages?

JAN
No. Nothing. Not a one. Been a real drop off in your popularity ’round here, sis. A gratitude abyss.

MARSHA
Kind of a r-relief, r-really.

JAN
I’m sorry, Marsh, what did you say? It’s been so quiet around here today, I’ve sort of lost the habit of listening. An innundation of silence. Don’t know how those monks ever readjust.

MARSHA
I’m still n-not used to this eye p-patch Jose Feliciano had sent over for Nat-tivitad.

JAN
Yeah, well, it’s a bit premature, don’t you think? Don’t they make braille calenders in Mexico?

MARSHA
If I d-don’t break it in , what will Jose say the next time he s-sees me?

JAN
That’s a puzzler, but, that’s what you get for donating your eye to a blinded seeing eye dog, dearie.

MARSHA
You d-don’t understand. L-little Joselita is s-so c-cute! I-I just c-counldn’t not.

JAN
God, this thing makes my tummy look like a beachball. Why I ever agreed to help you out with this…OLR, specify help.

[AS MARSHA SORTS HER GIANT STACK OF THANK YOU NOTES.]

MARSHA
So, Jan, how’s your boyfriend?

JAN
Spunkenstein? He’s all right.

SCENE TWO

[SAME. LATER. MARSHA is sorting cans by brand.]

MARSHA
Jan, I’ve got an awfully big favor to ask of you.

JAN
Favor? What makes you think you’ve got the right to ask me any favors?

MARSHA
Nothing. Of course, you’re right. I don’t know how I could’ve asked, really.

JAN
Marsha, you’re such an ass. Go ahead and ask me. I was being sarcastic. I couldn’t really turn down St. Teresa, now could I?

MARSHA
Oh, has she called again?

JAN
Hasn’t stopped. Not since you got her that cellular last Easter.

MARSHA
Well, I was wondering…. I know you like to gainsay all these charities and things….

JAN
Collecting sperm from endangered elephants? How could I mock something as solemn, and huge, as that?

MARSHA
Anyway, I was wondering if you wouldn’t mind…. The thing is, I just know you’ve got a heart of gold in there under all that yakety shellack and those barbed comebacks. You’re my sister, after all, and you couldn’t hide your true nature from me.

JAN
No, of course not. Not after all the childhood anxieties and proms dates we’ve swapped. All the teachers we tricked. Get on,

MARSHA
Gee, this is so edgy and real….

MARSHA
Well, you know how untidy people are at parades….

JAN
Do I LOOK like a maid, Marsh?

MARSHA
No. That’s not it at all. But….

JAN
But I do look great in a frilly apron, right? You sound like Spunkenstein.

MARSHA
They’re always imbibing their favorite brands of deliscious refreshing brand name carbonated commensibles…?

JAN
Yes, yes. All the old horses with their schnozes at the diet cola trough; little ones rotting away their dental inheritance with the sugar-loaded type. Big booming business selling us what we don’t need with ads that we don’t like so that we can go on being NOT happy in our very own very special American way. Happy capitalism day! Hooray! And your point….

MARSHA
A lot of those aluminum cans wind up sloppily discarded on the sidewalk; doing no one any good and creating a minor traffic hazard.

JAN
How dare they! I already asked you if I looked like anybody’s maid, didn’t I?

MARSHA
Yes. And you don’t, really, except maybe Fran Drescher a little. And of course, that means I look like her too, doesn’t it?

JAN
Just like I look like her. Right.

MARSHA
You know, that’s a great deal of top notch aluminum just going to waste.

JAN
And just what are we going to do with it?

MARSHA
Oh, Jan!

JAN
Hypothetically.

MARSHA
Well, since we’re going to the parade anyway….

JAN
Ye-ees.

MARSHA
We could just collect the stuff…. Hypotheically.

JAN
For what conceivable purpose? Another Sputnik? Tidyness’ sake?

MARSHA
Well, same reason I’ve got these. For Jerry’s kids. For crutches.

JAN
Those drooling dolts you have to stare at on Labor Day telethons? Marsha! Get lucid!

SCENE THREE

[THE PARADE. MARSHA picks up and deposits a can in her nearly full sack. JAN’s is empty, except for one or two passing parade viewers have tossed in instead of using the garbage can.]

MARSHA
Clank! A good strong can there. American aluminum.

JAN
Kiddies well on their way to tin limbs, are they? Almost makes me wish I was short a limb.

MARSHA
Well, you are slightly clubfooted,

JAN
That’s how mom always was able to tell us apart..

JAN
Thanks for reminding me, bionic eye. All my life, I’ve been able to slip on my special shoes, and as long as I didn’t mix up my left and right feet, I was OK. Didn’t think of my hanicap at all. Thanks for reminding me of my stature, compared to you, dear dear Marsha.

MARSHA
[recalling.] Big L and big R; mom drew them on your feet with indelible ink once a month like clockwork.

JAN
Like a pediopheliac tattooist, you mean. She used to do that in my sleep. I was ten before I found out that R and L weren’t birthmarks. I still have nightmares about the Tickle Monster… eeuagh!

[MARSHA clinks another can in her sack.]

MARSHA
Look. You’d better get on the ball. I’m getting way ahead.

JAN
[squinting at MARSHA.] The ugly head of competitive spirit, slowly raising its fanged countenance….

MARSHA
It’s what makes America great, isn’t it?

JAN
Oh yeah. It’s what Thanksgiving is all about, really. Corporate pilgrims smashing the competitive daylights out of the Indians on the Maize stock exchange.

[A line of mimes goes by, pulling themselves on an invisible “rope.”]

MARSHA
Oh, mimes! I just l-love mimes.

JAN
I’d like to hear your impression of one about now.

MARSHA
Oh, look. They’ve hauled themselves over to the P-pepsi stand.

JAN
Mimes. Make enough noise when they slurp that stuff down.

MARSHA
Oh, J-

JAN
They’re off duty. Let’s s-see if we can go get their cans.

JAN
[Going along.] Maybe they can shut you up in one of their invisible boxes. And soundproof it.

SCENE FOUR

[LITTLE GIRL SCENE— THE PARADE GROUNDS. The LITTLE GIRL in this scene is indeed one of Jerry’s Kids, and has crutches of aluminum.]

MARSHA
This is a once in alifetime opportunity. Pepsi is sposoring the parade this year. Just think of the discarded cans!

JAN
[to LITTLE GIRL] Are you done with that yet?

LITTLE GIRL
What?

JAN
[Imperious.] Can.

LITTLE GIRL
Can?

JAN
What?

LITTLE GIRL
What?

JAN
Not what, can.

LITTLE GIRL
Can I what?

JAN
Can you give me that can?

LITTLE GIRL
Can I give you what can?

JAN
That can in your hand. Milk-besotted youth… rocknroll is making them all deaf.

LITTLE GIRL
There’s a machine right over there.

JAN
I don’t want a machine, I want that can.

LITTLE GIRL
It takes bills.

JAN
Do I look like a duck?

LITTLE GIRL
Duck?

JAN
Duck, duck! Quack, quack! [flaps arms, etc.]

LITTLE GIRL
You’re a strange duck.

JAN
Look, will you give to me for a buck?

LITTLE GIRL
I said you were a strange duck.

JAN
Do I look like Donald Duck, is that it? There’s Donald, quacking his way through the stratosphere.

LITTLE GIRL
Oh, Donald Duck! Hello, Donnie D!

JAN
Look… just… here’s the dollar. Now give me the can.

LITTLE GIRL
A dollar! Is it real?

JAN
Is it real! Of course its goddamned real…. Who would go to the trouble of etching and printing up a fake… oh, nevermind.

LITTLE GIRL
It certainly looks real.

JAN
It is real. Now give me that soda can.

[LITTLE GIRL pockets dollar, drinks from can.]

JAN
aren’t you done with that yet?

LITTLE GIRL
Donnie D! Donnie D! [she waves furiously.]

[JAN takes the can, dumps it out, clanks can loudly into the bag with the two others, and looks over at MARSHA with a prideful smirk.]

LITTLE GIRL
…Mommie!

MARSHA
Hmm. Well, I guess that’s one more can than we had.

JAN
Look, you might just try thinking of me for a change.

[MARSHA makes “Hmm” thinking sound.]

JAN
What are you doing?

MARSHA
Trying to think of you.

JAN
Well?

MARSHA
Turn around.

JAN
Turn around?

MARSHA
Well, I can’t very well think of you with you looking at me, can I? Don’t you have to be absent or something? Isn’t that the usual way? Dear Fondly-Recalled-in-a-Distant-Land and all that?

JAN
Try harder. I mean, how do I feel for christssake? Hmm? How does neglected and bedraggled two minutes younger, clubfooted Jan feel? Ever ask yourself that? Maybe if you were just a shade more selfish, I could stand the unbearable fact that you are as giving as your are. But, no! Not a chink in your buffed and polished aluminium armor, is there! What a blinding shame! Here comes Marsha the invincible princess, driving her nice new Nice-CBM missle right down the sunny side of the street! All hail princess Nice!

MARSHA
W-would t-that r-really help you out, s-sis? If I w-were m-more like you, t-that is? More b-brutish and s-s-selfish, a female Donald Trump?

JAN
Well, yes. It might; it just might. But not is you’re selfish to me, personally. Try it out on strangers first.See how it feels. Snub a Vietnam vet, or kick a puppy….

MARSHA
I-I s-sup-pose I could try it. F-for you….

JAN
Don’t be all smarmy about it. That would sort of ruin the whole experiment, wouldn’t it? Sheer ruin, that’d be; the whole lab up in napalm. Don’t be selfish for me, be selfish for yourself. Nit.

MARSHA
I g-guess….

[LITTLE GIRL and MOTHER re-enter. MARSHA waves sweetly to her while JAN struggles with selfishness similies.]

JAN
Oh, look. It’s easy; it’s so easy. It’s like… like stealing candy from a baby. [Seeing who MARSHA is waving at.] Great! See that rotten little harridan with the soda-fixation? Figured she’d be in psychotherapy by now with all the fuss she raised.

MARSHA
All right. Right. What do I do now?

JAN
You are a pathetic creature, aren’t you?

MARSHA
My thespian instructress in sixth grade said pathos was a very valuable, as well as evanescent, dramatic trait.

JAN
Just shut it. God! …What do you do? What do you do?

MARSHA
Yes. How do I be selfish?

JAN
If you have to ask others of to be, to be…. Argh! I feel like Lucy being licked by that insufferable beast, that dog, what’s-his-name!

MARSHA
Pathos!

JAN
Was that the dingo’s monniker?

MARSHA
No. You were just such a good example of pathos just then.

JAN
[Going on from before.] Must’ve been named by an out of work actor…. How would you like to be a good example of a cruxifiction, Marsha?

MARSHA
[Going on from before.] Oh. Don’t you just love Snoopy? And, and….Look, there he is! It’s the Snoopy float just rounding the c-corner at the ta-taysachs clinic!

JAN
Yes. That’s the one you’re always bleeding at, isn’t it?

MARSHA
Someone has to be the guinea pig. Science would never advance without a few useful deaths.

JAN
Well, just remember that when you go over to that little girl over there….

MARSHA
Remember what?

JAN
[Lost in thought.] A useful death…. Hmm….

MARSHA
But how am I to be selfish?

JAN
[Flinching from habit.] I am not being selfish,

MOM
Why’re you always on my back. Look, Mother, you can just….[Realizes she is addressing Marsha.] I, I wasn’t being selfish,

MARSHA
I was just lost in thought. [Recovering her self-possession fully.] You do think, don’t you? Can’t serve crumpets at the UN completely without a stinking brain, can you? Perhaps one pickled in formaldehyde?

MARSHA
No, no. You can’t. I mean, yes, I do. I do have a brain. But I still don’t know how I am to be selfish.

JAN
If I told you how, it would hardly be selfish on you’re part, now would it? [Gives a friendly shove while MARSHA is still trying to unpuzzle the logic of her last statement.] Off you go….

[MARSHA goes toward the LITTLE GIRL]

JAN
A useful death, useful death….

SCENE FIVE

[PARADE GROUNDS– MARSHA AND THE LITTLE GIRL]

LITTLE GIRL
Eek! Mommie, it’s that horrible lay. And now she doesn’t gots one eye!

MARSHA
A h-horrible lady? Where?

LITTLE GIRL
[Pointing at MARSHA.] There! there!

MARSHA
T-there? Oh, but you’re pointing at me!

LITTLE GIRL
You took my can of soda.

MARSHA
I’ve got a lot of soda cans here. Now, which one was yours? We’ll fish it out.

LITTLE GIRL
[Taken off guard by MARSHA’s wacky tack.] I-I don’t know.

MARSHA
Well…. Do you know which brand of sodapop it was?

LITTLE GIRL
It’s not the can….

MARSHA
N-not the can? But, all I’ve got are cans. See? [MARSHA shakes bag. Cans clank.]

LITTLE GIRL
I want the soda back. You poured it all out on the dog.

MARSHA
On the d-dog? You mean that c-chia-h-hua-h-hua?

LITTLE GIRL
Chi- wha-…. What?

MARSHA
W-what?

LITTLE GIRL
[Making fun of MARSHA’s stutter.] Wh-w-what?

MARSHA
P-p-poor th-thing! You’ve g-got a st-st-stutter t-too, haven’t you? Well, I know what it’s like growing up with that af-af-fliction.

LITTLE GIRL
[Guiltily.] Pretty tough…. I b-bet.

MARSHA
Well, I can’t tell you anything about it that you d-don’t already k-know. However, don’t let them get you d-down. Just pretend you’re humming your words. Like a little song. [Hums.] I’m a yankee doodle d-dandy… a real live niece of my Uncle Sam….

LITTLE GIRL
Dandy? What’s a dandy?

MARSHA
[Stops humming.] Candy? [Aside.] From a baby! [Aloud. Narrowing her eyes.] You haven’t got any candy, have you?

LITTLE GIRL
Candy!?

MARSHA
I’m afraid I haven’t g-got any candy,

LITTLE GIRL

LITTLE GIRL
…candy?

MARSHA
[Aside.] Selfish. Be selfish. [Alound.] No, I definately do not have any candy…. And, and if I did, well you can be d-darn s-sure I would give you any. [Proudly, conspiritorially.] I’m selfish.

MOM
[Not even turning around to see what’s going on.] Hush, hush, darling. What do you mean, we don’t have any candy? [Pulls a whole bag of candies from her purse.] Now, here, you and your little friend shre this equally. I don’t want any selfishness in my children. And pay attention to the grand parade! the enthusiasms of youth cannot be duplicated! Oh, look, there’s Snoopy and that chittery sidekick of his, what’s-its-name! The yellow feller!

LITTLE GIRL
[Morosely giving half.] That’s half. I’m Melissa.

MARSHA
And I’m M-

MARSHA
Thank you. [To herself.] Maybe this selfishness thing is going to work out.

MOM
[Humming.] Seventy-six trombones in the big parade….

MARSHA
These Cracker Jacks are sure drying out my throat. [Coughs. Opens purse for change.] Wanna grab us a couple of Pepsis?

LITTLE GIRL
[Face lighting up.] Sure!

[LITTLE GIRL gets sodas. They lift them to their lips.]

MARSHA
Well, Melissa, as my friend from the UN, Sven Sorensen, says: skoal!

[MOM turns around, instantly alert]

MOM
Sven Sorenson! I haven’t heard that name in thirty years. Have you heard of him?

MARSHA
Why, I should think so, I gave him a crumpet and a vodka-spiked herbal tea just yesterday, around fourish.

MOM
Did you know that he and I… Well, I haven’t seen Sven in thirty years.

MARSHA
Well….

MOM
My dear woman, Sven and I were affianced all those years ago… We met on a pleasure cruise amongst the great and scenic iceburgs of the North Sea when… when…. [MOM begins to break down.]

MARSHA
When your ship smacked against one, and went all hands down!

MOM
Yes, yes. Greatest disater since the Titanic. I thought Sven… Well, they never found him, nothing at all. And yet you say he’s… he’s….

MARSHA
Alive and in New York. Yes he certainly is. Is your name Morainia?

MOM
Yes! Yes, it is.

MARSHA
Well, he talks of nothing else. He’s been a bachelor these thirty years, and taken to vodka and tea on a regular basis. Sad and proud in a drunken Icelandic way.

