Poetic Terrorism

Bey v3

2006-02-01T20:02:00.000-05:00

Alright, here it is--the latest draft of my screenplay. It's hugely long, so if you're just browsing this website, scroll down or click on the archives or something. If you read it, I'd love it if you gave me some feedback. Oh, and I'm posting this on the internet, but please don't steal any part of it, cause I worked my ass off on it (but you can't tell from reading it), and I might actually do something with it, like produce it. That's unlike anything else I post on this site, which I would be honored if you stole. This will be my last post on this site for a while, because I am going to india for a really long time. You can follow my progress at my other blog, at jed-in-india.blogspot.com

I didn't edit out the apostrophes or anything, so deal with weird symbols. You'll have to infer when there's stage directions, because I didnt' go through and make them italic, either. If you want a word document of this play, which is formatted well, just email me.
peace
jed

Bey
© Jed Bickman

Characters:
Bey—Just out of college, half way through his first year teaching high school English. Considers himself a poet.
Milton—Bey’s friend. He makes his living in graphic design, but considers himself an artist.
Carla—The girl Bey’s been sleeping with. She’s a secretary-type at a corporate office
John—Friend
Jenny—Friend
Jack
Alexandra
Samantha Students in Bey’s class
Jason
Jessica
A Mental Hospital Attendant/Nurse—Male
A Mormon
Terrance—A black man in prison

Note: I intend for this to be a film, but I don’t know enough to write it as a screenplay, so the director will have to fill in the blanks. Instead of just showing Bey’s talking head when he’s doing poetry, I think the director should establish a visual vocabulary using montage images that add or change the meaning of the words.

poetry is masturbatory.

Scene 1
Bey is seen in the bathroom taking a shit. He talks to himself

Bey: Americans herd themselves through cement streets with their eyes on the grime of the city beneath their feet. They have learned that they have to hold their minds clamped tightly to their skulls in order to survive a routanized life, watched by their own insiders, plagued with guilt for that one time they stepped out of line. That one time they gave up and felt a real orgasm. Their dreams are straightjacketed within their own heads, so they can stay numb enough to move through the same shit every day.
But I’ve been feeling my thoughts vibrating up and down the elastic cosmos. My mind runs from language like a hunted fugitive. I surrender myself to the animal in the back of my head. ‘Humanity’ was manufactured by our leaders to justify a life devoid of spirit, to rationalize the greyness. Animals are simply the subjects of the natural beauty of the world they inhabit. Humans are the subjects of a controlled economy.

Scene 2
The living room
Bey and Milton, two men in their mid-twenties, recent college graduates, are sitting on living room chairs, half facing each other.

Milton:
My words hit the wall behind you.
The blank airspace in your eyes
dominates my thinking mind.
I need your voice.

Bey:
A manipulated existence
in command economy
manufacturing profits for some callous suit.
In defense of avarice
we hurl heads and hands
into the jackhammer booth
where we heave holes
in butterfly ballots.
struggling to believe
in our dangling chad
to justify our fossilized vocal chords.
When somewhere a bush burns
speaks, stutters,
prays for his country
and starts a war.
thank god, we cry
And In God We Trust

Milton:
You hide from yourself
under revolutionary phrases.
People suffer in the world
and the system is going nowhere.
and you are hungry for the same river
that flew past our banks
a thousand plastic times before us
only noticed ebbing
by dreamy textbooks
Receding golden ages:
Honorable samurai,
Soulless cowboy,
grassroots carpetbagger—
save me!
the external world
is terrorizing my skin again.

Bey:
Self dominates self in America
we have no autonomy
and the only way to destroy the manufactured apathy
is to control the mass of American minds myself,
I’ll kill my insides
my needs and desires
to pressure a false outer shell
to manufacture truth out of
mainstream media
to awaken humanity
Because of something related to this problem,
I’ve been full of self loathing for weeks,
months, now.
the only answer now
is to give my body over
to a thirsty language.

Milton: Sarcastic, but does Bey see that?
Yeah, you’re the liberal messiah.
Thank you for walking amongst us

Bey:
Walk the earth,
seeing the suffering of the proletariat
will be documented
Understood by men like you.
I will see, and in seeing
create change
through a poetic revolution
a change in the vocabulary
of domination which
has recapitulated power
in generation after generation
of the elite.

Milton:
But you understand
Your hypocrisy is inevitable.
You can never speak for anyone else.
You’re young,
you’re white, and you were born into privilege.
You are the eternal beneficiary
of the system that you so love to condemn.

Bey:
So it is and will be.

Scene 3
The next morning’s third period Sophomore English class at the Carnegie Magnet High School. Bey is standing in front of the class, leaning on his teacher’s desk, holding a copy of The Great Gatsby. There are twenty or so students, desks arranged in an oval around the front desk.

Bey: So we’ve unmasked Jay Gatsby by this point, yes? Can someone tell me what he’s doing in East Egg, and why?

Silence.

Samantha: Right now? Isn’t he dead by now? I mean, he wrote this book a long time ago, now.

Bey: I meant, “these days which the book is about.” And, thank you Samantha for reminding me to mention something important about this book. Jay Gatsby will never die, because he’s a fictional character, in more ways than one. He’s reproduced in every generation, in classrooms just like this. The author, a one Mr. F. Scott Fitzgerald, is, indeed, dead. He drank too much. But back to the point. Who is the Great Gatsby, and why is he in West Egg.

Silence

Bey: OK. Put up your hand if you did the reading.

Everybody puts up their hand.

Bey: I’m not handing out study halls for not doing your homework, here. I just want to know. So be honest—no repercussions—how many of you did the reading?

Six kids put down their hand.

Bey: Alright, now keep your hand up if you know what happened in the reading and could tell me about it.

Ten more kids put down their hand.

Bey: OK. You can put your hands down and start inventing answers for me. You guys know me, you know I try to be real with you, and you’ve got to trust me that reading this book is worthwhile. I’ve got to teach some books to meet the state standard, but I get to choose one book—(deemphasizing) from a list—and this one is the one I chose, because it’s a good one, and it’ll change the way your brain works. Alright, who is Jay Gatsby?

Alexandra: Jay Gatz. He changed his name when he went on a trip to the West Indies with a rich guy, and he decided he wanted to be rich, too.

Bey: Great job. So he invented a name and a life for himself, why did he go to East Egg?

Pause

Jason: Daisy.

Bey: Great. What about daisy?

Jason: He followed her East, without her knowing, because he was in love with her.

Alexandra: He was stalking her.

Samantha: Stalker.

Bey: OK. I think it’s good you think it’s kind of weird, because it is. The man gives up the life he was born into, makes himself into a fiction, and chases an unattainable dream across the country. It’s the kind of thing we’re almost more comfortable with, today, in the age of TV, fluid identities, and misguided love for flickering images. But what I want you kids to think about is, on a deeper level than the individual character of Jay Gatsby, Fitzgerald was writing about America, and Americans, as he saw them. Might America itself be chasing an unattainable dream?

Silence

Bey: You ever heard of the American Dream?

Heads Nod

Bey: What is the American Dream?

Jack: (One of the boys who didn’t read) To have a family, and a house.

Bey: Good. Anyone else?

Alexandra: Anyone can come here, from anywhere, and be successful.

Bey: Good. Other ones?

Jessica: Freedom, and equality under the law.

Bey: Good. You kids are well indoctrinated Americans. I’m glad we’re safe from a revolution, at least for a generation. But do you see how these ideals aren’t happening? Millions of Americans can’t make it in our capitalist economy, they can’t buy a house, they can’t maintain a happy family life. Take Jessica’s point, for example: racism still runs rampant in America, and it’s most obvious in the legal system, which seems to exist mainly to imprison Black and Brown people. Have we come closer to attaining our American dream?

Heads shake

Bey: No matter what, Daisy cannot live up to Gatsby’s fantasy. Right? Why not?

Pause

Jack: Because she’s a human being.

Bey: exactly. The kid hasn’t done the reading, and he knows the answers before the rest of you. She’s a human being, she lives in reality, not Gatsby’s fantasy world. In Gatsby’s fantasy, she’s perfect, divine. But in real life, no matter how charming she is, she won’t satisfy him. And Nick knows that. So, somebody make the connection for me. how does this relate to what we were just saying about the American dream?

Silence. Some of the students look scared.

Bey: Come on, folks. It’s not a trick question.

Silence

Bey: OK. Our American dream, all our patriotic ideas of the land of the free, etc, are all fantasies. They’re unattainable. Because human societies are corrupt. For Fitzgerald to imply this in 1925 was an almost revolutionary act—to suggest that America will never be ideal, in the middle of the roaring twenties, it was a huge challenge to the powers that be, to the great optimism of America after WWI. That’s what got this book famous. But here we are, reading it almost a hundred years later, and it sounds different now, doesn’t it. How has our reading of this changed?

Silence

Bey: OK. You’re going to make me do all this on my own. Fine. Well, I think we’ve come closer to understanding the truth of Fitzgerald’s point, here. We all accept that America is screwed up, that it will never be free nor equal, and, moreover, each of our personal lives will fail to live up to our own standards. We’ll never reach satisfaction with society or ourselves. The defeat of the hippies, for example, was the last great defeat of this dreamy idealism. Under the reactionary power that we’ve been living under ever since, we’ve come to accept our fate, we no longer have cause to fight except for ourselves, we no longer have that sense that things could be better. So we’re ready to abandon our ideals, abandon our American dream, and live our own quiet, grey lives, waiting for death. Killing useless time with glowing screens, TV, internet, everything else.

Silence. The students look bored.

Bey: And with the death of ideals comes the end of cohesion, of a unified society. We can’t all believe in the same things, anymore, those things that we used to believe in, have fallen out from under us. And we haven’t been able to move on. That’s the job for your generation, kids. It’s up to you to build something real, something positive out of postmodernism. My generation was supposed to do it, and we failed. So now it gets passed on to you.

The students that have been paying attention look confused. Some of the ones who haven’t been begin packing up their schoolbags.
Bey: Alright, we’re out of time, but this would be the type of thing I would choose to write a paper about. Oh, I still don’t have your last papers graded…sorry about the delay. I beg you to do your reading. Um…it’s written on your syllabus, but remember we’re three days behind that (consulting a syllabus in his folder,) I think that makes it..Chapter 5. Read chapter 5 for next time.

The students leave quickly. Bey is suddenly left alone in an empty, silent room.

Fade out.

Scene 4
Carla is sitting alone reading a book in the living room, on the couch. There’s a pack of cigarettes on the table in front of her. She is Bey’s roommate.

Carla: my placenta sings late at night, cries for a holy inhabitant, absent in its misues. finally, once a month, in the early hours of the morning, sings its grand finale, its opus, aquifies itself, and leaves me lonely forever. pause the seven holy placentas of truth flying out of my ungracious vagina, pleeing a lonely life, my lonely life, useless and forlorn. it begins a seven day death pilgrimage to the toilet, seeking salvation in my underwear.

Enter Bey coming back from work. He’s wearing black pants, a blue shirt, and a tie with an outlandish abstract design. His collar’s unbuttoned, and his tie is loosened so it hangs like a ridiculous fish, the knot at about the level of his nipples.

Carla: Hey, Bey.

Bey: ah, shit

Exits off the other side of the stage.

Carla raises her book, sighs, flips through the remaining pages in her book. Sighs. Dog-ears the page she was on, and apathetically throws the book across the floor. Takes a cigarette out of the packet and lights it.

Bey re-enters in loose pants and an undershirt. flops on to the sofa.

Bey: those fucking children. Lived their whole lives never thinking an original thought. Someone must have taught them how to fuck their lives away, because I can’t imagine them coming up with the idea themselves.

Carla: I thought you said they were smart.

Bey: That was probably two months ago. I mistook sass for smart. An easy mistake under the modern reign of cynicism.

Carla: So why are you doing it?

Bey: Not sure. Nobody told me anything else to do, and this is what I came up with.

Carla: Because you believe that a good education is a right, not a privilege, and no one else prepared to give it to these kids.

Bey: Did I say that?

Carla: When we had John over for dinner.

Bey: I think I thought I was going to get paid. fuck it. how’s your life going?

Carla: Progressing smoothly towards the end of it.

Bey: And a worthy pursuit it is, indeed!

Carla: forced chuckle I was walking down the street today, and I realized something.

Bey: Momentous. Groundbreaking. What did you realize?

Carla: How much bad genetics we are burdened with. Most people should not be allowed to breed.

Bey: Really. And who is to decide who gets the right to breed?

Carla: I would, or anyone else who isn’t blind. It isn’t about judging people. It’s that some people should look at themselves, and realize that The End is The End, and they owe it to humanity that they should die alone.

Bey: Should I breed?

Carla: Look inside yourself. Do you deserve to continue for another generation?

Bey: yes.

Carla: You teach degenerate children how to waste their lives. I’m an assistant to someone who’s almost allowed to think, as long as its in a line.

Bey: But we have rich inner lives. We’re kings in the green pastures of our unconscious.

Carla: Enslaved by the superego.

Bey: I think you’re just trying to convince me not to get you pregnant. Or convince yourself…

Carla: Bey, the two of us? Will never come close to having children.

Bey: Can we still have sex? I quite enjoy that.

Carla: Um, yeah, we’ll talk about that later. I’m having second thoughts. Smiles.

Bey: But you’ll allow me to procreate? I’m going to teach my kid guitar before he learns to talk, so he can be an illiterate rockstar. Surely the world needs another illiterate rockstar.

Carla: OK. You’d be allowed to breed. but long as your son’s a complete animal, an eating-and-fucking machine.

Bey: But that’s what people are. And now you want them to kill themselves off? To stop fucking? it’s preposterous.

Carla: They could still fuck, with the right contraceptive measures. But we’ve got to cut the population by a third, at least, in twenty years, or else the environment will just stop being able to support us. We’re talking about a preemptive strike at the chemical apocalypse. People can barely hold it together themselves, and then they have kids and almost always fuck it up. Each generation gets progressively more fucked up and crazy.

Bey: I think you’re contradicting yourself, but I wasn’t really listening hard enough.

Carla: Most people suck, Bey. Look at the masses of Americans. You can’t find any redeeming quality. Look at mass media. These people lap that shit up. Reality television? Have you been to the movie theater recently?

Bey: Bey sits up on the sofa, and crosses his legs so he can face her on the sofa. People eat what they’re given. Most people recognize that mass entertainment is drivel, but it’s entertaining nonetheless. It’s what our culture is selling to them, and, as products of our culture, they’ll buy it.

Carla: And you don’t think that this is a situation that should be changed?

Bey: It is whatever it is. Most people are at least well-intentioned, most people are able to keep themselves to themselves.

Carla: You’re too forgiving. These people are tools.

Bey: Sure, they’re being used by the power structure of society. And we are, too. We have a privileged position on that power structure, to the point we can ignore it or be disdainful of it, but we will help reproduce it in the next generation to come.

Carla: It’s our decision, it’s our lives, we can challenge it if we want.

Bey: And how are you going to do that? Revolution?

Carla: Art. And sterilizing rednecks.

Bey: Art? Yeah, I guess that’s what I think, too. Art should be more political. Poetry, too. Poetry’s art.

Carla: Have you seen contemporary art? You think they give a shit about being political? No, they’ve finally all realized the truth that art is all bullshit, and they’re living the high life because they can get away with it. all of it—art, everything, art is masterbatory, and we as a culture, are just beginning to realize that. we depend on it to stroke our pleasure centers, our, let’s see, lascivious unconscious. sex and death, sex and death. The artist, the sacrificial lamb, starving, not soothsayer, truthsayer, prophet. Peepshow. A peepshow. For the rich. But that’s what gives us power. You’re trying to make art fuel a revolution? Fine, right, you can do that. But then what about when the next guy gets famous instead, a guy who comes along and he can make a canvass look interesting, make a poem that’s just good to read. Take Pollack, for example. You know Jackson Pollack? paintpisser, right? urinating on the canvass. His early work is better, but that’s aside the point. Actually, it’s not. Listen, the man’s a pretty good artist, studied painting, I like his stuff. No way he’s going to make it like that. Because he’s good, but he’s not Picasso, he’ll never be great, he’ll just be good enough. And that tortured him. All his life. He found a gimmick, something new, that gave him a life, a name. But couldn’t be great. So he created forms, his paintings feel good to look at.

Bey: You know you’re right. I don’t have to say anything.

Carla: But you will, you always do. You’ll keep writing your poetry. Trying to use politics as an excuse for it, instead of just owning up to the fact that it is useless.

Bey: I’ll own up to it. It’s useless, and self congratulatory. It’s arrogant to even claim you’re a poet. But it feels go good to shout a poem at some unsuspecting schmendrick.

Carla: I’m hungry.

Bey: I’m tired of this talk. You make me use my head too much, and it hurts. Let’s cook dinner.

Carla: I’ll help.

exit.

Scene 5
Milton and Bey. They are smoking a joint between the two of them, which they pass back and forth after one hit each time, so they’re smoking when they’re not talking. The pacing of this scene is important; don’t go as quickly as it is written, give a beat at the beginning at the end of each line. This is a type of competition between the two characters.

Bey: OBEY your uncontrollable day in and day out, your place in society. it is all you have. Milton passes him the joint

Milton: Obey the command economy, right? Bey passes him the joint

Bey: Obey consumption, rather. As long as you eat and wear clothes, you’ll be obeying yourself. And the command economy. Milton passes to Bey

Milton: Obey your testicles, spend night after night following them around. Bey passes the joint

Bey: Obey intoxication; hazy cage of droopy eyed alcohol and paralyzed by desire
and disgust. Passed back

Milton: Obey the sidelines of darkened rooms, the party won’t embrace you in these moments. Passed back

Bey: You can kill a party from the sidelines. Catch an eye corner here, there, destroy anyone’s bravado, if they know they’re getting looked at. Obey insecurity, man. Passed back

Pause while Bey smokes, passes it back to Milton

Bey: Obey green dreaming, you have to work for your dreams. Passed back

Milton: Obey your death, may it come after your dreams Passed back

Bey: It won’t. Obey your daily immortality, because you actually could die tomorrow. Passed back

Milton: The Russians might invade, yeah? Obey your work, even though you will die no matter how much of it you do. Passed back.

Bey: you know I don’t obey my work. Gonna have to start getting my shit together soon. Obey your shit, which is always falling out all over the floor instead of neatly in the toilet when you want it to. Milton passes to Bey

Milton: Obey sewers, because modernity hides our own shit from us Bey passes to Milton

Bey: Obey cities, where sewers tie us together Milton passes to Bey. Bey tries to hit it, coughs, makes a face, and puts it in the ashtray. This is beat man.

Milton: You’re beat, man.

Fade out

Scene 6
A party in a small flat in the City. On the hipster-end of the visual scene. Indy is the look of the day. The stage is full of mumbling hipsters, indie folk, the scattered polo shirt with the popped collar. All are white and holding red drink cups. The music is too loud, so they have to scream at each other. They naturally clump themselves into conversation cliques, circles. Carla, John, Jenny, Milton and Bey are standing in a circleish thing on the left side of the stage. Center stage, another clique of hipsters. Upstage right, a keg of beer up against a wall. Everybody acts kind of drunk, but not drunk enough to lose the awkwardness.

Milton: Pointing at John That’s right, we’re all fucked, you can see it. New Orleans was just the beginning. Global Warming, Man, it causes Extreme Weather Patterns. Hurricanes, more and more. All over the world, tidal waves, within ten years, we’re all fucked, we’re all gone.

John: Ten years? It’s not that bad. If it was that bad, there’d be hysteria, people would Freak Out, man.

Milton: I’m just saying, don’t work too hard now, you’ll regret it when you’re dead in twenty years. In ten years you’ll be getting fucked, homeless, whole family dead, and in twenty, you’ll be dead, and then your young years spent in pursuit of money will seem pretty stupid. We should be having fun now, getting to know each other. The last sentence was notably directed to Carla, next to Bey.

John: Then why aren’t people Freaking Out?

Carla: Because they’re not telling us about it. The government won’t tell anyone, because they know everyone would “freak out.”

Jenny: So now, it’s like a government conspiracy.

Carla: The economy would grind to a halt. It’s not hard to imagine. Most of the funding for science in this country comes from the Government; you don’t think they could have some control over what the scientists said to the public?

John: this is America we’re talking about here. They can’t do that here.

Carla: You’re the only one talking about America. Global Warming is Global. mumbles into drink: dipshit.

Bey: I’m done with my beer.

Bey walks off to the right side of the stage, where the keg is. As he moves away from their conversation, their words fade into the background noise of the party. He wades over to the other side of the party, not aggressively pushing people away but instead waiting for them to move out of the way. he then waits for the keg, and then very carefully and scientifically pours himself a beer, tilting the cup. Then he goes to the wall, leans against it (alone) and sips it.

