Excerpts, From Half-Human and Other Episodes
---Episode 1: Half-Human---
Dramatic Monologist 1, The Therapist:
What an odd time to draw you
From your quarters, you say?
Your eyes swing upwards
And the net beneath you rebounds with your safety
Then down to the
Table before you wipe your eyes and yawn.
Yes, of course, you can get a more comfortable chair.
I spin in mine and ask the guard to
Furnish one for you. If you get
Comfortable that, why that makes
Me happy.
To sit a quarter on my seat
And yawn with you as well.
We begin where you left off, yesterday—
This giant rolling page cascades with moss along the earth.
We will begin.
You have driven all through the night, before
These two bright stars cool off eternally—
The blind sky did not bat a single eye
And it did not sing, distant notes of light return—
On coming sounds of cars come and go
You seem to be to the only witness
To the lonely interstate above Me:
Vigilant and weary, stay hungry as
A wandering guard of this masquerade.
Fearful of earth, are you less than human?
Certainly, a breed of man and metal.
Half-car, half-human, predatory things
Rebounding through only light—without a string!
Agh! The pistol squeezes your thigh muscle.
You root for it and place it on the dash
As your bottom half digs in the road ahead:
What will make me less than human, you say.
Perhaps a centaur.
Does the awful interstate ever end?
Endless yellow lines and a tempo drip like blood from your lips.
You pull off from the interstate and see
The suburban homes yawn their tongue and recline.
They offer solace from the interstate.
You finally bring the car to a halt.
The strawberry of the lawn is a Gnome punching through with size.
Headlights appear in the living room window.
You take a quick moment to sit and sweat.
The beads of sweat are rolling down your cheek.
You grind your teeth into a fine powder.
You stare at the pistol sat on the dash.
You stomp the Gnome as you approach the door—
The sound of breaking
You grab it and let it hang by your side
As you approach the suburban household.
You should disguise the pistol in your jeans
So you don’t frighten the family—yet!
---Episode 4: The Deadly Hands of Smoke.---
Dramatic Monologist: The Nursemaid
Gun smoke billows from your clothes,
As you lilt in your waning hours.
Steady at your bed post hangs the dagger of the age
And keen with the rising dawn of an incandescent lamp to gaze upon.
A ride through the legs and branches of a scarecrow on the horizon
Until, nearly dawn, you found their gang,
Still awake, still sharp from worrying about the future,
And cooking breakfast before time to depart.
You exhausted from your travails,
But no time to waste in light of your good fortune:
All six tightly in a knot around the fire.
That picture of your sister, at your bedside, draws
You from the swooning upturned state of affairs:
Success in the face of all six.
Crows dispersed like dogs as you charged in
On all six and recovered her stolen wagon
When, taken from her farm five days earlier, you caught
On to their trail ten miles out into the low
Shrubs of a cold desert. That is quiet the tussle,
With only your rifle and whatever you had tucked in your
Waistband. So why fret? She
Is safe and in her natural state along with Samuel Frostman.
Embellishment of character is the point, dear sir.
You could be even colder and I would only blush! The garbage
Of a shabby few, crossed and tossed from playing cards, here and there,
Drew in the palatal sweat of a captive audience.
Namely you, a lone gunfighter and angry brother.
Why, so fearfully balled up in sweat! Launched
And set loose like a wild pig!
To regain control of her desperation or else she will
Dispense her problems onto you; namely, the elderly man
Who raised you both, Samuel Frostman,
The free negro who found you and her abandoned
In a field of hay. To pat your lips says enough,
No doubt—he is in your charge now.
To see your thirty-something muscles grow heavier
From knowing him. Your eyes grow dim a little
From the blood loss. Only tea will do that’s hot.
What could be more maddening than a wolf
Tearing meat from a black bear?
They might have just been thieves for all you know.
Is that a touch more fierce some than you would have it?
To be sure! To be given your step father to care for or else
Face a gang of six over a stolen wagon.
Right there is where I have it right, according to you.
Your sister pushed you out the door and
A rifle along with five days of food is all
You took. That little smile left in the corner
Of your cheek drips with coconut milk
When your nostrils flare from the pain
Of knowing sparse means. That muscle left, along with your focus,
Came from the soft old man, who is called negro by the shabby
Consortium of the public, in the room
Behind your sister's house where she cares for
Him until his last hour’s doom.
To sip from your tea, a wry fellow yourself,
Through the deadly hands of smoke—That is gun smoke, correct?
You charge through the coming and going of the sun.