MOM
Does he… does he ever mention me?

MARSHA
Talks of nothing else by his third tea, although the tea’s a bit thin at that point. “Morania, Morania dearest.”

MOM
Oh, darling woman, you’ve changed my life!

MARSHA
[to LITTLE GIRL] You’d think he was singing an anthem to a country named Morania, practically….

MOM
I see you like candy. Here, here’s a bagfull. I’ve just divorced the wretch that that makes these Crunch ‘Ems, this girl’s father. But what ever happed to Sven? I mean, they never found….

MARSHA
Caught in a thermal stream. Probably the same one that make the iceberg crack off the glaciers you were touring. That, and the Greenhouse effect. Sven’s the head of head of an international panel I volunteer for on that subject, bye the bye.

MOM
But what happened? Why couldn’t they find him?

MARSHA
Very strange really. I’ve heard the story a thousand times! “AAnd ssen, aafter I scramble oop onto se ledge ov an ice-cave, insiide de iceberg…. I begin to shaake, like de deviil has my soul on a rope, it is so cold. So, soo cold! I tell you.” Oh it was an adventure right enough.

LITTLE GIRL
But then what happened, Marsha?

MARSHA
Well, it gets kind of bloody then.

LITTLE GIRL
Bloody? Oooo….

MARSHA
Yes. Evidently, this fat walrus waddled onto the ice ledge. Sven slayed it, and crawled inside to keep warm. An illegal Japanese whaler found him three days later, howling and hallucinating in a dancing walrus-skin. They almost speared him.

MOM
Oh no!

MARSHA
Oh, yes! He had a case of Arctic amnesia pretty bad for the next ten years, off and on. Signed up with the Japanese deligation to the UN, and got his memory back when he met his first Icelander here in New York. Since then, it’s been nothing but Morainia this and Morainia that.

MOM
Sven!

MARSHA
Told me the whole story over a tuna sandwich we split at a global warming conference in St. Moritz.

STREET HAWKER
Videos of the parade! Sign up for yours today! Only 19.95! Rewind and relive the enthusiasms of youth! Video! Video!

MOM
Oh, I must sign up for one of those. Come along, Melissa, we’re off to the UN. But first I want to hear the gallidet marching band. You have my eternal gratitude,

MARSHA

MARSHA
Well, all in a day’s…. I must run too, my sister’s expecting me.

MOM
[to LITTLE GIRL] Come along!

LITTLE GIRL
‘Bye!

MARSHA
‘Bye-‘bye, Melissa. [looks at candy bag.] Maybe this selishness thing is going to work out after all. Like taking candy….

[MARSHA GOES back to JAN.]

MARSHA
Well, p-pretty g-good, huh?

[JAN, speechlessly angry, strides over behind the LITTLE GIRL and takes away her crutches. But the LITTLE GIRL… can walk! A miracle!]

JAN
She’s only clubfooted! Like me!

MOM
Melissa’s never set foot in a club. She can’t possibly be club-footed.

SCENE SIX

[THE PARADE. JAN has tied MARSHA to the Barney float, along with a bundle of high explosives on a timer.]

JAN
Your pain, your suffering, your desperate eye searching for an escape route. Darling, I’m in heaven! What’s that? Can’t hear you, darling. The gag, you know. Would you like a final word with your darling, evil sis? Well, maybe…. No, better not. You might just stutter out a scream or some such thing. Can’t understand you half the time anyway, stuttering like a woodpecker on speed…. Better yet, I’ll do it for you. I will perform your final words for you. About time you were out of the spotlight, doll. Even Glinda the good witch took a day off once in a while to polish her crown. Here, give me that damned glitzy eye patch. What were you, doing the Pirates of Penzanze for political prisoners on an Amnesty International road show? I’ll give you a dose of your own medicine, Dr. Feelgood.

[JAN pulls off eyepatch, puts it on, and begins to do a mincing, savage impersonation of MARSHA.]

JAN
I-I j-just l-love d-d-doing g-good d-d-deeds all d-day! That’s you,

MARSHA
T-Think I’ll fly to R-Rome and give the P-Pope a b-b-blow job! He hasn’t had it in God know’s…. Here comes the man for the float now. Now you be good…. Just keep up the habit. You’ll keep lonely-wonely Barney company, won’t you? You’re slung just about where his testicles would be, if the purple monstrosity had any. Not too diff from most males, really….

[BARNEY FLOAT begins to rise, taking MARSHA away.]

[ENTER the MOTHER.]

JAN
[Not yet noticing MOTHER.] H-hope I can get the loan of the sc-schoolbus to trot that gang of orphans over to the rerelease of M-mary P-p-p-poppins!

MOTHER
Marsha?

JAN
[Surprised out of her wits.] M-m-mother! [Moves down stage to distract MOTHER from seeing the real MARSHA, who is struggling frantically.]

MOTHER
Oh, good. It is you,

MARSHA
I never could tell you and your sister apart. I was just wondering when you’d show up. There’s been an accident involving the Momeschanch mime troop.

JAN
Oh, g-golly! Nobody done-in, I h-hope.

MOTHER
Just down the street on Two Rivers Ave. A sewage truck and a float. Talk about parting the waters.

JAN
W-what h-happened? [Aside.] The old stinker really has a nose for a story.

MOTHER
Well, the mimes were all miming away like windmills, and apparently the Chippawah-Peaceful-Way-and-Holistic-Vegan-Veggies-Incorporated float driver and that sewage truck driver thought they were a patrol of traffic cops giving directions. Ran ’em all down.

JAN
How h-hor-rend-dous! The whole troop?

MOTHER
To a man. Or whatever they are under those leotards.

JAN
T-terrible!

MOTHER
I’ll give this to them, though, they stayed mum through it all. Not a man-jack of of ’em screamed or bleated. Silent as the grave.

JAN
Well, they a-are p-p-p-…. p-professionals.

MOTHER
And, dear, I’ve got to tell you. Your father has just turned me out. I’ve nowhere to stay. You’re Mommy’s homeless!

JAN
W-well, I guess….

MOTHER
I can stay with you! Oh, darling, thanks! Where else would I go, an old bag of bones like me? Unloved, alone in the whole world…. We’ll never be apart again, MARSHA. From this day forward until the day I die! We’ll be the dynamic duet!

[JAN begins to weep. Almost.]

JAN
I’ll w-wipe your b-b-bum, Mum, when you’re old. [Wails out the word ‘old.’ Aside.] I’m stuck! I’ve become what I hate… someone good!

[Explosion sounds offstage.]

MOTHER
Good heavens, what’s that? Oh no… Looks as if the Barney float’s just done a Hindenberg right into FAO Schwartz! What mayhem!

JAN
[Aside.] And not a scrap of evidence.

MOTHER
What’s that? What did you say dear? You could roast all the Thanksgiving Day turkeys in New York in that inferno!

JAN
I j-just thought…. A-all th-those un-un-un-unhappy children!

[JAN smiles.]

[END]

Jul 082020
 

Poetic versioning of Aeschelus’ powerful visionary drama.


POWER
We have slid a long way down, to earth's end.
Now we are in an arid gorge, close rocks
Hem our freedoms and our bruised feet have reached
The lowest place. Hephastos, turn your mind
That forged the golden playthings of the gods
To harsher endeavors; let invention
Wither, and let love's meaningless surplus
Be dried up. Have your ire flare again 
In residence where he's made your flames vanish,
Putting out the light of goldenest craft
To help sprouting man, who rankly weeds
A gardened globe. Forge in violent fires
Bellowed large again by your oppressed heart
Thorned chains to lay him against these hard stones
In unmoving misery.

HEPHASTOS
                    I do not
Have a muscled heart to bind my brother
In these abandoned crags, or close in stirrups of iron
Feet equal to my feather.

VIOLENCE
                              Do not let
Filial affection unleash what you must bind.

HEPHASTOS
The commandment of Zeus has found its voice
In you, Power and Violence. In me,
Its uncertain hand, that which would rather break
Against itself that harm any dead hair
Of Prometheus else.--- Here he comes dragged.
[Enter Prometheus, dragged]

I have come commanded to bind in pain
His mobile spirit, which moves as a ductile flame
In each instant of the wind, following icy shocks
Of the chafing air with hot nuances of a mind
All on fire with itself. See how slow now
He comes to the cold lead of these chill slopes.
[To Prometheus] Brother, my love is all by whetted
 sorrow nursed            
And throws large shadows over this stale work.
When would it have been fresh? It stinks of old crime.
What has fallen to our days and hands? Like
Neglected fruit our poor duties lie rotting,
Which, had they been picked fresh, and shared, and ate,
Might have bulked us fat in feast, fat in love,
Fat in everything that sifts in tenderest rains
From Zeus' puffed perfection. Supine duty
Now inhabits the ditch, and in grim famine bears
All its teeth in hunger, none in love.

VIOLENCE
Generosity is not the want
Of prerogative, which chooses what it gives.
Prometheus betrayed your artist's trick
Of shaping fire to those who kept the dark
For all their light, and crept in dreams to day,
Mere moles who nosed their barren track in dirt
Without the bright aid of your rigorous flame.

HEPHASTOS
Neglected good has led us to these barren times
Where larders stand disgorged of multiplicity
And nature's rich display of choices shrinks,
Winnowed thin by too strict conservation.

POWER
Your one secret now shifts shafts of day
Into any peasant cave where two straws
Are not yet rank with urine. Does it not offend?

VIOLENCE
That which drew perfect Venus like a moth
To your cloven love and questioning shape
All hunched above the blazon of you art
As limping earth shadows the central sun
Stealing its various greens from one white,
He stole from you.

HEPHASTOS
Do not make such use of him.

POWER
Fear you not Zeus, who casts him in his state?
Fear not that such anger overborne may spill
And like the solitary volcano cracked 
Drown the least rat with the greatest vole,
And so grant you a current way to death,
Bedded in the pit with Prometheus?

VIOLENCE
Now shape your craft to the need; bind him close.

HEPHASTOS
It is done. The free man bound that was free.
I've gone a long way to come round to hate.
[Exit]

POWER
False prophecy has assigned its name to you
Falsely. Portent of nothing, stale omen,
You refuse to hear the bear's warning rustle
In the bushes at your back. Freedom's telling lark
Chained by enticing art to rock cannot bark.
[Exit]

[Enter the Daughters of Ocean, soaked]

1  DAUGHTER
Egregious terror trines our ocean-hearts!

2  DAUGHTER
Anemones all are drooped, and coral blanched
That once held quiet communication
With the soundless sea breeze. Swift sharks stood still
That must die in pauses, and far above
Came the venomed sound of iron beaten.
And now we see how your restless hands are bound!

1  DAUGHTER
How I long to comfort that brow, grief-distraught.

2  DAUGHTER
Manta Rays flared in stillness with wantless mouths,
Whales hung like sad mountains overhead,
And all the ceaseless activity of the
Yearning sea did to a remote slowness thud,
Forced by a forged means. Hephastos' hammer,
For what other ring of doom could charm waves,
Bent our ears to silence--- Save the one sound.
Sorrow has hung thick syrups on our eyes.

1  DAUGHTER
And those restless hand wringing whirlwinds
From the idealess dust, now warming short chains!

2  DAUGHTER
Tell us why you have been punished, for you
Have been punished.

1  DAUGHTER
                     Tell us Zeus' reasons.

2  DAUGHTER
Name the heedless crime.

1  DAUGHTER
                          Tell us.

BOTH
Tell us.

PROMETHEUS
Do not think my penitential silence pride
Or arrogant stubbornness. It is not.
No, it is a consuming meditation
That works in me when my mind considers
The subtle hurts that load my outcast state,
And of how in past time my estimation
Showered ignorant honors on my jailers,
Gilding their crimes before their doing of them.
But enough; of what your hearts know how should 
I speak?          
Listen to mortal suffering,-- how I
Spied them fumbling with their helpless wits, and helped.
It is a tale briefly told. Not to scold
Erring man, but to show how much his stature's grown.
In their uncounciled sight first spread vain webs
Of woven pride that gave far-seeing judgment
Close cataracts, obscuring heinous crimes.
And into their young hearing they had poured
Not mellow summer songs gathered from the air,
But stuffed deaf ears with brays of their own praises.
They were not men, but instead resembled
The shapes we see in dreams, mingling all.
To their burrowing lives I broke some light
That had been darker else. Like timid ants
They lived and ate, and kept house in foul caves.
Neither stars of winter nor the presaging scent
Of springtime did they know by counting moons,
Nor was laden summer by signs revealed.
But every matter was pursued in ignorance,
Full of wrong causes, false heads and false tails,
Inverting logic until I came and gave
Risen stars names and mapped their difficult settings.
I ferreted out the art of numbers
That put in the simple scope of man's discretion
The control of nature, and lettered rude mouths
With speech that made but oohs and ahs before,
 giving thus          
Discursive memory its mothering talk
That nursed the nine. By my gentle bough
Beasts came lowing to the yoke and plow
To perform with docile thanks hard labor
Men laid idly by. I made them love the rein
Who move lordly chariots with prideful steps.
And from the burning tongues of gods brought down
Stolen fire.
All these fool's arts I made for man alone
Who can't glue together some salvation for himself.
But when gods threat, saving devices perish
And cleverness holds up stumps, not hands, to pluck
This downcast body from its tortured state.

[Enter OKEANOS on a winged beast]

OKEANOS
Enough of your hovering comforting!
Brother, you cling to the heaving rock
Of your own willfulness, but I have come
Taming this dread beast by my thoughts alone
To break you of bad habits. Come, let me help
Who has no more dearly watered a love
In all his submerged dominions than that love
I have borne down these darkening airs to you.

PROMETHEUS
You have come to watch a vaulted heart crack
That has not renewing waters' suavities
To bear faults harmlessly, and repel
Sinewed attacks like the geysering behemoth,
Swallowing all. I am made of earth,
A counter-realm to your own ocean,
And must crumble, or blow like willess sand
When weeded from the compacting rain
That moistens all, lashing independence down.
Dry frictions of the upper air tear me
Apart at last, for I'll suck no more
From Zeus' tap, whose bitter dregs swell contempt.
You've come to watch and dive home to your conchs.

OKEANOS
It strains my spongelike affections to see
You in such torture. Let me talk to Zeus.
It was by right reason as much as force
That he hurled Kronos from the throne. 
You must at least, since all do chorus it,
Applaud his generalship.

PROMETHEUS
                         I'd rather laud
The humidest dung with reeking laurel wreaths
Than crown him thus.

OKEANOS
                     Ungrateful god, to say so!

PROMETHEUS
I have been his companion in these wars.
I knocked Kronos to his knees that Zeus ascend
To his present height on the conquered back.
Now let him from that crooked pedestal survey
Pestilent fields blacked by my bitterness;
He shall find no edge to that horizon
That commands all space, for my poor heart,
Like a coal used and burst, has swollen
Acres by his ingratitude. O, I've sopped
Millions of hurts in his service
Silent as a maid.

OKEANOS
                   Your jeweled wit
Which was in Thetis' rich womb in-treasured
Does but some gleam of His lightnings redirect
And is not the cause of all.

PROMETHEUS 
                              That's hard talk;
And hard words make poor entreaty.
[Aside] Perhaps he comes in good conscience and not
As Zeus' spy to view my wreck, or pry
My hidden prophecy from its safe place.
Either way, if he's come to help or hurt
I must whip him hence, for his own good
And mine... Go, dog! Fly my anger!
Your love is dust and advice a scourge
That must lash like feathers against adamant,
Uselessly. Go! I'll treat with you no more! 

OKEANOS
That's hard talk.
Have you all your gentle manner abandoned,
And like the skulking cur beaten from its house
Bark kind hands back, to spike me with such speech?

PROMETHEUS
O, yes, you're the one spiked and chained, not I.

OKEANOS
Do you make a tenant of your reason
To throw him out thus when there's rent to pay?
Your diamond arguments were once arrayed
By a blazing mind. Now my substance weeps
To see noble wits like paupers dressed
And set stumbling in the streets.

PROMETHEUS
[Aside] Brother god!
Your lashes sting me for my betterment.
[To Okeanos] Nevertheless, if it is not your desire
To see my frissioned death, it is your fate.
For what other design could pepper hearts
With a love that calls them from their rest to see
That love's destruction, besides blank-eyed Fate
Who, like the lanternfish, but with a fruit of mirrors,
Gazes in herself to find our dates?
Hopeful seeds must witness the vanquished
 flower's fall.             
[Aside] So you, who seeded friendship in my heart,
Must watch cold roots break what nourished them.