Bey: The sidelines embrace these moments. I can’t talk to these people. A herd, impenetrable and horny. These moments, from the outside, that’s what I know best at a party. These moments foster an imperialistic cynicism that allows you to finally realize how ridiculous this picture is, created by this time and place. Any given human being in the room could never change any of this, yet it is them. god is our hive mind, we do what's available, we follow the herd, especially when it contains those few people we feel comfortable with, and we can never leave their sides even though we have grown to hate them. they could be anybody. but no one would be much better, so why bother. whoever is around is around. obey them.

Bey shuts up and drinks, the other conversation fades back in

Milton: So I’ve been working on my sculpture, you know the one I told you about?

Carla: The one with the eggs?

Milton: No, the new one.

Carla: to the rest of the group, no, so last week, this kid comes home with a huge fucking box of eggs. Like five hundred eggs. And we all spent all day blowing the insides of them out through little holes. Because he was making his sculpture, and he was filling it with eggshells.

John: Where’d you get the eggs?

Milton: Stole them.

Jenny: what do you mean, blowing out the insides?

Clara: Through little holes in each end.

Milton: Hey, at least I fed you.

Clara: Eggs. I never want another egg, ever.

Milton: No, but my new sculpture, I’m going to hang a shopping cart from the ceiling, and dangle wine glasses from it. And spraypaint the shopping cart red.

From this point, the two sides of the stage talk in their turn, but they can’t hear Bey talking to himself because they’re on the other side of the party

Bey: Right Milton? you’re around in my life these days, I’ll obey you. He speaks my language when he’s with me, and I appreciate that. But around Other People, he’s One of Them. A good man, though.

Carla: That’s cool!

Bey: And he wants Carla, obviously. I can’t keep her at bay forever. I gotta realize that she’s all I got. He drinks. They wouldn’t know each other if it wasn’t for me. Obey Milton, he’s your friend.

Jenny: Milton, where do you get your inspiration from?

Bey: Obey Milton, the Artist of All.

Milton: I don’t really think that words should be attached to art.

Bey: Obey Milton, Eternal Consumer, Destroyer of Words

Milton: I mean, my art shouldn’t have a meaning that can be spoken. It’s a visual statement.

Bey: Obey Milton, Consumer of Humans

Carla: The signified is enough of a burden in poetry, it’s nice for the artist to be able to get rid of it.

Bey: Obey Milton, Consumer of Flesh

John and Jenny look bored

Milton: You understand. Art is art for it’s own sake.

Bey: Obey Milton, Cliché Chewer

Milton puts his hand in Carla’s, they get closer.

Milton: But my inspiration? It comes from the unconscious, Art is indulgence of pleasure, of our urges, where we are all animals.

Bey: Obey Milton’s Stolen Theoretical Constructs

Milton: To fuck and to die, the only things we ever consumed with.

Bey: Obey Milton, he of the bigger cigar.

Carla: When you’re drunk, anyway.

John and Jenny laugh awkwardly.

John: Um, awesome. My beer’s empty.

Jenny: Me, too.

They hastily escape from the conversation.

Carla: To Milton You wanna, um, go home?

Milton: Yeah. Should we get Bey?

Carla: Um. I donno. I want to go home with you, you know?

Milton: You got it.

Bey: I’ll only go with them if they come find me.

They get their coats on and leave.

Bey drinks his beer silently, and moves over as John and Jenny jostle him upstage for the keg. He finishes it, throws the cup on the floor, and exits the opposite way.

Scene 6
Bey is alone on the street, walking home. His face looks a little beat up. It is night.

Bey:
Lost in the spaces between
My absolutes abandoned,
I stand alone…
trapped in the zone
by razor wire masquerading
as classroom walls
and ground rules.
No paper to receive my poem
society dissolves around me,
my eternal canvass melted
Ripped in the wind
of a thousand french-fry fallouts.
My skin can’t contain me anymore.
self to self, dust to dust
Earth smeared with asphalt:
asphalt my only friend.

Scene 7
It is morning. Bey is shirtless in the living room. He is drinking beer. Carla enters

Carla: Shit, Bey. I just woke up, and you’re already drinking?

Bey: Drunken. Drunked.

Carla: What the fuck is wrong with you these days? You spend all your time fucking around, drinking and smoking. Aren’t you supposed to work, or something?

Bey: Talking to you counts as work.

Carla: Weren’t you supposed to be a teacher to thirty five teenagers? What happened to them?

Bey: I’m a shining rolemodel to them.

Carla: Then there will be no future. We’re all screwed. grabs the beer away from him, sits down next to him. How can you be drinking now? you just woke up.

Bey: Nuhuh. I didn’t sleep. My mind, won’t let me rest—it’s empty.

Carla: Bey, you have to sleep. You didn’t sleep last night either.

Bey: I can’t. He makes a grab at the beer bottle on the other side of Carla, but drunkenly ends up with his arms around her You could put me to bed, though.

Carla: Bey, come on. You’re drunk, you couldn’t even do it.

Bey: Nuuhuh. I wrote you something last night: Pulls out a crumpled piece of paper from his back pocket, and reads:
I will make earthly trees take root in your crotch.
Nighttime paradise
Where songs shout and gods play,
and the chaos is shaded by shade trees,
and I’ll bask in the bliss,
down by the waterside, I’ll lay my head, my head, lay my head.
Your crotch, leafy and green
protected by greedy photosynthesizers
from the white light of false love.
I hear factories clanging truths
I see eyes implode
your mouth on fire
and truth under your dirty toenails.
pause
Bey: hehe. I wrote that to try to get you into bed with me. Did it work?

Carla: making a face You said I had dirty toenails. Is that answer enough?

Bey: You do, but I think it’s sexy.

Carla: And You’re a huge pig. You gotta sober up, you’ve got class today.

Bey: Class? What is this class you speak of?

Carla: Come on, I’ll make you some eggs. You gotta eat, and drink lots of water for me, OK?

Bey: OK

Carla leads him offstage by the hand.
Fade out.

Scene 8
A classroom in ill repair. Bey is standing in front of rows of school-desks. He’s holding a copy of The Great Gatsby

Bey: Alright, kiddies. settle down now.

Bey: Alright, so we’ve finished the book. Right? Heads nod. So regardless of where you are in the book, today’s the last day I’m going to teach it to you. You’ll get a chance to write about it in the paper due next Monday—who didn’t get the paper assignment from last week?

A few hands go up, bey comes around and gives them handouts

Bey: A thousand students have written a final paper about this book before you. So I’m expecting each one of your papers to be completely unique, to make a good analysis of the book that no one’s ever made before. (He doesn’t sound particularly sarcastic)

Alexandra: And how’re you going to know? Have you read all those papers?

Bey: Yes. I have. OK. So, what goes on at the end of this book?

Silence. Jack opens the book under the table, and reads the last paragraph, trying to be sneaky.

Jack: Something about a green orgasm.

The class laughs.

Bey: OK. Good, work, Jack. You’re sort of right, even though you have no idea what you’re talking about. Let’s flip to that passage, everyone turn to the end of the book. Alright, who want so read?

Melinda, who hasn’t spoken before, raises her hand

Bey: OK. Melinda, will you read us the last…three paragraphs of the book?

She does so, in a beautiful voice, stumbling a few times. Shot of Bey’s head leads into a montage while she’s reading it.

Bey: The orgastic future is behind us now, swept backwards by the pull of fantasy, of allowing each thought to control the future, the failure of the promise of a democracy made long ago, now. And they say that you are the future, children—you have already been imagined, your eternal form has already been dreamt up by fire-eyed parents. And then, when you fail to become the New World, the shining light of a green present, when you become human-children who only watch TV and play with complex toys, when write a bad paper because you procrastinated, then the moment when you were their child begins to die.

Alexandra: Raises her hand, but Bey doesn’t acknowledge her, so she just says What? Are you talking about?

Bey: I got a little ahead of myself. We were talking about the green breast of the new world, the vast empty space that held the greatest of all human dreams. America, Fitzgerald is saying, is the greatest of dreams. It was the greatest of dreams. And now, it is whatever it is. An economy of greed driven by hedonism, a population controlled by TV, a society built on racism, the great empire of the 21st century. Surely this isn’t what George Washington and Ben Franklin were planning for us. Fitzgerald is talking about that original form of America, when it was just a dream that could be anything, when it was a vast, empty continent waiting to be exploited. That’s the dream that Gatsby inhabited, until the reality caught up with him.

Students have been writing or doodling in their books. Looking bored. Alexandra is paying attention.

Bey: For Fitzgerald, reality always catches up to the fantasy, the fantasy of a green America has to be replaced by reality, at some point. And, like we were talking about the other day, that’s happened—disillusionment has become the norm, and no one in their right mind can live under an ideal. But the problem is, the human mind craves fantasy, it depends on the green light, the promise of an orgastic future, to survive, to keep ourselves going. To beat on, ceaselessly into the past, as Fitzgerald would say. So what do you guys think we do in Modern society, to keep the fantasy alive?

Silence. Bey is too wrapped up in himself and his lecture to wait for the students to catch up with him.

Bey: TV. Internet. Pixels and projections. We drown ourselves in plastic media, fed to us straight from the belly of capitalism. This is the age in which data replaces reality. A future Fitzgerald could’ve never foreseen. Your time gave you everything:
instant access
the entire output of humanness
in your grubby hands.
And now that everything
is everywhere else at once
we drown in the sea of worthlessness
and sleaze that is the human mind
canals of tamed light
polluted by the giant mass
of the depravity of desires
twisted by walls of empty sight--
Darwin’s animal hedonism
perverted by dirty streets
flooded with words,
ravaged by nihilism
and poured onto sewers of data.

The students are looking at each other, trying to contain their laughter at their nuts teacher. Jack, silently egged on by the class, decides to take him on.

Jack: We’ve replaced the American Dream with TV?

Bey: Yeah, that’s good.

Jack: TV is the American Dream, better than what we had before—the land of great equality where everyone participates in the same culture that they create.

Bey: That is created for them.

Jack: You’re scared of progress, of the great possibilities that come with worldwide media.

Bey: The possibilities are worldwide domination, worldwide illusion.

Jack: TV, and everything that goes with it, are what we have now, Teach. You’re always talking about ‘cultural texts,’ and then you sit in front of us, violently condemning the cultural texts that make up our lives, the fabric of our culture. This is now, Teach. And this book flips to the copyright page was written in 1925. Do you know how long ago that was? This is completely irrelevant to us, to everything in our lives.

Bey: You’re just trying to excuse yourself from the reading.

Jack: I’m trying to explain to you why the reading is useless to me. This book, any of the books we’ve read in this class, have lost all their meaning today.

Bey: getting angry But you’ve got to learn. Where you’re coming from. How things got so fucked up, how they were always fucked up but in different ways. This shit is important.

Students are taken aback by bey’s language

Jack: Rising pitch to meet Bey, stands up Why? Why do we have to learn this shit? It’s useless to us, the world’s dissolving around us, we are completely out of control of it here, and you’re shoving Fitzgerald down our throats? This shit is useless.

Bey: The world’s dissolving around you, and Fitzgerald saw it beginning to happen. Are you going to try to save it? Or are you just going to watch TV while it all goes to shit?

Jack: What do you want us to do? There’s nothing do to?

Bey: I want you to LEARN! Throws the book hard at Jack’s face. Jack sits down, stunned. The classroom is silent.

Fade out.

Scene 9
The living room, with Milton and Bey, smoking.

Bey: So I got fired.

Milton: for throwing a book at a kid?

Bey: and swearing, and being a shitty teacher.

Milton: That’ll happen. I’m on the brink of the pink slip too. I better get to work on this project now. Shit, but now I’m high.

Bey: Fuck the work, man. Let’s entertain ourselves.

Milton: Alright. Seems reasonable. What’s to do?

Bey: Let’s go to that contemporary art museum. Re-opened last week. Look at shitty art and make fun of it.

Milton: aight.

fade out

Scene 10
In a modern art gallery. Highly abstract paintings of questionable technical skill hang on the wall. A few yuppies mill in and out of the gallery—it’s not hugely crowded, but there are some people. In the corner there’s that video instillation—Double No! by Bruce Nauman: it features two clowns jumping up and down saying NO! NO!NO! in a particularly annoying way. enter Milton and bey.

Bey: This museum is inside out. The walls…

Milton: The walls?

Bey: Are keeping America out.

Milton: Are keeping the paintings up.

Bey: Because Americans don’t want this

Milton: Art?

Bey: Americans don’t want art.

Milton: They just can’t deal with it.

Bey: They’re forbidden from it. They must be kept out, with white walls.

Milton: And paintings face inward, nudes on white canvasses.

Bey: And, facing inward, they see us

Milton: Hold us.

Bey: enclose us

Milton: A womb.

Bey: A prostate.

Pause.

Bey: I’m going to quit teaching and just do art. It must be so much easier than dealing with those children. Look at this, do you see how easy this was to do? Paintsplatterings.

Milton: It’s not easy to do it first, and call it art.

Bey: They produced bullshit and theorized it into art. I can do that. My entire education’s taught me to do that.

Milton: while the rest of us were learning, you were learning to bullshit.

Bey: It’s really just a question of if you can sell yourself. Your art, I mean. make a niche in the economy of art.

Milton: Sell out?

Bey: Out and into white walled fortresses

pause

Bey: This whole culture trip
Thirsty consumers
feed off art buying
off unspoilt white walls.
The misery of the mediocre artist
Trying to make a life out of what he knows
is bullshit.
Men who will never be masters
selling their humanity
to themselves
Hurling sperm onto canvass
their whole lives.

Milton: Their whole lives?
Each moment
of artistic creation
stands alone.
Each brushstroke
an isolated present
that never dies.

Bey: Getting worked up The present? Art is the present? Fuck the present. It waits in quivering anticipation for Gatsby's green light, wallowing in it's own semen of a thousand wasted teenage kleenex. Eternal present? Each brushstroke an eternity? The present is infinitely thin, like a line, like the wire around your neck, cutting into your skin, pulling tighter, tighter, and you can only get a moment's breath, a "present," a reprieve from death by relaxing, giving in to it, just long enough so you can hurl your elbow into your attacker's nuts. And then you wonder why your own genitals are so bruised--yet you and me, Gandhi and Ronald Regan, spend every moment hurling our fist into our own crotch, taking painful gasping breaths, trying to create a "here and now." Mostly because the Government's been telling you that you actually *want* to live in the present since you've been a baby, denying you your past, owning your future. You deserve more breathing room in time than this infinitely small point you've been given (and you have to pay taxes on even that! Fuck the welfare state!) Fuck the present.

Pause. Milton’s a bit taken aback.

Milton: Um.

Bey: OK?

Milton: You win. Look at this video installation. Gestures at it

Bey: I’ve seen it. It’s annoying.

Long pause. The sound of no.no. slowly grows louder

Milton: One lone man
paintbrush poised against society
The only hope
Against the everyday.

Bey: The artist? Or the Marlboro man?

Milton: It’s the American Dream. One Canvass, One Man Against All Institutions.

Bey: Alone?

Milton: Alone.

Bey: You’re not alone.

Milton: Artistically alone.

Bey: You don’t know alone. The loss of everything, but yourself. You isolate me.

Milton: I isolate you?

Bey: You subsume people.

Milton: You assume people.

Bey: You breathe people

Milton: I live off of people. Survive in their company. you isolate yourself. You love too little.

Bey: And the little that I love gets taken from me.

Milton: By yourself.

Bey: It should be a gift.

Milton: I love you. And that I can give you.

Bey: no. pause. no. pause. nono. pause. Milton goes to get closer to bey, give him a hug. nononononono!NONO! Bey shoves him hard away, so Milton is pushed back. Bey goes on the offensive, and launches himself against him, body checking him into a painting. The alarms that go off when you touch a canvass in a museum go off, and guards appear. They grab Bey, restrain him, and lead him offstage. Milton is unhurt, but too astounded by the events to speak. Bey is struggling against the guards.

Fade out on Milton standing alone.

Scene 8
Bey is sitting in a waiting-room in a fairly dingy mental hospital. He is wearing institutional clothes. He is attended by a male attendant, standing casually in the corner, looking at Bey.

Nurse: (attending him) So, didja have a job before ya came here?

Bey: Teacher. High school.

Nurse: Yeah? I went to high school. I known some high-school teachers in my time. What subject?

Bey: What subject high school teachers go insane?

Nurse: English.

Bey: My school calls it “Literacy.”

Nurse: Sure.

They sit for a while, the man looking at bey and nibbling on his lower lip.

Bey: What do they call this place?

Nurse: Where you’re sitting is in Taft Hospital.

Bey: They didn’t send me to prison?

Nurse: Hey, man, we’re here to help you, is all. What would you go to prison for?

Bey: Terrorism. Treason.

Nurse: Treason? You can be hanged for that.

Bey: For violating the Laws of Being.

Nurse: What’s your political faction?

Bey: And this is where they send you for it, for anarchism of being. This is the reactionary counterstrike. Episode II.

Nurse: Alright, son. You’re all right, not being punished for anything.

Bey: This is the middle act.
When the sun sank
deep in the west where daily God died—
Evil melts into abstraction
rivers of propaganda,
hardcore militiamen on bicycles ride
skinned kneecaps,
lines of Nazis electing
Cheeky Russians to be God.
Herds of hectic indigenous
displaced into a cartoon fire
erupting from bush eyes
staring down at his domain:
Texas.
Cowboys herding brown bodies through economies,
The middle passage reaches its end
tunnels built under the Atlantic
though which slaves
eternally march.
White men squat on rotting summits
flexing muscles flaccid
from malnourishment.
The truth is abu graib.
The truth is an ad against cigarette ads.
The truth is a cartoon
of a cowboy riding a talking horse
over a pile of black bodies
This is the nationalism of cowering pain
this is the middle act.

The nurse looks at him hard.

Nurse: Man, you got a vocabulary. you’re a dark crazy-man. You always talked like that?

Bey: I always talked like that. I talked like I talked.

Nurse: And nothin’s changed, eh?

Bey: The place where I talked changed. (getting happy, suddenly) Now I talk in the loony bin. Where I can talk all day, and no one will listen to me.

Nurse: Oh, now, we’ll listen. The doctors’ll listen to you, alright. It’s their job, in fact.

Bey: You know about re-education camps? Stalinist Russia?

Nurse: taken aback You a Stalinist? I mean, it’s OK if you are. The days of blacklisting are over, here, mah friend.

Bey: No, I—

Nurse: Interrupting as a door on the side of the stage opens and another nurse pokes his head out. Hey, the doc’ll see you now. Come on, kid, let’s go. See what the doc can make of ya.

Bey: I…

The nurse drags Bey through the door by his arm.

Fade out.

Scene 9
Carla and Bey are sitting in a completely white room on white chairs around a steel table. Bey is wearing the uniform of a hospital inpatient.

Bey: Welcome to the land of fluorescent light, examining tables.

Carla: Thank you.

Bey: An autoclaved world. The state of eternal ideal, where everything dissolves into the great unholy blank at the end of the sentence. The sentence, when it was passed down, surprised me in it’s leniency. Life without parole. Life without parole? For what? for slaughtering an entire world, an entire perspective, for extinguishing a universe of subjectivity. For surrendering myself to an ideal, an absolute, for raping the shadows on the wall.

Carla: You didn’t get life without parole, bey. You’re just here for a short evaluation.

Bey: And after here? I’m going to prison, I know that.

Carla: Prison? No, we worked it out. You’re coming home soon.

Bey: Parole? there’s no escape here, there’re no walls here. The shadows on the wall, my eyes chained to a fire in the middle of the cave, the cell, and I’ll burn my eyes, cast them into the fire which hurls the shadows onto the wall, which I never asked to see. Hurl myself onto the flames of perception. conception and reaction, reception and the final constipation of understanding, back and forth onto itself.

Carla: I dreamed of you last night.

Bey: You didn’t exist last night.

Carla: I thought of you last night. But you didn’t exist for me, either.

Bey: What is this place?

Carla: It’s just a place, where they can take care of you. Because I can’t help you.

Bey: No, the desire for pleasure, for lasting pleasure. What do I have to give you to get pleasure?

Carla: your mind. So I can straighten it out for you.

Bey: My life? you have it.

Carla: that’s shit to me. You’re shit to me.

Bey: this is the land of uncertain light, fluorescent light. You know I’ve ceased to believe.

Carla: that’s something, at least.

Bey: No, it’s not. Your eyes have no color when I look at them, and neither does the sky.

Carla: you’re alone.

