Act 1 Scene 5 (A Revival)

For hour after hour I bemoan my sensibilities on balconies and rooftops, watching as the day stutters a bit before finally conceding to night. Finally I board up and sigh, drink like I’m aspiring to be chic once again, and scour yellow withered pages for signs of new life. Faulkner would be in a bad place if he had to eat pills at the same rate as I, so I cut him a break at midnight and take off for the street, especially careful to lock and bolt my door due to the fear that pulsates my guts as I count off the dark blocks.

The danger grows inside of me as I scuttle towards the epicenter, dodging the brooding miscreants that pounce upon me, and feeling oddly prescient as I mount my approach. I give change to no one, and shoot ominous glares at the queers congregating on the corner and the gothic crowd that hides beneath their cloaks.

When I arrive, I am overwhelmed. Goopy eyed dipsomaniacs tumble amuck, spinning their women through puddles of abject howling and blowing ring after ring of smoke. My pace heightens as I weave through the menagerie, passing bars full or revelry and reverence and feeling terribly estranged and alone.

The street is stuffed to its gills. Two dreadlocks hurl past me on skateboards, a mime poses for beer on the fringe of an alley, an evangelic bears a cross and passes out leaflets, and a pair of bare legs swing out of a window and attempt to lure me in. But I am not to be distracted, and steadfastly move forward in my pilgrimage to the Gyro stand, where Ali Baba waits for me with a delicious tortilla of lamb.

He is quick, and I am grateful, and once I slam the door to my hideaway and shoo the trauma of the world away I eat heartily and sigh. It is Thursday again, and I feel as if I am a scarecrow enjoying the sweetness of dusk while trying to will the pursuing crows anyway. It is useless, and so is my discretion when it dodges meditation and then lies petulantly on the bed thinking about more loafull ways to get high, so I acquiesce and we team up, remarkably sullen that the proverbial M is nowhere to be found in the denseness of the fog.

On the bed in the hot heat of night, I am strung out again and lonesome in the worst way. I read the New York Times, a biography of a cult hero, and the saga of Emily Grierson again and again.

Act 1 Scene 4 (The Letter)

The dog’s fur is smooth and white and gives way to a pink underbelly that is pelted in spots. I am ambitious when I arrive home, but soon find myself overcome by malaise. The air is full of gnats and the scent of the swamp betrays me. If homeliness is godliness then my domicile is dead, but the plants dotting the fence line still bloom with life. They seclude me, and enrapture my momentum in their chutes.

There is a sculpture of a mongrel tyrant staring defiantly from amidst boughs of Ligustrum and Ginger vines, and I shudder as his eyes scour the yard for misbehavior. He is dressed in stone. I am clothed in earth, and revel in the mud on my knees and the bugs that encircle my head. The alabaster bitch slams into my shoulder and sends me spilling to the turf on all fours. She grins, and the tartar on her brilliant fangs gleams. “Let’s dally in these blades, let’s rumble in these clods, let’s muss up our hair and blacken our paws,” she cries.

I am not amused at her attack upon my sullen meditation. I lash out and box her ears violently but she thinks I’m just being friendly, so I grasp at her again and grab hold of a stray paw. I yank her towards me and pull her to the ground where I hold her motionless by pressing upon her polka dotted stomach with my palm. She quiets, and I appreciate her seriousness before joining her belly up on the ground. We sink into the soil like cadavers, and I realize how seamless reality appears from one inch high.

Today in the mailbox, I was officially declared ineligible from anything too intellectually rigorous, and my lungs burnt for thirteen seconds before I cooled them off in a pond. Now, I’m complacent again, and it feels refreshing not to be the object of institutional scrutiny, and I empathize with the plight of the mongrel for he is a victim of observation of the most horrific kind. He has been sentenced to spend all eternity inert and subject to examination from all of those who pass, and although he will never be allowed to sing or dance or draw crude pictures with crayons, he will be judged by every pedagogue who crosses him and decides to comment callously on his inability to lament.

His armor and his sword are only cruel facades, and I am lucky to be wearing denim that tears and a smelly V-neck undershirt that speaks volumes about my potential in the realm of collarbones, and feels much better at the moment then a future in sophistry or a drive in a fancy car.