OKEANOS
Beg sustenance from Zeus and all will be well;
For he brews such stuff as will raise titans
From discarded dolls. You know I love you well--

PROMETHEUS
These words feed me well, who teems on discontent.
Sway on, ocean.

OKEANOS
                 To move with the marrow
Of a great strength shows no weakness in yourself.
Brilliance is not all in solitary
Leisure consummated, nor is obedience
Any bodiless thing but a substance
Of affection stuffed into a man
Makes him loyal to God's descending prayer;
For only those below have this power:
To lift what's sacred higher than themselves.

PROMETHEUS
What's this? One god still loyal as a dog?
[Aside ] Those below have this power... does he hint
At overthrow? Surely what's tacked
In the sky may be by good carpenters
Dismantled. 
And what's Zeus but an uplifted image?

OKEANOS
The mightiest sword-hand that ever lived
But obeyed its bones. Do the same yourself
And thrive when times are direst. I'll talk
Zeus out of his sternness; it is an affect
Frowned upon him by your dark broods.

PROMETHEUS
[Aside] Whatever else you are, or yet may be,
Your eye lies waterlogged by surging sleep
To see me thus; you are not yet awake
From Zeus' sea-dream of the perfect state.

OKEANOS
I'll talk, and with oceans of arguments
Subdue his silhouetted heights to one calm.
I'll talk, and let such a sea of speech
Subsume his reason, he'll welcome back with banquets
The despised prodigal, who banished found
His way home to true love in foreign fields.
And if all this does not settle him
I'll infect his dreams with loving whispers
That transform all the wild fancy of his mind
To your belated praises. This I swear.
And if with his lightnings he'll try the waves
We'll dodge 'em!

PROMETHEUS
Brave Okeanos! O brave!
Now my heart cracks in truth, to be so loved.
Now shall I endure my trial as much
In comfort as in terror; you've cozied
My jolts with your gentleness. Look, my guards
[Shaking chains] Shiver to behold a countenance
So alive with friend's love. The stones are friendly 
For me by your example, and nearly
Melt for my release, they are so deeply moved.
You'll contest his trined lightnings with your own
Thrown up by splashing water? Good brave god!
But do not throw yourself in the chasm
Of my cause. No, rather let me suffer
My ordained ignominy as I must.
For then will the mute chords of nature break
And the stars like mourners torches be cast
In deep waters; all order unhinge
And the chaos that lies in things flow loosed
Over the whole earth, to see such injustice!

OKEANOS
But let me speak what your countenance conveys---

PROMETHEUS
If you'll not by Zeus' command be bound
As this brave embassy proves, then be bound
By mine to silence. Untongue yourself here
And issue not your honest thoughts to Zeus
---He'll carve dwarves of them. Its God's firm habit
To batter after what cannot be bartered for
By threats and faces. Instead stand silent
And stare high clouds down with that dignity
Which does my soul soldier's service thus.

OKEANOS
But let me talk...

PROMETHEUS
                      Do not.
A prophecy I hold close keeps me warm.
Hold your teeming tongue. Do not speak, but go.
[Exit Okeanos]
I loved him ever.

1  DAUGHTER
                   You say prophecy
And then say silence.

2  DAUGHTER
                      What's the mystery
That feathers stone beds?

BOTH
Tell us.

PROMETHEUS
         I know my immortal story.
It was a gift beguiled before my birth---
[Enter IO, stumbling, beautiful]

What loveliness is this that astounds the stage?
Silence, ladies, it is my heart that stumbles.
Her glance heals me all. She carries soft looks
That sit cased in the face of Patience
Who gazes miseries past their durance
And makes my suffering small by looking on it.
Who are you, soft creature? Why have you come?

IO
In truth, sir, I run from my troubles
And am hunted by my own frailties,
Which bay me to your company.

PROMETHEUS
Sweet girl,
What are your troubles, who must not suffer
Or prove the world too cruel to live upon
That sweetens its hard tooth on such fresh life?
Or, if true hurt, but suffer as the lamb
Made sad by want of playmates. Say, innocence,
What song you brother angels sing to catch you;
Teach me those notes, and, by life, I'll lung them 
Back to heaven! Say, dear, what is your name.

IO
Oh, heavens that have cursed me with such a one!
I had rather been blanked of hearing all
Than know my name.

PROMETHEUS
                    Even so, you have one.

IO
Even so do spiteful breaths that say it
Make me sail away, by their puffed impulse
Repulsed. Do you still require my badge of me?
Your silence implores it, which speaks you well.
I have ever loved a quiet moping look.
Even so came Zeus to my father's fields,
Crowned by that affection eyes alone may speak.
I knew him a king, and myself a woman
Equal to a king's desires, and anon
We joined while the hay shuffled; anon loved.

PROMETHEUS
Bickered to sin by jealous Hera's tongue?

IO
He lugged an obscure grudge from Hera's bed
Into our talk, and I gave God my pity...
Even so, to escape her haughty hate
Was I stuffed into this rough cow-skin suit,
Fenced with her beasts, and by Argus guarded
Whose thousand eyes were trained on my disgrace
Until Hermes in one swat shut them up.
Since then I'm followed by this stumbling bug
Who stings me fresh to new misfortunes.
Now you've heard my story do you know my name?

PROMETHEUS
Even so.

IO
          Even so, I am Io.

PROMETHEUS
Io! Sorrows ravens hover near you still.
In truth, you're legended among gossips,
And no ear escapes the buzz of your troubles.

IO
If I could drown disaster with a flood of tears
Or tear vengeful Hera from her watchful post
By cries inflicting lightnings like those
Her husband owns, I'd do it. Though Nature swoon
To be so usurped and have its queen
Plummeted from still stars to the churning mud
I'd do it. Zeus himself was the first strong arm
To bruise the celestial order, which runs
Corrected by his divine direction.
Cannot a woman do it, whose swollen loins
Drop kings into their kingdoms, and whose breasts
Milk tyrants? To be so stung and beaten
Makes me, like the dog caught in a hailstorm,
Hate all that's above.

PROMETHEUS
You shall not do it.
Although you make a nation's millions march
Against the skies, you shall not do it.
Although you stalk his crimson heart
From the ladder of his ribs, and with a cannonade
Of brass take aim, you shall not do it.
Nothing in the empery of man or god would prove
Arsenal enough for your objective;
Sooner should grass crown kings and legions bear
Feathers for their killing swords, than you should win.
Almanac of all absurd desires,
Pinnacle of impossibilities!

IO
But why? Why?

PROMETHEUS
My dreams herald against it.

IO
Then Zeus shall reign forever, and Hera
Forever be his surmounting queen.

PROMETHEUS
Come here; let me whisper to you the truth.
[She goes to him]

IO
[Breaking away]
I can't stand it! I cannot stay.
[Exit]

PROMETHEUS
Sweet girl.
So truth drives beauty out, or mad with its stings.
Perhaps I must lay me at fortune's foot
Which rolls over all, and not from this mount
Rehearse my troubles to the earless air
That can no further than a coffin's silks
Carry dead men's prayers. I'll lie quiet.
Here in the dust, father and mother, 
Our indignities end. Let me lie simple as a butterfly,
Pinned and grinning. Dulcet air invades these crags
And must each enmity suffuse until its joy.
The ground is not adverse, and harshness lessens.
In his black mouth, the fox has brought a berry
For the unkilled bird. Look, she dabbles in its gauds.
Oh, I'll die singing now, seeing portents live.
Every creature knows its secret brother
In such sights, and by such seeing blessed.
Let opposition perish. All must love. I'll rest.
[Daughters of Ocean make a noise]
Who's this stalks upon my meditation?

1  DAUGHTER
Still, tell us how Zeus will be brought down,
How by patient fate unpinned from the stars.

PROMETHEUS
Zeus amid his lusts will marry trammeled Io,
And get my vengeance on her fertility.

1  DAUGHTER
Zeus' son will undo him!

2  DAUGHTER
                         Zeus will fall.

PROMETHEUS
I will outwit death. When pasturage gloms
His blades, and the mower's skis are tongued in green,
I will worm from my putrid root, shed death,
And groan in glory toward the sun again.

1  DAUGHTER
We must keep silent.

2  DAUGHTER
                      Pray Zeus does not hear.

PROMETHEUS
It will be hard for Zeus to outrun
My whispering words. He shall fall fated.

1  DAUGHTER
Don't you tremble at your own daring?

2  DAUGHTER
Bound down and roaring like the freest lion!


PROMETHEUS
My mouth speaks graves where Zeus plows
 but dead ground.        

1  DAUGHTER
Oh, quiet. Even blind gods can hear such curses.

PROMETHEUS
Then let him windmill daggers at my voice,
Naught will drown it. Let him rage his white skies
An eternal red, and it shall stain me
No more than colored glass in the chapel
May pierce  a baby's sleeping cheek. I'm not fated.

[Enter Hephastos]

HEPHASTOS
Zeus has heard everything. You must now say
What will come dismembering Zeus as night
The softest yellow body of day consumes.

PROMETHEUS
You come bearing the vengeful cup of Zeus
All muddy now with blood. Dictatorship
Speaks weak words through confident megaphones
That boom the shouting opposition down
And drowns the quiet censure of its victims.

HEPHASTOS
Unlock your prophecy.

PROMETHEUS
                      Never, never
Will I go throwing gold to my starving foes
That they may banquet fatly at my defeat.

HEPHASTOS
Have you nothing for you father then?

PROMETHEUS
I stand wounded in his debt, who has taught
Such tough lessons that I can only wish
To answer with repayment.

HEPHASTOS
                          Do not mock
You last hope out of hearing, Prometheus.
Wise words tell wise acts what to do.

PROMETHEUS
Then why
Have your parrot words not puffed you upwards
To out-size Zeus? Are they not his swelled thoughts,
His din of instructions, that you sound here?
Is it any other voice that carps aloud
His squeaking pleas? "O, Prometheus, say
What is in your mind that we cannot guess."
Say what you cannot guess? Surely my thought
Is less wise than that you high gods possess.
Say my mind? It would gainsay all you have
Pronounced, and be most unholy.

HEPHASTOS
None of this helps.
Will you go against God and rave forever?
What sweetness can be heard in one's own voice
Dropped in an unechoing void?

PROMETHEUS
My case
was looked into and verdict passed long ago.

HEPHASTOS
But frame your answers to your miseries
And you can go as free as any prideless bird.

PROMETHEUS
Your words crest and break against me lightly.
They beat in vain against decided stone
That shall not loosen. No small moss of fear
Creeps into my heart to dislodge courage
From determination. I was not made
To shatter at any asking, or turn
Bound hands up begging mutinous mercy
To release pensive chains from straining wrists.

HEPHASTOS
I do not love a hot rebuke. But show
Some contrite design in the words you use,
Saying "Pardon..." or "I forgot myself..."
---But let your tongue display some modest flavor
As when a strutting peacock nods to get
Progeny on his mistress, relaxing
In the sweet summer air his strenuous song
And I will melt. Zeus withholds judgment yet;
Remain untoward and our contrasts must yield
As a furious star into the thick
Ocean fallen, nothing but blind fogs and steams.

PROMETHEUS
This world passes like a prayer in the dark.

HEPHASTOS
I do not wish my ill success in this, or wish
My prayers to crawl like a crying worm
Into deaf ears that feel only the nearest trumpet,
Insensible to all else. But you are hard...

PROMETHEUS
Chop and prate with me as you wish to will,
You shall not hew my meaning to your ends.

1  DAUGHTER
Unless fierce interchange swap gods and men
And men show more of gratitude than sharp nature
Points them to already, you are eternally cursed.

HEPHASTOS
Then hear how you shall suffer. Hurricanes
Of God's ill will shall come dashing lights
Against these hard rocks in hungry strokes
And eat up their solidity. But that
Won't lard our Zeus whose righteous anger
Keeps him trim as the vital viper. For then
He'll throw such thunders at the earth
Every stony crag shall abate its toughness
And obedient tons of earth liquefy
To drown rebellion. Then... Then you will fall
More black years than you have already lived
Recounting your crimes in meditation
Until you crash to the appointed place.

2  DAUGHTER
Shall the sinner there have hope of rest?

HEPHASTOS
None.
But, after a while, light will come circling back,
Though you will not see Zeus come reproaching you
With blows, he will send his loyal dog to feast
On your chained liver. Out of the dawn sky
Each day His loved vulture's abhorrent head
Will slide thirstily down on buffeting wings
And tap you to the marrow. When painful night
Stitches up your severest wounds to
Fresh bruises once again, and you sit plumped
Like a rich raspberry in the sun
That bleeds its virgin ripe to the first hand,
God's bald vulture, renewed by hunger, will return
With his fingering beak.

1  DAUGHTER
Will you show no mercy for this perfect
Creature? Prometheus, bow down your head.
Haughtiest power forgives such obedience.

HEPHASTOS
Do not dream that this will ever end.
No god will change his bracelets for your chains.
No man will trade his own disasters
For another's. God's mouth cannot say
Other than what is, and His every word must break
In action, or have no living meaning.
Decide how best to unwind your brash fate
Before the dizzy clock must terminate.

BOTH
Prometheus, repent! We must go.

[Exeunt]

PROMETHEUS
Words at last have made the earth convulse.
Thunder shivers the dust from these rocks,
Light flashes out, as if the thought
Of some terrible mind issued itself in fire.
Air shreds. Boulders leap like hares from the sling.
Sea and earth are confounded to black mud.
See him, a tongue of tinfoil in his
Tiny chariot, raised by obedient winds
Above the argument of the storm? Fire licks the wheels.
I think, when my heart stops for a minute,
I can make out the pinched shadow of his frown.
[Disappearing beneath stage]
O blue earth, O blue mother, love me
And see me suffer.



END

Jul 082020
 

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]

Jul 082020
 

A bold, contentious exposition of the meaning of the
Sex Pistols rendered in high Shakespearean style.

GREGG GLORY

GREGG G. BROWN




In the beautiful world, you have to respond.
                             --J. Lydon

 JOHN LYDON       the Young Bastard
 SID VISCIOUS        the Lover Boy
 PAUL COOK        the Whiner
 STEVE        the Bullshitter
 and MALCOLM MCLAREN        the Old Fuck



Top^

["Anarchy in the U.K." plays as the narrator ascends the stage.]


 PROLOGUE

[To be spoken by Lester Bangs, Richard Hell, or Griel Marcus.]

We gather here some summers past his death;
The air near us bears its sweet fragrance yet
As in the dim past it was accustomed
To have borne. We come to document a trial
Of youth, and speed, and the chase of fire
That edges young veins anxious yet to burst
The bare confinement of the body.
Ambitions churned in mills of desperate hope,
And clear vision upreared from smoky tenements
Crouch within our subject's city-bounds as well.
Everything not incidental
To a prince's birth in loathed ashes
Shall be told in what we are about to speak:
Mire costuming here a spirit as rare
As any that went naked in greater ages
Whose philosophers, incidents, and strange tales
Whisper still in books passed down to us.
He was one-- I cannot speak it-- but let
Him show; he was one to tumble Jove
Or put into the gestures of his peers
Antics to mimic truth out of hiding
And mock empty vaunt with its own faces.
He was as Michaelangelo's god of boys, set down
In despite of time, vaunting, vague,
A fishing rod as able in his white fist
As any furling sling to draw tyrants down.
Now I before your gentle selves appear
And ask you reconstruct from rended memory
This man, whose trim vitality works wonders
In us yet; who, as though king among those ghosts
We are yet to join, he captains our resolve
And sails us, briefly parted, to those parts
And kingdoms of ourselves we quail to glance at.
Let one summer stand for millions,
And let a universe of lives be exampled by
One life, one death. It is fair enough.
Let not identity struggle besmirched in the mass
Or roil in the crowding roll of oceans
Of limbs-- so like a war is any hived
Metropolis. Instead let concentration fall
From our high heaven of observation
Into the single life and particular fate
Of our chosen hero. Let him be unveiled:
     [Spotlight comes up on Sid, biting a hangnail.]
You see he fits the mold, but not how well;
That is the office of our tale to unfold
--And, if you will but tailor your wide
Imaginations to our narrow telling,
Refining in mind what our rush of detail
Must leave gross, and fitting yourselves
Into the garment of our object here
As if the skin of the protagonist
Himself, flushing round what was left in need
By the author's drying pen, we shall succeed.
Let us, and him, find what name will fit him best:


SCENE ONE



PAUL
Sid! Sidley...!