Bey: to be alone is to exist, and I don’t. Can you see me? Don’t answer that, you’ll lie. You can’t see me. These days, I go to jerk off, only to find that my dick doesn’t exist anymore, and neither does my crotch.

Carla: do you think of me in those moments?

Bey: I’ve never met you, I don’t know you, and you aren’t here now, so how would I?

Carla: I think you know the answer to that. I see myself in every glance of your eye.

Bey: you exist only for me.

Carla: and I am beautiful?

Bey: and you are beautiful. And that is all. Because that is what I have brought you here to be.

Carla: There’s no sex in the final darkness, and finally that is the only salvation of absolutism. Because it replaces itself, immortality through procreation.

Bey: There’s no sex here. The final darkness. Institutionalization, now and forever. You’ve left me, severed me, and I spiral into nonexistence. Soon, I will have no relevance at all. I will cease to be controlled.

Carla: Controlled?

Bey: By the police state, the ideological reign of monotheism, belief in a singular power structure, bourgeoisie.

Carla: The fascists again.

Bey: And I don’t care anymore. I know, I can’t change it, I’m infinitesimal against it.

A metallic voice comes over the loudspeaker.

Voice: Visiting Hours are Over. Patients, Please Report to the Aerobics Room For Rehabilitation.

Carla and Bey look at each other in the eyes for a final moment. Bey breaks the moment, and looks uncomfortably downward. Carla quickly exits offstage without saying any goodbye.

Scene 10
Carla in Milton’s bedroom. She’s sitting up in bed.

Milton: So when’s he coming back?

Carla: It’s up to the shrinks. Soon, probably. He’s not half so fucked up as most of the other people in that place.

Carla: Oh, so that’s why you saw to it that he did get psychiatric help?

Milton: Come on. You know he needed it.

Carla: I don’t know anything. I don’t know what it’s like to be in his mind.

Milton: The doctors said…

Carla: The doctors just met him, they don’t know shit about him. Bey exists, Milton, and he’s a beautiful man, whose perception is it’s own art, whose perception has lead me through this world since I got to college. He pushed me, and I pushed back, and we got somewhere.

Milton: Not just somewhere. You got here. He’s lost control of his life.

Carla: No, he hasn’t. It’s something else.

Milton: Something else? Did he grow up?

Carla: He grow into himself, grew an exoskeleton. I don’t know.

Milton: He embraced the safety of delusions. He gave up. Everything is bullshit, right? It’s a great excuse to give up. He gave up his mind so he wouldn’t have to take responsibility for it.

Carla: I’m not interested in criticizing bey behind his back. You’re trying to get me to take sides

Milton: I’m not fighting. I’m trying to get my friend some help that he needs.

Carla: So you’ll get rid of him.

Milton: Get rid of him?

Carla: You two left for the museum. I sat at home, made myself dinner. Then I did my reading. My writing. Then you came home, without him. And he was all I had, and I can’t be alone right now.

Milton: reaches out to her you’re not alone.

Carla: And that’s why you think you’ve won.

Milton: What you’re accusing me of…is preposterous. He was my best friend.

Carla: You’ve known him for six months.

Milton: He was the only one I’ve known in this city.

Carla: I’m telling you what I’m going through right now.

Milton: Well, that’s insane, Carla. I didn’t put him there. …they Asked for an Explanation, and it wasn’t me that attacked him. It was a choice—prison or help, he could’ve ended up in prison. He ruined one of the paintings. And I knew he needed help, and I couldn’t help him.

Carla: But I could have.

Milton: You couldn’t have helped him. His exoskeleton, remember?

Carla: Oh, and they can? In that dirty fucking institution, where they don’t know him?

Milton: couldn’t help him.

Carla: I need to be alone.

Milton: Be careful being alone. I don’t want to lose you, too.

Carla leaves.

Fade out.

Scene 11
Carla is sitting on the couch, reading and smoking a cigarette. Milton walks through the stage on the way to the kitchen. Carla stares after him coolly. He avoids her gase. She stubbs out her cigarette.

Pause

Bey enters carrying a huge canvass and a plastic bag full of paints and brushes.

Carla: Bey!

She leaps up and tries to hug him, but he’s carrying a huge canvass

Bey: Whoa. hold about.

Turns around, and very delicately places the canvass against the wall. Then he takes the bag of paints, deliberately turns it upside down, shaking the metal tubes onto the floor. Then he turns back to Carla. They embrace.

Carla: Bey, bey, bey. He looks at the floor. Bey, you’re back! i mean, how?

Bey: I asked to go, they let me go.

Carla: Bey, How are you? I mean, how are you feeling?

Bey: Still looking at the floor OK. I mean, OK. They fixed me at the hospital. That’s what hospitals are for, and they fixed me.

Carla: Touching his arm warmly Bey, you weren’t broken.

Bey: And they fixed me, they fixed me. I’m sorry to come home, I mean now, interrupting you and all.

Carla: We were living in your absence. Nothing to interrupt. They fixed you?

Bey: I am now a productive member of society.

Carla: You bullshit badly.

Bey: No, Carla. What I just lived was big enough to snap my spine. Upright. In the final desolation of the White Castle, in the eyes of the straightjacketed prophets, I saw what it is to produce, to contribute.

Milton enters holding a big cooking spoon covered in red sauce.

Milton: Bey! You’re back!

Runs over to him and hugs him melodramatically. Still holding the spoon. bey halfheartedly tries to hug back, but is overpowered.

Milton: So how are you feeling?

Bey: Real

Milton: You feel more real to me now.

Bey: It gave me a purpose. A Meaning. The final dissent hanging on white walls, voices heard across the void, I saw myself hanging on a white wall, dangling by picture wire. art leaps through the skin, destroying what should only be caressed. To Produce, to Contribute, to Society, that is the mission of the White Castle, to create minds who Produce, who Contribute, and I will.

Milton: Produce?

Bey: Objects for consumption, my Best Friend.

Milton: It’s all still bullshit, isn’t it, bey?

Bey: I am bullshit, I am worthless.

Carla: I’ll decide that, if you let me—

Milton: Hold on. You think you can just claim to be sane, and you’ll be sane.

Bey: I am only acknowledging that I am insane. That’s all I need to do.

Milton: All you need to do?

Bey: To be sane again.

Milton: No, you have to do work to get better, Bey. It’s not easy like that.

Bey: If I produce something, worthwhile, it won’t matter.

Milton: You have a life that needs living. You’ve lost your job. And you have friends that care about you, and you owe it to us…

Bey: And I will, I will produce Objects of Art, for the Ultimate Consumption, I will categorize myself, I will lend my voice to the chorus of lost souls stacked on Super K-Mart shelves. Don’t worry, Milton, I will tag myself, barcode myself, and i will be read by lonely scanners. Electronic beacons of sharp red light will stroke my dying words, my final words, must be written in paint. Multicolored cum drank by a thirsty avant-garde.

Milton: What happened to art-is-bullshit, Bey? Now you’re trusting it to save your life? To justify you? It’s a desperate move.

Bey: Well, what do I have? What else is there? I’ve got to build something out of this. I’m never going to get a teaching job again. I need something. Nobody faults Van Gogh for being crazy.

Milton: You have us, you have your friends. We’ll help you.

Bey: Milton, you taught me that I am finally alone. And turning to Carla I need you. I am worthless. Sure, to the common man, I can have worth, priced—tagged and barcoded, exactly equivalent to the empty voices I share shelfspace with. I can produce something, my last hope. But regardless, worthless to you. You’re better than the average consumer, Carla. You expect humanity. And that’s why I’ll never deserve you, maybe your pity, but never you. I am determined to strip myself of every glimmer of humanity, so that I can integrate myself into this Economy, so that I can Produce and not question, so I can be Sane.

Carla: I…you don’t have to give up yourself to be sane…

Bey: Most people don’t, but most people aren’t insane.

Carla: You don’t have to give up me, though.

Bey: That’s up to you. And him.

Milton: Ah! So this is what this is all about. All this hate. And I couldn’t understand why you suddenly hated me.

Bey: Sure, you’re so fucking clueless. Look at that cute little innocent face.

Milton: Listen, man, it isn’t like that for me. (In a mocking voice) I’m not trying to take her away from you or anything like that. You both told me you weren’t in a monogamous relationship. Both men look over at Carla. Milton sobers up a bit OK. I’m leaving you two. She’s yours, if you’re going to be possessive about it. I won’t touch her.

Milton leaves

Carla: OK Bey. I feel bad about sleeping with Milton. Shouldn’ta done that. But you’ve been on your own trip recently. I thought you were trying to get rid of me, to be honest.

Bey: I’ve been a bit fucked up.

Carla: You’ve been a bit fucked up. And it’s been your own thing, you think it would be better if you were closer to me, but I can’t help you, Bey. Because it’s your own trip, your own mind. I’ll love you, and I’ll support you, but…you got your own work to do.

Bey: So I’m alone.

Carla: you’re alone in your head. I’ll take care of this body.

They embrace
fade out.

Scene 12
Bey is alone in the middle of the night hurling paint onto a giant canvass. He’s smoking. he is intent, but it looks bad. There’re all the other colors but no Red. On the other side of the stage, there’s a single shitty chair by a shitty table on which his paints are laid out.

The doorbell rings. Bey answers it. The Mormon is there. He is dressed in a dark suit, but he looks exhausted and crazy, has sunken eyes, and stubble. Or he looks like whatever actor plays him.

Bey: What are you doing proselytizing in the middle of the night?

Mormon: I…I…God won’t let me sleep. He, He keeps me awake, He talks to me. I’m here to tell you about the Grace of God, to urge you to open your heart to them.

Pause

Bey: I hate your kind, you know. But I been working alone all night, , you, you come in, look at my painting, lemme know what you think. But don’t try to convert me. I’m a homosexual and an atheist. And I have sex with horses.

He comes in, and Bey steers him to stand in front of the painting.

Bey: there it is. My first painting. What do you think?

Mormon: I see God in it.

Bey: You see God in it?

Mormon: I see God. I t…talk to God, every other night.

Bey: You talk to God?

Mormon: He’s. Um. He’s lonely. He has n-no-one to talk to. O-only the chosen ones to talk to. only You and Me. Me and You. If you let Him.

Bey: Only me and you?

Mormon: Only me. You haven’t Listened. Y-you’re too self-involved. You don’t listen.

Bey: You don’t know me.

Mormon: H-he told me about you. He told me to See You. To make you Listen. Suddenly gets much louder, passionate RIGHT NOW

Bey: Right now?

Mormon: Right now you will hear God. Why, Why else are you awake?

Bey: I’m awake, my mind won’t let me sleep.

Mormon: He’s keeping you awake.

Bey: No. I’m….I’m afraid to lose (pause) consciousness.

Mormon: You are Afraid of D-death.

Bey: Very Slowly I am afraid of death.

Mormon: But I will make you immortal.

Bey: Art will make me immortal. With a good agent or something.

Mormon: Are you trying to pass t-that off as art? S-seriously? gestures to the painting. He sits down on the chair and leans on the little table.

Bey: I don’t know. Yes.

Mormon: You, are Chosen, Bey.

Bey: How do you know my name?

Mormon: I know you are the Answer. You have a Duty.

Bey: I know.

Mormon: To spread the Word

Bey: My word

Mormon: The Word.

Bey looks at him and drinks

Bey: Hey, do you want a drink.

Mormon: Prophets should not drink. You’re destroying yourself.

Bey: Listen, I don’t like all this god shit. I’m an artist.

Mormon: I-it doesn’t matter if you Like it. God is Real.

Bey: Real? I don’t even think you’re real. Coming to me in the middle of the night, talking nonsense. I just got out of a mental hospital. Understand? The loony bin. Which makes you a delusion. Enough to get me put back there, probably.

Mormon: But you know I’m not.

Bey: Yeah? Would you bleed?

Mormon: Red blood. Like Christ.

Bey: I was always taught that Christ bled red wine.

Mormon: red wine…

The conversation trails off. Silence. Bey finishes his drink

Bey: Red. When I decided to be an artist, I forgot to buy red paint. all the other colors. Forgot red.

Mormon: When did you decide to be an artist?

Bey: Yesterday. He goes to fill his drink

Mormon: God made his plan for you before Time. You are to relinquish your subjectivity. Use god’s vocal chords. Feel the world reverberate at your feet. Make men bow before you.

Bey: Will you stop telling me what to do? He comes back from his drink, and stands right over the Mormon.

Mormon: And when you do, you will relinquish your fear.

Bey: Fear only a mechanism to control the masses. I am an individual

Mormon: No, you are all individuals. And fear controls your every step.

Bey: I’m done with this. Would you please leave?

Mormon: It is your anger. You’ve felt it all your life. Why didn’t the other kids like you in elementary school?

Bey: getting angry Silence. This is my house.

Mormon: Because you hit them.

Bey: Picks up the Mormon by his collar This is my house. Get out of it.

Mormon: Calm This is your head. Get out of it.

Bey: Fuck you! Throws him down onto the floor

Mormon: And that’s why you are Chosen. Because you alone have a voice.

Bey: Standing over him. get the fuck out of my house. This is my house.

Mormon: No, this is your life. You have a voice because you have rage.

Bey kicks him hard in the ribs

Mormon: Feel your rage, feel your power?

Bey: This is for a merciless life of proselytizing He hits him

Mormon:
door to door, rage to rage,
I fly through the plain
backbones of herds
of in sullen motion
shipped from store to carpet
by sleepy escalators.

Bey: For Infinite Arrogance He hits the Mormon hard

M: the silent rage of the masses
will swallow you whole
and your battle through
tracheas and lungs
your rage will break their teeth
and flatten complacent vocal chords.

Bey: And yet you still talk continues beating

M: They will feel you brewing
in pools of stomach acid.
The dumb beast of silent dreams
will enflame the night
and the false merchants
and dirty hands
will end their adulterous reign.

Bey: Eternal dishonesty Bey looks Manic, hits again.

M: Rage will rise
passing through blazing elevators
into Mary’s placenta
and through the eyes of black horsemen.

Bey: This is for the lie of objectivity Hit Justified by blindness

M: And the sea of white backed
soupy voiced
drinkers of culture
will face their finality.

Bey: For the universalization Hit Of Our Delusion

M: And we will be saved.
You and I alone
in the Kingdom of God

Bey: Sanity lay in my humble

M: You are the angel of blood
who else could be Elect?

Bey: And you’ve ripped me of my reality. Hits him I could’ve lived! Hits him I live in a society, a civilization! hits him Surrounded by beauty! Hits him And locked rage away. Hits him And now, my delusion, hits him you have robbed me of the Rest of My Life! Hits him My only hope hits him For Communal existence, Lies in the Death of Delusion!

Mormon: The suppression of yourself?

Bey: The Death of Myself

Bey has pulled out a knife. The lights black out. A sudden flash of light reveals his arm on a downward arc.
Fade out.

A shot of Bey mixing blood with paint and using it in his painting
Scene 13
Carla is on the couch, crying. Milton enters.

Carla: He’s gone

Milton: I can’t believe he killed a man. I didn’t think he had it in him.

Carla: He’s gone, and I’m alone.

Milton: You’re not alone he tries to put his arm around her to console her

Carla: Fuck you! She violently pushes him off of her and storms out. Milton is left alone on the couch. He lights a cigarette. and smokes it for a moment.

Fade out.

Scene 14
Bey is behind bars. He leans on the bars as he talks. Sitting on a cot in his cell is his roommate, a black man named Terrance. Past him file an unending column of prisoners, all black men. They each look in his cell as they go by

Bey
The final imprisonment
of american life
Everyone’s in here with me.
It isn’t lonely.
The spectacle of backlit life
I have no shame
or remorse
Only that more people
did not accompany my fall.
No shame…
only history
unwound by words
stretched into meaninglessness
by millions of strained vocal chords
Only history wound and unwound
by thousands of revolutions
that ended where they began.
Only history
where the clash of arms against arms
fades into silence
drowned by time
where blood spilled dries again
and mothers giver girth again
and ballots are flung into obscurity again
the unending spiral of spilt ink and blood
carefully filed away in library catalogues
and abandoned
because there’s a war on.
Because there’s a war on
hundreds of black brothers
threatening me
because the history of my skin
is their gaping wounds,
And in here
the final revolutionary act
is to forgive.
You may have my lunchtray,
my cigarettes,
Because I had power of birth
and chose to be here today.
They were born behind these bars.
I will end behind these bars.

Scene 15
Bey is lying in the middle of his cell in a pool of blood. A shank sticks out of his ribs. Terrance is sitting on his cot, looking at him. Two guards enter.

Guard 1: Shouts Open Fifty One!

The door to the cell slides open. The two guards enter, with their beating sticks drawn. They briefly glance at Bey’s body, then to Terrance

Guard 2: well, boy, what happened here?

Terrance: Ah….Two men jumped him. Ah didn’t do nuthin’

Guard 1 hits him in the head with his beating stick. Terrance falls on his cot. The two guards begin beating Terrance brutally, but unemotionally. Terrance cries out a little, but is quickly knocked unconscious. They keep beating him.

Fade out
Finis.

chaos! losing! normal!

2005-11-10T22:36:00.000-05:00

Slocombe & co.,
a preface is needed, though. I got rejected from MAcalester, which is a good school--chalk full of beautiful people, esp. the boys who make you think you're gay--but got into a school down the road which is sometimes breathtakingly mediocre, with 1970's feets of engineering such as the cement library that makes me want to kill myself. When I look at my jeans and my sweater, and my petticoat that doesn't fit me and my sad pretensions, I see things, think maybe I was born for it.
This semester I take Portuguese at Macalester and have one helluva inferiority complex on account of that; a Russian friend who works on the school newspaper, name not important, asked me to write an article for Macalester's school paper. And I obliged. This is what I wrote:

dear friends,
first and foremost, set the scene: aceeltrrated elementary portugues wuth david sunderland is offered at macalester, the school for more intelligent kids down the road with millions of dollars of assets in a small safe on the fourth floor of the humanities building, just below the rotating windmill that tock tock tock like a heart under the boards of some poe short story. at night i'll have samba dreams. in the twisted cadence of Capoeira night, I will hear the words whispered to me:

mas hoje tem, amanha nao, mas hoje tem amanha nao.

what a shitty metaphor. perhaps such behaviour is why i was rejected from macalester. i remember the day well: it was spring and it was either marquette loyola or macalester or maybe a school that was named hamline university that flattered me with promises of an american scholarship for a true american scholar; one peat-smoke day in april, a letter in the mail: you have been rejected from macalester. condolences. silence.
four years later, one waits in the grime halls of the the library, stones and a sensor so that one won't steal books; i ooze into the final floor where the fast computers and read poems on the internet. i think about the time i kissed amy on the chin and the beatup shade philosophical. i think about sex, mostly, and someitmes my mindwandering past the fifty-seven chevy computer bank to what i'm going to buy for dinner that night. making small lists in my head of things to do: buy cigarettes and a belpepper, get over amy, buy a bellpepper, honor thy father, deposit your paycheck, quit drinking and eat more bellpeppers. this human condition of mine is horrible, and perhaps the real reason for my rejection from macalester.
around me the great minds of my generation in jeans-torn justright, beautiful boys from all over the earth, and a couple of pouting-lipped real lookers from south st. paul. no bleak visions of death and the maiden, and no edna pontellier tragedies, there are no smoking hookers here, in the redbrick castle. there is only love and solar energy.
my eyes have been failing me, and this becomes important:
lately some trick of the shadow or the jagged line of refracted light will fall on my face and i will think that my house on Marshall is haunted with indians risen--i wonder if there's an old Chippewa with a black painted face under my bed, buried and forgotten on Marshall avenue, and maybe one day he'll suck my soul through the TV set in some wonderful ironic gesture.
on halloween i saw a ghost at macalester. in the swinging glass doors of the humanities building of your college, i saw him. i recognized him from the jaw: two lines cracked with time running from the corners of his mouth to a narrow chin, then came the broad, red nose and the stubble streaked across the jowls like God was impatient, then the clear blue eyes with the bloodshot. my father.
i saw his face there in those swinging doors, and the veins of the arms knotted from twenty years of laying brick, the chest rising and falling under a plaid shirt, and the concrete and plaster hardened around the hands, choking--hanging at the sides with defeat of that peatsmoke day in October, when they told him his back was no good and they'd had enough of him, not to come to work tomorrow. then the hands swinging, the old man drunk at 5pm and the rocking chair splintering.
it started raining, and i looked up at the sky. i don't know why, because i haven't seen my father in three years. the glass door swung to and all focused. It wasn't my old man, but me in the swinging glass doors at macalester college, in this unholy year of our lord, two-thousand and five. I would need glasses.
that day i rode my bike down marshall avenue, got drunk, and masturbated. beneath me, the blackfaced chippewa stirred with memory, was still.

