a play in five acts
Scene: A perfect panopticon.
Actors: Whomever.
ACT I
- First, a dollar.
- Then, another.
- Then another and another.
- And so on.
- Yes.
- And so on.
- What we weren’t used to
was what followed.
- The building, the
not-budging…
- …the catering, oh god, the
catering…
- Yes, the catering. That
was just awful.
- And so sourced in its
source.
- Like the rats in the
earth. Are there still rats in the earth?
- Like none before. Believed
in and blessed.
- Yes.
- Only on the surface do we
presume the edible. Below, we know what is eating.
- Below, the eating is
better.
- Better because?
- Better because they’re
eating.
- Eating is one of the
things people do.
- When they’re not not
eating. When, then, they’re a wonderful whelp.
- By whose standards?
- By the one that makes the
lamp go out.
- Ah, yes. The Overseer. The
Forgiver and the For-got.
- Always gotten, always
gained.
ACT II
- An old piece of cattle.
Our Vietnamese noodle people.
- Our halts in the corner,
whispering for a light.
- Yes, and the light, no
mistaking about it.
- It shines on. On and on.
- On us all.
- On others more than
others. Others stay in the dark.
- But only because of blindness.
- Not only.
- Not only, but not not.
- A almost light.
- Curbed by cubed wisdom.
- More silence, more
daughters to ignore.
- More blight. More
responsibility for that blight further more brought upon the self like a bright
light of forgetting in the light and always forgetting.
- Forgetting the day.
- It’s Tuesday. The day
after Monday.
- It was Monday then.
- Yes, Monday. The day we
all stood up and took a breath and walked outside into the sun and air and took
a walk along the water.
- A walk that always led us
back.
- Yes. Always back to what
we knew before.
- Knowing only.
- Knowing only a little bit
more.
- And then Tuesday.
- Yes, Tuesday.
- The day after Monday.
Tuesday.
ACT III
- Yes, Tuesday. The day
after Monday.
- And on Wednesday they’ll
be watching us.
- Watching like on Monday.
And Tuesday, too.
- Yes. And Wednesday we’ll
be watching, too.
- Watching like watching on
TV.
- Terribly bored and
entertained.
- What will the will of base
of the speech of it be?
- It all depends on the lack
of grounds. On the lack of firm yard grounds and deposits.
- Like trees disappeared
into floods of flies.
- Only more dying because
of. A fruit fly, only instead. Is it a fruit fly? Is it a roaming sucker of
practicality and sweetness?
- It is a leper on the tip
of the touch of the virus of it, all things considered.
- So, yes. A fruit fly.
- In a manner of speaking.
- In a manner of speaking,
let’s speak of the years together later.
- In the years together
later we sat and spoke about the years together earlier. We spoke of the time
where time was a time and the time got worse and better and worse how strange.
How strange. We spoke of the strange distinctly. And yet had no words for that distinction,
only thoughts through feelings through touch and such.
- Yes. We spoke of that too. And, too, we spoke
of poor old sluts that loved us while we were furiously working behind the
behind and beginning on bar number 27 the stretching the stretching the
stretching apart. Just lie back now and relax.
- Just lie back now and
relax.
- Relax to the trilling, to the treble of a
soprano brush comb. To the fact that I knew she was looking, was listening, to
every damned thing I said. Relax to the laugh that sets you uneasily on edge –
only to relent to the joy of it once it relaxed itself. Relax to the future of
this – all play – and relax to something of a kind of peace, always present,
yet always so looking to go away.
- Present how? Now?
- Present like the wish to
kill a child simply because you tired of taking care of it after awhile.
- And how relaxed, said?
- As said, relaxed as a
reflex; relax as a barrier to the barren waste-side of life beside the water;
relax as a small quiet chat (chest beating); relax like a close of the eyes and
the stammering of the feet held to feel quiet and quiet ruckus, alone, in the
maddening thing that is the quiet, that is the noise of the quiet, that is the
quiet of the quiet of the noise it is nothing.
- Relax. That is the thought
that comes on a Saturday.
- Yes. It’s Wednesday still.
ACT IV
- It’s a problem
- It’s a problem without
solving. Nor worth solving, really.
- It’s still a problem.
- I want to slapdash your
symmetry, to coordinate your insubordinate conditionals.
- You want to fuck me in the
backcloth.
- Yes. That as well.
- Well if I pour myself onto
the backwall, again and again, they’d still be watching, taking notes, and
noting how unfit each of us were for the wearing of such paltry clothes.
- They would think better of
ash.
- Of ash. Or of sand – sand
being the better because it’s less of a dead thing, never being alive in the
first place.
- Lacramose as they always
were.
- Only the shade, the shake,
only sorry for her.
- I walk with her now, down
along the waterfront. We speak and stop and hunger and look at a duck. What do
you get out of it? A laugh? A humor, humored only in hunger and duck eggs…
- I would never say this on
the record.
- On the record, I would
only look at the water, nothing above nor below. Just the water, itself, always
moving.
- Yes. Always moving.
- That was back when I was
high on gas. May I offer you a get in?
- A get in to what?
- Just that. A get in.
- As a substitute for a
little light?
- No. Not as a substitute.
Just as a get.
- A get what?
- A get, a get in, a get in
the end of the end of the get of it all.
- I see. A get.
- Yes. A get as a get all
solid soon.
ACT V
- Today.
- Today, Thursday.
- The day before Friday. The
day before before the weekend.
- We’ll spend it splendidly.
- Or tired, only splendidly
disposed.
- And wake, in horror or
splendor, always depending on today.
- Yes, always depending.
- We’ll let them watch. We’ll
let them learn what they want to learn and learn by fits and starts and love
and lack thereof.
- Is that it?
- Mother says so.
- No more words, only words.
Only feeling as such in words in the mind.
- Yes. This is Thursday, and
we handle so much love to give it comes suffered to come.
- Did mother say so?
- Only on the backs of other
births ultimately betrothed to death, like pearls around a wrinkled neck.
- Only mother knows.
- I’m taking that as a
silence.
- As you could. I would take
it as a silence, further.
- So, silence?
- Yes. Silence.
- Knock, knock.
- Who’s there?
- Who’s there who.
- Who’s there who who?
- Who’s there who who is who
is there, now and forever. And you should know who (you’ve always been
watching) the who of the what of the who of it all.
FIN
