Thursday, October 31, 2013

TWO DREAMS, a cliché - DREAM TWO






My parents were visiting me in The City. Where I was staying was the upper decks of the Art Institute of Chicago, which had been changed, basically, into a suburban mall run by back-biting hate-mongers trying to change the institution into someplace Sbarro would feel welcome.

They arrived, feeling overwhelmed by the magnitude of the place.

“This isn’t what I expected,” my mom exclaimed.

There was my traditional central visitors center, surrounded by a huge atrium with dozens of traditionally mall type stores and food venders surrounding it.

Above, as if in the heavens, stood the traditional glass view of “Paris Street, Rainy Day”.

My parents asked the front attendant to call me down from where I was.

“Could the faggot guy we have behind the scenes come down to meet his parents,” he announced.

20 of us came down, looking for someone we knew.

I saw my parents who smiled, happy to have seen me at last. They wanted to taste that “good pizza” they had heard about. How they had to be quick because they had tickets to “Wicked” and so had better have a move on.

We ate some pizza, both of my parents saying how it was true that they had “better pizza here”.

I wanted to die. 











They told me we better get going, as it was still a long walk “down to 51st street”.

I told them we had to walk “up to 51st street”.

They didn’t buy it.

I was out on the sidewalk with burnishing skyscrapers blinding my eyes from the glare of a water-soaked sunset. My father, looking at a map, pointed to the street in front of us and told my mother and I we could catch a cab there.

I told them both that if we wanted to catch a quick shuttle, we should head the opposite direction, in the direction of “the bay”.












My father crumpled up his map and shrugged. My mother wondered how I had figured out the city at all.

We headed East, where the Bay Bridge was, but I found that the route I had figured we could take had been flooded.

I told them I would swim out to see how far the flood went, and they agreed to stay and study the map while I was gone.

I was swimming, stroking really, along the gates of what seemed to be a flooded Marina, with others on speedboats plowing past me gesturing that I was being stupid in no uncertain terms.

I looked back behind me, seeing my parents look up from the map my parents held and wave.









I woke up with the sound of three knocks on the door, feeling embarrassed for my parents and really alone. When I went to see if anything was knocking, no one was there, no trace of a knock at all. 









TWO DREAMS, a cliché - DREAM ONE








I was cast to be a minor role in a local community theater version of something very similar to “Pippin” though not “Pippin”, exactly. I had decided to not study the role, having seen the Broadway production recently, and felt secure enough in my ability to improvise to be able to provide at least a capable stand in for someone who cared. On opening night, the curtain rose, I mouthed a few bits of chorus work, other cast members looking at me with crossed eyes. I went backstage to have a drink and read, and while doing so I apparently lost track of time, being literally pulled on-stage to handle a scene with was presumed to be my father (played by a man who had the stature of Tim Curry and the face of Tommy Lee Jones with a beard). He spoke a line to me, which I was supposed to answer, but had no easy answer to respond. The crowd went silent and the hybrid father looked at me, with eyes that screamed “don’t fuck this up, man”. I continued to fuck it up for at least five minutes, spitting something out that sounded like “but, dad…I thought you wanted the duck”.

Eventually, another extra came out in a burlesque dress and started up what was supposed to happen, by way of a narration or “explanation” of what had just occurred.

I had, apparently, been overcome with the notion of my becoming a king that I was speechless and not thinking straight.

I was hurried offstage and given a good talking to by a really withered Andrea Martin, who I recognized from seeing her on a trapeze when I say “Pippin” earlier this year. She smacked me and pointed a boney finger in my face, telling me that I was doing everyone who had worked so hard a complete disservice and should be ashamed of myself.

Having always loved Andrea Martin in my youth, and being subsequently amazed by her performance earlier on a trapeze, I was shocked enough to try to read the script and learn a few upcoming lines.

Those lines came and went, with other side players taking my place, while backstage I could hear the audience growing restless and uncomfortable.

Finally, I thought I had caught up to the point in the play where I could carry my own, knowing at least the end words to the song at the end, and with Andrea Martin dragging me onto the stage I stood there, presented next to my hybrid father, with the orchestra swelling under us, and I started to sing but nothing came out.

My hybrid father turned to me and said:  “Really? Even now?”

I croaked out a few lines about something I don’t remember and the whole cast rose up behind me, singing the right lines to the right song and all I could remember was I was shaking and the lights grew blasting and I looked out at the audience and all I could see was my mom, after the curtain call, with her not clapping at all.









I woke up with the sound of three knocks on the door, feeling embarrassed and really alone. When I went to see if anything was knocking, no one was there, no trace of a knock at all.








Monday, October 28, 2013

Pure Scaffolding, Cut











Within our fixed object,
ourselves, we are rendered
merely something between
gestures, convenient markets.

As such, the miniature office
of surprise can, as such, be a
a reminder of vocal ambiguity,
centuries of a quietly flowing book.

A recollection of petal-coated
ephemera, studded with blisters
of dreams remembered, and therefore
neighborhoods of gilded organs,

reaching out towards defeat, in defeat,
towards the reminder of an immense
richness, one that sturdy’s the soul
and thus makes what which what not.