Enter IT, enthusiastic. Faces audience and looks at audience happily, and then speaks directly to audience.

IT: OK. You want to play?
     OK - I’m IT.
     I’ll be blind a while
     and I'll count
     and you go hide. OK?
     Yippee!

IT closes eyes and places hands over eyes and counts.

IT: One..two...
      Go hide!
     Three...four...five...
      I’m IT!
     Six...seven..eight...nine...
     Oh, this is fun...
     Aaandddd - Ten!
     I’m IT and I’m coming!

IT takes hands off eyes, opens eyes and looks about. IT looks with enthusiasm.

IT: Oh...where are you?
      I’m IT and I search
      and I find you nowhere...

      OK...I’ll search again...

      I search over hills and in parks
      I look behind bush and below benches
      but you are nowhere to be found.

      OK...I’ll search again...

IT looks about on stage, pretending to climb over a hill, or a tree, and so forth...looking...searching...

Enter THAT.
THAT observes IT searching, for some time - and then speaks.


THAT: What are you doing?

       IT: Who, me?

THAT: Yes, you.
              There’s no one else here.
              So what are you doing?




IT *(coming close to THAT): I’m searching. I’m IT
                                                    and I’m at play, you see.
                                                   You know - hide and seek.
                                                    I’m looking.

THAT: I see. And your name?

        IT: They call me Life.

(Silence)

IT: And your name?

THAT: They call me Death.

(Silence.)

Life: I suppose we should embrace.

Death: Yes, we should. Come closer.

(Life moves forward, closer to Death, and they embrace.)


Death: That is nice and warm.

Life: That is ****** cold!

Death: Hug me hard
            Till we are one.

Life: Like dissolving into each other?

Death: Yes - like two become one.
             That sort of imagery, that manner of speech.
             Those delightful cliches.

Life: Should we turn off the lights then?

Death: Yes, we should.
             It’s no longer child’s play, is it?

Life: No. It’s no longer child’s play;
         There’s another 4-letter word for play
         One could use - but play will do.

Death: Yes. So let’s turn off the lights.

(Lights fade.)

Life: Maybe we should draw the curtains as well?

Death: Yes, we should. (Shouts) CURTAINS!


*(End. Stage is in complete darkness. Curtain.)

Nasrudin is in his early twenties
and he works at the warehouse

See, each worker
lifts 3 sacks a time  
and puts them on a pile
and walks back for more

but see Nasrudin
how he works -
he carries just 1 bag
and puts it on a pile
and walks back for 1 more

Now, says the foreman
Why is it you only carry 1 sack
When others carry 3 at a time?

Sir, says Nasrudin
*I carry 1 bag a time
and make 3 trips in all
But the others
unlike me
are just
too lazy to make 3 trips

I write mostly
to please myself
but the Academy
of Dr Poets
said:
That’s a gross form
of showy *******

so once in a while
I write to
give you
O most gentle reader
some form of pleasure
so that it brings us
together
into a sort of
respectable ***-elebration
and the esteemed Academy
some form of ******

I write mostly
to please myself
but the Academy
of Dr Poets
said:
That’s a gross form
of showy *******

so once in a while
I write to
give you
O most gentle reader
some form of pleasure
so that it brings us
together
into a sort of
respectable ***-elebration
and the esteemed Academy
some form of ******

you know, people like
to write about their lives
in terms of likes and dislikes
about their their loves and hates
another poem about
how they feel today
which is the same as they did yesterday
and no prizes for guessing
how they’d feel the next day -  
and as you know
how people like to write
about truth, justice, and love
and about the dark corners in the mind
about their religion, their nations and eternity?
their culture, their identity, their sanctity? -
but me, I like to write
about nothing
cos I’m just the same
as them other poets
(we’re all human)
for all that is nothing too
so in natural conclusion
Socratic fashion
or Aristotelian school
so when I write about nothing
I write about what them other poets write about
and when they write,
like me,
they too write about nothing

*We all do, vainly speaking

this is an educated
refined, cultured, poem
fit to clothe a queen’s body
radiant enough to sit on a king’s head
no doubt,
the king’d head on a silver plate

this is elegant, truthful,
and most dignified as robes
and gold threads on a priest’s mitre
and ermine round the waists

this is immaculate,
probing, penetrative and sedate
so well-constructed, traditional
so cast into meter and scanned
so organised and adept
as a gynaecologists’s fingers

and last but not least
it is reverend, respectful and silent
as full of respect as are holy poems and sonnets
and poems all fit into good form and shape
and thus it refrains from 4-letter words
though - ****! - sometimes it slips and falls
like a drunkard, into the gutters

*but it is the fault of the terrain

you know it’s possible
in some reality-branch of Super Science
when you’ve just got out of bed
and then you are in the kitchen
there is still a you
lying in bed
as is another before
you went to bed
and so there is another
in the kitchen
while you are in the car
a you in every
second split into countless fractions
as in picture frames
of the journey you take

you get the drift -
but which you gets the drift?
every you drifting in space

but what of it? you ask
of this possibility
of multiple realities?

Well, it’s when I knew I was *******
that’s when it got scary
cos I knew then
I was caught infinitely
with a boring you
in every nano second:
cos if you’re there, I’m caught too...
every second caught in indivisible slices
all round the teeniest-weeniest section of an infinite string
of a boring you
and poor me - *bored and *******