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?"