To keep your face tilted to the left or right,
The magistrate summoning you in ten days later
To discuss your tinkering in the low shrubby desert.
What do I know from my dissension, you ask?
Perhaps, I do not know enough. What is so
Wrong with loving your father?
And then, two days ago, to be encumbered in
A brawl with Wild Manny and the girl pistolero
He rides with in the mud-puddle town square
Where you finally lost a fight!
You were given to me by the town, shabby consortium
Of local pinch-pennies, precisely, correct? You could or could not
Loose your life for fighting. Yes, drink your tea.
To wonder who you are does no good with
You as you are, you know, a man all shot and bleeding.
I pick up the water from your bed side
And leave you to your rest. Why not toy with trinkets?
Entertain something cheap or tell a story in song? Be
A cowboy as many often do! To see only your
Kin in the sparse desert of your father
And believe that as opposed to the other
Viewpoint, keen with interior revelations of subtle joy,
To be a gun fighter! As you were when you drew down and
Fought all six! That is real combat—I leave you now. To hear your sister
Pray for you through your father makes
Me sick with grief!
Dramatic Monologist: The Wounded Gunslinger
Why not stay a moment longer, nurse?
Your predisposition to leave is obvious while I’m in your care.
You think I am a brave man for kicking dust
With those darn crooks. Who am I without Samuel Frostman, my daddy,
And my daddy summons me back to the flowers,
From my ways, when I just wanted to act!
To dial about the feeling, the golden fields he walked in,
The story of his life south of here with his mother,
And the walks he took with her as he re-awoke from the idea of being black.
That old timer bugs me and always has.
To me, the connections are obvious. I was adopted by a black person. Now ask me
Who am I without stage through curtain call?
I only see the long distance of my soul through history
And to be charged by the public with the drumming of my heart
Historically predisposed to be disarmed with name-calling, taunts,
Bigotry, while I’m still a rifleman in the mid-west.
I still wonder what I’m good at—That is gun smoke correct?
To draw down on me with high fashion, lilt and gloat,
To make connections through only sight, reinforced by the bartender
And mail-boy, rebounding with the difference of a string
That is made-up! To return time and again to the point
That made me feel low by my character-development.
I am disarmed by my daddy, and I have a rifle,
Through the deadly hands of smoke, watch your mouth!
And then, to dance through it with two fingers tucked in your waistband!
Why not make up a story? Be like me and pass?
I grab my rifle rounds drooping from the door hook
And breathe awhile before returning to my bed to recoup
My strength. Should I hold a grudge? Wild Manny
And the girl pistolero he rides with ought to be corrected.
Sure you laugh and taunt me still, without the
Bronze and silver leaves my daddy raised me in,
Fresh as rain from my youth breathing on my face
To face the future in a world full of gangsters!
---Three Poem Summary, Early Work (2003-2010)---
Michael
Gabriel…Gabriel. It is true?
Virtue’s Scout. Chief Seraphim. Lucifer has fallen?
We must battle him to save Heaven?
And within the constraint of God’s law?
How is this done? He is free.
His rogue strength is the binary of God’s law,
God’s law, to us, becomes his power.
Our strength is bound
To communal temperance
And unwillingness to stray
I have drowned in questions—
To his foe he endows his greatest aspect and our tutelage?
Where does one turn when Virtue’s Scout leads astray?
Their actions complement each other well
Neither can be held accountable for them
While waging careless war
As if Heaven’s populous were those alone who seek power.
Will God punish me for not wanting to be him?
If the powerful increase in power through mutual conflict
They are allies despite their shows of opposition
If this is true, God’s greatest ally is not us or Lucifer but Satan.
If this is true, I know nothing. True, I know nothing.
But if I know nothing that means I know myself
I only have self-knowledge
I am not God nor would I care to be—
I didn’t come here in pursuit of Glory
Or fear of Hell but for my deepest concern for Heaven.
The Ethereal Plane
Quality of thought attracts angels,
On the vast auditorium of ancient exchange.
In the inspired lot, the brilliance caught dangles,
A leaf ‘come of age’ with the season’s mood change.
The chatter is deafening, beings old and great,
How genius and skill in this prophet to wed.
While the greatest angels tell stories of spoken words fate,
Considering the vast history of all that is said:
“Life’s noon, such a brilliant melancholy mood.”
“The creator still gives the gift, so interesting this make!”
“Earthly boon, Heaven’s pride in sweet solitude!”
“Fathom the emotion and depth he will take!”
With concerns, that logic spent true turns without a care,
Heaven molds thought not caught by a line.