Act 1 Scene 3 (The Exodus of M)

Pregnant with thought I drive rapidly away from the airport and towards the city. I speculate on what album is profound enough to listen to until my enthusiasm is eviscerated by the obtrusiveness of my destination. I am going to work; while somewhere above the green hills of Georgia M is tending to a vomiting baby and jamming her ears into the headphones that my clumsy toes broke.

The lanes flood with cars full to the brim with pairs of oxen, lions, and goats, all of whom are love-struck and bridled with gaudy affections. They claw upon each other in backseat frenzies of schoolboy passion until their backs are ravaged with sores and wounds encircle their throats. The doves have been absolved of their duties and are necking the swine.

The levies have been stretched to the limit and are unable to suppress the desire of her fingers to make haste for mine, and the sentimentality of her clicking makes it unlikely that the gaps in the wall will be repaired within time!

I get off at 5 and saunter towards the river, watch it fertilize and fecundate its own mysticism, watch it swallow a tug boat that chugs on down the line and squeals at me.

“Brother you best put on that fig leaf and thank the big guy for letting your lucky star drop so gracefully to you. And don’t doubt your premonition that she’s more than just an ampersand, because if you ever lose her you’ll regret it till your blue. And if you’re dapper and you’re proper and her senses do not stop her, you might be lucky enough to snag her before you’re through. But don’t ever dismiss her likeness and the way she’s done you righteous or the fruit she feeds at midnight from her womb.”

A bum sings a bad rendition of a James Taylor song. He only knows a few lyrics. I walk by a nonsensical piece of modern art. It looks like a giant silver jungle gym. “Maybe they built it to attract lightning bolts,” M whispers in my head.

Act 1 Scene 2 (A Room Full of Mirrors)

Fuck me, and when Voodo Chile skips I think about burning my idiosyncrasies down with a flamethrower. I fight technology for a while, but it battles back and mandates that I sign, scan, and replicate an official document. I fail miserably. The corners are cut and my skin turns pale. I make a phone call to the fringe and within minutes my volition crumbles into hues of lamenting grey. I hang up, then call back and press all the numbers simultaneously until someone finally speaks. Customer service, why do you feel the overwhelming need to rape me of my easy living naiveté?

Girls in the Pacific Northwest muse at the curling of my moustache while ambitiously rolling joints from jars of grass, and I throw a ball across the yard for the dog and then lie on my back and drink Coors light. The sun heats up upon my stomach, and I start to worry that my flesh may begin to tan. Darkness convenes in my mind. The wind blows wistfully. Shape up, size down your ego, ship-out your mendacious tendencies. Sucker punch the melancholy humors and interchange them with a new Buddha and a better configuration of dawn.

Snake pits, golden hair looming over wretched cosmopolitan flesh, hard bellies, and rolled eyes. Socialites teeming at an incestuous extravaganza of new born aficionados, drunk on their own myopia and steadfastly ignoring a congregation of wild things who are burying themselves alive.

You move me like a piece of bleeding pork. Burnt and split through the middle, whining about revision and the smashing success of your newfound celibacy.

Act 1 Scene 1 (Alligator Elegy )

Sunday night, and I am listening to Saul Williams' pathos unfold into hip hop soliloquy in the comfort of the dark. It is 12:03 A.M and I shall go to bed soon, however first I find myself struck with the impetus to write. What will happen inside of this medium? Likely journaling, some poetics, much political incorrectness, and possibly a little mediocre prose. Will I write anything erotic? Perhaps. I have recently written a graphic short story about the sexual misadventures of an assiduous overseer and a barefoot country nymph. She’s only eighteen and recently divorced from a minister. He’s slightly older and vaguely resembles me.

My overseeing potential is unlimited, although my current occupational prospects are dim. Tomorrow brings forth another week of life, in which I will halfheartedly attempt to fetter my reality in the form of a job. Fuck, I’m broke, and luckily JM continues to lend me money and girls with sunburnt cleavage continue to buy drinks for me. Somebody even bought me an alligator sausage sandwich on the eve of St. Patrick’s day, due to the fact that before the check arrived I had already departed into the beer soaked seas of green.

Motherfucker, enough of the unraveling of my ego, the time is not yet ripe for self aggrandizing propaganda, this moment is prepared solely for me to abase myself without regret and without glee. And if you’re lucky tomorrow I’ll explode in radiant specters of dialectic extravaganza but right now you’re forced to wait; and muse about the insignificance of my words tumbling out from my caverns and tickling my pectorals and groveling at my knees.