STEVE
Boredom blows bright the dull grey sparks
Of his eyes, until all the yellow charge
Of coward youth in love with nothing else
But mirrors to sigh the sick hours past
Is burned, burned quite away, and nothing left
But still that same desire fuming there
Simple as a flame.

PAUL
Oi! It's hot enough as it is.

ROTTEN
He meditates too much
On the particular cause and instance
Of his private hurt, which cannot be made
To answer the general injury.

STEVE
Fucking Sid!
What can you do with a boy like that, hey?

PAUL
He nurses an inward wound with wayward looks.

STEVE
He's been talking a lot of trash lately.

PAUL
His winning spirit's spiralling in
For the incinerator again. Last time... Gaw!

STEVE
"Hangin' up me spurs," he says. "Gonna shove
It in and liv' w' me mum." Suicide!

ROTTEN
Each man's civil temper's his own to keep.
That coolness lost, by the heat of events
Fired aside, or from the burning steeple
Of a towering grief thrown down sparklike
In a roaring wash of rainbow flames
Deep into the hellish mass of circumstance
And all deportment, measure, surity,
And freezing reason that should coldly show
The icy signature of a man
Is lost and damned, hotly dispersed, in anger
Or any other rage of fuming ruin
Past individual recovery.

PAUL
By that harsh measure
Every man, like a matchstick, at a single strike
Of his fiery righteousness would be
Trashed to ashes.

STEVE
Aye, then were we ashes all.
Stoked by a too stern lightning to nothingness.

ROTTEN
Stoke up!

PAUL

[Pleading.]

 Let's keep Sid civil.

ROTTEN

[Relenting.]

 All right then; we'll show him how
To raise his sad laughs again amidst our howls.

[Attention shifts to Sid, who opens with soliliquy as others approach.]


SID
 And indeed, as you can see, my shirt reads me:
'I hate.'
Plastic holds itself as natural, warm
And capable to my raw ass and hand
As any hippie love of heaven, sea
Or indian soil would cause here an inch
Of father's affection. Their stench is ripe.
They chant in a ring for heaven's dear love
But disdain the fight that gets it.
All's struggle. How out of turmoil to pry
The clear and lucent love, that's the question.
To deny the struggle is to confound
The chance; and they're liars. Rather close up
Those affable gates that let in the stench
Of rankest hypocrisy as though it were
Light and air-- damn them up, I say, damn them--
Than leave them lax to such vicissitudes
Waiting for a thrilling whiff of the best
To enter out of pardonable hope.

PAUL
Hey, Sid.

SID
 Yeah, I'm against it. I waz jest
Tellin meself how bad it all waz.

ROTTEN
Horrible! Yer a degredation, Sid.
Cold, isn't it?

SID
 Sure, sure. I'm cold.

STEVE
 C'mon, Sid. Cheer up.

[Steve sings, to the tune of 'London Bridge:']

Margaret Thather's a dry old hole, dry old hole;
Because of her we're broke and bored, that ho' ho' ho'.
We've got no jobs; we're on the dole, on the dole.

SID
 My fair lady. Haw haw haw.

PAUL
Let's do something.

ROTTEN
What is there to do?

SID
 I'm cold. [Rotten throws lumber at Sid.]

ROTTEN
How boring!

STEVE
Nothing to do.

PAUL
Oh, I don't know.

[Sid has been gathering debris, pulls out lighter fluid and sets all ablaze. Smiles.]


ROTTEN

How boring! It's hotter than Satan's arsehole out here, and you go starting fires.


[Enter McLaren.]

MCLAREN

Hallo, boys. I've seen you lads moping about. My name's McLaren. Malcolm McLaren. What's your names?


PAUL
John.

STEVE
John.

ROTTEN
John.

SID
I'm hot.

MCLAREN
C'mon then. Follow me. My kool Sex shop's cold.
Ever seen the drafty rafters there? Mannikins,
Naked like us to the world's dicked stare,
Hanging in aerial abandon; skinney limbs
At fleshtone dangled rest above my loitering
Patrons' guessing heads. Keep them guessing,
I says. "No dead time," etc.
     [They reach the SEX shop]
My puppets-- for what's man but
A stick that sings?-- my thoughts have swelled on fire
Before this cold hour from spiteful breaths enough
To ash the cordwood. I'll ask your service now
To douse my substance before its drowned in flames:
The unadoring world must be made to pay.
Too long unloved, a man begins to fray.

ROTTEN
Are you proposing something, McLaren?

SID
Let's hear; let's hear what there's for us to do.

MCLAREN
Time's persecution pursues us all
And the grave levity of his law
Allows no trick of escape to flaunt his cause
But like the paitient bailiff waits beside
Until old and infirm we cannot stray away
From the impaitient leash curling at his waist
But all are from the judge to judgement brought.
And since this guilt of birth we may not shake
Until we have shaken off our lives themselves
But must under the sentence chase our lives
Like ill dogs to their predetermined ends
Sniffing for chances, in shivvered packs secure
And yet insecure-- remember still the end--

PAUL
A dog's life.

MCLAREN
Then let us be such dogs as roam in wild pride
Barking with horrors, redeyed fiends each one
Basking in bloods when the hunt is done.
Let's own such shocks as lesser men run from
Founding nations damned to breath a day
Past us-- and no further-- for believe me
Caesar was one such dog as we are
And his terrors have hounded his renown
Round the globe, as if it were a single ear
And he the sweet lover whispering in it.
We have such voices too, believe me all--
And this world is such a place of fjiords and flaws
As they shall find deep receipt within it.
Now, to choose the script and paint our faces.
Come, my hangdogs, have pleasure while you may;
Ridiculous age should find us sated.

ROTTEN
What is it exactly you are proposing?

MCLAREN
What has ten times the voice of modest men
Declaring their hearts in modest, fervent tones?
Who crouches in the ear of active youth
And shouts invective to an empty brain
So like a stone it may stoop to fondle--
So like, yet one cannot shout stones at faces--
Yet one may shout stoned men to action, eh?
So like the one the other is, stones, brains, all
Grey and servicable rounds, rounds for fire:
Ready from the cannons of your neck to bolt
And deliver destruction of this place,
My word the lynchpin.

ROTTEN
What? What does have that voice?

MCLAREN
Have you not seen the boy bent to memorize,
All studious torment in his crinkled brow,
Stiff as any anxious lieutenant
To catch the letter of his instructions
Above the wolving howl of bursting war?
There, down by the speaker in his own room
He listens for the news. Whose news, though, whose?
Beatles, Stones, Byrds, why should these objects talk
And we have no voice at all?

SID
 Let's start a band!

ROTTEN
We'll need instruments.

MCLAREN
Instruments I have.
Pour your liquid essences forth, let voices
Cry your rain of judgement loose on this world!
Flood hypocrisy from its dobber's holes,
Rape the senator's wife, confound floated bills,
Let Pigs drown before they fly at us
All unable with billyclubs awry.
Pour forth, and in the turbulent judge
Of heaven, who squints from the hurricane's eye
Laugh for all the terror of his wet,
Dishevelled reign.

SID
 Cry Anarchy at last!

ROTTEN
I'll undertake some study of this part.

MCLAREN
Boys, be rascals to my jiving knave
And to all this long-haired world we'll give a shave.

["Seventeen" plays cheerfully. We hear the chorus: "I'm a lazy sod."]


Top^



SCENE

[Rotten and Sid’s bedsit. They are playing the prison game of Chicken where the forearms of each contestant touch side by side, cradling a lit cigarette between them. Whoever pulls their arm away from the 2,000 degree heat of the lit cigarette first, loses.]

ROTTEN
So what do you think of the band notion?

SID
I think I wanna vomit what I’ve eaten; [Sid farts.] But it may be too late.

ROTTEN
I already have a few lyrics in my head.

SID
Yeah?

ROTTEN
This could be something.

SID
Death or glory? It’s just another story.

ROTTEN
Rehersal space is there for us, Malcolm was saying. Equipment. Couldn’t you learn to play something besides ingenue?

SID
Yeah, I could learn things. I got pretty big hands.

ROTTEN
Well, it seems like a chance. Twenty-five quid a week from McLaren, guarenteed.

SID
It’s gonna be a lot of work.

ROTTEN
Alright! All we haveta do is stand up and say something. And we have to stand up.

SID
I don’t want to work.

ROTTEN
You know, make a noise. Be something.

SID
I’m not going to work.

ROTTEN
A man must do something.

SID
No work.

ROTTEN
Alright!

[ROTTEN jumps up abruptly, losing the contest.]
It’s gonna be something, Sid. We will.

SID
Ahh, yes. No doubt. I win.

ROTTEN
First rehersal is around seven o’clock.

SID
I won, Johnny.

ROTTEN
Won. Won? Oh, yeah, the game.
And your wrong, Sid. I won. I definately won.

SID
The bass is a must.

ROTTEN
Everybody can pick out an instrument at the rehersal
And figure out what they want to play. [Exit Rotten]

SID
It’s with our dark lives we lightly play.
And contrast, being the one instruction men know
Who cannot learn a difference twixt likes
Unless the one is all of violentest white
And the other black as blood; how then teach
Tender love, which is but a difference as soft
As silk enwounding down, where dreams may slip
As silent as breath held to their fantastic births.
So that the all-enduing white may seem
Itself, and love as love stand and not yeild
To any onslaught of ignorances
Here I’ll be a blot all black as death
Which shall by my mocking homage be overthrown
In the minds to which my meaning does appear.
So that some may love truly, and without false looks
Betray a need in giving, I shall hate.
O such a hate as makes mad dogs appear tame
And the hot blood freeze up of those who on it glance
Be their fairenheit and celcius doubled
By war-rage raised to the boiling point of stars
To burn a blank in heaven, they shall stare
And turn cold inward stares upon their hearts
To witness in his heat the casque of a man
Glowing radient with so fierce a hate!
So wrought with a furor shall my mind bend
Upon bloody thoughts enough to swell the earth
And fish for a burning glory baptised there
That should in Hell hold honor against the devil.
How many then shall suffer to simply look
On this distemperate visage panting here
That has shaken off its particular face
To stand consumed all with flames of hate
And pure as any visionary ghost
Commit its aetherial offices of fire
To action.

Top^

SCENE

[ROTTEN resolved to be a completely honest human being. TV is on in the room.]

ROTTEN
I’ve told McLaren that Sid’s up for it,
The experimental apparatus is jacked into place,
Wires spouting from his forehead.
Being an apparatchik for the Individual has its perks.
No ghost of guilt puts its sweat-sheath
Of indecision on me. I out-face my sheeted semblables,
Mirror-pale in witness of their parents’ chimplike diminishment.
Each man’s diminished, or dismantled
From the sacred whimper of his intent, when he lets
This blistering world scissor him apart:
Once into “son,” twice as “man, husband,”
Or “citizen.” Never let them tell you what you are!
How NOT TO trust the fissioning essence in us,
Burning each unencumberd nerve alive
As a toothache– a cascade of blisses
As likely as any other fretted thrust or touch
Of this chummy, glum globe’s impingement
On the imminent individual by his
Sang-froid “oi!” from his fetters freed!
But to be yourself without the rolling
Fear of eyes, individual, alive, and free… what else
Is there? I am resolved, renewed, now, here,
A completely honest human being I’ll be
And nothing fear.

[SID from next room, booming] I think I got this riff kicked!


ROTTEN
This finniky generation is gonna get a kick!
Loud as a wacked statistic I hear my nothingness proclaimed,
My name erased and flinching face razed
From the knowing scroll of society's adornments.
This pithy bit of wickedness I will unwill,
And make the glossy ad-assed tabloids shout my name.
The queen will roll my name with curses in her sleep
And recite me in her ernest prayers to God
That we be stopped.
One week to the first gig, and then
Let that dread which thumbs other men down
Rapsodise as my tom-tom. Be my troubled, thudding beat
As if all war in your electric hollows rolled!

["Holiday in the Sun" plays, the bit about "this is the Berlin Wall."]

Top^


SCENE

[Outside first gig]

SID
Hallo.

NANCY
Hiaw.

SID
Oi, my bass is broke, and that ain't good, ay?

NANCY

You in a band? I came over to London from New York with my boyfriend's band. But he won't give me any of his stash, so I gotta do tricks for whatever I can get.


SID
Tha' wanker! He doesn't play the bass, does he?

NANCY
What's it to you.

SID
What's yer name?

NANCY

Who cares? [Softening.] Nancy Spungeon. And my boyfriend jerks off with his guitar; musicians are so testosterone-sick..


SID
I wuvs ya.

NANCY
Fuck off.

SID
Why? I got a few quid.

NANCY
Oh?

SID
C'mon, yer good. Let's have a shag.

NANCY
OK. Gimmie what y' got.

SID
[Obviously stone broke.] Uh....

NANCY
 What the fuck. You cheap asshole. I'm worth it.

[SID sees a way to divert attention from his poverty.]
SID
Prove it, cunt.

NANCY
All right. Down with your slacks.

SID
Uh.... Y'know, I gotta play me bass in a minute....

NANCY

[All business.]

 C'mon, c'mon.

[SID drops 'em; we see he has on his leopard-skin or red swastika underwear. SID busts open his bottle of Bass Ale and does a cheap sexual grind display with beer-bottle-as-penis.]


NANCY
Wow.
[Off comes NANCY's shirt.]

SID
[Going to his knees.] Gaw, yer beautiful. So fackin' beautiful.

NANCY
Really?

SID
Yeah.

NANCY
Be my dog.

[SID drops from kneeling to all fours. NANCY puts a chain necklace with a padlock on it around Sid's neck.]


NANCY
Now your mine.

SID
I can't fink a nuffin' finer.

NANCY
Are you holding?

SID
[Rising to his full height, feet spraddled wide apart.]
Yeah. [SID grabs his crotch.] All four inches of weenie glory.

NANCY

Ugggh. No, you fucker.-- You got any DRUGS? Any heroin, horse, H, smack, anything?


SID
Uh, yeah.

NANCY
Where?

SID
[Obviously not holding anything besides his dick.] Uh....

NANCY
WHERE!

SID
What's this? Da third degree?

NANCY
Shit. Nobody tells me the truth, whatever there is of it to be told.

SID
Yer really beautiful, Nancy. I mean it. Really.

NANCY
I don't know what's really real anymore.

SID
What's real is the way you feel! And fuck the rest of it.


NANCY
[Trying out the concept.]
What's real is how I feel. If I ever figure that out...

SID
[Aside.]                 Sere, sere
The tragic countentance you show obscured,
Displaying griefs, hiding harsher substances
Veiled within. It's a face to break saints.

NANCY
...I'll let you know.

SID
                         It is a cold allure,
Burning without touching; faint fire, faint fire
Within me chalks the haloed outline of your face.

NANCY
I am untouched and soiled, corrupt and pure,
The virgin whore Greek slavemasters adored;
Compounded of clay by dirty fingers,
Still a shapely vessel for holy water!
Tongued and speechless, dumb and breathless,
This girl's variable soul put to the test
By no man's flame as yet.

SID
                         'As yet'? Put your hand
Against this heart and it must withdraw gold
Purified by fire.

[She reaches out, leans against him a moment. A voice off stage shouts: Sid! Sidly! Bass solo's up! Sid exits]


NANCY
Something good in him.
I think I might like him. The shy white chest.

[Sid stands with his bass, thinking aloud while he mimes playing, as usual.]


SID
And if I were to die upon this instant
It were in a dream I'd die-- and there
Death has not taking but is a sweet addition
Of time and dark to lead the dreamer on.
Where's the harm if this picture that I live
Returned to curtained obscurity, from where
Nancy's hand now draws it like a lamp?
If it were to suffer no measled spot
Of corruption but endure the same as now
Even into that memory of perfection
None has joyed to have since the fall of man?
If from the disintegration of critics
This resolve itself still inviolable?
What harm, if on this patched imperfect globe,
Perfection seal perfection once from our own
Too-invading touch? If petty habit,
Or the all-ravaging, time-incensing blade
Of injured wit, which longs to enter
The innocent ears of those it apprehends
Have injured it, and rend there the brains
Of guiltless mouths with ravings; for no sooner
Does the sunday preacher speak hellfire
Than we, our apprehensions so aroused
By the word-- waiting alive within us
As it were-- begin to feel our own skins
Peel and burn, were themselves-- justly and for once--
To die and cease in this?