Raktabija

2005-10-21T11:16:00.000-04:00

Scene 1
An urban street in New Jersey. Vishnu, the Preserver, is incarnated as an opium user who crouches over his pipe. Another opium addict and resident homeless man, Rajeev, is sitting next to him. Rajeev knows that his friend claims to be Vishnu, but he doesn’t believe him or really care.

Vishnu: The past plagues me, every moment that has existed or will exist, it oppresses me. Because it does exist.

Rajeev: The present oppresses me, my friend. Look at us, look at what we have been reduced to.

Vishnu: Yes. This moment is has its problems. The earth has ceased to be able to support herself, her streets are crowded with the desperate. And you seem to have lost hope, my friend. Drugs and crime control our country. The world seems to have left us behind. But this state is the end of two millennia of history. And that is what weighs on my mind today. If only things had been different…

Rajeev: How can you concern yourself with such matters? I, for one, am hungry. starving. Can we get some food somewhere?

Vishnu: You don't understand. Each moment, this moment, is wrapped in the every second of the past, it is entwined. And, from the perspective of the gods, it is all happening now. I see us talking the same as I see everything that has happened, or will happen.

Rajeev: How will I die?

Vishnu: You couldn't handle the knowledge, my friend. It is for your safety that I can't tell you

Rajeev: That's for me to decide. How do I die?

Vishnu: The opium will kill you.

Rajeev: Seems reasonable. A good guess, I suppose. Takes a hit

Vishnu: Your attitude is good, pious, my friend. Death is not to be feared. It is a beginning.

Rajeev: But then how can the past bother you? the past is death, the death of the past is natural.

Vishnu: There is no denying that, my friend. But there was one time when the natural order was threatened, when even death would have been corrupted. And because there was one time, that time is this time and every other time between.

Rajeev: unenthusiastic, humoring his friend Really?

Vishnu: It began when the demons attacked the earth to fight the Gods for it's dominion. They were led by the demon Raktabija, who, through practicing austerity had been granted a boon.

Rajeev: What boon?

Vishnu: That every time a drop of his blood spilled on the mortal earth, his power would increase and there would spring up another clone of Raktabija, equally powerful. In this fashon, his power would increase during battle.

Rajeev: And how did he plan to take over the world?

Vishnu: Through death.

Scene 2
The bedroom of Drupada, queen of the Pandavas, she of seven husbands. She lies asleep. The demon Raktabija enters and stands over her, with her blade drawn. She wakes up

Drupada: Screams Out! Who are you? Get out of my room!

Raktabija: I am Raktabija, king of the demons, and soon to be king of your domain, my queen.

Drupada: Beast!

Raktabija: It may be so, but I have more power than you. You may die. Or you may come with me, and continue to be queen of your country. My queen. My beauty. I would offer everything to you. The world.

Drupada: You have nothing to offer me. I would refuse to ever be complicit in your malevolance

Raktabija: Whore! You will be mine. Climbs on her bed, and stands over her, his legs over her. Do you have anyone to say goodbye to?

Drupada: My husbands. Are off in battle.

Raktabija: Drupada, mine, the sons of Pandu are dead. your husbands are dead.

Drupada: Kurus have been victorious?

Raktabija: As we speak, I slaughter the kurus; my other selves invade the palace of Dharasthra. You will know my power

Drupada: And so, how have my husbands, unparalleled warriors, fallen? Surely no common man could defeat the cunning of Arjuna, the strength of Bhima?

Raktabija: Don't lie to yourself, my queen. You know that it was I who spilt the final blood of the Pandavas, ere I came into your presence.

Drupada: Evil beast! Scum! you bloodthirsty animal, you've taken my husbands Breaks down into tears

Raktabija: Why do you morn for your earthly existence. I, who know all, know that this life is a lie, my queen. You have no reason to believe your reality, thus it is silly to be attached to it. It is your lust that created your fantasy of your husbands.

As he speaks, blood begins to flow down his left arm, seemingly out of no where.

Raktabija: blood flows again. Lifts his hand to his mouth, tastes the blood Blood sustains me, drives me, my queen, it births me again and again. My power, my heart. Now come away with me.This is the blood of Bhisma, military advisor to the Kurus, most noble of warriors. I have just slain him in his harem, in his land. Ask me how I can be killing elsewhere while I am here with you.

Drupada: because you are a liar, full of hypocrisy, pride and arrogance

Drupada is in anguish beyond words. In a sudden fit, Drupada draws a dagger and sits suddenly, stabbing him in the chest Raktabija. Raktabija stands stoically and allows Drupada to make a large cut in his chest. Blood pours out of his breast.

Raktabija: Blood births me, my heart. The gods will thank you for your sacrifice.

As Raktabija's blood flows to the earth and touches the ground, it forms a perfect clone of the demon. There are now two identical Raktabijas. They both stand over her, facing each other

Raktabija: Both simultaneously: Release your fantasy of existence

They both raise large blades, and simultaneously bring them down on Drupada, killing her.

Fade out

Scene 3
Within the chronology of the play, this scene happens simultaneously with the last one. If you are directing this play, come up with a way to convey that. The Pandava brothers huddle around the hatchback of an old-school boxy yellow Volvo in an empty parking lot outside of a suburban strip mall in New Jersey. They're high-school age kids. Yudusthira “Yud” is the oldest. He is Hispanic. Then Bhima, a portly Black youth, gets out. Then Arjuna, a large black kid wearing a do-rag. The twins, Nakula and Shadheva, actual brothers, lanky kids, mostly silent. Nakula's reading a book. A few of them are smoking cigarettes. Shadheva’s rolling a blunt.

Bhima: Where's Draupadi?

Yud: I donno. I tried callin her, but she didn't answer.

Arjuna: Man, that girl's so hot.

Yud: I know, man. Trust me, I know.

Bhima: Whatcha reading, Nakula?

Nakula: Doesn't look up Charles Dickens. For class. I got a paper due tomorrow, man, and I ain't read the book.

Arjuna: See, man, that's like what I was telling you earlier. Now why the hell do we gotta read Charles Dickens for school?

Nakula: It's literature, man.

Arjuna: It's white man’s literature, right? How's that book gonna help you live on the street?

Nakula: It's about living on the street, an orphan boy.

Arjuna: But an English street, not even an American one. This shit has no relevance to me. Fuck it. I ain't gonna read it, straight up.

Yud: Cell phone rings. He pickes it up: huh? yeah, you wanna meet up? You should. I'm just chillin with the boys. Outside of the outlet mall, Big & Tall, you know what I'm sayin’? Cool. See you in a sec. Hangs up, says to Arjuna Draupadi's on her way here.

Arjuna: good, good.

Shadheva sparks the blunt.
Bhima: This that heady nug we got last week?

Shadheva: That, mixed in with some mersh Nakula picked up from that pusher, Jack.

Draupadi rides up on a moped. She's beautiful, and Indian, not like the boys who are black but randomly and inexplicably have Indian names.

Yud: My girl! wazzup, how you doin'?

Draupadi: She looks worried bout the same, you know They embrace

Arjuna: 'Sup, Drap? You aight? you look a little disturbed

Draupadi: Yeah, well, yeah actually. My dad got arrested this morning.

Yud: Oh, shit. For what?

Draupadi: Possession. Of weed. But that was two months ago. He didn't show for his court date, I guess. So this morning, he was driving on the turnpike, and got pulled over. Cop arrested him, searched the car, found five grams of coke. I don't know what the fuck he was doing with coke, Yud. You know him. You know he's no cokehead.

Yud: disturbed. That's right. shit, man. hits the blunt. Listen, I'm sorry. I don't really know to say, you know how that is? Can I help?

Draupadi: Let me hit that blunt. Pass it, hit it.

Suddenly, a cop car comes skidding into the parking lot. Just for the sake of being explicit, the police force is the modern day reincarnation of Raktabija. Makes sense, right? Two white cops get out of the car. Draupadi flicks the blunt, and it lands, still smoking, under the car.

Cop 1: What're you kids up to.

Yud: Just being law abiding citizens, sir. Practicing our right to free assembly.

Cop 2: Yeah, sure, kid. Can I see some ID?

Arjuna: You can't just ask for our ID's like that, we don't have to show them to you. Legally. You need a reason

Cop 1: We got reason, you loitering in the mall parking lot. This ain't your home, boy, you got no right to be here. Where you live?

Yud: 35th street.

Cop 2: what's that I smell?

silence

Cop 1: Smells like the Mary Jane to me, sergeant.

Cop 2: Yeah. You boys been toking a little reefer?

Bhima: Get out of here, pigs.

Cop 1: We will, just as soon as you hand over the marijuana

Cop 2: Just give it to us, and you won’t get in trouble

Arjuna: Yeah, right. may we leave now, officer?

Cop 1: Are you going to make us search you?

Arjuna: get away from me.

Cop 1: Come here Takes Arjuna, frisks him, empties his pockets, finds nothing.

Cop 2 approaches Draupadi. Yuddhistra gets in between him and her.

Yud: Don't touch her.

Cop 2 advances

Yud: Back off feeling threatened, and manly, he strikes the policeman in the chest

Cop 2: Oh, shit, kid, now you got it. Strikes him with the billyclub, Yud fights back, but is overpowered by the police

Drupadi reaches inside her coat

Cop 1: Shit, she's got a gun!

Two shots are heard. Draupadi falls to the ground.

Silence.

Yud: You killed my girlfriend. You motherfukers. You fucking killed my girlfriend.

Cop: To his partner: Oh, shit, seargant. This ain't gonna be easy to dig ourselves out of. You boys stay here. We’ll go get the authorities.

Arjuna: Gee, we thought you were authorities.

Cops leave hastily, sirens blaring. The lighting changes color to make the scene a little less real.

Yud: They’ve taken everything now. What the fuck to I have left? What do I have to live for?

Arjuna: Only to obey.

Yud: To obey…

Bhisma: To obey the orders of an organized economy

Yud: To obey the greyness, to find a deskjob

Arjuna: to obey my phallus, find another woman to put my seed in

Yud: we'll spend night after night following our testicles around

Bhisma: from darkened streets and sickening parties; shallow selves centered obeying only animal noises

Yud: looking for satisfaction.

Ambulance sirens are heard offstage.

Arjuna: getting more angry obey finally fucked green tile floor. obey linoleum, bottles of holy beer obey and release yourself into debauchery between the lines, allowed rebellion, freak with no consequences. selves bind to selves excluding watchers, dreamers, stoners.

Yud: We will maintain, my brothers.

Bhisma: We will graduate. High school will end.

Pause

Shadheva: meekly When will we fight back?

Arjuna: They fucking killed Draupadi.

Bhisma: Why obey? Your complacency, Yuddhisthra, your complacency is an evil, an opiate. When will you make your mark if not now? They fucking killed your girlfriend.

Fade out

Scene 4
The Pandava brothers are at Bustop, the local strip owned by Nakula and Shadheva’s father. He doesn’t really care that his kids take their friends into the club, they just can’t drink. Kali dances on the stage (poledance)
Yuddhusthra: So that’s her?

Nakula: Yeah.

Bhisma: What does a stripper know of the battle for justice?

Shadheva: She's been at it all her life. She's seen everyone she loves die. And she's so young.

Arjuna: and so hot.

Nakula: She calls herself the goddess of death.

Yuddhustrha: And she can kill the demon?

Nakula: She can kill anybody. With her gaze.

Arjuna: And her breasts.

Shadheva: No, she kills them with her hands.

As part of her ‘dance,’ Kali takes out a large blade—a folding knife. She turns her back to the onlookers, and uses the blade to cut a deep gash in her shoulder. she lets a member of the audience, who paid her, lick the blood off her shoulder.

Arjuna: Damn.

Yuddhusthra: I said goddamn.

Nakula: You're lucky. She only does this act once a month or thereabouts.

Bhima: Sure. You wouldn't want a scarred stripper.

Arjuna: Whatever, man. I'd take one.

Nakula: I can't talk to her. Dad won't let us.

Kali finishes, stands up and walks off the stage.

Yuddhusthra: I can. I'll talk to her.

He walks offstage after her.

Fade out

Scene 5
The Demon is battling the townspeople and wreaking havock. There are constantly more incarnations of the demon as his blood spills on the ground. The townspeople are getting killed. Suddenly, the Goddess Kali, dressed as she is traditionally (four arms, holding a blade, a severed head, adorned with a belt of limbs and severed heads. Black skin—not black like African, but black the color. Long tongue. Black hair. Lots of red in her costume), comes riding out on a tiger. Her eyes blaze red. Immediately, the battle stops and the townspeople flee to the other side of the stage. They prostrate themselves before the goddess. All the incarnations of the Demon also prostrate themselves, and then they all flow back into the original demon, reunifying him. The demon prostrates himself directly in front of the Goddess’s tiger, kissing the ground.

Raktabija: looking up, avoiding the eyes of the goddess Kali, my goddess, most fearsome mother, queen of death. I worship you, I exist from you, you are my birth and my purpose, I am your servant. How may I serve you?

Kali: Lowly demon, your existence is jealousy and avarice. You kill, but only I am death.

Raktabija: I lay my sacrifices at your feet, my mother.

Kali: I need nothing of you. To me, you are a parasite.

Raktabija: Was I not sprung from your womb?

Kali: My womb was never polluted with the seed of a demon. You are of that miserable race of demons, jealous of the power of Gods and lustful after their dominion. Only through your destruction can balance be obtained.

Raktabija: Destruction, my mother, destruction. You who are death know that destruction is only a fleeting glimmer, a moment in the cosmic cycle. With each moment of death, with each wound inflicted, I gain strength, my mother. I gain your strength from my spilled blood.

Kali: To pulverize you, to rip you out of existence, that is my duty. That the cycle will begin again, that is inevitable.

Raktabija: My mother, you realize not what you say. To destroy me is to destroy yourself for we feed off of each other as we are each other. You are death and I am a killer. Violence begets violence, and death is death.

Kali: And you shall then become one with me, I shall bear you back to the spirit realm.

Raktabija: Trying to hide fear No! I do your bidding on this plane. I am your servant. allow me this existence.

Kali: You seek domination, I am not blind. You seek the world of humans.

Raktabija: Humans are stupid, you can see that. Completely unenlightened, living fantasy lives, inventing their own reality as they go. They are totally imprisoned in time; they see neither where they have been nor where they are going. They are paralyzed with attachment to the world, fear of their mortal death. That is why they fear me, because they are attached to their bodies, a fantasy. What arrogance they must have, to simply assume that because their own eyes see a world that it truly exists! They grant themselves too much and have no perspective. The world is nothing like they think it is.

Kali: And you are arrogant enough to think that you know the truth, that you have perspective.

Raktabija: Because I know death, I know death well.

Kali: You are ignorant.

Raktabija: I know that all that is will not be. I know that bodies meet their ends. It is the natural way of things.

Kali: Is it natural to be killed as a child by your heartless minions?

pause. Raktabija looks behind him, as if looking for support or for his minions

Kali: You are delusional, heartless, and arrogant. You believe you have power because you can kill, you believe in your supremacy because your blood is rage. You are powerless because you will never change the eternal order. That of the non-existent there is no coming to be, of the existent there is no coming to be. Your destruction has no effect on this, and that is why you are simply irrelevant.

Raktabija: You are so sure of yourself, that you know what exists and what does not. You’ve surrendered yourself to illusion.

Kali: I am an incarnation of the universal, of the eternal. I am a God—I am one of the many faces of Devali, I am submerged in the ocean of the godhead, the endless source of all existence, and I see all spread out at my feet. The eternal destroyer, the great Siva, is my husband.

Rakatabija: The god's reign will end, and soon. As you were born so will you be murdered, the cycle will begin again

Kali: I am the cycle.

Rakatabija: I am become death, destroyer of worlds.

Prepares himself, and rushes at Kali, his blade raised. Kali opens her mouth. Out of her mouth issues her infinite tongue, which covers the earth on which Rakatabija stands. This takes away his super power because his blood is no longer spilling on the earth but instead on her tongue.

Kali: I drink your death
raises her blade and cuts Raktabija deeply across the shoulder
and bathe my inner self
Strike
in your
Cuts off his arm
viscous evil blood.

Raktabija is standing, bleeding profusely, on Kali’s tongue.

Kali: and with every drop that you spill

Raktabija: I'm growing weaker

Kali: I consume your strength.

Slices his legs, he falls

Kali: You return to me, the source of your idea.

Raktabija: losing strength In destroying me you give me new life. You give me the power of your eternal body.

Kali delivers the final blow, and cuts of Raktabija's head. Then, she consumes his body, and drinks the blood that has pooled on her tongue.

Kali lets out a long, animalistic scream, that fades away long after the lights are dimmed

Scene 6
Kali's scream at the end of the last scene can still be heard fading. The setting is the Strip Club, where the Modern Kali dances onstage. She’s clothed enough to conceal a handgun. Vishnu and Rajeev, and the five Pandava brothers are there in the crowd. She suddenly stops dancing, and screams

Kali: Turn that fucking music off! To audience What are you all?!? Slaves! fucking Slaves, Slaves to your testicles, dirty eyes glued on my body, what do you get out of watching me prostitute myself? I'm giving no fucking handjobs here. I'm not getting you off. That's your job, don't try to pass that shit off on me. Pulls a small handgun out of her bra, begins waving it at the men in the bar. You disgust me. You disgust me when I see you hearding yourselves through the streets, strangled by cheap suits, only obeying to the whims of your fucking tiny balls, do you think this is life? you were built to obey, to obey your bosses. obey the economy.

Someone in the bar: Will someone get that bitch under control?

Kali: You are under control, you fucking cunt. My control now. Nobody come near me, don't fucking pollute me. I am your salvation, I am the final answer. This is for the lowest depths

Two shots ring out. A man in a suit falls to the ground

Kali: This is for the third rail, the deepest subway cataclysms

Another shot. Nakula falls

Kali: For the fucking present moment, the here and now shot Shadheva falls The present, waiting in some quivering anticipation, for some orgastic future Shot, Random guy in bar falls The future holds only death, for which the present waits, wallowing in it's own cum, for a moment's reprieve, a second to take a breath Shot, Yuddhustrha dies a moment to fight back. This is your moment to fight back, and I'll take it Shot, death Rage, Rage against the dying of the light! Rage, Rage, do not go gently into that good night! Shot, Death

There is now chaos in the club, people running out. Kali leaps off the stage and begins biting people, ripping off their skin, soaking herself with blood. Really make this as graphic as possible. This is the goddess of Death going on a rampage here. Don’t hold back.

Kali: between moments of violence If the sewers run green, the plants are bleeding under my fists, poisoning asphalt to grow hallucination-forests in the dreamful anarchist future. Death My future. Death your future is mine! Death And some were born to endless night.

Scene 7
The battlefield in ancient India where Kali has defeated the demon. However, now there are bodies strewn about, both demon and of townspeople. Kali is the only living thing on the stage. She walks among the bodies, ripping off limbs and heads, and adorning herself with them. She makes a belt out of severed arms and puts heads around her neck. She smiles to herself.

Fade out.

WORD show

2005-10-09T12:26:00.000-04:00

If you are in providence this upcoming weekend, come to WORD!--a poetry performance. It'll be at Rites and Reason theater on Angell Street on Thursday the 13th, Friday the 14th and Saturday the 15th at 8:00

Another play

2005-10-07T13:25:00.000-04:00

Another play. If you only have time to read one of them, scroll down and read the Oct. 1st post.

Alex and Bey sit at the table in an apartment's kitchen. It's a dirty kitchen.

Alex: Death comes with immediacy. We are slaves to the idea of time that leads you to death.

Bey: I got a pomegranate yesterday. It's my new favorite fruit.

Alex: And then time is manufactured by society and injected into you at the same time that the myth of cohesive consciousness is injected into your sense of self. The lies at the center of our lives.

Bey: your time is absolute, and so's mine. Different, maybe, though.

Alex: Are you hungry?

Bey: you live from one moment to the next, lusting after each one, slaughtering and dismissing the present.

Alex: Yeah, and you?

Bey: humble immortality, this moment here and forever.

Alex: You're delusional.

Bey: beer and cigarettes, for example. The only worthwhile investment, right? Gone in a night. The present, baby.

Alex: consume. Yes, master, consume.

Bey: It's the only thing you can have any power over—the present, your mouth.

Alex: You eat what you are fed. Do you like Oreos, Bey? Gorditas?

Bey: hey, capitalism is delicious.

Alex: That logic feeds the system

Bey: You don't understand me, not yet. It's not logic, Alex. Fuck logic. It's hedonism, the only meaning we can find in postcapitalism is in hedonism. Be a glutton.

