op3 test 91910

Drunk Poet

[Scene 1. Coffee shop interior, mid afternoon. A few drifters dotting the tables, one reading a newspaper, the waitresses catching up with a soft clinking of heavy mugs. Two men at a table center stage, sprawled legs with fishery boots and t-shirts.]


"Is it fair to fire upon women and children, civilians?"

"No, but it is necessary that there be collateral casualties in modern war. Especially in modern urban warfare, which is a relatively newcomer on the scene of the modern and civilized era of mankind."

"But still it is unfair."

"My friend, I can tell you that fair is a summer evening with the one you love most. Fair is a breath of the gods into your sail as you cut water with dolphins swimming in the wake of your passing. Most fair of all is candle-lit love. For me anyway. You use the wrong word when you use 'fair', I think. Of course it is not fair. The whole business of killing is foul from start to finish. Lasering an ageless face three inches above an innocent smile is not 'fair', it is foul. The smile falling into sand, this is foul, a teenage life ended out the back of her pretty head. How can any of this be fair?"

"But there is the other type of fair that I'm talking about. The implied measure of balance between right and wrong."

"Yes, well, I shy from condemning our words of pleasure to negative or derogatory meanings. There are so few words of pleasure; we must protect them."

"Now you are speaking as the Poet."

"I am a poet. For better or worse."

"Well it is for worse if you put words before lives."

"The words are our lives. Words allow us to think. Words allow us to agree or disagree, words allow us to fall in love."

"I am not ready for your twisting this conversation into the confines of our fine spring day while five thousand miles away they are killing innocents. Imagine your sister falling legless to collateral damage. And who can say it's blind? We see scenes played out through night vision scopes even on the news! You cannot tell me it's all blind mistakes."

"I can't imagine my sister at all anymore. And who is innocent? Remember, it was words that allowed us to suspend the Japanese from human status during World War II. Words from those who study words. Words that made bugs out of men then brought them back again to the world of man after every inhuman event had been unleashed upon the world."

"You are useless in a coffee house, except maybe on stage occasionally. Let me tell you something: Poetry is boring to everyone but poets."

"It's a lonely life."

"I'm asking you what you think now, here and now, not what you are going to write at midnight."

"Words are weaker than the writer and the speaker. This is the great divide between us all, especially when there are cultural and language differences. No one can really say what they mean. They think they do, but they might as well be ordering creamed corn in an old folks home."

"How else to do it."

"Damned if you do and damned if you don't."

"Well, now that's a new one!"

"Truth bears repeating even at the risk of frivolity."

"Man, you are full of it today. She called again didn't she?"

"Listen, I don't know why there is war. Sometimes I think it is a force within men, the true devil perhaps. But then I think what god would do such a thing to the innocents you speak of. The children are the worse for me. Not so much the infants, but the ones from about three to six. The funny and joyful ones, always wanting to please and be accepted. They don't know yet."

"How can you single out a life?"

"How can you not? And I called her."

"You called her. You are a fool in love."

"All men are."

"Especially the 'poets'. Seem to need the suffering and all. I'm talking about those who don't deserve to be taken. Let's just say the cute five year olds. Do they deserve a bullet? Aimed or otherwise?"

"Now you are upon sacred ground. This type of thing means God is late for dinner. In Nazi concentration camps, inmates used to pray every night in their slots that God would come and make their horrors right. And the saddest of them all were the ones who prayed and prayed and prayed and found God to be the quiet type. No answer, just death and more death, worse even than the sacking of an ancient citadel. Industrial death. Assembly line death."

"You think God has anything to do with this. You say 'late to dinner'. What do you mean by that? Does that mean you believe in God, but that you believe in an inattentive God?"

"Inattentive is a receptionist you have to ask twice."

"Then what, exactly, are you saying?"

"You aren't listening. No one says anything 'exactly'."

"Fine. What, as exactly as possible, are you're thinkings on God. I can't believe you called her."

"I love her still. Listen, I want so much to believe in God. I have a friend who visits me on occasion. He is the most patient and pious Christian I have ever met. No, pious is the wrong word. But he has a surety in his relationship with God that transcends the laws of science. Servitude, that's it. He is the manifestation of servitude."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean he does things right out of the bible. It's like he's a player in it. An unwritten player. No lines, no on stage presence, he doesn't even pull the curtains. But he lives the life, and I have never seen it otherwise in him. He is a best friend, of which there are so few and I am afraid to talk to him."

"Why?"

"Because I don't want to lose him. I don't want to say anything that would be offensive to his way. So I don't say much when he talks about the bible. Mostly I just nod because it's easy to agree with the principles while doubting the historical accuracy of the words. But many people think every word is the property of God, and if you disagree with any one word it disqualifies you from the whole thing."

"Not everyone believes so strongly that way."