[The chords of "Pretty Vacant" strike up.]
Top^

SCENE

[Famous “fuck” TV interview plays on in a working class flat with man and wife watching. At the end of the interview, the man cries out :”Oi!” and tosses a brick or his chair through the TV set. Dialog below should be used if a videotape of the interview cannot be obtained.]
GRUNDY

Twenty million pairs of eyes are on you now. So tell us what all this atonal noise and dressing up is all about, if you can. I mean, it seems pretty downright silly to most of the rest of us.

ROTTEN
[To himself.] Shit.

GRUNDY
Pardon me, what did you say?

ROTTEN
Nothing. A dirty word. Next question.

GRUNDY
No, no. I’m really very curious. I insist. What was that word?

STEVE
[To himself.]Dirty sod.

ROTTEN
Shit.

GRUNDY
Well, that’s not really very intelligent, is it?

STEVE
And I say your a dirty old bastard.

GRUNDY
[Spluttering.] What? What?

STEVE
You keep looking at Susie like you wanna shag her right here on the couch.

SUSIE
Do ya?

GRUNDY
Well, I never.

STEVE
Go on, say it ain’t true. Fucking rotter.

[Sid laughs. Rotten sees it all going down the tubes.]

ROTTEN
Bloody fuck. We’ve ruined everything. Again.

[“EMI” plays up to “too many people have the suss/ too many people support us.”]


Top^

SCENE

[McLaren and Viv’s apartment.]

VIV
I can’t believe it! Are you all packed yet?

MCLAREN
Almost.

VIV
An American Tour. It all popped together pretty quick, didn’t it?

MCLAREN
I suppose.

VIV
The first two record signings completely blown. And you got to keep the cash advance. Quite a deal.

MCLAREN
Dodgy at best.

VIV
And then a third signing for even more money up front! Well, that’s a lovely irony, isn’t it? And an international tour arrangement thrown in! Not bad for a kinky old buzzard like you.

MCLAREN
I suppose not.

VIV
Oh, that flotilla on the Thames. Having them play in the middle of the bloody river. Going straight up the the Queen’s Jubilee! Brilliant! Bobbies and everybody having to wait until you pulled ashore before they could even try to arrest you.

MCLAREN
A real swipe at Authority.

VIV
And getting them to sign their record contract on the steps of Buckingham Palace, no less. And Sid with his stiff quiff. I was pretty impressed, I can tell you.

MCLAREN
Rebels without a pause.

VIV
Rebels with menopause?

MCLAREN
Eventually. One day.

VIV
Hand me that hair iron, will you? Thanks. I’ll be downstairs; the taxi’s due any second. What do you suppose this rush of publicity really means? I mean, the papers make it sound as if we’re about to organize some sort of international anti-everything movement.

MCLAREN
People do it all themselves. All that beautiful political crap.

VIV
What do you think you might make this into, anyway? How much harm or hurt can four beastly boys zipped up in rubber goods do, anyway? What will you make out of them? The way the papers write about it all! As if we were terrorists. Or a sharp-edged Danger Mouse flailing away with a fully-loaded automatic guitar. “Oh God no, they’re plugging in. There goes the country.” ZZZapp!!

MCLAREN
A real amplified re-fleshing of the old anarchy bivouacs.

VIV
Cells of resistance, and all that.

MCLAREN
Sounds very biological, don’t you think?

VIV
As if we were an infection in the body of Mother England. [Laughs] What do you want, anyway?

MCLAREN
Just another commercial venture, darling.

VIV
America… I might have a chance to hunt up some fresh fashion ideas, mightn’t I? [Exits.]

MCLAREN
I'll have all a chaos. When effect meets not
The cause, and old age crawls to the baby's cradle
And there bawls its second weak infancy to the sheets
My wry smile shall widen to an earth-engulfing gash
Ingesting in toothy winces a wrong world
The intensest squints could not correct.
With this intent, I shall in America with my protege club prevail!
For years, Teddy Boys squeezed into my ripe Sex shop
Pear-pale, peach-sweet, thin and slinky in their kinked clothes
And now my charmed boys in their ragtag come marching out!
A decade of manipulation's not enough.
Sensible extirpation is my willing wish against sin,
To FEEL free is the only free there is, a sweet
Release from the clapped weight of intent
From which clapping hands raise and praise the supplicant.
How many jiggers of winning did I need to drink?
I won against my lolling generation, and then beat myself.
John may be a bit of a sticker, the prick.
Sid will give and give, docile as a housewife.
Why look you, once his mind's made over, his body
Follows adoringly, even to the precipice.
So all-of-a-kind is his nature that intent
And action have no more division between them
Than wind and wave. What one directs, the other
Slavishly obeys; its a virtue that may serve
My turning of it. After this, I'll burn as if
The indued lust was in me, firing all my thoughts.
They dress in the fagged-out rags of my harrassing dreams,
Hold a face I've pancaked against the furnace of light,
Wink at my blinkered insistence, chime to my timing
And let their voices uncork the change something in ME demanded.
All chaos unleashed in a stabbing minute unrehearsed....
These youths I shall to my alarming purpose bend,
Give voice to the vortex I feelingly live within.

[McLaren closes suitcase and wheels out of the room.]

["Anarchy in the UK," plays as we go to America.]
Top^


ACT II (America)

SCENE

[At the Homesick Cafe, Ark.]

[Boys on tour bus reading their "shocker" headlines out loud to each other. Except Rotten, who glares.]


Various: The Foul-Mouthed Yobs!
WHO ARE THESE PUNKS?
The Filth and the Fury!
Rock Group start a 4-Letter TV storm
Just because Steve called him a fucking rotter?
Grandmum Furious at Filthy TV Chat
Viewers in big protest over shock outburst
More Uproar as viewers jam phones
Grundy Goaded Punk Boys Says Record Chief.
Nufin goaded me, you old load.
Worthless, decidedly inferior, displeasing...
All: Yes!
The ragged face of Punk Rock
The Punks-- Rotten and proud of it!
Obnoxious, arrogant, outrageous... the new pop kings

SID
 Hey, Johnny, here's what they call you: The Ragged Rebel.
 Haw. The Ragged Rebel.

ROTTEN
Oh, Sid, you're so bawring!

SID

O, look you now what an unworthy thing you make of me! Should my concentration on this point of debate be anything less than tyrrannical, or dominate me less than the oppressive sky, then I, an erratic flicker of breath between unbreathing birth and breathless death as all men are, should lose my own weight of conscience, and disperse the only quality of mind that gives men effect or worth.


ROTTEN
Yeah, well, y'know.

PAUL
Food, food, food.

STEVE

[Taking up the chant:]

 Food, food, food!

ROTTEN
No luxuries cramp my stomach like the queen's packed larder,
Fat-back pork lolling between the ice-green truffles...
Knowing your 70 minutes' hunger each hour defines you is harder:
Spirit is trash, and god the garbage man is still on strike,
Uneaten piles of human flesh foul the bright air
Strangling the wayfarer who's forgotten how to die.
Dry heaves reassure me; my white neck's too knotted
For the hangman still. Watch my stumbling tongue,
B-S-ing to the hissing end! It's all just so much sass
I learned to spit at Grampa's deafened, wrinkled stump
Pearled with old, oil-red, oiled eyes.... Hssshahh, hssashah, snap!

PAUL
Hossannah, hossannah. All eat now of Johnny's manna;

STEVE
That'll choke us quicker than any hangman's yank.

PAUL
What makes you so fucking blessed right anyway?

SID
 We're all as hungry as you are, John.

ROTTEN
Yeah. But you're all wrong, ain't yeh?

[Bus pulls up to diner.]

TIBERI
OK, OK. Everybody off the bus!

[Inside diner.]

TIBERI
Eggs and butter for the British brats here.
Eggs to settle their stomachs from a hen's ass,
Butter for all the gold they'll get paid.

ROTTEN
Sincere pain, sincere joy, what else is there?
Nothing's in us, and less is in our stars.
Did we ever tell you about the time we met
That asshole ---

PAUL
Anecdotal violence! Anecdotal violence!
I love anecdotes.

SID
 We tol' ol' Bill Harris to shove it up
His withered cunt---

ROTTEN
Back at the Playpen
Where we'd lean into our drinks, and drink, and think.
Sid was ashamed of Bill's being so dull
And tried to save him with a slash; "a bash
On his ripe noggin'll straighten him out"
He'd said: and wham went the theatrics, Wham!

SID
 You gotta live and bleed to be, ya see?

ROTTEN
Fuck dental floss: who's gonna live that long?

SID
 Operational utility, see,
Is the only ungimmicked gauge of success.
And when I cut him, he was free, free,
And let loose against me as if I lived,
Not in the papers or on the TV,
But there in the room with him, within reach.
His knuckle was my suckle: haw haw haw.

ROTTEN
Bill was a cop who knew the Bandits well.
Well, what of that? I'd gotten clobbered plenty
By the cincured cops I'd grown up near.

SID
 It's true enough. Authority buys its face with pain.
Fear in weak eyes can paint a popinjay
Above the status of an eagle's stare.

Top^



SCENE

[Hotel room]

MCLAREN
Tiberi, my boy, listen up. Item:
International image. The permanence
Of celluloid fantasy. Item:
Cash advance for everybody.
Who can we call?

TIBERI
MGM.

MCLAREN
Columbia.

TIBERI
Paramount.

MCLAREN
Calling the 20th century!

TIBERI
Warner Brothers.

MCLAREN
Warner brothers. Brothers in arms!
It sounds tasty and correct in a flat, unleavened way.

TIBERI
They're already paying for this tour.

MCLAREN
So they are. Why not?

[Mclaren reaches for phone.]

Top^

SCENE

[The auditorium in San Francisco. Tiberi greeted at the door by a stage-hand.]

COHEN
Who do you serve?

TIBERI
Why, one that’s better than myself.

COHEN
Why do you serve him?

TIBERI
Because he is better.

COHEN
Many men in their various disciplines have a superior touch. You cannot serve them all. Men must serve themselves, or else this divided loyalty would allow but very little sleep.

TIBERI
He’s better than me. If I would not serve him willingly, then he, being better, could make me. If I werte to contrive for distance between my master and myself, his farsightedness would foreshorten the leagues of my leavetaking, and I would be as good as by his side even still.

COHEN
Perhaps you could serve him well, but hold aside your heart and keep it secret and alone.

TIBERI
If I were to so withhold, and in myself keep that affection owed outwardly, then he, knowing my measure, even to its height and pitch, and exceeding that measure as much as a whale does an inchworm, would discern the shortfall in my affections. Yeah, if I were to withhold even one particle of all my mind from service, he, whose mind encompasses and surpasses it, would percieve the debit and hold me owing. And such owing to such encompassment, I would not feel.

COHEN
And you serve in hope to better yourself by such example?

TIBERI
I serve because the worser obeys the better part of man, or else all is chaos. There’s many tragadies that have played on that.

COHEN
But is there no improvement in your scheme? No profit that may be had by you from your master?

TIBERI
I serve one who never shall be as bad as myself. There’s a profit of trust and confidence for a man in that.

COHEN
Self-treachery! Never have I heard it so bluntly put. Who can know the doings of another’s heart? The change and expanses hidden there? Why each man’s a walking maze or undeciphered rebus, save to gods or madmen. A madman makes no udse of it because he is mad. The gods game with such insights to while away eternity, showing man a riddle to himself. Gads! Think on it.

TIBERI
My pledge is a matter of honor in myself, not to swerve from it. It is a constant in myself that I most do guess at, not in him I serve.

COHEN
And yet, here you are, pledging service to– to a blank stone! Hell, one might do better thus: the stone will keep its qualities, a man may not. You say that he’s a better by viewing of his past acts, which are as much the charge of accident and chance as deportment, and by that view squint into tomorrow. For all service pledged today is but a guess at constancy tomorrow, that the pledge may be returned or paid in kind or still find honor in its subject. Yet you plegde a riddle, and hold it as it were a star above your head, changeless and remote. Do this and disserve yourself.

TIBERI
It’s honesty.

COHEN
Who’s the nearer gainer?

TIBERI
Just help me lug this shit onstage, ay? I thought San Francisco was supposed to be a friendly city.

[Stage Hand helps with equipment.]
[“Schools are Prisons” plays us to the radio station, where BONNIE turns it down to speak.]

Top^

SCENE

[Radio Interview at K L A M, as in ‘My Lamb,’ the lamb of christ, on the lam, as in (lowercase) 1[one] am, as in Clam, as in money, as in female sexual organs]

TIBERI
You boys have GOT TO do this interview right. Understand?

ROTTEN
Oh? What if we don’t?

SID
I don’t give a fig about you.

BONNIE
On the air in five…. Welcome to San Francisco. This is Bonnie Bonfires, and we’re talking to the Sex Pistols, the outrageous punk band from England who’ll be playing the Geffin Concert Hall tonight. Well boys, have you been having fun?

SID
More fun than ever. So much more room over here to be fun in. You can spit across Britain.

ROTTEN
NO FUN. NO FUN. NO FUN. NO FUN.

BONNIE
Should I play another cut from your album.

SID
Who cares about the music?

ROTTEN
The music was never it.

BONNIE
Well, OK. Here we go. [Plays another cut from their album]

Sid and ROTTEN
Blah blah blah.

TIBERI
You treat this little lady nice.

Sid and ROTTEN
Blah blah blah.

TIBERI
Lemme make it easy for you. You do good, and you each get a leather jacket.

SID
Nobody tells us what ta do.

ROTTEN
Oh yes they do. I’d sell my soul for a leather jacket.

BONNIE
Any new material?

SID
Got a song about God.

ROTTEN
And all the pretty angels…

SID
It’s a real attack. A death march.

BONNIE
Really.

SID
Got one about South Africa. How the niggahs gonna rise up.

BONNIE
What kind of school did you go to, Johnny? Parochial?

ROTTEN
Schools are just another prong in your conformist machine.

BONNIE
I have to do a radio ID. This is K-L-A-M, San Francisco, transmitting on….

Sid and ROTTEN
Blah blah blah blah.

SID
I want to talk, to say something.

BONNIE
Go ahead.

SID
Hallo? Is DeeDee Ramone out there? Just hallo. Hallo!

BONNIE
Do you like the Ramones?

SID
I love the Ramones.

ROTTEN
I hate the Ramones. I hate them I hate them. They’re boring and mundane.

SID
[Sings.] Nothing to do, nowhere to go oh… I wanna be sedated!

ROTTEN
I don’t want to be sedated. Absolutely not. And neither should you.

BONNIE
Well then who do you like?

ROTTEN
Me.

BONNIE
I would hope so. Anybody else?

ROTTEN
Not really, no. Not at all. I don’t like rock music. I don’t even know why I’m in it. It’s just the only way I can destroy things. It’s the best way.

BONNIE
Tell me about your song ‘New York.’

ROTTEN
It’s about imposters from New York, all those cheap assholes who call themselves poets and take themselves seriously and all they’re doing is destroying music in a trivial way. It’s like they’re serious. At least we’re destroying it practically. I just want to ruin everything. Have I earned my leather jacket yet? This is so tedious.

TIBERI
Two sleeves.

BONNIE
This is hard, isn’t it?

ROTTEN
Yes. For a young man like me.
[Pause.]

ROTTEN
I am the defeat of your social engineering plan,
And the timid victory of the individual.
My annihilating mind reduces every other one
Back to zero cause it can and that way I
Can really get started and exist. In a world of mirrors
Every one of you becomes just another face.
I must spurn the temptations of the marketplace,
And not sell the shards of what I've gathered here.
The nihilist in me shouts you up against the wall
And then, I shoot until there's nothing left;
My lesson plan includes an ineradicable I, which then
Can say I'm everything, or anything, or what
I want to be. In a universe of ciphers I,
I am the only one. And then, when that becomes clear
and (the atmosphere in here is damp) all
Of you get sick of being so erased, and scream
"I exist!" in your sickened state, well then
Maybe I'll have done something to unleash
The little man inside of you at last.