Alex: Anything produced on an assembly line will taste like plastic to me. Let's get tacos.

Bey: You're a hypocrite.

Alex: We all are. We've had this discussion.

Bey: sure, sure. Where do we get tacos? There's no Mexican food on Thayer street, remember?

Alex: There's no Mexican food in providence, as far as I know.

Bey: I've got rice and beans. And they're free to you, cheap to me.

Alex: Let's do it. What you got to throw in there?

Bey: Tofu, peppers—let's make a stirfry with it.

Alex: Fine. You’re in charge. Can I help?

Bey: It's sort of a one man kitchen, we'd be bumping asses. Here, cut this pepper for me. Hands her a pepper

Bey: Singing
Red beans and Rice
Red beans and Rice
Ah could eat a plate twice.

Bey: You know why you can't buy beans and rice on Thayer street or anywhere like that?

Alex: I know what I think, but what do you want to say bout it?

Bey: It's because it'd be a terrible business move, at least in America. You'd haveta sell it cheap, because it's rice and beans, and then everyone would buy it because it's delicious. It's really all the food anyone needs, right? so then they wouldn't buy the other shit, the stuff you can make a profit on.

Alex: I thought it was cause the bougey (As in bourgeoisie) brown kids were too good for beans an rice.

Bey: This product is actually too good to be sold under capitalism. It's my favorite food in the world. It's sustainable. It'll always be delicious

Alex: whenever you make it.

Bey: granted. I've got some experience with the beans and rice.

Alex: It won't be your favorite food when you're thirtyfive with kids.

Bey: And I'll be well on my way to death, right?

Alex: and you'll be working a desk job.

Bey: aw, hell no.

Alex: And you'll be living each day like yesterday and tomorrow

Bey: you think life ends at twenty five, don't you? Well, when I'm thirtyfive, forty, I'll be living my life, whatever it is, man. I hope it doesn't suck. And if it does, I'll change it.

Alex: What, just pick up and leave a family and a job?

Bey: Whatever the situation calls for. Hopefully my family won't be that bad.

Alex: Families can be bad, man.

Bey: That's why I'm not going to marry you. Or even sleep with you, by the way. Just so you know.

Alex: You make it sound like that's your decision

Bey: When we were first hanging out, you were singing a different tune.

Alex: Whatever. Pig.

Bey: You like mushrooms, right?

Alex: no.

Bey: Well, I just put a lot in there. You've got terrible taste in food, by the way.

Alex: I just don't like mushrooms, or cheese.

Bey: Now, there's your problem. Two foods that you can always add to food and it'll increase the deliciousness, guaranteed. Mushrooms are like islands of juicy flavor in food, like an oasis in a desert of rice and beans.

Alex: Whatever. I'll pick them out.

Bey: It's just an excuse not to eat all of your food.

Alex: Come on.

Bey: I'm just looking out for you. I hate eating disorders. Actually, I don't mind them in the abstract, but you? you should be above that.

Alex: You don't know what it feels like, you don't know how deep it runs.

Bey: Sure, I don't. Food is really fundamental to my worldview, you know that. We live to eat.

Alex: And that's why an eating disorder is so hard to overcome, because it was born in a fundamental rejection of your worth as a human being. A denial of existence.

Bey: That makes some sense to me. Don't think I’m not empathic about it, it's the worst thing and it's not your fault.

Alex: But you don't realize how men feed it, and you don't do anything about it.

Bey: what do you want me to do? Men are almost entirely sexual beings. And they'll find attractive whatever society has taught them to find attractive.

Alex: whatever. I'm eating fine these days.

Bey: Good. Here, let's eat this.

They set out the pot on the table, scrounge for a few cleanish plates

Alex: Do you have any juice?

Bey: Tang.

Alex: I'll have water.

Bey: here's the hot sauce.

They eat in silence for a time, Bey eating quickly and with relish (hot sauce, actually), Alex eating at a slightly slower than normal pace, drinking a lot of water. At one point, Alex gets up to refill the Brita filter.

Bey: Can I have your mushrooms?

Alex: Here you go. I think I'm sick, though.

Bey: me, too. Who is healthy at college? I get sick at the beginning of the semester, and then just stay vaguely unhealthy all the way through.

Alex: The torpor of daily life, classes. Also, dorms are cesspools of the nasty.

Bey: delicious nastiness...freshmen...

Alex: what?

Bey: I said nothing. mumbling again.
They eat

Alex: I was walking down the street today, and I realized something.

Bey: Momentous. Groundbreaking. What did you realize?

Alex: How much bad genetics we are burdened with. Most people should not be allowed to breed, that's the problem these days.

Bey: Really. And who is to decide who gets the right to breed?

Alex: I would, or anyone else who isn't blind. It isn't that hard.

Bey: Would I be able to breed?

Alex: Maybe. Sorta.

Bey: I thought it wasn't that hard.

Alex: Alright, you'd be allowed to breed. But not with me.

Bey: I wasn't asking. See, though? It gets harder to make that call when you know someone better. Which means that your initial decision is meaningless.

Alex: I'm a pretty good judge of character. You can tell a lot about someone from looking at them

Bey: Not enough to deny them the right to spread their seed

Alex: We're talking about pure genetics, here. Just cause someone is a nice person doesn't mean that their kids won't be wrecks. People can barely hold it together themselves, and then they have kids and almost always fuck it up. Each generation gets progressively more fucked up and crazy.

Bey: I think you're contradicting yourself, but I wasn't really listening hard enough.

Alex: You can tell, anyway. I can. Most people suck, Bey. Look at the masses of Americans. You can't find any redeeming quality. Look at mass media. These people lap that shit up. Reality television? Have you been to the movie theater recently?

Bey: People eat what they're given. Most people recognize that mass entertainment is drivel, but it's entertaining nonetheless. It's what our culture is selling to them, and, as products of our culture, they'll buy it.

Alex: And you don't think that this is a situation that should be changed?

Bey: It is whatever it is. Most people are at least well-intentioned, most people are able to keep themselves to themselves.

Alex: Well, they're always all up in my face, I don't know about you. You're too forgiving. These people are tools

Bey: Sure, they're being used by the power structure of society. And we are, too. We have a privliged position on that power structure, to the point we can ignore it or be disdainful of it, but we will help reproduce it in the next generation to come.

Alex: It's our decision, it's our lives, we can challenge it if we want.

Bey: And how are you going to do that? Revolution?

Alex: Art. And sterilizing rednecks.

Bey: Art? You're so delusional. Art is great, but all it effects is art. The masses won't see your art. You do art to change the way art is done, which has the potential to change some of the ideas that society operates on. But you're talking about sweeping political change. You're talking about a massive program of eugenics, here.

Alex: you're right. What we need is a dictatorship. Democracy is as flawed as the masses are.

Bey: We have something close to a dictatorship already. A small elite of assholes run the country, and there's no democracy about it. So we can choose one of two names on the ballot? big fucking deal, right? how did those names get on the ballot? It's like an election where Saddam Hussain gets a hundred percent of the vote.

Alex: But it depends on the quality of decision that gets made. we need a different dictatorship. One with balls.

Bey: mmm...balls...

Alex: What?

Bey: Being facetious. I think that we do a bad job listening to each other, Alex. We have the same fucking argument every time we hang out

Alex: That's probably true. I don't really listen to anyone but myself. It's not a bad thing, it just is.

Bey: Yeah. It must be fun to be the center of your world.

Alex: One should be the center of one's own world. We don't have anything except ourselves.
Bey gets up from the table, takes his plate and Alex's plate to the sink, puts away the extra food, and begins to do the dishes. Alex sits there.

Alex: Do you have dessert?

Bey: Fudgesickeles. Want one?

Alex: naw. Too cold. You should keep chocolate around.

Bey: Alright, I buy chocolate. Then I have chocolate around, and so I eat it. And then it's gone in a day, and I've eaten a bunch of chocolate, and I'm not really ahead of where I started. It's not worth the effort.

Alex: What're you doing tonight?

Bey: I'm just going to work, till bout 11, then I think I'll go over to David's and have a beer or something. You?

Alex: I've got to finish my sculpture tonight. I'll be up all night

Bey: as every night.

Alex: Well, I'm out, then. Thanks for the dinner, Bey

Bey: Any time.

Alex leaves. Bey turns to the sink and begins to do dishes. Fade out.

Masonic Temple

2005-10-01T13:19:00.001-04:00

This is worth reading. It feels good to have finally created a peice of writing that I can tell you is worth reading--it's been years. It's nothing new for me, I've covered this territory before, but it's back.

A bum, Charlie, and Scott, a Brown University student, are squatting on their haunches in the abandoned masonic temple in downtown Providence (before it began to be renovated). Charlie is wearing a coonskin cap. Litter is strewn about the floor and the walls are covered with iridescent graffiti. Scott is shaking an orange spray paint can.

Charlie: Ya know this is my home, kid. Ya taking an adventure, right? where ya live, kid? ya go to school?

Scott: I live in a dorm, meeting street. Brown. sprays a long orange arc on the floor

Charlie: lotsa girlies, upa there at brown, eh? a daring exploration offa campus. mumbling: intrepid he's a motherfucker, intrepid intrepid adventurer, mah house, mah home. you got tobacco?

Scott: Nope.

Charlie: listen, kid, ya got no spirit, no character. ya cantt go through life a-likea that. ya know me, i been surviving for thirtyfive years, out cold in tha world, survivin by mah self, that takes spirit, ya know? ah got mah eyes failing on me, and ah got nuthin to live on, and sometimes ah dig through the trash and ah make mah belts out of the 'lectrical chords, ah ain't like you, goin to sum Brown University. ah know mahself, and ya ain't gots no idea who you are, do ya? ya have a purpose? Eat these. he takes out three little white squares—blotter paper. Here, put this unda ya tounge

Scott: Spraypainting, hell no.

Charlie: Ah, ya know ah wouldn't do anything to hurtya. Ya need this, ah see it, ah knowed it when ya first came heah. stands up, advances on Scott. We see that he is quite large

Scott: Stay away from me

Charlie: eat this. Ah'm givin you a present, heah, ah ain't got much to mah name, and ah'm tryin to sacrifice it tah you, don’t be ungreatful, prick

Scott: What is it?

Charlie: spirit-medicine. your eyes ah hungry, empty.

Scott: get away from me! Charlie advances on him, then suddenly knees him in the stomach, grabs his neck, forces his mouth open and inserts the blotter paper. Scott splutters. Charlie hits him across the head and Scott is knocked unconscious

The camera cuts away, and then slowly fades back in on a dark room. It’s the basement of the Masonic temple. There is a foot or so of dirty, murky water with an oil slick flooding the room. Scott is sprawled out, half in the water against the wall of the room. He begins to come to. Music plays: The End by the Doors

Lost in a Roman...wilderness of pain
And all the children are insane
All the children are insane
Waiting for the summer rain, yeah

Scott spasams, hits his head against the wall

Scott: Wha? whathafuck? ooohhhshit, ohgodogadogod. help! meekly help? something's trying to crawl up my nose

Charlie emerges from the darknes. Now he is wearing a raggedy narrow-brimmed fedora, and his voice has changed; now it's crisp and clear

Charlie: Your journey has now begun. You must trust me, or I cannot help you through it.

Scott: You asshole! what the fuck you doing to me? Stay the fuck away from me, I’ll hit you tries to stand up; he is very unsteady and looks nauseous uuurgh lurches toward Charlie as if to attack him-raises his fist scott tries to attack Charlie, but he is too unsteady and Charlie grabs his wrists and physically takes control of Charlie. He lays Charlie back down.

Charlie: You need this, I'm doing it for you, and I'd guide you through it

Scott: Things are moving in the darkness flying at me.

Charlie: What I gave you, three hits of pure LSD. Have you ever tripped before?

Scott: mushrooms.

Charlie: listen. if you fight the drug, it will kill you. If you fight the trip, it will kill you, or at least part of you. if you fight me, I will kill you. I am forcing you to have this experience, and I am guiding you through it. To survive, you must trust me, you must let me in to your mental space, to share in your trip. I have also dosed myself.

Scott: Your face…it's moving, spiraling. it's it's liquid, your nostril is growing, oh, god. I’m going to be sick.

Charlie: Stand up. I got something to show you Scott cowers in fear. You scared of me? You should be. Feel the fear enslave you, drive you, let it fuel you. Ride the beast. Ride the beast. Don't fight it, Scott. You are afraid, let yourself be afraid, if you fight it, you’ll get brain bubbles. Now STAND UP

Scott jerks to his feet, begins trying to run away from Charlie. His feet slip in the water, can’t find a purchase. He runs away, and Charlie lets him.

Scott: after some time running through the muck, stumbles, slows down to a walk breathing hard. what's happening to me right now? where am I? How did I get into this? I'm afraid. It’s ripping me apart, fear. I've always been feeling like this, I've felt this before. I've felt like this every day of my life. How do I know that? I've never known it before…but, I never thought I was feeling this, I've always known it before, never, I've never known this feeling before. But I know I've felt it every day of my life. Where is he? He? Who is He? Where did He disappear to? monsters…animals, what is that? peering into the darkness I think he’s trying to kill me. he's trying to kill me.

Scott trips on something. It is a stray dog, a big one. It growles and menaces, but does not bark

Scott: Oh, FUCK

Dog: growling rriide the beast, riiderrrriiide

Offstage Speakers whispering below the sound of the dog: ride the beast

Scott turns and runs the other direction, runs until he enters a sewer from which the murky water is flowing into the room.

Scott: tripping hard; he has a sickly, unmoving smile glued across his mouth ooohh, tunnel. tunnel. túnnel. toonell. tunnel. sewerspace…..a period of silence in which he walks forward through the sewer ohshit, he's still trying to kill me. he's still behind me, isn't he?...... I feel the tunnel breathing. in and out, breathing. deep, gratified sighs. sounds like a woman, after sex, in and out, afterglow, and I am in her tunnel, breathing. that makes sense, now, tunnel. I am in the tunnel of the city, penetrating it. hello providence, i penetrate you, i fuck you. afterglow. the sewers are veins, with shit for blood. it feeds on providence's shit, and lord knows, providence is shitty. i've known that providence is shitty since I moved here, and now I’m penetrating it’s shithole. our sewers hide what connects us, in our solitary backroom dreaming. our sewers allow abstraction in human encounters, allow us to disappear from ourselves. I can't look at your face, it overwhelms I and I. . our sewers wrap us together in dreamy abstraction. our faucets rip our outer skin off every morning, and pure waterfall flesh cannot hide behind dirt reality. my skin. he is trying to kill me, I’m going to die, I and I. I am plural, I am talking to myself because it needs to know what I am thinking. I am I abstracted, I and abstracted I.

Scott comes upon a ladder, and climbs up it. he opens up the manhole, which is just too small to climb out comfortably. He pushes his body up into it, gets his arms head and shoulders out and tries to squirm up.

Scott: The sewers give birth to I and I. the sewers birth me, fallopian tube shithole.
He emerges into the main hall of the Masonic temple. There are high ceilings, and light from the setting sun streams in through windows near the ceiling. On the wall he faces, there is a giant throne statue with a giant Masonic G symbol and other impressive shit. On the wall is a giant expressionistic representation of a nude woman, sexuality emphasized. Or whatever the set designer wants to do.

Scott, still on his hands and knees from climbing out of the sewer, looks up, awed, quivers, and falls on his face. he lays there for a moment, staring up at the ceiling.

Scott: I've hit the main nerve, I know it, command central, you understand. Men become gods in this room. I am god, god of this moment, god of myself. I am holy, my life will be eternally holy and I will be worshipped as Jesus. this is my burden, this is my burden, this is my duty. The price you pay for being god. ohshit, it's terrifying—I can’t do this, you know I just can't do this. Am I alone? he is trying to kill me, he is Satan, if I am god, but everyone is god, I am everyone. I know I am going to die at the end of this, this is it, the culmination of everything. this is the end. I'm scared to die. where is he? coming up behind me, always, he always has been, always will be, sneaking up behind me. Begins to jolt his head around and back, jerkily looking over his shoulders. Brie appears right in front of him, a girl with dark hair, his first girlfriend. It doesn't matter if she's real.

Scott: Brie! Brie Lehman? what are you doing here? oh, god, am I imagining you? you...you’re beautiful, you haven’t changed.

Brie: I'm here, take me

Scott: my taste in women has gotten worse since you, Brie. Touch, my touch, my feel, I never stopped feeling you, Brie. Sex, love, my body egresses and entrances, I become a worm eating the soil of human flesh and leaving behind me a trail of the same. I become eros. You want me.

Brie: fuck you. narcissistic prick, you have to self aggrandize in order to justify yourself. fucking parasite. you march toward the death of the masses, you and every one like you are small time hitlers doing your part in the holocaust of time. You are a parasite of sickness, a flying demagogue of capitalism. You have freedom, your parents bank accounts and your shiny degree guarantee it. Do you know where I am? Do you smell the vomit on my breath?

Scott the acid is beginning to peak: uhhh….vomit? rooocket. oh god. can I touch your arm?

Brie and Scott suddenly and very jerkily kiss. Suddenly a wheelchair rushes up (can it rush up from beneath her), and she sits down in it suddenly and hard. Her head rolls to the side and rests on her shoulder, and her eyes look vacant, as if she just passed out. Charlie appears behind her, cleanshaven, wearing a bowlerhat, carrying a briefcase, and smoking a cigar, maybe.

Charlie: Is that your thing? would you have sex with a girl in a wheelchair? A fucking gimp? Is that what you’ve come to?

Scott: whimpers why am I sitting in a wheelchair? where did this come from?

Charlie: You are encased in cement, in the navel of urban desolation. You are a shard broken off from a long lost humanity, you are alone. this room was built right before the stock market crashed in '29, it was built in loss, suffering for some mystic elite, the kind of guys today who lock themselves in sportscars and jerk off in their pinstripe suits

Scott: I feel myself vibrating.
Scott: I gotta get out of here, I’m going to die, I gotta get out of this.

Charlie: don't fight it, kid. Don’t fight me. You want to go somewhere else? you want to go outside? I got somewhere for you, you'll fell better.

Scene changes. Now Scott and Charlie are standing on the roof of the temple. Providence is in the distance, sitting there and being shitty as it tends to do. Charlie has changed hats again. He’s wearing a felt long-brim brown fedora.

Charlie: You are talking to a human being now. I exist. Do you give a shit about that? does that enter your narcissistic little universe?

Scott is way beyond words, looks at Charlie.

Charlie: I've been where you are. You know you're here still, you'll listen to me. Do you give a shit who I am? I asked you to trust me earlier. I worked in providence, I wore a white shirt every day. Sometimes I wore khakis. Sometimes black pants. When I felt wild, I wore a Looney Toons tie. I had a boss. I had 'supervisees.' I wasn’t sure if that was a real word or not, though. By real, I mean noncorporated, unamerican. Supervisees. They were peons. I was a peon. I think they may have done something all day. Made things. I’m not sure. I know I didn't. Sometimes I came by their cubicles and 'reminded' them about that report. I smiled, which made me insecure. I have bad teeth, and every time I open my mouth, I feel like eyes are in my empty gullet looking into my blank, 8 ½ by 11 soul. I clean up a little bit. Some people, some people should have the right to decide who deserves the privilege of living, you know? I got a good judge of character, and I know what we need, as a society. I ain't gonna breed, because I know that's what we, as a collective, need. Me, I'm celibate. I skullfuck the American Dream. My testes are lit up green. I kill the already dead. The faceless. The middle managers like me.
Someone reached down my open mouth with a pen and drew a picture on my soul. It was just a pastoral landscape. And when they took their hand out, I went to get more orders from my boss, and I let his eyes into my mouth. And the fresh ink, the nice landscape, reached out, grabbed his eyes, and doused them in stomach acid.
What I'm trying to say, is I shot him in the face with my shotgun. And now I’m an angel, a killer. And now here you are.

Scott: aah, shit.

Charlie: Now I don't know you, and you're just a kid. you're an arrogant prick who doesn't appreciate his own privilege, a sucker on society, maybe, but maybe you'll get out of school and use your degree for something meaningful. maybe you'll do someone some inch of good. is that your plan, punk-ass kid?

Scott: Scared i'm worthwhile.

Charlie: You're tripping face, and you're oozing mendacity. you can't hide from me.

Scott: I have all the power, right now. You are fear, you are my fear. I own you.

Charlie: Feel the fear building in you, ripping away at your consciousness. I feel you fighting me. You can not beat me.

Scott: I cannot overcome you. I'm going to die…I have to resist…I'm dying. Scott utters a grunt that turns into a guttural scream, and launches himself at Charlie. Charlie attacks low and Scott ends up on top of him.

