Your voice.

i hold my mind up to the light, and turn it this way and that, examining the cracks, peering into it,
checking its clarity.  
i can stand this way, outside of myself, and say 'this is a clear mind', 'there are cracks, but nothing too serious, nothing that can't be mended'
but my mind is a tricky thing.  it breaks glass.  it slips and oozes through my fingers, falls to the floor, spills.

liquid truth stains the carpet of my interior.  no spot remover can take this blemish away.
and i cannot just leave it there on the floor for all the world to see.  i'm down on my knees, scrubbing and scrubbing through the night, but liquid truth just moves on down the hallway.  it is mercury, skittering away from my frantic hands.  

all the while, my mind sits in the corner and laughs at my futility, recording everything on film, news at 9.

I have written so much
****** poetry across this city;

left it in bars, under streetlights, and

In the bathrooms where people have ******
all over the toilet seats
and I had to use my poems
to clean it up.

They are on napkins
and receipts;
pieces of toilet paper,
and even a one-liner
on the carcass
of a piece of paper
that once held a straw.

The words get soggy on wet bars
and bloom like black flowers
losing all consistency and coherence.

Sometimes
I write them out of pure impetus.

To get me going,
I need a couple beers and those
Pabst-drinking, past-drunk
drunk girls that get close up to you
and put their lips on your earlobes
like they want to tell you a secret

But all you get is a present
of soft stinging breath.

Sometimes
I write them for some girl I meet,
like the one who came up and sat down
right beside me.

She said her name was
so and so.

I said my name was
so and so,

so we got to talking

And the topic finally reared its
fat, ugly head:

“Are you going to school?”

“Yea I go to State”

“Oh that’s cool, whats your major?”

“Creative writing”

Then she smiles at me
like I’ve got some broccoli
in my teeth,

and she wants to figure out a way to tell me

without breaking
this three-beer-good-buzzing mood,

finally she says:

“write me something”

And I become a dog for her.

In my doggish way
I take my tail
out of my pocket
and tuck it's wiggling self
onto a napkin.

I write
about how meeting someone new,
is like trying to figure out
if what you’re looking at is a skyscraper
or a mountain,
or just a Norfolk freight train
barreling down the tracks
with your name on it’s front grille.

My dreams are full
Of skull-*******
And ****-*******
And ******* all night long.

******* girls I loved
And girls I came to hate.

They are full of that driving hunger
like being tickled
By the queen wasp's stinger
Until the syringe went to deep

And the want became a need

And
the *******
became

A plague,

so that I couldn’t dream
Of anything else,
but sticking my ****
into some pink *****
And driving it all the way into
Her
until
I could see it in her eyes,
forcing the smell of her
reddened, limping *****
out of her ears
like a bloated body
excreting excess venom.

I wake up
to a hard-on,
fatigued,
limping,
famished,
humiliated.

Every night I pull the power cord out of the digital radio beside my bed, the one with the lime-green numerals, and I wrap the cord around my neck until I can hear the muffled hammering of my heartbeat
inside my skull.

When his eyes first fell upon her
She was choosing avocados
In the fruit and vegetable aisle.
And he watched how her thumbs lingered
On the base of the alligator pear
And pressed, maternally.
He feigned interest in the cabbages
Whilst sensing her delicate architecture
Through his peripheral gaze.
He thought that somewhere,
In real or imaginary life,
They would soon bathe together.
And when they did,
They soaked for years in secrets,
Details suffusing through their lips and arms,
Water-hole satisfaction and moonlit deserts
To make them feel they might have transcended cabbages
And be pervading a rhapsodic realm
They forgot their friends watching in greenery,
Subsumed by each-other,
They felt no need
To live in a world of relativity and apples.
Their love-traced sphere tightened around them,
Until it ****** at the edges of their skin
And wailed when they parted.
Tighter it grew, elastic dug into their humid thighs
Contorting their once harmonic bodies
That used to fit like crosswords.
And they each became ugly to the other
As the seconds ingested their perfection
And they bickered like flailing urchins
In a deep sea soiled darkness.
Decisions were made and paroxysms detonated
And they were taken back by their
Fungal friends with tissue offerings
And ethanol.
Time passed, and memories were binned
Periodically on tuesdays
Until neither knew the other
And they would pass in the supermarket
With no more than a quickened gait
And a silent thud in each ribcage.

But neither could buy avocados.

"Where are your gloves?"
A man with watery blue eyes,
And steaming black coffee asks me.
I almost cannot hear him over the brutal wind,
The city taken by storm.

He leans closer and whispers,
"They are giving some away,
Under the bridge."
As if I know exactly which bridge he is speaking of.

Winking,
He continues past me on the street.
Homeless,
But fortunate in his kindness.

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.)