The composer is seated in his armchair looking concerned and absorbed.
LIGHTS ARE MAUVE WITH YELLOW HIGHLIGHTS
The four of us will discuss
Without hesitation
Without too much hesitation
Just enough
We will discuss as we see fit
The face of the day
And know that we see
The power play
Clearly spelled out
Unmistakable:
Either shoot them
Or have them simply vanish
His manner grows steadily more intensified as he speaks in earnest:
Judge me not by what
You think I do for why
You think I do it
Judge me not
{repeat those four lines as necessary – perhaps they become a rhythmic chant}
Do you have any idea
What we are under?
These lines delivered in measured breaths like a chant, with rests between the phrases:
Let me.
Allow me.
Permit me.
For twenty minutes.
To establish.
In your mind's ears.
And the lungs of your heart.
Exactly what.
I'm still living through.
Let's get it right.
Let's be explicit.
Here in the drawer of my desk.
Let's speak plainly:
He whispers as loudly and distinctly as possible:
I am still afraid
I was raised in this manner
Not by my family but by the
Benevolent state
I was raised to be
He is up and darting around the room, ducking in corners, crouching and leaping to illustrate his point:
Like this
Like this
And this
And this-like this
Like this
He has ended up standing pressed against the wall with his hands out, staring wearily
Torture is terrible
Even in your own language
Whether they torture you
In German or in Russian
or English for that matter
Torture in Polish
Torture in French
It's still torture
What happens when you are arrested
Or the sustained, even more gradual torture
Out here like me in the street
Torture is torture
Even in your own home town
He swallows hard
Even if you don't shoot me
Behind the ear
My ears still ring
With the essence of shooting
And anyone with conscience
Has the same auditory problem
LIGHTS HAVE TAKEN ON A THREATENING COMBINATION OF COLORS & INTENSITIES
Agitated, he ambles stiffly away from the wall and plants himself squarely center stage.
Someone is laughing
Under the concrete
Someone called my name
I'm leaving the square
Hands in my pockets
I bit my cigarette in two
Spat spat spat
Spat on the pavement
But cannot expel
The life my mouth is full
Of this kind of a life
Cannot spit it out
It has bonded
With my mandibles
My palette is painted
With the life I've led
The lives we've lived
My teeth are ringing with it
My tongue is silent
Behind my lips, silent
With witness and mute
With having left itself
Immobile during each
Segment of my time here
Crossing to the armchair, he sits and gradually changes into a statue as it were.
Time in our bodies
Should be precious
I wanted to savor
Every evening
But instead I swallowed
Each night, whole
He settles in as the movement becomes a sort of cantata
My teeth cannot
penetrate the surface
of the night, and
my throat must
dilate to allow
the night to slip down
into my stomach
where every honest effort
is made to digest
the night, each hour
each and every minute
wedged in my guts
See how the string
Vibrates to mimic
My gizzard
Listen to my gizzard
I have the guts
Of a rooster
I wasn't born this way
The government
Performed a transplant
Whereby the cock's gut
Was planted inside of me
I have a Soviet gizzard
When Stalin planted
Chicken guts inside
His citizenry
It was to enable us
To peck the ground
And live on scratch
Have you seen the rooster
Up all night staring
Both ways at once
Did you know that
Insomnia is inherited from
Reptilian ancestors of birds?
I become a dragon
Breathing smoke at 2 AM
I sit perfectly still
Except for ashes falling
And at dawn
Hear me cry out!
But when they come
To see who's generating
All these noises
I am silent and immobile
You'd never know
It was I who had crowed
I crow like a crow
I hide like a black beetle
The rain collects
In my pockets and nothing
Can be resolved
There are no solutions
I sit unblinking
A weary little reptile
A wary little bird
Never do I blink
I have swallowed
My own voice
I let it out
Through the drawer
Where chamber music
Waits out the siege
The siege of Khrennikov
The siege of Brezhnev
My eyeballs crawl
Out from behind
My spectacles
My eyeballs
End up perched
Up by my cowlick
I am watching
Those who are watching
They are watching
But I saw them first
Mine eyes never close
I am watching too
I have become a sphinx
I can perch here
Longer than Lenin, even
Longer than Lenin
I am perched here
Long as you like
Like it or not:
Here I am.
BLACKOUT
© arwulf arwulf 2015
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