Scott: Ride the beast

Charlie stands up suddenly, launching Scott over the railing and down, falling the six stories down to the sidewalk next to the mall. Charlie stands silhouetted in his hat, while The Doors song plays.

Silhouette: This is death, the drug does not lie. My spirit is broken. I must go west.

Jim Morrison: The west, the west is the best.

Silhouette: Deep in the west, where daily God died, where daily the imperialism of fear ran men's lives, where the middle passage reaches its end in eternal slavery.

Jim Morrison: This is the end, the only end, my beautiful friend.

Slowly he turns around, and we see that somehow it’s actually Scott wearing Charlie’s hat. He turns to walk out. He leaves the rooftop and walks through the anteroom where he first met Charlie. There is a figure huddled in the corner of the room, a bum wearing a coonskin hat. It is, of course, Charlie, passed out in a drunken stupor. Scott exits the stage, and the real Charlie stirs himself

Charlie: now, where did that fuckin kid get off to?

2005-09-27T20:31:00.000-04:00

when sammy davis hugged richard nixon at the '72 republican national convention, even the republicans flinched and moaned in awful horror.
i've seen pictures of legless 2-year-olds in iraq, i've heard Sam Beckett plays about little girls getting pushed in front of trains, i've heard my parents having sex in the next room, and these things... these things, my friends, have disturbed me less than this godforsaken photo of poor sammy davis jr.

"Being a star has made it possible for me to get insulted in places where the average Negro could never hope to get insulted."
--sammy davis jr.

how true, sammy, how true.

George Jackson

2005-09-26T19:53:00.000-04:00

George Jackson, a revolutionary hero who changed the world from a segregation cell. He was assasinated in 1971 by the prison guards of Soledad State Prison. The official story is that he was killed in an escape attempt after Stephen Bingham, a white socialist attorney from a rich family, smuggled in a gun during a visit with Jackson. They have never produced evidence to support their story, but they don't have to.

GEORGE JACKSON: You didn’t bring it, did you?
STEPHEN BINGHAM: I did. It’s hidden in the tape recorder. This is the day you will taste freedom. Do you remember what it's like to breathe outside air?
JACKSON: You stupid fucking idiot. I don't know you—I didn’t ask for this. Do you know what it's like in here? They’re waiting to kill me, looking for any excuse to put a bullet down my throat. And now you want me to wave a gun in their face?
BINGHAM: It's a fucking tyranny; they've had you too long. It's time. You just said it—you have to get out of here before they kill you. There's a car waiting out front, and a plane waiting fifteen minutes out in the country. You'll be in Cuba this afternoon.
JACKSON: I didn't ask for this. I don’t need your help, white devil, and I don’t trust your white face. I don’t need you; I’ve been in this cage since I was fourteen, most of the time alone in seg. And now, I've made them afraid, I’ve spoken out, they know they can’t control me. I embarrass them. And so they can’t wait to kill me, they'll take any excuse. I know the psychology of these pigs, and I have power over them, and I scare them. But as soon as I wave a goddamn gun in their face, they’ll kill me.
BINGHAM: I didn't do this for me, I didn’t do it for you even. I'm talking about the movement, here, the revolution.
JACKSON: Fuck you! Look at your skin, man, you can't hide from yourself. If the revolution came, you'd be killed, you have no idea what it is to be a black man in America? you ever been in prison? Come on, you ever been in prison?
BINGHAM: I've seen lots of prisons, I'm an attorney.
JACKSON: You're a parasite. You make your living off these hellholes, just like these guards. You think you're a revolutionary? You're trendy, you think you’re cool. I can see you in some fucking college bar spouting socialist rhetoric, talking about the revolution, to some blonde girl, and I'm sitting on a hard cot in segregation. You're a fucking parasite living on the black man's back.
BINGHAM: I gave up everything for the revolution, man. I can't help how I was born—I'm white, it's not my fucking fault. But every day since then, I’ve been working to break the system, to bust you out of here, and all my other brothers, too. My father disowned me for my politics, you know? And now I'm trying to support myself as a public defender, scraping by. And here, today, look at what I've done for you. I've given you my life right here. And I don't know you. I read your books, but I don't know you, and I’ve given up my life for you. Do you want this gun? This is your moment of decision. Don’t put it on me.
JACKSON: You're a tool. Give it to me...Now, you best get the fuck out of here. Head for the border. Maybe I'll see you in Cuba.

GUARD! I'm taking control here now, give me your weapon!

Sewers v1

2005-09-10T09:31:00.000-04:00

I editedit,editeddedtit:

The sewers are veins with shit for blood,
and the city only ever inhales.
Trucks fly on fourlane superarteries
delivering loads of Doritos to gaping mouths.
Welcome to the Kingdom of Us:
rotting concrete,
where we could have made anything,
could have been humans on earth
but were too cheap.
so content with plastic,
metaphysics,
and gutters.
summon the charcoal and chimneys,
summon the gas stoves and microwaves.
we will eat tonight, don’t worry about that,
keep shopping.
keep shooting.
And someday, we’ll move out to the suburbs, dear.

-
my fluid seeks sewers to feed myself, my city, but black rotting streets destroyed my undercarriage,

the highways pulse with commodities;

my house rests between opposing offices;

I can look through my windows to my attorney.

his aggression opposes what in a domestic animal: cold open space, large enough to work with isolation?

the city is the possession, the men in it middlemanaging, cubicles.

You have to consume real estate to be human, distance, square footed, in which a beloved kitchenette is heaven, for example.
-

My sewers, my blood, I felt my city around upon me rumbling down upon the long high superways,
I felt my mouths crying for Doritos,
we exhaled into overbrimming cash registers
that can now buy anything,
can only buy us.
Welcome to my house, gridded and grey,
where we could have had a future, we could have been here before,
but we were too cheap.
Give me your kitsch! your scams! your hungry!
Don’t worry, inhale, your fiery riots will wait for tomorrow.
we are an island of torment in a sea of white picket topped waved American Dream.
-
Plumbers tie the city together
so we can herd ourselves through the streets
avoiding the eyes of passing humanity.
Our faucets rip off our outer skins every morning
so naked waterfall flesh
cannot hide behind dirt reality
while beneath our plodding feet
our true skin of grime
eats away at sewer walls

fear and loathing at 1243 thomas ave

2005-09-01T13:11:00.000-04:00

Friends, a new poem of chegrin and loss, death recovery suicide (?). Its name is New house.

New house.
two story brick house in downtown st. paul
right next to the caribbean neighborhood
and the roman catholic church.

for some reason, it reminds me of my grandfather:
he had a white moustache, carried a metal cane.

$300 a month and change,
no bed no linens no nothing. i don't even have a desk to write my
nothing poems.

it's the house i fell in love with Amy and
the utilities are not included.

there's a bottle of Jack Daniels whiskey
staring at me with it's plastic eye from the freezer.
there's coca-cola, for mixed drinks.
i see a white hand, a jack and coke in a coffee mug.

grandpa gritton outlived his wife.
and late at night i can hear her
talking to me.
i walk through the park with the maple trees, i can hear her feet
playing with the cement, hear her saying to me, "John Paul."
which is the name my parents gave me on the day i was born.
i see her shadow, watch the sun in her hair
and it is as white as doves.

for a month,
grandpa gritton didn't know his wife had died, slept in the bed
with her corpse until the neighbors
complained about the smell.
slept in the bed, all alone, with grandma.

her pictures are on the referigerator.
behind them is the whiskey.

the beast

2005-09-01T11:27:00.000-04:00

The beast she'll find
burning his mind
bathing in fear
ascendant atman
and the beast she must ride
inside
to see herself at last,
and, seeing, the beast
cocoons and growns
finds peace
stillness
in the silence
of skin
and din
of roaring spirits.
the beast I ride
flowing inside the tides of veins
feeding it, burning air
wastes of tired blood retreat
into my stinging chest.
The beast I contain
with ink and busywork
breathing grey air
and falling in love.
The beast I maintain
with poems howled from the deep
with the tepid bassline of mountains
and falling in love.

The New Age

2005-08-24T17:29:00.000-04:00

This was written by Pancho Aguila as he withered away in solitary confinement in California's Fulsom prison.

THE NEW AGE…

is the distant child crying,
the murmuring of insects in the brush,
the long hair wound round the block,
the comet come, gone and here to stay,
the stars unseen lift up their skirts.

The new age
is the pulse I feel in my agony,
the hopes I hear from the despairing,
the shadow refusing to lie down
as a body swings on a rope,
our lips that smile
before an execution of holy bullets
then part, in a desire
for the age unseen.

The new age
is the love of the people,
the concern for caged minds,
the rally cries for freedom,
the assault on the old,
the break out of the spirit
marking in the total push
out of the stomach of the shark
To see once again
the ancient vision
of universal beauty
sing a star song
spilled thru the night
as bonds vibrating
thru our inner selves.

The new age
is the imperfection of our selves
pushing against the grind
as we kneel to kiss the stone
gushing in a spring
before appearances of virigisn
that will lead armies
to open the gates
where the muscle of a spirit
lies staked to the jungle.

The new age
is the insult we feel before tyranny,
the powerlessness before government,
the passion of twisted lives
natural in a twisted world,
the fear of dying in loneliness
in a world of four billioin,
the surreal untruth of good tongues
hiding in the guntowers
with a crucifixion held to be kissed,
the unbound love for each other
we fear-burying it in quiet
less someone else think we care,
the quiet torture we deny
feeling miserable in our selfishness
as we punch a bag
vaguely familiar as our face
we search fore endless
by the rays of the new sun.

The new age
is where our feet take us
restless as our showes
rattling like false teeth
in an earthquake
we feel deeply
as others lie frozen
in the icebox of television,
where the american dream
hangs on a hook
to be buthered,
sold…
and eaten…
in a cannibal rite
of self-execution

The new age is the mad impulse
of asylum houses,
the strange truth
of psychotic minds,
the natural knowledge
of children…

Obey

2005-07-25T17:17:00.000-04:00

self realization impossible in a sea
of rooms built by men you’ve never met
the walls you can't understand,
influence.
lean if a bar presents itself, drink
others drink,
seems to be the order of the day
obey.
obey.
obey.
obey green bills
house solemn white men
obey your phallus
and spend night after
dreary night following it around
from darkened streets
and sickening parties
shallow selves
centered
obeying animal noises only
terrifyingly 'uninhibited'
hiding behind impossibly high walls
obey finally fucked green tile floor. obey linoleum, bottles of holy beer obey and release yourself into debauchery between the lines, allowed rebellion, freak with no consequences. selves bind to selves excluding watchers, dreamers, stoners. sidelines embrace these moments, and foster an imperialistic cynicism that allows you to finally realize how ridiculous this picture is, created by this time and place and each individual human being in the room could never change any of this. god is our hive mind, we do what's available, we follow the herd especially when it contains those few people we feel comfortable with, and we can never leave their sides even though we have grown to hate them. they could be anybody. but no one would be much better, so why bother. whoever is around is around. obey them.

obey invisible leashes
that tie you to familiarity
with crustacean people
in animal selves
who can't suppress their beast
but try too hard anyway.

the burden of smalltalk
suffocates me.
obey green dreaming
surviving night after empty night
in the blurred cage
of droopy eyed drunken life
paralyzed by desire
and disgust for what
they believe has become
the human condition.

The Ashtray

2005-07-22T12:39:00.000-04:00

the ashtray full of days, butts bathing in ash. soot from thousands of lungfires, cherries eating rat poison, gulp by gulp. this night, every night for months, this table, this ashtray, these people consuming for themselves with each other. using each other, hungry eyes caged by depression, apathy. depend on the unfailing ego. depend on curling smoke hurled across the room, the music to fill the void where conversation died weeks ago.
I looked at alex across the room from me, lengthwise opposing. she met my eyes, stared at them hard, took a drag. she raised one dark eyebrow and reached for the ashtray. For a moment, I searched for the perfect words, to summon her. Gave up quickly, ruthless fantasy.
Henry around the corner cradling his camera. tripods strewn over the floorspace, lights. Life has become a long photoshoot, posed existential boredom, reinforces the haze. He kneeled, focused on Earl looking destracted, exposed. the unblinking lens shuttered and fell silent.
She felt the weight of my gaze still on her. I didn't hide my eyes behind a smalltalk smile, my stare got heavier. She looked at the posters, the ashtray, at my hands rolling a joint, back to the ashtray. She flicked invisible ash off a clean cigarette. Suddenly she returned to my eyes, unafraid.
"Death comes with immediacy. Death comes with your uncontrolled present, which hurdles headlong unstoppably toward the future, toward death. We are slaves to the idea of time that leads you to death." Her voice, oh god, her voice made her ascendancy transparent, gave her away, the voice of an old soul in youth.
I liked to pretend I could keep up with her. I liked the feeling of being able to play her games. "Time is manufactured by society and injected into you at the same time that the myth of cohesive consciousness is injected into your sense of self. The lies at the center of our lives."
"you're so full of shit, jed. you inhabit absolute time. you live from one moment to the next, lusting after each one, slaughtering and dismissing the present." Earl attacked, as she will do.
Henry focused his lens on me and I tried will myself out of existence.
"humble immortality, this moment here and forever. beer and cigarettes. This story has to beginning, no end, it is yours, yours alone, I can't share it with you. Stop trying" she said gently.
I would do anything for you, I said intraskullular. I wish I could say it out loud. I would be anyone for you. Your skin, your voice could justify me, give me leave to exist.
It will never happen. We are alone.
I let mingus fill the room, fell silent. I lit the joint, found solace in acrid smoke. Smoke my companion, my mistress. In this moment, she will never leave me.
In your picked liver, in my blackened lungs, we live. Paralyzed by desire, living in insecurity only enhanced with daily drugs.
The ashtray accumulates her cigarette. Henry and I passed the joint back and forth, I could feel it making my night hazy, could feel my exoskeleton beginning to calcify. I know this feeling well—I will stay silent and cynical all night, full of self loathing, paralyzed by loneliness.
"Don't we have somewhere to go? I've been sitting in this chair all week."
"yeah, governor street. let's go," said Earl.
a hike.

sermon

2005-07-19T11:29:00.000-04:00

Americans herd themselves through cement streets with their eyes on the grime of the city beneath their feet. They have learned that they have to hold their minds clamped tightly to their skull in order to survive a rounanized life within the panopticon of postcapitalist life. Their dreams are imprisoned within their own heads, silenced and repressed so that they can stay numb enough to move through the same rountine every day. But I've been feeling my thoughts vibrating up and down the elastic cosmos. my desk can't hold me anymore. my mind runs from language like a hunted fugitive. I surrender myself to the animal in the back of my head. Humanity is a construct manufactured to justify a life lived devoid of spirit, to rationalize the greyness. It is the sell we wear over our buying selves. Animals are simply the subjects of the natural beauty of the world they inhabit. Americans are the subjects of a controlled economy, and gain meaning mostly from their place within it.

at the corner of truth and voice lies the death of separation, end of apathy and belief in discrete souls. we silence ourselves daily. we silence ourselves with smalltalk.

Language binds us in the selfsame cells
of compartmentalized life
where words are manufactured
by media executives and
white intellectuals backstabbing for tenure.
where words end, thoughts
lose meaning.
The thought of revolution has
left our lexicon
leaving the mass of men
castrated,
destined to spend their lives
strangled by suits pushing forms
down each other's throats.
That we can change the world
by recapturing the words.

The sewers are veins with shit for blood

2005-06-29T14:52:00.000-04:00

The sewers are veins with shit for blood,
and the city only ever inhales.
Trucks fly on fourlane superarteries
delivering loads of Doritos to gaping mouths.
rotting concrete, glass cages with cash registers.
Welcome to the Kingdom of Us,
where we could have made anything,
could have been humans on earth
but were too cheap.
Decided we were content with cheap plastic,
metaphysics,
and gutters.
summon the charcoal and chimneys,
summon the gas stoves and microwaves.
we will eat tonight, don’t worry about that,
keep shopping.
keep shooting.
And someday, we'll move out to the suburbs, dear.

.....
my fluid seeks sewers to feed myself, my city, but these foundational beams of rotting streets destroyed my undercarriage,

the highways pulse with commodities

my house rests between skyscrapers

I can look through my windows to my attorney.

his aggression opposes what in a domestic animal, cold open space, large enough to work with isolation?

city is the possession, the men in it middlemanaging, cubicles.

You have to consume real estate to be human, distance, square footed, in which a beloved kitchenette is heaven, for example.
....

My sewers, my blood, I felt my city around upon me rumbling down upon the long high superways,
I felt my mouths crying for Doritos,
And we exhaled into overbrimming cash registers
that can now buy anything,
can only buy us, reaming our foodstamps over again
Welcome to my house, gridded and grey,
where we could have had a future, we could have been here before,
but we were too cheap.
Give me your kitsch! your scams! your hungry!
Don't worry, inhale, your fiery riots will wait for tomorrow.
we are an island of torment in a sea of white picket topped waved American Dream.
....
The city was there as I was there
flowing inside the shreds of newsprint
soaked in the sludge
of all our industrial and self secretions.
there, my bottom half rubberized, my shirt covered in shit
that steeped down from fifty stories of city.

Some shitleak under 16th street
years of someone’s acid vomit
corroding the pipes.
Leaking into drinking water
obese consumers blindly
wallowing in themselves.
...
our sewers wrap us together
in dreamy abstraction
our faucets rip our outer skin off
every morning,
and pure waterfall flesh
cannot hide behind dirt reality.
Plumbers tie cities together
so that we may roam streets
avoiding the eyes of passersby.
our cities enable solipsistic
self images
masterbatory subcultures
conversation murdered by
perfectly accessorized
pictured people.

Bonaroo trip

2005-06-17T16:01:00.000-04:00

Here's an account of a hard trip I had at Bonarroo, it seemed crazier at the time than when I wrote it up:

We were wandering through a suddenly savage tent city, walking in circles and talking in spirals, descending into exasperated incomprehension, tyler and I suddenly strangers. “How long have I known you? do you know where you’re going?” Chronic disorientation in space and time plagued us—neither of us could hold a moment for long enough to understand it. He questioned me, and I had no answers, and by the time I told him so, the question was gone. All I could get from him was “this is really intense, really weird, are you tripping? I think I’m tripping, I’m not sure.” And, the ever present, “let’s just go back to the van, man. It’ll be a place to ground.”
He had an acryllic face on his belly, nipples for eyes. My chest said “I Love You” in green acrylic paint. I liked mine, he needed his off—paint burning into my skin, he said.
It started raining, and suddenly we were on the right street, I spun around a tent and there in the distance was the van, tent, and just in time, downpour. We flung ourselves into the tent, unstable. Thankful for a destination. He began questioning, and I couldn’t keep up. His mind sent question after question burning out of his mouth into a monologue that needed little encouragement from me. But I didn’t know that, I tried to keep up with him, I got frustrated, I needed to call adam, I needed to piss. I just walked out of the tent, feeling like I was abandoning him, relief flowing out of my bladder in the rain. There’s adam! holyjesus, man, I’m glad he’s walking in, does he have any idea what he’s coming into? What is he coming in from? need a hug. Tyler opens the tent looks at adam, glad. Then he looks at me, standing in the rain. “What’s happening right now? Are we going crazy?” “Yes. we’re going crazy.” “It’s not just me?” “No, I’m going insane with you, we’re going insane together,” and in my heart and maybe maybe-not my mouth “I’m sorry for walking out just now.”
Adam flung himself into the tent after me, and we all three sat in a trinity, legs crossed, listening to ourselves. Tyler questioned endlessly, and adam and I chased his mind through time and through destiny and truth, which circled back on themselves in the great cycle of questions burning through his mind. In the presence of adam, I was no longer frightened and overwhelmed by the questions, and I began to understand the tremendous artistry with which tyler lead himself through a universe suddenly deprived of time and meaning. I wish I could remember all of it, I wish it had all been recorded, but it wasn’t. He asked over again “Is it OK that I’m talking now? Is it OK?” and a series of time questions “How is this happening now? When did this happen? did I already say that, or was I going to?”
Somewhere along the line, we made the momentous decision to go into the van. Adam and I lay in the back, tyler got up front, still talking. His questions slowly became more manegable. Adam began to scat with his voice, singing answers to tyler’s questions, and music became our safety. adam sang “beautiful women, can you hear us calling you, we have song, we have soul?” and suddenly we were singing to the rivers of beautiful earthy girls outside the van. I saw a girl out the windshield, flashed a peace sign and she did too, and my trip morphed to thinking entirely about what kind of energy we were sending out of the van to her—as if our powerful tripping vibes were a beacon for everyone to fall in love with us and us with them, and I began waving things out the window to show that we were good, desirable, come into the van. I waved my hat, then tyler’s knife, a paintbrush, my arm. At some point, Adam took over the talking, began ranting about the right of expression, that expression is all we have and we have it and it’ll never be taken away. I felt the best vibes emanating from him—I felt that he respected me and respected tyler so much he wanted to burst. he began telling us that we are all saints, and then that we were all gods, that we were the trinity, that we were Buddha, and there is Buddha looking at us from outside our windshield! We are surrounded by saints. and I began feeling like god. from then on, my trip was very egotistical—I built myself up to a legend, a god among men. The objects around me became holy icons of pieces of my personality—the hat, the paintbrush, the knife—it didn’t matter to me that only the hat was actually my own. I lined up these things on my chest, and became them. I began to feel strangely masculine in a stereotypical way that when I am not tripping I distain—the Marlboro man machismo that kills. I took the knife and began stabbing it into the table in front of me—stab….stab…then cut, saw, hack. Stop.
Sex, love, my body egresses and entrances, I became a worm eating the soil of human flesh and leaving behind me a trail of the same. I became eros, and in that moment understood that I was desirable. I felt this so strongly that I assumed that it was emanating from the van, summoning humans. “And you’re perverse, so you like women in wheelchairs and who can’t walk!” Adam said to me “Yes” I said, although the thought had never occurred to me before. I guess I’ve just never seen a really attractive girl in a wheelchair, but I unhesitatingly affirmed the fact that I love cripples sexually with my entire being. “How amazingly fucked up it is that people who can’t walk are seen as undesirable” he said.
Adam took up his notebook and began to scribble. I felt sure he was recording me, he wrote, and I was glad of it. I left the van, came across a guy selling didgeridoos. I was instantly enamored of that object, I felt it was transcendent and perfect, and well worth the money—a poor tripping decision. I walked away with it. I walked to the next tent and asked the girl working there for a hug, which she gave me. Then I walked back to the van, victorious with a didgeridoo I couldn’t play. It struck me later that the only reason that object came into my life was that it was phallic and I was tripping.
Coming down was foggy. My brain was completely grey. Tyler sat silent, I don’t know how long he had been silent for. He stared straight ahead. The only thing he would say was “are you guys still tripping?” a question for which there was no reasonable answer. Herbie Hancock played outside the van, one of my favorite musicians, but I felt no urge to go see him play. Adam’s mind was still bouncing around the van—clear, now. Trying to understand what the trip meant. He struggled desperately to make us participate in his energy, but all I could manage was monosyllables. I could see that he needed to rap on about life and expression and love, and I wanted him to. I wished I could’ve rapped back, given him some feedback energy, but I couldn’t. Sometimes I managed a tangled sentence, but my mind was completely absorbed in purging the toxins.
Alex returned to the van to three half naked men sitting in silence with savage distracted looks in their eyes.