BONNIE
Are you going home after tonight's show?

SID
Our visa's expired.

BONNIE
Do you think its different here than in England?

ROTTEN
You've really got no idea how stupid you are.

BONNIE
What do you want out of us 'Yanks'?

ROTTEN
MOREEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!
Complaisant slugs, gumming up the air with your foul breaths.

SID
Nothing here but dirty cowboys and sore-thighed wives.

ROTTEN
Gimme a fix of the pure, the real, the clean LUCRE
That spic-and-span life commands. A toast to the country
With the least. Drink up Sidney! We've earned our
Leathers by now. Gimme the free bleed
Anarchy asks. Out of each man ranges free free free
The dispelling shadow of his own unowned soul.

SID
Hee hee hee. [They Exit.]

BONNIE
Thanks. And good luck on your show here in San Francisco tonight. [To mike:] Well, I think they heard me.

[“Problem” plays briefly as we head toward utter disaster.]
Top^

SCENE

[Last Engagement, San Francisco.]

MARCUS
I'm Griel Marcus, bald-faced punk's
Rueful, truthful rock-critic supreme;
Whatever I say becomes whatever I see.

BYSTANDER
[Bumping Marcus] Fuck off!

MARCUS
Drunk in the cockpit of this moment's corse sussurations
I hear hippie history's dismissing 'brava!' in the floor-boards' squeal.
Johnny's spinning skull must fly off its spitting spike next,
His rare form magnetic, a showboat on fire.
Watch the wicked, watched world grind itself down
To his loose, hissing tooth. Tonight, tonight! Now.
I've watched. The hysterical, real saint-Just
Wishing hysterical happiness to everyone he couldn't kill.

ROTTEN
Bang into the flopped heart of America I flapped,
My long, grimed tooth my instrument! Catch fire
From this piss-stream of lip-jizz; I say fire
To make Carthage blush, and the pillaged babe
Don her habitable virginity
Fresh as any haight-ashbury herb cure.
We'll make such faces! Breed on tiger-milk
You who wish to finger what we offer...
We'll make such faces, turn to ack-ack hue
Our enlarged gourds til teeth burst: such smiles lick
As respected age will treble tremble---
Fathers curse inheritence, and stones yeowl
To be whittled into junior pebbles
Out of so grave a bulk. Mothers curse sons
Whelped by nursing pains to urgent manlings
Of size to whine into this hissing mike
That scatters truth into dumb fertile ears
And like seeds of lice or liscence perk there
The bandaged arms of Anarchy! Rise, lice!
And overwhelm the blinded head of state...
Take what wisdom would not give. It's time!
Crawl into every margin of the law
And breed upset. With perpetual strife
Upbraid laced dignities, and cause small wars
To fruit the earth with disrespect, make change
Frequent and large, dash reason, and with blood
Let each man's Caesar's freedoms be regained!
O royal hue! To convey the marrow
And very essence of a life. By pulse
Revealing to the stale outward intant
Time's constant arrow moving forward still.
Blood in my toothpaste dish makes me sick
To think on time's waste. Hear the moment's beat
In your stagnant ears? Listen now to blood;
Lift a gun or tongue; swim in such instants---
Freedom is a minute you can't forget,
Nothing more. Texarkana's next this tour?
We are many in the dark. My sneer's a bombshell.
Let's bludgeon our faces against the light...
Blot all torches. We'll make such faces...!

MARCUS
There they go, fabulous at last.
The fabled anger fated for parade.
See how blind John stares and stares.
The black, quickened eye disabling
A head trapped in history.
When will we unleash ourselves and die free?
What man believes the stories he tells himself?
You can overhear a dozen prophets at any bar
Betting their dreamed guesses into oblivion...
Sauced, sleepy, slurred unhurried drears.
How many hunches have I discovered and doubted,
Telling myself I'll live forever on the sly
Drenched in wrenching death-prayers by the score...
Something tells me that the boot is braver
Than the twitching man who kicks me with it.
How many other minutes will singe and sing like this?
The annihilating sound, the screaming face alive
Retelling a dream interred. Interred and true.
Convinced and cynical in my writer's chair
Perched on some desert telephone pole
Like an eagle's quartered nest, I reach
For my blue, explaining pen as my foot hits the wire!
Knowing what I know, I think its the crash.
Unfullfilled desire leaves it debt in dreck;
Dada's marched-on heart is beating still.
Those fulfilled? Even more so. History keeps
Repeating its minutes, a bum that mumbles
His mantra to a swigged glass.

ROTTEN
Is this exceeding blessing, this individual
Excellence extempore, merely a receding grace,
A backwash of wish, naked in bare sincerity,
Made supremely visible by withdrawl alone?

MARCUS
What gain inheres? Nothing forgotten's real.
        Everything's forgotten.
Johnny's ribald face is burning the spotlight back to black.
His voice an echo without a source;
My dull feet are sore, I've been standing here since birth.
The theiving minutes pinch my imagined halo to ash,
St. Catastrophe without a wish to incinerate my sins,
I stammer on the moment's agile surf and glide
Fishing for a reprieve I haven't faxed myself.
Why can't I kill whatever I see? Asleep in his stitches,
Frankenstein mumbled love for the blind flower-girl
       Chaplin wooed.
Why can't I sleep and speak? The terrible dreams
Rise in the visionary nullity of Rotten's ripe rant,
Blaming the logjam of time every infancy invents;
What choice of fathers does a chilled begetting undermine?
My drugged druthers always centering on the whispered
       "Not I, Not I."
The nascent NA NA NA that ripped Elvis to the top!
How much more must I incinerate and disclaim? All's mine.
Mine mine mine! Disbelief's the easiest wish to insist on.
Its the hard, current, Jabberwocky of the damned
I can't understand, their bleating insinuations of reprieve
Manufactured and patented up-your-sleeve!
My dyslexic eye precedes the Lettrist revolt,
My dubbing ear Dada Ball's crunching balungo-beerhall putsch!
Decapitated atop my careening pile of crooked books,
I fix on the age's marginalia, squinting for a clue;
Haphazard history's gimmick's fixed by tricks
I engineer from here with a wink and a lisp. Follow close!
Cops are burning my wicker house to the holy ground.
The heat's in me still that put their finnicky indignation
To the torch! I hold a copy of commie Combat rolled,
Batting all comers with its tickle-whip of scholarly love.
It is history's Rosanante that I must skewer and cure,
Ferrying imagination's master-men to their mooted doom;
The mute ashes lash and flabbergast me as I stand
Winsome and sinewy at St. Joan's last barbeque.
No matter how poor in spirit you are, there is always
Desire. Desire unfulfilled, as it appears. A cinema wish
Snapping in the projector and evaporating, each
White, slaved, delectable evocation revoked.
Have you seen the serene mistress of this wish?
She rides all times as if swished backwash,
The sea retreating to the sea's indecipherable source.
Always there is the sweet reverse of the siren's chorus,
Less promising less and less, a minmalist's urge
Sanding away the unallowed surges our bodies offer.
Wolman with a silent, blanking screen at his command
Knew what the humdrumming camera's oceanic whirr allowed
Knew each lived minute demanded its hour,
Each hour, eternity. That girl Liberty
Kept her witching watch alert night by night,
Stik-on stars spangling her showbiz brow
As she danced down the photographed Paris streets,
A weeping illuminati with nothing on! So it goes.
Today she's done her promomade of Nos, the void
Loosed from her solo vowels and the crashed, done, down,
Flair of Petey-boy's Wall of Sound, ennunciating Void;
From this announced denial a scintillating permission slips,
My hands reduced to crabbed claws can fasten still....
Destruction on this rash scale proves creation's true!!!
My neon feelers tremble in the black box of night,
My undone heart moves its inchworm rounds renewed.
Nothing demands its consequence, I am the world I rue!

ROTTEN
Ever get the feeling you've been cheated?
Top^

SCENE

[Hotel room, San Francisco. Annie Leibovitz is trying to gather the boys in the shower for a group portrait. Rotten is on the phone.]

ROTTEN
Bloody fucking spanking wanker! [Hangs up]

TIBERI
Well, what do you know? San Francisco today, Brazil tomorrow.

ROTTEN
What?

TIBERI
You’re going to Brazil tomorrow.

ROTTEN
What?

TIBERI
Don’t you understand what I’m talking about?

ROTTEN
What?

TIBERI
You’re going down there to cut a film with the Great Train Robber holed up in Rio de Janero.

ROTTEN
That’s pathetic.

TIBERI
[Tiberi shrugs] He wants to call it ‘The Swindle.’

ROTTEN
He wants to make a mooovie; 'The Swindle!'
That would tuck us away all tidy and dead. Oooouuu!
What a sensation. They made my nerves tingle once,
But now I know it was all a game. How fun! Bloody...
I'm calling McLaren. That arse. What a circus.

[Sid stumbles out of the shower.]

SID
What's going on?

ANNIE
Just like that. Hold that sneer.

SID
[Throwing his towel over the camera] You whore.

ROTTEN
Malcolm's trying to kidnap us to South America, that's all.

SID
 Don't they have those naked parties down there?

ROTTEN
That’s not the point, Sid. He’s trying to pervert the entire experiment.

SID
Oh. Well…

ANNIE
C’mon everybody, back in the shower. Really good light glares off of the fixtures.

SID
Jam it.

ROTTEN
[Picks up the phone]> What’s Malcolms number? Anybody! What the frizz is the number where Malcolm’s at? Do I have to wait for that wanker to call here again? Anybody! What’s his bleeding number?

ANNIE
Click, click, click.

ROTTEN
Oh, that’s it. That’s too much. I’m out. I’m smoke. I’m dead to you from now on, OK? This is simply far too degrading, being paraded around like this. Malcolm McPuppet can go hang!
[Exits]

[“Belsen was a Gas” plays as we go to the next scene. Maybe show some clips of the boys in Brazil from “The Great Rock and Roll Swindle.”]
Top^

SCENE

[Hotel room, San Francisco]

TIBERI
He’s quit. John’s no longer with the band. With anything. He says he’s gone to Jamaica and fuck you.

MCLAREN
Ah, shiit! Slaying betrayer. Crimped infidel.
When he comes back I’ll have to say something nice to him.
I like his asshole. Or something. Shiit!

[Phone rings, Tiberi picks it up]

TIBERI
Hey, well, whatever. You better take this.

[McLaren on the speakerphone, talking to the movie guy.]

MCLAREN
Yes. Yes. I understand.

MOVIE GUY
The project is untouchable without Johnny’s drawing buzz.

MCLAREN
I understand. [aside] Ideas aren’t honey enough for the vixen flies. Attention in this blitzed world is a game of one-upsmanship. And I’m too persona-poor to play my own part. [aloud] I understand.

MOVIE GUY
Get Johnny Rotten back on the set, or my interests will witdraw all funding for this film.

MCLAREN
I understand THAT. [Hang up.] Look, Tiberi, we’ve got a revolution going on here. I’ve got a movie contract. This band is blistering the world’s thin skin, and they’ll pay anything to feel the pain. They want the illusion that they’re alive. But, there’s a problem, the face man has escaped. Johnny’s popped off to Jamaica. He’s sick-unto-death of us. Tired. He’s just a lad, after all. But he is needed. The mask of fantasy through which every heaven-drugged voice was pumped is getting a sunburn in the coral-mauve Carribean. Not good. The movie may be behind schedule already! And it’s the celluloid that’ll last, and not our wearisome noise. I must have that frittery inch of stained-glass church windowpane for my mile-high history.

TIBERI
So what are you going to do?

MCLAREN
Yes. What am I going to do?

TIBERI
Yes, what are you going to do?

MCLAREN
I’m going to talk to him. If I convince him, I convince him. If not…. I want you to go to Jamaica– an island of indecisive breezes– and try to convice him. If you convince him, you convince him. You won’t go unprepared. Hand me those blank pages over there.

TIBERI
These?

MCLAREN
Yes. Those.

[McLaren takes five of six blank pages and carefully puts his signature at the foot of each, then hands them back to Tiberi.]

TIBERI
What’re these for?

MCLAREN
Exigencies. If I cannot convince him, and your voice is dust in his ears, then note what complaints he makes, and note whatever his own desire may speak of. Note them. Note them on these pages as my own true intent. Whatever he wants [aside]let him think he’ll get.

TIBERI
All right. You really want to put him in the driver’s seat though? This could mean that he’d be tellin everybody else what to do.

MCLAREN
He already put himself there with his big star-biz ego-fetish GOOD-BYE fuck-off.

TIBERI
Is there anything else?

MCLAREN
I’ll tell you more of my intents after the phone call. Now you may get out.

[Exit Tiberi.]

MCLAREN
[punches a number on the speaker phone]
Hallo, Johnny?
What have we to fear, enmansioned, founded
Here where highest joys a trembling earth
Disposes, waiter to our wants even as she
Mimics and points them to their setting on.
The crypt of night is draped with jewels
And sick want, pale with wan fear,
Is fattened by our expectation to join those dear
Who have left us laughing departing hence.
God as king, worm or fool
Can knock us about no more than chance
Whose jaded tigers jab at us pinned to earth.
This being so, as indeed it is,
Lets talk among us as if we were dead
And loss and gain a game played
By those abandoned above our roof of turf.
This done, our new talk will range
In absolutes as freely as a kitten
Moves his mates among. Then shall we be,
As our abilities all have chance to turn flesh
Corporal spirits diamonded by tongues
And turn in flashing sequences of ourselves
As once the deciphered pages of a book.
O then what gainers will we be!
To know all ourselves, entongued here
As ages heretofore dreamed only
The provenence of heaven! To hold
Castled in the keep of teeth our very selves
And have their essence printed in the air
What fingers may fan! O secret bliss!
Uncased before time and times are done
And all the world's expansive 'Ah'
Constricted to a noose's tiny 'o'
To be drunk while still fresh in every sense
And our each little gate of perception
Overwhelmed with joy! Come, come,
Let's talk while we've tongues to lavish us.

["New York" plays as we fly to that black basalt city.]
Top^

ACT III (New York)

SCENE

[Sid 'N' Nancy's apartment.]

SID
What there is left of me that love would put
A hand to, hew down, and let drugs eat up
The surplus, even as they already have
Your hollow eyes consumed.

NANCY
                       Stop it Sid. Stop!
I do not have to dredge my heart for drams
But have love enough to wet you to the core
And send the efflux and semblance of your ghost
Drenched to heaven.

SID
There's no comfort in it.
But chilly do I move through these spare rooms
Turning visions and nightmares over in my fist
Like a restless paper, which tells more
In its rough square of life than I ever,
Ever shall do myself. Does it not
Astound?

NANCY
Do not, do not love me, and then
Draw a sour face over bitten fruit.

SID
Hmm. Yes. If I cannot prove out one image
With my entire life, and take this page
And append myself-- but momentarily!--
To its whirlwind, then what is't to've lived?

NANCY
Well, you're going to that gig I set up at
Max's Kansas City next week ain't ya? Ain't that
Something more 'n  a footnote? I'm in bad way,
Sid. Don't I always tell you you're the only star?
I set that gig up for you, honey. Ain't that
Worth a little sumthin', sumthin'?

SID
Is the carryover of existence
No more than the monumental footnote
Of an obituary? I think
It cannot be-- and yet, what is it to live?

NANCY
Aw, Sid, fuck off! I'm going to Richard's
For my fix. Give me the money, honey.

[NANCY grabs money from SID and exits.]

SID
Is there, in that drugged beast's look of hers
Love to expiate misery of self
Or is self all-too tangled in beastly briars
For any look of hers to burn by fires
Back to unencumbering phoenix' ash
From which some tired I might at last arise?

Top^



SCENE

[Richard Hell’s apartment. He is alone, reading Baudelaire’s Last Poems. He looks up.]

HELL
I feel blank.
[Knock at door.]

HELL
Oh yes.
[NANCY enters.]

NANCY
Gosh, who’d’ve thought you’d stayed so cute?

HELL
I didn’t think I needed anyone to tell me that.

NANCY
Hi y’er. [She leans up close against him]

HELL
I don’t mind givin’, but you have got to want.

[Nancy throws Baudelaire book at Hell’s head]

HELL
What? Don’t! [He tackles her] That’s my Baudelaire.
[pause]

NANCY
You hurt me, I hurt you. What the fuck?

HELL
What, the fuck?

NANCY
What we had was real.