"No, and some seem to make it up as they go along, to suit themselves it seems. Anyway, God's greatest accomplishment is to solidify belief in men. Then come the little interpretations of little consequence that fill the grave sites of the believers, innocent or not."

"So you believe this is all Gods fault?"

"I don't know anymore. I know that men fight war. I know that it seems cruel and unjust in the results. I know that God is claimed to be on everyones side at once. In fact I cannot think of one war where God was not called upon to be a player. I mean for both sides at once."

"Like now."

"Well, it seems to me they are the ones doing most of the praying. The new X-box just came out on our side and it's outselling bibles last time I checked."

"Sort of embarrassing."

"Sort of. I guess I need a parting of some Red Sea, or even a little lake. I hate riddles. I loath not knowing, waking up alone and most of the rest of it. Do you think she'll call back?"

Midnight Sitka

Again the truth of the jungle emerges; breath visible in the cold sundog of my aging.

Even a warm trip to the kitchen does not save me.

The light of the opening door blooms into the darkness my secrets hold.

I remember the first phlemic cough booming through the Midas treasure of my solitary room; which is silence.

The silence of snow undisturbed save a track of wolves to the side.

The frantic search begins anew; drawers slide wood on wood as failing eyes search for any shine

--A badge to compliment how far the journey, what I have become, who I am.

A medal perhaps proclaiming valor for wounds taken;

Some dusty trophy for the tears soaked into me from the ones who called for comfort long ago.

There is a path padded down the dust deviled hallway.

Another week the phone has hung mute in the noose of its' unplugged chord;

Unable to proclaim: no one has called.

Neglected now for years, my last guitar complains at my passing - - breaking strings in the cold - - accusing frigidity

It sits orphaned in the shadow of my clothes hanger easel, given away a year ago; as yet unclaimed.

There was nothing else to give.

There is no gold here. No letters of recommendation.

Only words stacked through journals and hard drives that will never be read.

Songs lingering to be passed on; tiny frameworks of resurrection dreaming now of a willing breath.

Second hand clothes bear witness to a mad allegiance to the tragic artist.

Forced forward beyond reason; chasing a self just out of reach, behind doors never breached.

This sunset seen is not of my painterly hand; - - So meek these muffled prayers for the moon.

Shaking heads award what I demand; a fate wasted loser shunned to their world.

A two painted medicine shirt covers my bathroom mirror; Life side out:

Without my face I am myself; not the old one you see fleeing through the store with my broken leg stick.

- -Recently startled by the shoulder touch of a yet compassionate physician

I cannot recall the last time I felt human flesh upon me.

In their eyes my course is set; Starlight far and away suggests a compass run steady into fog

Not knowing this oceans end as flat or round;

The glory of our ships so soon forgotten in the hungry horizon.

These words then remain/

Prisoner to a funeral cleanup, where the resigned and dutiful pack my work into closeted boxes.

Sweated hours of words filling every blank become lost in the next gracious move.

Such is the pull of unknown words.

This midnight strikes a line never so close.

Heros At The Helm

Sometimes I think this stuff is real.

These little trains of thought; the little engines that should, that could,

Could they only would they.

Quietly written; the sad loss of the nightingales of morning;

The voices of our children --swept away in this circus of the senses which casts no shadow of love.

Sigh and a chair; the aging warriors now weary and bloated in their battle dress.

Who will pick up their sword? For surely someone must.

Let it be them and not us. Let it be them

Not us. --I think this is what the leaders of the world are saying off camera.

This season; there are no banging of shoes in the gatherings of the United Nations of Planet Earth.

This season; many lands feel the cold steel irony of terrorism in its many forms.

The blunt proof of the terrorized; a bruised housewife next door --the child asleep in a burned out basement.

The honorable soldier shaking alone in the deserted sands of good and evil...

Such is the regurgitated irony of the terrorized becoming the very instrument of their own fear.

The tragedy of it all; fading in a parade of reality shows: benumbing us to our own sometimes unclean emotions.

It seemed impossible to coincidentally pile blunder upon this bloody art; Leaves don't fall that way.

But maybe; in a trick of the moon; It was an accident. At best a passing fog in the dreamers' eye.

Or, at the worst, misguided angels; drawing the heavy sword for their own.

No one needs to point wicked fingers at the wicked.

Someone needs to Mother this and make it all better.

Any song, foul or fair, is only a follower of the Pipers' State of Mind.

What we have here at this time in our civilization is a State of Mind that allows this reapers' tongue to sing.

Otherwise it would not sing: It would cease at the steeled disgust of peoples standing firm in common cause.

The sweetest of fruit bears a bitter seed; Democracy demands complacency.

So we learn to distance ourselves

From what is done in our name

From what is done in our spirit.

Shadow whispers all acts are justified by justice; In darkness comes the reply:

When there is War; Soldiers are heroes.

When there is a Just Peace; There is a Hero at the Helm.