A POEM OF WELCOME!

2005-06-10T17:10:00.000-04:00

welcum back from a hooker in Providence, RI

O strange summer night, air taut and dry as a drumskin
Strange thoughts on this night, and the howling of some lost semitruck on 119
The air is thick tonight, meus camaradas, and voiceless, without scent,
Crickets make for me some sandy lullabye for twenty-something nothing
on strange bleached evening, strange summer night.

Why, it was only fifty-one years ago on today the Americans landed on Normandy.
The history channel had men dress up in world war two costumes and act
Mad at one another. I howled at the moldy moon and masturbated into a month-old condom.

In Giza, there's a hooker waiting for me in my room at the Pyramisa Hotel.
She's got the bedsheet pulled up over her breasts, she's looking at me with her
black eyes like she hates me, I think. Little sharp, mean black eyes

Professor Slocombe, it's raining in Boulder, Colorado, and I'm drinking Earl Grey tea. The whole
world is sad today; are you sad with it? It's memorial day and Christ is alive and well in Boulder, Colorado on our sad day, June 10th, 2005, in our mean state.

I've been thinking about kidnapping a Republican. I might kidnap him and make him joyful.
But I realized the only suitable fate is to find some man in a yellow Lacoste polo shirt and loafers
without sox, sedate him and rape him repeatedly.

It's a strange, sad day in Boulder, Colorado. Your mushrooms worked too well,
Professor Slocombe. It's a strange day, and I thought it deserved a poem of welcome.
Welcome back to Providence; somewhere there's a hooker in a dim-lit room, pull the sheet away

uncanny idleness/shadow of death

2005-05-24T19:31:00.000-04:00

dear friends,
have been completely fucked up on drugs, for instance valium which i threw up. they gave me drugs to make me fall asleep and when i woke i was still asleep and the local anasthetic for my teeth made me vomit. there are holes in my gum and i can't get any excercise. i can't take pain-killers. i am allergic to valium, i found. I take baths alone and it's no fun. my cheeks are swollen because of those sinister molars of mine (they have removed a bone from my jaw).
i think about a girl i knew in st. paul and it makes me unhappy.
i wonder, were my wisdom teeth supposed to come out? what is this strangeness, these odd drugs that harken to awful fermentation, dairy and valium make me vomit, et cetera--> this strangeness what strange life! miserable.
perhaps this girl i know in st. paul won't call me anymore. she will see photos with my cheeks like they are and she will remember that i am a little gay and she will no longer want to see me--> she will wonder, "How did he pay for the dentist? Perhaps he gave Dr. Pickles a blowjob as a deductible?" Perhaps she will imagine sordid orgies involving the nurse who had big tits? these blasted wisdom teeth caused an awful breakup with my girlfriend, maybe!
I took a walk and i watched the water run out of the concrete tunnel; (it will never bend to the water). i saw planes in the sky, reminded me of soaring, of the difference between joy and happiness and my lord this strange human vessel! Wha strangeness strange, strange life. Strange!
I called professor slocomb and we had tea together.

something

2005-05-14T21:18:00.000-04:00

The difference between language and number is that one has real existence, but is not truth in the Neitzchian sense; language is artificial and has no real existence. How can truths be carried by illusions and metaphors, and what is carried by number? How can we see the illusionary truths of language without using language? Language, therefore, the birthplace of ideology, becomes the most fundamental and inescapable ideology. This is why we can never live outside ideology. Numbers, however, are not ideologies in of themselves, but signify the ideology of mathematics that Pythagoras gave us. We now believe that truth lies in numbers, through science; the only way to escape ideology, we believe, is through objective science. This is flawed for two reasons: 1. Said proved that objectivism does not exist in science, and 2. science is in itself an ideology. It may, however, be an ideology that leads humanity away from the illusionary truths given by language, and thus the number could potentially replace language as the fundamental ideology from which all ideology is born. However, Father Infinity maintains that it all potentialities (including this one) are in existence. How does this change the perceived role of humanity in the universe? It shifts our role from conqueror (Orientalism) to quantifier. We shall traverse reality, assigning numbers to everything.

Althusser

2005-05-08T05:08:00.000-04:00

Narratives must be read as expressions of some ideology, some set of ruling principles of society. This is because texts are unavoidably read as expressions of an author, who is shaped by their culture to whatever extent we can believe in the power of upbringing and experience in the formation of one’s worldview. The narratives that make their way into the shared consciousness of our communities must share the fundamental common sensibilities of those communities. Most of them take for granted these ideologies are true, even if it is just to the extent that they take for true what they know to be true. The most salient question of the conventional critic at this point becomes: How did these authors learn that what is true is true? However, the more interesting question for us here is the implication: how do narratives go about teaching the reader what truth is? How do narratives reproduce the ideologies that control the masses?

Problem of the week

2005-05-06T13:27:00.000-04:00

hey gang,
-been wondering lately over things; iraq, etc., puzzling over straning barbarism of woman with wide-set eyes and out of focus picture of nephew in hands on cover of New York Times;
-also contemplating the slow, beautiful completion of Woman, or rather i should say Woman completion/likewise the completion of Man, Man completion; a woman and a man a man and a man and woman and woman.
-strange, puzzling completion!
-someone broke Nick Reuter's nose last night at the bowling alley; we were all drunk and i saw the bone beautiful through the skin, the nail that stands up gets hammered down! i thought of bones and breaking and bones spinning in the air in 2001: A Space Odyssey.
-animal noises! such as exist in the death and the maiden! Fucking apes! Broken bones!
-sigh when she gets her period! Fantastic, holy ambiguity! The spaces between the beginnings and ends of your words make my world turn in strange, puzzling soul-continuum! Fantastic work, humans!
-strange completion!
-i am complete as strange ambiguous pantheon collects for single, beautiful infinity-moment! i am complete between bed-spreads! puzzling, holy complete; the complete of infinite fuck continuum!
-i will make my way to your bed again, strange dying of the light! i must.
-when i leave this bed i leave warm. i enter strange world of vast continuum i don't begin to fathom. and when i write your arms around me/in me/(me)/beside me/above me and below it is vaguely threatening!
-make of that what you will, gang--i'm stumped in holy continuum. because meanwhile there's a lady on the cover of the New York Times and only her eyes are in focus. Adoringly yours,
Japles Fantastic

poem v2

2005-05-05T22:25:00.000-04:00

Anyone read Althusser?

Poem
phrase:
colon truth
written slowly, spoken quickly, lived briefly
jabberwocky: story untold understood
lives morph into lies in meta-ink pixels.
Times-new-roman selves
shelved on endless, eternal, unreadable disks-

this data has no birthplace
born recorded,
it means nothing to us.
ignore my name

and twist yourself around
my glowing words.
allow yourself to listen-
the first moment of release
into another's reality
my greyness spread out over
your eartime is our first taste of nirvana
indulgence in escapism
allowable only in institution
dorm room eternities.

Can this acid ink
shatter our suffocating interpellation?
I'll hail you as universal,
and in exchange,
you promise to call me nothing.
I am a piece of paper
and I know you well enough
to know that you can breathe.
your gaze violates me,
your eyes expose every inkstain,
soon, you will have finished with me.

poem v1

2005-05-03T03:16:00.000-04:00

Poem
phrase:
colon truth
written slowly, spoken quickly, lived briefly
jabberwocky: story untold understood
lives morph into lies in meta-ink pixels.
Times-new-roman selves
shelved on endless, eternal, unreadable disks--

this data has no birthplace
born recorded,
it means nothing to us.
ignore my name

and twist yourself around
my glowing words.
allow yourself to listen--
the first moment of release
into another's reality
my greyness spread out over
your eartime is our first taste of nirvana
indulgence in escapism
allowable only in institution
dorm room eternities.

poem

2005-05-02T12:57:00.000-04:00

this is only the beginning. what is the rest? the question keeps me up at night.

Poem
phrase:
colon truth
written slowly, spoken quickly, lived briefly
jabberwocky: story untold understood
lives morph into lies in meta-ink
pixels.
Times-new-roman selves
shelved on endless, eternal, unreadable disks
murderer:

i like to fuck

2005-04-30T14:15:00.000-04:00

i like to fuck under the covers that were ancient progenitors madness type sheets, such things as are found in outside-Cairo bazaars that stink like camel (and there are a few dark-skinned teenagers fighting each other throwing thick fists, laughing--I've seen this). i like such things and i have placid look in eyes; she tells me my eyes are turning green, i smile because i've always wanted eyes that change color and now all i care about is taking a hot shower with her, who looks good naked.
there is no point to this. it is madly obscure, it is not Joycean because it can not hope to be the thing itself. my honor's project is on Samuel Beckett and JAmes Joyce and why are they such different sorts of men and yet both Irish and even Dubliners, Samuel Beckett fuct Joyce's daughter and they nearly got married and anyone who has an eye for such things could tell that Beckett wanted to fuck James Joyce and maybe they did once or twice who knows. I am reading brilliant novels and these men are highlighting for me that i am no genius .it is a thought that terrifies me.

i like to fuck

2005-04-30T14:14:00.000-04:00

Show and Tell

2005-04-26T18:13:00.000-04:00

Written last summer, shared with you now.

My feet held the asphalt down
I loved the longhaired strangers around me
they would not talk to me--
they were
scared, dancing
didn’t know how much I needed them
How much I was there for them, scared.

Look, cop, I’m smoking a joint!
Dancing,
look at me from behind walls of truncheon
riot mask
iron face
Just in this instant, I refuse.
To be ruled by your laws.
There was a bag of pure white joints
holding the asphalt still,
And I was in love with them.
She had dreadlocks,
shocking beautifulkind face,
and a lighter.
I was in love, scared.
I wish she had known that I was alone,
needed her then.

We were trying to show the world
that we existed.
They couldn't see us over the broad blue shoulders.
Mutants who hid their faces
but only from pepper spray.
Could blind you with contacts

Jail was disappointingly uneventful.
Just a touch dehumanizing.
We weren’t treated like real criminals.
Guys in the bus just sarcastic,
like me,
not fascinating, I didn’t care about them.
In the back of the bus, I entered a daze
I’m still trying to fight my way out of
a week later.

I just can’t focus anymore.
I fade in and out of conversations.
Where is my passion?
Did I leave all of it on the corner of 5th and Market?
Do I need more sleep?
I could use a joint, a long embrace,
constant needs. Not desires, really.
I feel translucent.

4/20

2005-04-21T12:29:00.000-04:00

What a 4:20 trip that was. Our only holiday, for us teaheads. She discharged me delerious at fourten in the morning, me high on her, delerious very confused. by the time I breathed and put on my shoes, it was 4:17--I had to get to the main green, I ran there. i forgot to get the people I said I was going to get, started this trip on my own, alone, running through fratrow alone in the death hours of the morning. I got to the main green to see a cluster of stoners, none that i knew that well, I smoked with perry and Arjuna, more quicker fivebowls in fiveminutes. By the end, I was spinning around in circles, disoriented, saying "what?" to a tree. Arjuna had a bubbler, cop walked through, we began to walk out. Moment of decision: which way to leave the green. In my delelrium, I didn't follow perry, walked towards the rock, hoping to hit my favorite smoking spot, but not able to vocalize that, just walking. Arjuna followed me, carrying the bubbler. Moment of decision: I wanted to say "give me the bubbler, I got a pocket, there's a cop behind us" I didn't say anything, my mind moves slow. he spat the water out, cop behind us yelled something authoritarian, and Arjuna, bless him, bolts off running across the quiet green, through the college gates, up hill up the street, cop hightailing it after him, him carrying the bubbler like a baton. He was clearly outrunning the cop, but then again, who outruns a cop? I felt horrible, shouldve been me running, why are people always taking the rap for me? have I no karmic responsibility? I lead him into that situation, perhaps, and by the time I realized, nothing I could do. I walked home alone when I most needed to someone to keep my mind grounded. I didn't sleep until 7:30, driven insane by alone thoughts in the early morning stillness.

Woke up to a bright and beautiful Earth Day, spent the day making hemp chords on the grass and smoking blissfully. Climbed a tree with Alex and realized I might be acting like a heavy duty asshole right now, began to make plans to beg for forgiveness. Or maybe I should just ride this thing out, whatever the hell that means. Heavy communication problems right now.

I saw Bob Weir doing the greatfuldead thing last night, orgastic show, drove me to the edge of my endurance and capacity for beauty. I need sleep, but I've got mad real life shit to do today.

I am so contributing to your blog

2005-04-17T11:33:00.000-04:00

We sat on the porch making porch swing music before I hated spring when he asked me, name your favorite plant in the whole backyard.

The backyard in its absolute entirety? It was difficult.

Dad liked the pine trees. They are nice, he said.

Is that all you like about them?

They are nice, he said.

As nice as peaches or a piano, or Alfred the cocker spaniel? Are they between the levels of niceness present in an individual who is exceptionally nice and an individual who is only somewhat nice? And how can a tree be nice anyways? How would you classify the niceness of a tree, Dad? Hello?

He asked me what my favorite plant was, in the whole backyard. I think I said wisteria.

Wisteria, free of domestication, its own unaltered species, could climb, albeit very slowly, to the tops of thick Georgia trees. More considerate than kudzu, it would not choke the tree to crawl towards the atmosphere. Beautiful, it would wind itself gently to hang loose from taut branches, its purple flower clusters swinging from stem spines.

But I hate pine trees. They are ugly.

Dad said quiet, you will hurt their feelings.

I apologized to each tree in turn. I believed they forgave me until I was fifteen and realized trees do not have central nervous systems, and therefore lacked the capacity to comprehend spoken language.

THIS IS ANOTHER TRUE STORY

2005-04-16T15:35:00.000-04:00

i have a friend who is living in Thailand right now. A while back she lost sight of who she was, now she's strange. Anyway, she's on a beautiful beach right now and the descendents of the people who served British people mai-thais are serving her mai-thais and maybe the world is fucked, i don't know.
but anyway, one day jack osbourne showed up at the beach. this isn't a lie. She got to be friends with him and the model he had been following around. Together I see them or rather i see them together, i imagine them sitting in chairs on the beach and the indo-china sun is a ruby red, red like a strip of red silk in some vietnamese plantation run by a french lady, they're drinking mai-thais.
and i wonder if jack osbourne knows that the beautiful woman he has been following around sometimes gets the shits. I wonder if he knows that she bleeds on a monthly basis from her vagina. i wonder if he knows that sometimes she doesn't wipe and she'll get a big nasty brown stain in her undies. and this friend of mine, her name is willi... she poops every day and she has no idea.

bedsheets

2005-04-15T10:58:00.000-04:00

My bedsheets universalize me tonight
right into "un"you
breathing air in my lungs
until I black out
to bathe in "your" light.
Think how many cappelaries you have-------my cappelaries in lung pockets sprung packets prucking sackiks!
then think how well they show holy patterns
on your face
(cerebral cortex)

My Life Plan

2005-04-11T23:36:00.000-04:00

And my carrear dreams died.
Ambition for American sucsess clouded over
by a new comprehension of human society
The need for community,
our herd mentality
imagine bands of beast men
surviving nature struggling to exist
only to smother ourselves in the artifice of individualism
and content with cutting holes in cement
to plant trees in.
A reality paved over--
but for a purpose:
to live in mass.
This is our purest instinct
and it drives me now.

church

2005-04-10T10:44:00.000-04:00

To go visit your god sunday morning
unlied purity, true belief seems your real
ticket to heaven-non transferable
for the low, low price of tithe
and telling a darkened screen how dirty you are.
God guides Americans through freemarket life
sustains genuine hope
and makes people easy to control.
and this country was built on a church
bound by a preacher standing on
The soaring pulpit
whose excuse is to be twentyfive feet closer to a god
invented by an institution
a god who has time to see your every sin
who knows your every lecherous thought,
who sees you masturbate every time you do it
This is the preacher's god, the ultimate surveillance,
who watches you from inside your own head.
the stark white ministers finger stuck straight
shouting down Satan and Santa Claus
for a watchful god that
can see you drooling in your pew
can see you rattling your coins in the tray.
So dear jesus, are you comfortable
handcuffed to your cross?
the patron saint of deathrow
injections of cold metal pierce palms in
the execution chamber with
a oneway mirrored gallery
to rub the execution in the face of VIPs,
the victim's families
ejaculating over the thought of some cosmic justice
achieved in the state's needle
the Roman nail
the silent death
of pew life.

Fuck the present

2005-04-08T12:12:00.000-04:00

Fuck the present. It waits in quivering anticipation for Gatsby's green light, wallowing in it's own semen of a thousand wasted teenage kleenex. And then Morson ridicules us for perverting it into what we wish or what we fear? The present is infinitly thin, like a line, like the wire around your neck, cutting into your skin, pulling tighter, tighter, and you can only get a moment's breath, a "present," a repreive from death by relaxing, giving in to it, just long enough so you can hurl your elbow into your attacker's nuts. And then you wonder why your own genitals are so brused--yet you (me, electrons, and The Pope) spend every moment hurling your fist into your crotch, taking huge gasping breaths, trying to create a "here and now." Mostly because the Government's been telling you that you actually *want* to live in the present since you've been a baby, denying you your past, owning your future. You deserve more breathing room in time than this infinitly small point you've been given (and you have to pay taxes on even that!) Fuck the present.