HELL
I don’t know….

NANCY
FUCKFUCKFUCKFUCK.
[Pause]

NANCY
You don’t have any smack, do you?

HELL
Not that I can lend.

NANCY
Any I could get?

HELL
Well, I don’t know….
[Nancy crawls into his lap]

HELL
I do know someone who’s holding. Do you remember Rockets?

NANCY
Rockets Redglare? That skeevy little shrimp?

HELL
He’s probably at his place.

NANCY
On Houston Street?

HELL
Probably.

NANCY
SEE YA.

HELL
Hey, Sweetheart.

[Nancy exits. Hell sets up the Baudelaire book and addresses the picture on the front jacket]

HELL
Tell me if this is finished:
[sings]
Desperation takes us in its feral cue
as luxury lights installed upon a losted view
and terror tricked shadow in pitiless devotion--
imploring furious mirrors of singular commotion
     its true... its true...!

Animate angel fumes her retinue of dreams
Stabbing azure parodies and rending elixive schemes
with no respite for my insensate senses
enslaved in velvet dawns and sonorous tenses
     oh no... oh no...!!

Spirit exhales divine perils in exquisite quivers
dyed her in defiance and cool lipstick shivers,
like flatterers dissembling demented agitation
or tears falling like the loveless jewels of contemplation!!
     my-self...! myself...!!!

Top^

SCENE

[Sid ‘N’ Nancy’s apartment. Nancy returns, gives herself a fix on the bed, relaxes. Sid goes over to her and picks up the works with the following line:]

SID
Gimmie.

[Sid takes the ‘works’ to the bathroom, hunches up against the toilet and injects himself.]

SID
This rearing horse has neighed my veins alive;
It turns their slothful flowing to more rapid pace,
Spilling armies of antagonistic thoughts
From their safe haven and compeerless view
In the appointed temple of the brain
To those waiting slopes and mountain-arms
That tumble to our bowels, then stretch out to feet
And, like the volcano in his roaring, the body
Once aroused, rests not till all the landscape
Burns laved with that fire the brain compels
Out in a rain of fuming ashes over it.
Drugs are argent against a low self-conceit,
The beggar's into a tyrant's riches thrown
And chatters at the rats, his councillors.
High into his eye each purviewed object is excerpted,
Finding there its aptest use and valuation;
Be it less than a poor scrap of scrambled print
Tugging his ankle like a wet hand, or some dull word
Imagined in the wind, his altered state,
Being so high-enhanced and tragic-excited,
Seizes the wayward syllable, which trumpets in his ear
Of vast ambitions trashed, kingdoms undone,
The long low note of doom resounding soundless
In his brain alone, the subtle drum
That had urged him on, til cavalries entire
That had so newly charged in victory-seeking pride
Stand again in-reigned in sudden defeat.

[P.I.L.'s "Albatross" plays briefly, annoying us.]

Top^

SCENE

[Jamaica, Rotten's cabana. Poolside]

GIRL
Why did you leave?

ROTTEN
How could I stay?

GIRL
There's nothing here.

ROTTEN
There's nothing anywhere.

GIRL
Yeah, right..?

ROTTEN
It's only ourselves... It was The End!

GIRL
Our faces and our fears. Our freedoms, right?

ROTTEN
Our inhibited pissings, more like.

[Sound of rustling shubbery. Rotten pulls Tiberi from behind a bush at poolside]

ROTTEN
Shadow of vengeance! Tiberi, what’re you doing here?

TIBERI
Oh nothing. Nothing. really.

[Rotten pulls at camera strap on Tiberi’s neck:]

ROTTEN
What’s this? Eh?

TIBERI
It’s just a camera, you know, to get a few snaps.

ROTTEN
Slippery as a condottieri, Tiberi. Probably been sliming up the bush you dragged through to get a geeky peek at me.

TIBERI
All we wanted was your picture for the movie.

ROTTEN
My picture! all I own is my image. The intimidation of a shameless face.

TIBERI
Yeah, well, your story’s a lot of what we’ve been trying to put together.

ROTTEN
[grabbing papers out of Tiberi’s coat] What’s this? Well, what is it? [examining papers] McLaren’s reduced to selling his autograph, is he?

TIBERI
No. They were left blank so that I could fill them in. With promises. You know, like McLaren’s been talking about. You’re in charge. You can do what you want, make what you want. Any project. Anything– so long as I got you to come back to the group.

ROTTEN
Christ, I gave all that up. I don’t need any shit from the past. All that’s dead.

TIBERI
Everyone I know just wants to see you guys back up there again.

ROTTEN
Christ, Tiberi! Humping the friggin bushes to get me friggin picture…

TIBERI
McLaren figured you’d be pretty much pissed. Guess he was right. But he still wants the project to go forward. So, you know, whatever I could get…. And now you guys are so big. Now you could actually cash in on it a little. You know, make some money and be free to do whatever you want.

ROTTEN
Except quit. So now you’re going to steal my freedom from me too. McLaren’s holding up my money. Sid had my friendship. And now– for the best of reasons, to be a verbal martyr and fixed tidbit in kid’s dreams— I’m supposed to dive back into that mire? Can’t you see from the way they’ve got you crawling around behind bushes that self-determination is the LAST thing that they’re interested in?

TIBERI
Well, how about a line for the movie then at least? Its a mythological documentary of sorts—

ROTTEN
The Demise of the Never Beens? Dreamy. Fuck off.

TIBERI
Just say: “Who killed Bambi?” They can edit it in ok. Ok?

[As Tiberi holds up the camera to film, Rotten takes the lens in his hand and shoves him backwards into the pool]

ROTTEN
Zed, Hector! Kick his highness’ ass. [Enter two thugs who pull Tiberi out of the water and start beating him] That’s all the picture of me you’ll glom onto.

TIBERI
Ow. Ah, fuck. Hands off! Damn. Damn you.

ROTTEN
Watch how the image in your cracked skull, Johnny Rotten Magnificat, melts from the stiff indifference your wrong wish imposed; a posed, inverted, evangelical, shouting and strident gimmick for your gimcrack Hollywood picture,— back to the wavering and real, loving negation of a single man. Let my NO now hollow out my image where your false wish reigned.

TIBERI
Not even an instamatic fragment? Your anger’s really photogenic, you know.

ROTTEN
NOOOOOOOO! I’ll kick your ass myself.

[They punch Tiberi offstage.]
[“Liar” plays ironically as TIBERI is beaten.]
Top^

SCENE

[New York, Suicide Promise. Sid N' Nancy's apartment.]

SID
The soul of man to its true object is miscreant.
Smeared with fecal farce is our smooth wall of love
That upheld only projections of sweet heaven
Between us, once. Where has our strength of dreaming fled?
How gone, that which from the daily air drew in
Sweet opiate clouds? Our imagination's cancered over,
My heart a tumor lugging up my throat! I cannot swallow.
My dry eyes, empty of tender tears, ache to weep,
And must hang aching still, deprived of that
Visionary flood that lifts the animal in us to man,
The twitch of sympathy that had bound us as brothers
Knotted no less than pearls on the trim wire
Of our cause, has lapsed us now to this estate
A degredation even to the uncombining sand.
So far have we fallen, who thought to rise forever
Alert in the hilarity of spirits,
A pairs of perfect angels, turning higher
With each god-send of wind, until clouds themselves
Shrank dazzlingly beneath us, the lost sea a rumor
Of unendurable light. And are we now, even now,
Descended to this? O human liberty!
Let us scrape the dirty earth for our bones,
And charge our jellied flesh with treason,
For bones have abandoned us if we cannot stand against this.
Let us lose the hair that marks and mocks us even as a beast,
Rend sight from our sockets, sniff the absent crypt,
Stab hearing from our ears, cut the tongue
Howling from our mouths that can make no speech
Innocent of betrayal, and so convert ourselves
To ragged bleeding brawls of detested elements
All in a chaos so confused with themselves
That the least drear piece of life-- be it
As miserly as a toad!--- will take no stain
Of comparison from us, to say we share
Any quality convertible with itself.
     [Nancy sits up in bed, clear from her high and depressed.]
All charmed intent of tenderness has abandoned us.

NANCY
Let’s do it.

SID
Aw God, not again.

NANCY
C’mon Sid; for real this time.

SID
Why do you always wanna talk like this?

NANCY
C’mon, Sid. For real.

SID
Ahh, Nanc.

NANCY
Sid, Sid. I– I don’t want ta die.

SID
Too late. We’ve been born, and now we’ve GOT TO die.

NANCY
I know all that. I was just expressing myself.

SID
Funny way you’ve got about it, wailing with no one to hear but these blank walls.

NANCY
I always thought you were listening.

SID
Well, I guess so; not that THAT counts for anything.

NANCY
So much suffering on my part, and nothing to show for it.

SID
I forget half the things you say as soon as you say ’em.

NANCY
What’s this been but unendurable misery? Swallowing your kisses like pills….

SID
Love’s gone bust for you. Your heart was never in it.

NANCY
Strange days, skittering on the knifeedge. Strange, strange. And so long….

SID
Well, then, what’s left?

NANCY
Christ! Always asking that question, ain’t you? What’s next, what’s next?

SID
Well?

NANCY
Always pushing past the minute we’re fixed in. You think something great’s gonna happen out of all THIS mess? [He gives her a look] Well, well… I know. But can’t you just quit it for an instant? I can’t tell what’ll come no more than you until it comes hurling down and smashes us ta bits.

[Silence]

NANCY
Let’s do it. C’mon, Sid. C’mon. For real this time. For real. [She presses the knife into his hand] You have to kill me. You promised.

SID
What promise do you have to extract from me
To know the thrust and tenor of my resolve?
Does the thrush promise miraculous song
To the listening air, or does it merely sing?
Does the babe swear his mother's milk to drink
Or does its small mouth simply incline to drink?
Does the putrid corpse disclose its white ribs
To fulfill some deeded oath to the earth?
No more shall I then our agreement break
Than my face and body may my name avoid;
Call me liar, and perjure your enterprise.
I shall none of it, but instead be true
As these bones may not this frame abandon,
Which indeed they do stretch and define thus,
Stiffening frail flesh with determination.
I'll be true. So saying, know me thus said.
For what I am, I cannot be other.

[Lights go down with the knife in Sid's hand.]

[Lights fade up in Sid N Nancy’s apartment. Sid lies in bed next to dead Nancy.]

SID
 Leave off life awhile, it's overrated.
Nancy, your blue eyes toward death, as if toward
Another shore whose beating sands were war-drums
Marching you out of life and sense-- and love;
For I had loved you. Together we'd poured
Each hourglass with centuries-- to the crest!

[Sid falls asleep.]

[Rockets Redglare begins pounding on the door, opens it on its chain, eventually sees Nancy.]

ROCKETS
Hey hey! Sid, Nancy, I was able to score a little more stuff on the cheap. Come on, open up. It’s me, Rockets Redglare. I got some good horse. Premium grade. Sid? Sid, you there? Hey Nancy how about a little yankee doodle dandy on the meat-flute while Sid’s off? Oh, oh there you are Sid. Well, you gonna let me in? You…. Oh man oh man oh gad oh god. Nancy…. bloody bitch. Um, you guys are gonna have to deal with this yourself. Sid, Sid, this is some serious shit, Sid. This is way deep. I gotta crawl on out, pal. Sid, man, you’re damned for this one. Serious, serious.

[“No Future” plays briefly as we go to the recovery room.]
Top^

SCENE


[NYC Hospital]

SID
Blue and ruined in my hospital bed, the dredged
And unending canyon-cut of history chopping my heart
To chasm-splinters, I wait for the explicit lisp
And white-noise hiss of dawn's razoring entrance
To wake me like the guillotine's scissor-whisper
Wakes the aching head it drops back to sleep.
Raw dawn infects my eyelids. Spider-light
Creeps against my strung-out skin. Creeps, creeps.
The fabulous crash and disaster of being alive
One more time! How many times, time times time,
Have I hunched into my skin to face the skulled annihilation?
How many grins unhinged from that skull of grins?

[Phone rings]

MCLAREN
Hallo, Sidney?

[SID mumbles; a bludgeoned “Yeah?” emitted]

MCLAREN
Is anything left alive on that end, Sidney? Anything still in pain, any victim alert and hurting?

SID
Yeah, yeah. Whadda yew want?

MCLAREN
Only what’s best and most dangerous, as always, boy.

SID
I’m so sorry Nancy’s dead.

MCLAREN
You must come back and play for me, changeling. The film’s in the can; you’re a gonna be a movie star, boy. But first you must come back to me. You must guard the carnival.

SID
I’m so sorry Nancy’s dead.

MCLAREN
Everything's irreversible. You know that.

SID
I don't think I know anything. I'm just so sorry.
I want to touch her. I want, I want everything.

MCLAREN
Oh, I see. You want a cure. A salve, a taste
Of the bliss salvation. A pope's denoumont.
How christian of you, Sidney. How lovely and protestant.

SID
Why can I still see her as if she's here,
Standing by my bed, her hair all haloed in the light?

MCLAREN
You need to beg forgiveness, Sid. A dram of baptizing
And all that. It'll do you a world of good. A whirl
Of the condemning waters almost snatching you under now.

SID
In atonement velvet as the dust I'll
Bear myself through the inscence-shrouded dark
Into the very corner of ministry
Where peace of conscience like a nerve-wracked mouse
Shivers in self-captivity; I'll palm
The prize, and bear it like a beating heart
Back against my bosom and into the light
Of common day.

MCLAREN
You see how easy's said;
Its easier done. Forgiveness is a game.

SID
[absolutely trapped]
What do I have to do. What do you say.

MCLAREN
You shall kneel and I shall bless your low head.

SID
Yes, yes. Bless me. Yes.
I wanted to escape, but I can't.

MCLAREN
Crowns of more vested rank than your's have done it;
When the impious impetuous Henry wet
His knees in the snow at high Canossa
The Pope unbent that king, stood him up,
And blessed him. So I bless you now my boy.
   [Sid kneels, holding the telephone receiver above his head.]
Return to your kingdom of the TV.

["Bodies" plays, up to the repeat: "I am not an animal."]

Top^

SCENE

[SID in a taxi, going home from the Max’s gig after NANCY’s death.]

DRIVER
Boiy, dat Max’s Kansas City sure is some wild joint, mistah. Was you plain’ in dere wit’ dat raggedy bass guitar on yer lap? You’re a braver man than I am, that’s fer sure.

SID
Keep yer bleedin’ hole shut, old man.

DRIVER
Youse younsters. I ain’t seen one a youse who….

[SID whams the plastic divider ferociously. DRIVER shuts his hole.]

SID
And now, insensible and languid
As any milky tear, I watch awash
These blank solemnities and joyless vigours
Strut their little glittering while before me,
Prating: I am life! I am alive! Alive,--
Has not a salamander's tail, disjoined
From the sleek head, and fidgeting in the hard palm
Like threads of fire, as much claim upon
The grounds of self-animation as these
Who clamor ecstacies? The quiet nun
Or quaker staring walls down in her church
Commands vibrant meditations in a breath
Unbreathed; voiceless, and without even
So much as an eyelid's unconscious stir
That might annoy a flea, the devotee
Whirls the cosmos round her like a cloak
Invisible, and the kneeling stars in choir
Warm her hush contemplation, those white maids
Stirred to comfort an unmoving central calm.
And so, to cut short the dogs' whining yip
And defoliate the grievy wreath of death
Before its planted, blackly ribboned,
Above my Nancy's unuttering grave
And avoid the choked yodeling condolences
(Almost worse than the shrived chastisement
Of my sense!) and dolorous crowds of mourners
Stamping passports out of my private grief
For a photo-op of mourning stardom,
I'll pack myself into a holy cloister,
Eschew the tasteless ornaments of this world,
Revile in silence the thousand hands
Excited to touch, or anxious to please,
Holding nothing but their wanting of me,
Discard the thin sensuality of flesh
Poor in variety, lost in having,
And in saving spent, whereby we each
Mock ourselves in choosing one above another,
Exiled from all this aping mockery
And saved in being lost, found in being saved,
I'll quit this exchange of jibes, this commerce,
This weary commerce of weak weary souls,
Primping worn attitudes in new attire
And withdraw as the widowed spider
To her pall, mourning-gorged, defeat inflicted,
Damaged in spirit and in sense maligned,
Grim in prayer to the godless absolutes,
Nature's cheating majesty that cannot cease with us
And that way pay love. Drive on, drive on.