A love lightly told, yet brightly burns through, to spare
Them the anguish to watch the maker’s chosen shine.
Bard said, “Fear not
Unrecorded thought, of that in our brain.
All is regarded, acknowledged and caught!”
The Ethereal Plane.
Awakening
He sharply awakens to marching steps of a new day.
They are bringing a morning kiss from the one
That provides guidance against the trendy sun,
That sun that pretends it isn’t cold beneath its bright ray,
Yet lets the chilly winds bully his limbs as he makes way.
The day was never as good as way it had begun
This laborious first step, with a deep breath, is taken
Among large cars, rude alarms on their dizzy ways,
And, like a reluctant mouse evading death in a cruel maze,
The cars terrorize his will, which is already shaken,
By throttling puddles that thoughtlessly awaken
Him, and unglue him from his home’s lucid haze.
His mind begins to awaken despite the sun’s false ray.
Then a storm cloud grows. His timid legs run
But his socks are soaked before his march is done.
He tries not to pay attention to what those children can say,
But a full day is left, to his heavy heart’s dismay.
The day was much longer once it had begun
When home bound alone, sensations begin to grow
With a slow beat, as the gravel grits and plays,
Like nervous teeth, sounding different in strange ways.
While the leopard skin patterns of the sun spinning slow,
Like cascading rain, through the tree boughs glow.
He hopes this awakening is just a phase.
This was the routine of his cement-slogging day,
Which shackled his two legs heavy until they felt like one,
But the moon, earth, and spinning sun
Were inconstant next to the warmth from his mother’s ray
Which guided him to push on until he found a way.
The day is forgotten now that it’s done.
---Three Poem Summary, Middle Work (2010-2020)---
To Build an Arch
What was it that he said and that I learned?
I learned about the past up until right now
And into the future tense. I looked in circles
Until I saw the past in front staring at me from
What was already said though I must demonstrate?
The last shall be first,
The first shall be last.
The future, until time ends,
Follows the past
Through a word;
And, according to Jesus,
What has already been said is
The Word of God.
We Share His Voice
1.
We share His Voice
With air
Through a bar
Go and sleep
Side by side
The keeper
Walks alongside You
In the tidal spray
The melody is plucked
From the high grass
And washed in Words
From His Voice
His Design
He compared our company
To a line
2.
As the foams
Rose and disappeared
Where grey seals dive
The berry bushes store
Fruit that hangs
And dot the floor
Now even more alive.
As the village men
Recovered
A basket
Of cherries
Each one
Hands to the other
A whole bunch, Merry
In a Song.
3.
Fear of the storm
Bring in mellow rain
Yellow sun
In the mist of memories
Breathe in and bellow
The notes
We Are
We scatter
Along the shore
Rock on rock clatter
Blue belly roar
Voice within cloud
Claps together
As Letters,
Rejoice!
The grey clouds clear!
4.
The weather worn
On his shirt
And battering Sun
In His eyes
Raise the voyage
On the belly blue
From Him drown
At sea
Eat the meat that falls
Where it lies
All around, His belly roars!
5.
Nostrils swell
To tell
The note
Of the sea
How well
They are company!
6.
Pull me from the word of Him,
Lie me next to kin, and kin,
Side by side
In the air we glide
In the stolen breath
Of all that's left
We rise into the wind.
Along the mar
We beat His bar
Until Time finds time again
7.
To Hear the water spill
And spread out in array
The many ways thrill
We spread out till
We are swallowed in the spray!
The Voice of Him
We do not Hear
We depart
The line
In array
Beyond the rim!
Time cools
Then the heat fills in
The Body pools
Side by side no more
To lie beside our kin.
Clear as clear
We hear
Chaos! Our Body beside
The World Lost!
The Rolling Clouds
The Sea Shrouds
A Distant Sun
And frost.
Distant and clear
Our Body near
Even bigger wind
How crossed
So far from fine
From the line
Tossed
To settle as grey dunes
To be mere sand
The rise of sound divine!
An epoch as land
As Song to Me it tunes!
We Hear until
Ordered by His line.
Side By Side to One Another
That We did not lift or write
in Song, We sang into His Light
Until our notes strictly to the high bar cleared
And the verse of Him was not disturbed
As well were our verses not lost to be discovered
Along the shore
Among the water edge roar.
And the bar we write was colored in tongue
And in the space we ride the instrument
And lay numbered according to one another
And the air
By the song we share
Up to the Harmony, We climb
and Our reach
Became a stream of Time.
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