On the Run By Pink Floyd

2005-04-06T11:04:00.000-04:00

This was written stoned immaculate while listening to Pink Floyd's "On the Run" (On the Dark Side of the Moon) on repeat

Beethoven's fiddle
lands on his feet in a crouch
dusts himself,
breathes and sees:
german airport,
runs,
thrusts himself again and again
into the running reality ambiance,
he begins to fly
running messiah,
electrifies nighttime daydreams
more, more,
highlighter around her ear,
archenemy laugh:
funkadelic ecstasy elvis
kicks him in the nuts,
helicoptering laughing
illuminates the dayglo condoms
in a drawer down the hall,
explodes them.
James Brown,
helicoptered in by health-ed exstrippers,
gyrating over a crowd of groping fans
this is our end!
archenemy laugh!
flyby, fakeout,
twisting in for the fatal whirling punch,
missed, fell in to far distance over leftsholder
coming back-a boomeranged
archenemy laugh!
two of the four hoursemen are murdered!
police'll be here soon.
Cocktail party rubble.

leave the film running, it'll start again after time,

bolditalic computerfuck

2005-04-05T00:30:00.000-04:00

i was using SPSS 11.0 in order to calculate the standard error of the means of a sample, i realized that i loved my computers flat screen and the lovely way it glows at me. me and the computer; i tore off the plastic from her beutiful body and off with hard angles and hewlitt-packard ensigns; i saw under the plastic a beautiful mess of red, green and white wires and pressed my tongue to the screen and i fucked that computer until i was trembling and my hand on the desk it was beet red i couldn't stop moving it, i found my pink, naked ass still pumping in and out long after the beautiful moment had ended. the computer gave me a blank glow: i knew she had used me just like all of the other boys who had fucked her. i loved her more, somehow. Love,
JAPLES T> FANTASTIC
P>S>_"T" AS IN "THE"

Gorillas

2005-04-02T14:50:00.000-05:00

What kind of servitude do you have to be under to believe in God? A god outside of you? If god is not in your eyes, He is nowhere, so don't believe in god, believe that you are god. The pope has no allegiance to your passion.

If I were a gorilla, I'd be at the bottom of the hierarchy, the opposite of the Alpha Male. This is because I spend too much time thinking about where I would be in a hierarchy of gorillas.

I spent all night chasing sounds in and out of reality. Heartbeats, earth tremors, dances became vibrating air against supersensitive skin became slowdances of pulse leaping in and out of your capillaries *categories*. Despisetories, depostitories of despise. Desuppositories, where you shove your existential angst up your asshole. Despisetoriums, sanatoriums for the despised. Depositiories for the night noise of nextdoor construction of some bullshit called poststructualism eating it's own tail, picking it's skeletotal spine out of it's nervesockets. I'm devolving into my own devourment, and I’m choking on my own Barthes. The devourment is the true government of love that will some day devour the facade of government enshrined in painfully opaque white. Faces the color of modern death masks, the Phantom of the Opera.

on page a4

2005-03-30T14:36:00.000-05:00

if you look in the NY times for the day of March 30, 2005, you will find an article about the United States of America (America the Beautiful America the Brave Free, Free America SoarLikeTheEagleThatYouAre America, soar to the tops of this cathedral of ours, yes, this same America). You will be pleased to note that the newspaper that printed the picture of a palace home of the Krygzstan president under construction is funded by an American grant; Jesus bless you America (!) cum in my face (!). America is both my mother and my savior, like Marianne in Sons and Lovers. America has the most beautiful rounded hips and I have plunged deep, deep into America.
On page a4 you will read how a while ago a president signed a bill that made a grant that funded a paper that printed a picture that made democracy democracy holy democracy as such in the streets of Beirut, Lebanon (author's note, some of you might note that democracy was not in GrenadaCubaThePhillipinesVietnamKoreaBrazilChileAfghanistan&c; listen you pinko commie batards we're beyond that, now; i wouldn't take it back for anything, not with the fire in us now). This made my eagle soar to the top of the Cathedral of St. Paul where I went to Easter Mass.
On page a6 there was an article about the Ousted Prime-minister of Krygzstan; he is in exile; he announced yesterday that he may resign. I was fascinated that my mind had wandered across America's beautiful breasts and had come to rest on an article about the Prime-minister of Krygzstan who may resign, two pages later. First and foremost, I was instructed of holy America holy holy holy America we're all right, after all because of a picture in a paper, a grant, hookers in the streets of Bishkek, Krygzstan, &c. everything will be OK democracy is stirring in the negroe corners of the awful world. Second, I was informed that the Prime-minister of that country announced yesterday that he will most likely resign.
My eagle in my cathedral in St. Paul, MN, and our brave soldiers in Iraq and I'm happy, happy, happy are you happy? A voice played in my head and then I spoke these words:

I don't like war; I'm a peaceful man. But I think you need to be able to defend yourself.

I was a political science major in college. In college I got drunk and never got laid. Defense and grants and pictures and papers and ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
This afternoon I took a nap and had a dream: in my dream I was in Budapest with a couple of hookers. We got drinks at a bar with leather sofas. The bill was $400 American. I shouted at the manager, "You motherfucker." I was wearing a tee-shirt with white stains on it and brown stains, too, maybe from picking coffee beans and I was shouting things in Spanish on my way out the doors which only opened when an old lady at a desk pressed the button. Read page a4, then read a6; there are savages about.

In The Belly of the Beast

2005-03-22T18:57:00.000-05:00

This sea of cubicles
this vaulted cathedral of capitalism
defined by fivefootfive fakecloth walls
bosses harvesting the fluorescent fields of the new InfoEconomy
drifting through cubilcles drinking acid coffee
Emptyeyed men blinded by the copymachine glare
caught in catchphrases about productivity
entangled in minderbinder economics,
shoving numbers into crannies;
spirit money that never will exist
is juggled across semipermeable bank accounts
Competative streamlined downsized brains
bicker like snivvling hyenas over carrion
like starving prisoners battling over messhall fare.
Many a good pen died in that fight,
battling neon paper,
jobs outsourced to eye-irradiating screens
White collars tighten, necks bulge, veins cry out for freedom
This is the copymachine slavery of the information economy
this is your life's work,
your contribution to time,
chasing someone else's photocopied dreams
feeling boss watching you waste paidtime.
lost in the trembling cells
you will die here.

Democracy Matters Announcement

2005-03-21T11:17:00.000-05:00

It's very important that everyone (if anyone reads this blog) to go to the Underground on Wed. night at 9:00 pm. Myles Lennon will be rhyming, which, if you've never seen him before, is the most amazing thing you will ever see in your life. I will also do a few poems which I hope will go over well.
Peace
Jed

Clean Elections, Dirty Music and Ex-Cons
WEDNESDAY 9pm
free @ the underground

hip-hop and spoken word spotlighting the Rhode Island Clean Elections campaign and the campaign to end felon disenfranchisement

feat. hip-hop from Broad St. Studio, word! poets and the grandstylings of Andrew Fox

if you like democracy, or are pissed about the fact that 20% of black men in rhode island can't vote, if you don't like democracy but you like hip-hop and talent, if you think corporations shouldn't write laws and that 'one man one vote' should mean more than 'one dollar one vote,' if you like poetry and impassioned people, and/or if you have sympathy for a group of idealistic kids that've been trying to run an all-out statewide campaign out of their own pockets and on their own steam....

then come show support show love.

cosponsored by students for sensible drug policy and democracy matters

for more info call @ 510.914.1200
www.cleanelectionsri.org

Hydro Plane

2005-03-21T01:08:00.000-05:00

Hydro Plane

I saw hydra on a six dimensional plane

And sky upon hydro when the blue world was feigned

Life in dark light

The lefts right when relativity reigns

On white panes of a window behind the patterns in my void

Images vibrating in space don’t avoid

My dead side beside a bed side reverie

Reveres revelation

Mental matter—electrical summation

Sight selects satiation

Like nation building

To scrape a sky that reflects in a puddle’s eye

-i-I-eye am eyes see

and hear a somatosensory smear

of voltage across a bipolar membrane

loving and hating water

hovering a hydroplane

submerged on the hydra’s plane

Cave pt 1

2005-03-18T15:14:00.000-05:00

And you will be seen
Paralyzed by the teacher's droning voice
These are the best days of your life
forced regurgitation of
propaganda disguised as facts
tests graded by security cameras
Rows of ideas withering on the vine
held parallel by wardens holding your minds in line.
you'd escape,
but you'd starve to death as soon as severed
from the teat of this steel cafeteria.
Here, you learn who the master is-
he wrote your textbooks,
and so he blinds you,
grinding numbertwo graphite into your eyes
his eyes are your shackles because
his lackeys see your every
impure thoughtcrime.
Your history is on loan from him.
Your ink is his black blood
Your ideas are his veins,
Your arteries pump his eyes
Seeing your every heartbeat
walk, chained man, walk.

THE SQIRT-THRUST OF A REALLY FUCKING GOOD ORGASM

2005-03-17T12:18:00.000-05:00

i spoke to a deaf friend of mine today. he explained to me that his brother Claudius had put poison in his ear while he was asleep. he can't speak to people anymore. when people speak to him now he sees that a mouth is much like a jellyfish and that we are all animals and all made of stars. he runs a newspaper and his newspaper doesn't touch the people in the space between their breasts so that they suck in their breath. these things made me sad.
i was reminded that hamlet saw his father on the balcony and saw that claudius must die. i am reminded that hamlet held a lawyer's skull in his hands and wondered deep like everything is made of stars. hamlet loved ophelia. and in the space between his father's ears was the poison but more so in the space between his ears it was holy holy holy and claudius sleeping with your mother answers any questions in the holy space between your beautiful poisoned ears.

I heard the words on the street

2005-03-17T01:45:00.000-05:00

I heard the words on the street, coming out of mouths of two apparently middleclass, middleaged, middlemanagement white guys, simultaneously: "you are Iran."
Fuckina, I ran. I ran like the revolution was being won in my colon.
And running, and running past swimming pools, suburbs, libraries, I saw men in slacks raise their fists.
And running, and running on white clad feet, padded, protected, and insulated, I ran like the revolution could.
And I ran with the revolution, she showed me fear, anger, and how to kill her,
How to run instead of fight
How to rule instead of lead
.

Elane Brown

2005-03-14T12:47:00.000-05:00

On Wednesday, March 16th from 7 to 9 p.m. in MacMillan 117, author and former Black Panther Party leader Elaine Brown will speak on "New Age Racism" in MacMillan 117 (Starr Auditorium). Brown is the author of "The Condemnation of Little B" and "A Taste of Power: A Black Woman's Story," and she has worked with and written extensively about American justice on behalf of poor and black children. There will be a question and answer session and book signings immediately following the lecture. This event is free and open to the public, so come early and bring questions!

Co-Sponsors of this event include: Students for Sensible Drug Policy, The Brown Democrats, The Brown Lecture Board, Women Students at Brown, The Undergraduate Financial Board, The Sarah Doyle Women's Center, The Third World Center, The Office of Institutional Diversity, The Office of the Dean of the College, The Office of Campus Life & Student Services and The Center for Race and Ethnicity.

for more info contact Rebecca_Dumas@brown.edu

Dear Mr. President

2005-03-13T13:53:00.000-05:00

Dear Mr. President,
What proof can you give me that you exist?
because I've never seen you
fall in love.
And every time you fall in life
your old boys catch you.
Just to get at the black blood of the earth.
I don't care who you are.
Because I'd rather know the person reading this poem
than you.
Because it doesn't matter who you are.
Because donkeys are elephant food
and I'm a vegetarian, anyway.
how do you kiss with that sneer?
You live the history of your skin,
but America wants you to fall in love.
Sincerely,
periodexclamationpoint.!

The New Panopticon

2005-03-12T12:53:00.000-05:00

Friends, the society we live in is nothing if not imprisoned. The last twenty years has seen an explosion in the rates of incarceration, while crime rates have remained steady. At this rate, in ten years, every American will either be in prison or a guard beating the shit out of them. This won't happen because America thrives on the facade of freedom, which can only be maintained if the middle class ignores the penal system. The justice system is racist, classist, vindictive, and unthinking.

To be convicted of a felony in America is to lose all hope. It is difficult or impossible for people leaving prison to find a job, to be self sustaining. Of course, they didn't gain any skills or education in prison. Excons can't even vote--they are systematically disenfranchised and dehumanized. And so, rates of recidivism (people returning to prison after a short time on the outside) are huge and growing. How would you make it on the street after fifteen years in prison, after fifteen years of being a number, a beast in a cage? No family, no job, no home. Back to the joint, back to the cooler.

The first step is to change the laws, especially the drug laws. Prisoners sentenced for drug offenses constituted the largest group of Federal inmates (55%) in 2001, down from 60% in 1995. Drugs? White people smoke, a lot more than black people, and don't worry a damn about getting arrested.

Then, to change what incarceration means. People should be able to get an education, to gain skills, to introspect and find themselves in writing, in art, in something meanigful. Education in prison works--for every dollar spent on education, recidivism rates nosedive.

But it's not about that. It's not about the people. It's about the right of the government to declare a human a beast, to remove their name and their being, to lock them in with a mass of despirate, abusive men and guards to fend for themselves. Sexual abuse is rampant, and is perpetrated by guards as well as inmates.

There's so much wrong with this shit, I've got to stop before I lose control.

the story of the smily face with the embarassed expression

2005-03-10T00:08:00.000-05:00

if you click on comments for the blog there are little expressions and one of them is a little smily face that looks emberassed and we have anthropology together; he told me the story of when he was so emberassed. see we got a drink together but i'm not gay, don't worry about me.

all right
he had always had a yellow face and that night she showed up wearing a low-cut blouse. she had a pink smily face the smile was a little curly smile like she knew something secret. the two smily faces kissed and she stuck her tongue which was strangely imperfect red in his mouth and grabbed his yellow smily dick and he made the expression mentioned above. that's the story.
that and then he was not emotionally involved and his roommate took the pink smily face home and made her bend over and had sex with her in her bottom.
time heals all wounds, tho.
they forgot about the pink smily face and one night yellow smily face got too drunk and got in bed with his roommate. they lay there until the sun rose and yellow smily face went on a walk to sober up.
"I'm going to try to sober up, man."
"That's all right," said his roommate

bureaucratic rage

2005-03-09T20:34:00.000-05:00

bureau-crazy RAGE

The power structure the POWER structure and I’m staring at his bureaucratic red face and tie white buttons blue hair and Brown copywrighted 1780something did anyone realize they were sponsoring this and where’s my teacher they never taught me once about where my money was going the –how many tens of thousands –yours—their budgets in 40,000x7,500 how many zeroes is that—does a BillioN mean anything to you anyways…I’m in the middle of it, part of, invested in it and so are You—and they didn’t even tell us, it would upset the balance…he’s turning the pages now, in the background, and I caught my mind wondering to rage, but I can’t maintain the anger- never was sustaining—not when I’m IT

Aces

2005-03-08T12:55:00.000-05:00

This is longish, but worth it:

Holy are the achieving aces
masked hot potato players
blaming eachother’s ugly ties.
learned fashion from an embalmer.
Accounting from a poet, the bard Enron
barded beardly wired wild eyed prophet of eternal profits.
Huge vaults—defined by fivefootfive cloth walls.
The phoenix busts boxoffice records again,
making god into a corporation again,
flying into acid raves and copyrighting ecstasy again.
The pipe organ converts the masses,
the soaring pulpit
whose excuse is to be 25 feet closer to God.
And you build sky-scrapers!

omni are the achieving aces
midwifing the earth with syringes;
drunken ribosomes of wheat
increase yield for subsidies not to sell.

Where are the achieving aces
who leave the work to black spades
covered in tar at the end of the day
from paving the world over
painting darkened poems through cities
through trembling canyons of glass and shit.

Unholy watering: burning bushes of Columbia
men hooded to beasts,
humiliated Christlike Muslims guantanamoed
praying to Mecca McDonalds, facing Miami.

Holy are the achieving aces,
We love you for our umbilical paycheck
predigested food straight into our starving gut
and ferment to make us vomit and forget.
Forbid us our earthly inheritance,
our dirt and our air.
One day the malls will rise up.

here we are:
aces, back to back aces, high
first class jets lousy with ties
semenspreckled underwear
unbelievable pleats irradiated
cotton genome shifted shirt
sound lives iPodified
botox foreheads commodified
grey brains starched and wrinkleless.

Trumphant, these transcend, ascend
on the shoulders of degrees
from ivied masturbation chambers
theorizing while being fed
cafeteria silver spoons flying

Grave Yard Text Books Written In Un See (K)ing Ink
Head Stones Held In Rows Of Ideas Drying On the Vine
Held Parallel By Grave Tenders Just Ifying Us In Death
Hoeing Identical Death Seeds With Ink Bleached Garden Rakes. (You)

epitaphs dulled by incessant rubbings
stroking others dying words
to darken the negative space
telling the hive-mind of humanity
nothing
that couldn’t be better told
by the highwayworker’s spades
the taxidriver’s air freshener,
the trucker’s crowbar
making a living
a corner of society that belongs to them
real estate in ideas.

And so here I stand
sitting in a classroom stuck in gridlock
pergatoried in acid drizzle
my body rots away from under me
my crotch overgrown with moss.
slippery leather insole
surviving puddle after puddle after endless tunnel.
education is priceless in America,
just like Mastercard.
For everything else, there’s your desk job:
tie, watercooler in the breakroom…

Many a good pen died in that fight.
The theater of war:
ink, neon paper,
mostly eye irradiating screens.

and outside the untouched truth
looms over our workday.
the truth that we’ve sold out.
that we do the same thing every day.
the aces have settled down, but the world
is just as overwhelming as it used to be.
we sit at info-mirrors
perhaps working for a cause
which is forgotten after an hour of business-arranging
word hammering
shoving numbers into crannies.

the only thing driving us are pure moments of communication
achieved in life being lived in common.
aces flipping over aces in shared agony.

Events & Announcements

2005-03-04T12:54:00.000-05:00

Poetic Terrorism

2005-03-03T20:12:00.000-05:00

Welcome to Poetic Terrorism: a new method of communication. A new vocabulary for resistance. We’re opening a new front in the war against soundbytes and corporate catchphrases, because it is impossible to think when your words are controlled by discourse that is manufactured by imperialist corporations and sold to us wholesale in our schools and TVs. Bullshit shoved down our throats by government spokespeople and paid advertising: WE (you) have something to say, SAY IT!

Poetic Terrorism is profoundly nonviolent. It is the resistance of our voices. We are controlled by a submersion tank of manufactured ideas--by the media repeating the talking points of the government.

An exquisite seduction carried out not only in the cause of mutual satisfaction but also as a conscious act in a deliberately beautiful life—may be the ultimate Poetic Terrorism

-- Temporary Autonomous Zones, Ontological Anarchy, and Poetic Terrorism

Poetic terrorism is about bringing the art of resistance into every facet of our lives. Live your life loudly. There is no becoming, no revolution, no struggle, no path; already you’re the monarch of your own skin—your inviolable freedom waits to be completed only by the love of other monarchs: a politics of dream, urgent as the blueness of sky.--Hakim Bey

Poetic Terrorism is a means to achieve ontological anarchy. Ontological anarchy is freedom from prepackaged states of being. Our ontological state is our state of being: the massive, unwieldy lie that is your sense of cohesive selfhood. Every day, you struggle to define yourself in some pattern of relations with the society around you. This occurs through the accumulation of material, exposure to cultural capital (which is today just a Hollywood commodity), and, most of all, confining yourself to the roles that you are TOLD you should fill. Ontological anarchy is freedom from all this bullshit. It recognizes that none of us are unified, cohesive beings, and allows us to be whoever we are from moment to moment without worrying. It allows us to be present in the present, instead of acting from a preconceived artificial state of being.

Until we can start nationwide dialogue, until we can truly unify, create a common consciousness of resistance, there will be nothing but despair in the left. Until we realize how widespread discontent is, we will never be able to create a common vision.

What will this Blog do?

Poetic Terrorism exists to begin building a new dialogue about politics, culture, economies, and the media.

However, Poetic Terrorism is also a place to bring dialogue into real action. Along with a daily update, this blog will provide a calendar of events, issues, and happenings for the politically and artistically active. To submit an event, email the date, time, location, and description to PoeticTerrorism@gmail.com

peace
Jed, Myles, Yesenia, John Paul

insertion penetrate

2005-03-03T18:45:00.000-05:00

listen i thought i'd begin the festivities with an emotionally dry commentary on the current situation in iraq, corporate rule, petroleum, the environment, the zapatistas, who am i what the fuck am i doing with my life does anything i do really matter, love your huckabees and masturbate to the girls in the commercials, america when will you send your eggs to india, the cia sold crack to black ghettos to buy Lay-Z-Boys, christ we're all going to die people are fighting wars over water the media are lying to us my grandma died on Tuesday and i think i'm in love spring is coming and the snow is melting in quiet patches and the grass and the leaves look like death.
no really i guess what this is, is a question more than anything... is the idea to point things out, to discuss all of this monstrous shit in the world, or is it more to write about it? I can write mad poetry about this crazy place crazy crazy crazy also everything under the sun and maybe the language will bend to my savage sub-culture erection. YOURS SINCERELY,
JOHN PAUL