[They stop a moment later. ROCKETS REDGLARE gets in the taxi.]

SID
Yeh holdin’?

[“Bodies,” continues, repeats on the chorus: “bodies… bodies….”]
Top^

SCENE


[Three Cops pulling OD'd Sid from his squalid squat]

1ST COP
Here's one who's dead; and he shall not come again.

2ND COP
What use has life for the dead interred?
What function, purpose or fair proportion
Not disfigured by the rashness of their laying-in?

1ST COP
There's no flaw in nature great enough
To let imperfect man twice suspire within.

2ND COP
The bloods that did afflict him while he lived,
Beating like a sea within him, now curdle
In calm sourness by the broken body.

1ST COP
Passion's a curse.
The more passionate a man, the more cursed.

2ND COP
If we could only take dear note of how
These fluid essences betray our ends
We should not let their reigning tides
Overwhelm us whiles we live.

1ST COP
Temperate should be our conduct on this globe
Assessing every substance to its portion
Dull and wisely as a baker; no rush
Or pell-mell hurricanes of the brain
To shake and spice the doughty dough we knead.

2ND COP
Man may live by bread alone; I've seen it.
The whey-face never stricken, never overjoyed,
All novelty of expressive form forced
To obey the median.

3RD COP
No no no,
You deal rough justice to so abuse the dead.
Out of their icy Elysium they shed cold looks
Down on past faults, faded deficits,
And all that troubled their brief lives on earth.

[SID's version of "(I Did it) My Way" plays us to oblivion.]
Top^

SCENE


[Johnny Rotten, 1996, deciding to go on Reunion tour.]

ROTTEN
Sid's dead. What's it to me,
Twenty years on, far from those black barbs
That pulled his blackened heart apart.
Twenty years on, now look at me: a beer-bellied,
One-man extravaganza in my mansion by the sea.
The prick, the needle, of my amphetamined
And recorded voice has been homoginized for the mass;
Living Billie Joe, rinky-dink Rancid, and dead,
Disbanded Nirvana, the name Cobain
As common on the tongue as Coca-Cola,
Reduce perforce my infinite freedoms
To a moron's capering elegy in damp Seattle---
Everything I did undone to one scrunge of grunge....
I still won't be sold. Or told what to say!
What I've said, I've said. And what done, done.
They've murdered what was simple and living once,
       the whores,
Spray-painting their corporate logo door to door,
Hissing out their little As in purchased reds
And circling it with an easy, sleepy, unthinking O.
Oh, Sid's skinney skull must be puking in the grave!
One more mess you've left, ay, Sid?
All these minor worms from the record company
Keep wanting me and the oi boys to get back together,
Grandads of punk and all that crap;
I'm way too intelligent for that....
Once, slipped in the rubber vestments holyman
       McLaren prepared,
I was the Jah Rastifari, my slicked head in heaven
While sweet Sid and I matched wrists against cigarettes
In our burnt-out London bedsit, the window a faint frame
Of Athens trashed. The sun's an atombomb
Against my teenage-angst zapped blue brain.
I was that which danced above the dust,
All water and suavity, now crushed
By history's bronzed boot: here. Twenty years on,
What a bitter P. I. L. I've had to eat,
And swill it down with my cheap, American beer.
Nothing good can last. Every sweet memory frazzles,
Each blurry detail fading from reality-hard
To some dream-softness; the dream soaking the sheets
      like drool.
God knows, if he dared exist, I'm nobody's fool.
But maybe, maybe I could take it all apart again,
Destroy the whole rock n' roll world to its glittery,
Hackneyed core again; eviscerate its essence
Of copycat do-nothingness, slam the sham, again;
Zero it all back down filthy zilch, again.
We're still valid, those three piggyback hacks, and me.
Maybe. Maybe.... Oh Hell.......  why NOT???

[Tag lyric from B-Side of “Revolution in Classroom” plays, ending abruptly with an echo on the words, “In the beautiful world, you have to respond….”]
Top^

SCENE

[Johnny Rotten in Jamaica. 1977. “Sid’s dead” speech. This is an alternate ending to the play, and may be used instead of the 1996 ending above, or in conjunction with it. If used with it, the 1977 speech should be used first, and redundant lines duplicated in the 1996 speech sould be eliminated from the 1996 speech.]

ROTTEN
Sid's dead. What's it to me, ensconced by malice
Safe in Jamaica, far from those black barbs
That pulled his blackened heart apart. Apart
I'll stay for this eccentric while and follow
The quirk of my inner query
Until I learn in cold painful detail
The lesson and resolution of his death.
Once, slipped in the rubber vestments holyman McLaren prepared,
I was the Jah Rastifari, my slicked head in heaven
While sweet Sid and I matched wrists against cigarettes
In our burnt-out London bedsit, the window a faint frame
Of Athens trashed. The sun's an atombomb
Against my teenage-angst zapped blue brain.
I was that which danced above the dust,
All water and suavity, now crushed
By history's bronzed boot here: wingless, weird,
Stuck in the fat maggoty swamp at Bataan.
     [watching a large chameleon sliding on its rock]
I am like him whose mincing tongue
Scents the unsaying air, a jaded dragon
Unfurling in the sun, hissing its dissatisfaction
To warm palms in slow sounds---
Such a green ruin of sleep as myself
Is incapable to act.
   [pause]
Is this excellence extempore a receding grace
Made supremely visible by withdrawl alone?





EXTRANEOUS BITS

MCLAREN
I'll have all a chaos. All chaos
Unleashed in a stabbing minute unrehearsed....
With this intent, I shall in America with my protégé club prevail!
For years, Teddy Boys squeezed into my ripe Sex shop
Pear-pale, peach-sweet, thin and slinky in their kinked clothes
And now my charmed boys in their ragtag come marching out!
They dress in the fagged-out rags of my harassing dreams,
Hold a face I've pancaked against the furnace of light,
Wink at my blinkered insistence, chime to my timing
And let their voices uncork the change something in ME demanded.
A decade of manipulation's not enough.
To FEEL free is the only free there is, a sweet
Release from the clapped weight of intent
From which clapping hands raise and praise the supplicant.
John may be a bit of a sticker, the prick.
Sid will give and give, docile as a housewife.
Why look you, once his mind's made over, his body
Follows adoringly, even to the precipice.
So all-of-a-kind is his nature that intent
And action have no more division between them
Than wind and wave. What one directs, the other
Slavishly obeys; its a virtue that may serve
My turning of it.
These youths I shall to my alarming purpose bend,
Give voice to the vortex I feelingly live within.

[McLaren closes suitcase and wheels out of the room.]
["Anarchy in the UK," plays as we go to America.]
Top^

Dec 152014
 

a play

SCENE

[describe waking town]

MRS 1
I am one missus, and she’s another. We keep the high secrets of the town to ourselves.

MRS 3
In the summer it’s packed with tourists.

MRS 4
In the winter its cold as ashes.

MRS 5
Empty as a milkbottle.

MRS 1
I like the winter sea.

MRS 3
All the cheap establishments jammed with commerce.

MRS 1
So little to do but keep our secrets from ourselves.

MRS 3
There’s Timmy.

MRS 4
And Billy.

MRS 5
My Marjorie and Alex.

MRS 3
And Doris and Alice my blessed twins.

MRS 4
All the boys and girls in their goings and comings tumble about the town today as everyday. All alive and alone in the holiday sun. All the boys and girls….

MRS 1
And my Shawn. [pause]

MRS 3
I never saw such a beautiful boy.

MRS 5
And there he is in the front door now. [Light appears on an empty doorframe.]

MRS 1
Mind yourself; you’ll bake red as a roast, your nose fat as a radish and your armpits still pale.

SHAWN
Aw, Mom.

MRS 1
Finn, who is in the stodgy process of owning half the sleepy seaside town— from the sky-stretching white of the sleepy church steeple to the rotted docks snoring in the deep blacks of the ocean water— keeps a canary by her bed by her window to sing her asleep and awake.

MRS 4
Pip, pipe! Oh, it runs like a zipper up and down my spine. Pip, pipe! By the grace of God, I can hear it in my own house plain as the telephone.

MRS 5
Pip, pipe! The mean spitting chatter that pings from the shrunken golf ball of its chest! I mean…. I’d sooner believe an oak exploding from a pea.

MRS 1
My little Shawn himself is attached to the wretched thing, for the sake of throwing rocks.

MRS 3
He dawdles to a stop under the sill.

MRS 1
He imagines the lilac skull in his hands. He examines the eyesocket and all the orbiting, rayed lines of its empty sight. He tries on the bone wings skinney as widow Maggie’s spinsterish fingers, and takes a quick, panicked flight around the room with the uncaged bird.

MRS 4
That wild boy.

MRS 5
That dear chimp.

MRS 3
Flying a skeleton around my good sitting room!

MRS 4
[correcting] Flapping the white hollow bones himself.

MRS 3
That wild boy.

MRS 5
That dear chimp.

MRS 3
…Babystrollers ominous as whirlybirds on the dank planks of the warped boardwalk resound to the strong march of his eleven-year-old heart. In the silk ash rags of dawn, floating on the female sea, Benny the town bounceabout is jogging against the light for the recuperating sake of his heart and thighs. He pauses on the thundering boardwalk to salute Shawn in his Raider’s cap while last night’s date still lies topseyturvey in his bungalow bed.

MRS 5
Over the dunes and down to the receiving sea progresses young Shawn, all cartilidge and sneakers, with his battlescarred knee— flips round the wide corpse of a dog examined on elbows all yesterday, curls across the scolding seashelf of small speckled rocks, talking in washes, leaps conspicuous spikes of dunegrasses, bristling in swishes on the white spine of the continent, and, removing carefully the blood dot of his red Raiders cap, tumbles sunlovingly into the blue mutable surf.

MRS 1
That’s how Shawn walked in the acres of his knowing. His eye was as tall as the clouds in the sky; and sweet and simple were his curses and wishes.

SHAWN
Look at me. I’m a rum-runner smuggler that has come to this pirate’s cove with a tasty blade in my teeth.

MRS 4
He emerges from the surf.

TIMMY
ARRGblabbldiiigrrrrahhhh!!!!

MRS 5
Shawn arranges the whirls in a winking pond full of the ghostly bodies of jellyfish panting beneath the swirled surface flaming in glitters.

SHAWN
Ghost! It’s a ghost.

TIMMY
The creepy spirit of dead Mr Finches.

MRS 4
The scolding schoolmaster of the ill-educated town drawn to a study of stamps and empty seashells.

MRS 3
Passed away with his snoot in his books. He bends like a weary reed, quiet as an indian ambush, and glares like the sun into the tidalpool full of stones and blotched coral. He paddles the water with his coin-enjoying palm ready to buy Tony Andagili’s icicle licks with the warm quarter his mom had outfitted him with among the hydrangeas at breakfast. Wet sands slither through his fingers and a sandy cloud opens under the smoked glass. And the pinkeyed jellyfish squishes past his angry hand and pumps into a little dark hole small as a pupil in skirted distress. Shawn is tired of playing with ghosts and turns tiredly away from the opaque pond.

SHAWN
O I am a pirate that’ll slit your gizzard!

MRS 4
He shouts, running like an alleycat to where Timothy Turves is whistling through grassblades in the windy lee of the bluff.

SHAWN
I am a pirate that’ll slit your gizzard!

TIMMY
Oh.

SHAWN
Prepare for a doom of ferret’s teeth and shark’s gullets.

TIMMY
I am prepared for my doom.

SHAWN
March to the plank. [Timmy marches to the nearest rock]

SHAWN
No, that rock. That rock.

MRS 3
Timothy scissors his yellow arms in the air, balletstepping to the flat rock that’s the plank in his duck jacket.

MRS 5
He believes in the eternal veracity of his demise.

MRS 4
His head is full of cowboys and heroes.

MRS 3
Samurais and sixshooters and noble endings.

MRS 5
He stands prepared.

MRS 4
He totters on the rock.

TIMMY
his hands go out before him.

MRS 5
His heart full of death, he hops in the water.

MRS 4
Dead as a doornail.

MRS 3
Extinguished as matches.

MRS 1
But like a seabird he gets up.

TIMMY
ARRBLBBLLRR!

MRS 4
He shakes his head like a fish. [pause, the boys pantomime burying treasure]

MRS 3
Boys bury treasure.

MRS 4
And dig it up in the dark.

MRS 1
Patrick Kinney and me in the nude snow past the harvest hills and farmers asleep in their coats, milking the moon-bellies of splaylegged cows, spent a heated evening in the blank, snowwhite, snowblind night of my first, and most silent, marriage. God, in the toasty loaves of his arms I felt somehow loved and listened to at once. He chest roared and rolled and yearned like a furnace while his sparking eyes stared and smiled under muddy brows thick as cigars under the star-stabbed sugar-dome of the seasprayed night sky swirling above midges and winter and our soldered embrace hid in the quiet dark of the bed. On that syrupy evening, above green thistles and below the timed departures of the sobbing stars, making one by one their queued exits, was the sweet sodden lump of my Shawn conceived. Time stabbed and passed. Patrick Kinney knew the child was made that night, that that was the night of creation. Dandelions and frostbite, whispers and kittens, the years themselves came rolling in and out and I heard not a word from that travelling man. Shawn’s shape by that time had changed and he’d grown into a fine young thing.

MRS 4
They rose to race on bicycles humming down to the drumming boardwalk. They were caught, for a moment, with the wheels and spokes like spiders, in the amber sunset before I lost sight of them.

MRS 3
They leapt, my Timmy and your Shawn, about the rocks all afternoon being pirates and werewolves as the sun fell in blazing licks and they ate their jam sandwiches.

MRS 1
They bulled about the foxtails in the tarry marsh and practiced their howls for the moon.

MRS 3
Which one grew fur?

MRS 4
Which one got big teeth?

MRS 2
Did their snouts stretch out long as foxes’?

MRS 3
Did their child’s ears tuft?

MRS 4
Pads harden over their palms?

MRS 2
Did their hearts shift in their ribs?

MRS 4
Did their howling bring down the moon?

MRS 5
Yes yes yes. All the magic happened. The crabs creeped sideways from the sea; they cooed to the moon as sister and mother, low and fat in the rum-black sky of summer. Their swift claws knew the sin of blood, and sandpipers and infants dripped from their fangs. The moonlight on the snow frail as eggshells.

MRS 2
Or ashes.

MRS 3
And pale and yellow as eyes, she listened to the high wild cries of their hearts.

MRS 5
But soon enough they all tumbled exhausted to home and their warm human beds after supper.

MRS 1
And there is Shawn’s burrow under the burying dark, under the burning sun, in the grave ground by the park where my people are.

MRS 2
The boys have come running over hills bunched as mittens, hunched against winds and wails and schoolmasters’ ghosts. And against the slap and sigh of the sea which buries us all they are hunched. In their shivvering boyskins bluecold under blankets they watch the clouds change shapes as they fall asleep.

MRS 1
Imagine my Shawn while the moon’s winking bone is still flying over marshes and midges, indulging our wishes, and the deep sea cradles up to the shore. Imagine my Shawn, boneweary eleven, closing his skyhigh eyes on the couches of heaven— after a day full of mysteries and spices and unassailable seas. Imagine my Shawn, in his britches and stitches, his brittle blood and rough laughs, climbing to sleep over pirate treasures in the feathered quilt we’d all sewn together.

MRS 4
All the world drowned in the sound of sleep.

MRS 1
And there’s my Shawn sleeping.

MRS 2
Dogs and fishes skip through his skull.

MRS 3
Trilled bug-thumpers fly east to west and spring to winter in his sloshing noggin.

MRS 5
A rubbed thumblestilskin unknown, unnamed.

MRS 2
He watches a bird with a clock in its belly.

MRS 3
He watches a clock with wings for hands.

MRS 4

He watches Mrs. Finn's blind canary, Sam.
Birdslayer.
Prestidigitator.
Jellyfisher.
Finch mincer.
Moonhowler.
Captain of tidepools.
King of green hills.
Prince of beaches.
Sweet as an apple.
Turned over in dreaming.
Crying in sleep.
As if wounded and bleeding.
Noseful of weeping.
Bleared eyes shut.
Sweet as an apple.
Pale and sleeping.

[END]