Vulgar Operatis[1][1]
by ct staples and Matt Snell
Written in Discord
And Cut-up-
Cycling in and out
Of Lucidity and
Nonsense.
Written for and first performed
For a Streeteating event
At Casa Del Popolo, Montreal
March 21, 2004
C: A very drunken man
once said:
M: Suffering and revelry
C: Are two sides
M: Of the same coin –
C: Heads or tails?
M: (Shrug)
C: It slipped down a sewer grate,
M: To be carried away –
C: Amongst the shit and alligators.
M: The best way to kill a bear is too break a beer bottle into a pot of peanut butter and leave it in the woods…
C: Elephantitis with almonds and sugar?
M: If you’re offering…
C: Somewhere under my skin in a deepseated safety deposit box Salvador Dali is playing Beethoven’s Ninth on a naked knee with two spoons…
M: Soft, without bones?
C: Like two slabs of bologna.
M: I feel like a fumbling chainsaw juggler – riding a unicycle, drunk, with too man things on my mind and smoke in my eyes…
C: There will be no encore.
M: So we must keep faith in savage butterfly sex!
C: I am the-way-the-truth-and-the-light!
M: Not quite.
C: I am the dark, the lost, and the grim!
M: A fib.
C: I am a sixty watt lightbulb burning in a one-windowed room, eleventh of September, nineteen fifty four –
M: – Forty watts, turned off, august afternoon, nineteen eighty seven.
C: Just like Even Steven, who walked with a limp.
M: And had a face that was sandpaper smooth, no matter how often he shaved…
C: Stumble-dumb and buttered-up, he courted Syphilitic Sally with bargain bin gin and stale Baby Ruths…
M: Yes, he was a florescent bulb in an empty school.
C: A candleflame flickering in a blackout…
M: A string of white outdoor Christmas lights – six missing six burnt out.
C: No, you are a string of white outdoor Christmas lights, six missing and six burnt out.
M: I am a magic lamp.
C: A rubber stamp.
M: Fading to nothing, because I love her endlessly!
C: Not without
reservation.
M: She is everything I am!
C: A string of white outdoor Christmas lights?
M: Enough!
C: Deferment of one’s own responsibility.
M: Fuck off! How ‘bout
“My love is as deep as an ocean…”
C: Which ocean?
M: Indian?
C: That’s a good ocean.
M: Mmmm.
C: My belly is full of heart-shaped candies inscribed with surgeon general’s warnings!
M: Push-up sandwiches for the Atkins masses!
C: Untie the lie that binds you!
M: Loose the noose that soothes you!
C: Excuse me.
M: Yes sir?
C: Might you breathe me out for a moment?
M: But of course…
Adrenaline kick
and stomp
cancanning across
razor wire over
pack of vicious dogs bleeding from
their ears… I offer cupped palm water to strange travelers who’ll share a journey’s leg, a tale, and a meal. I have a heart I take out every evening like hospital plants in the twenties or false teeth. Step. I retract my previous statement. I have a mess of pulp so low it’s delicious and death to those with cogs and wheels! I embrace the merciful freaks and crest the calendar before the tide breaks. As many warm lips as can fit in a room – are good – a soft musical hum presses the floor as we recreate the analogue static of the forest. I escape to creaking trees and a musician bullfrog where my happiness is not dependent on expectation, and don’t you dare call it“contentedness…”
C: Excuse me again.
M: Yes?
C: Umm:
tick tock
the tawdry mock tick tock
tick tock
the TV squawks tick tock
tick tock
the muffins burn tick tock
tick tock
a lesson learned tick tock
tick tock
the insomniacs moan tick tock
tick tock
the telephone tick tock
tick tock
the heater hums tick tock
tick tock
an officers gun tick tock
tick tock
a scratch is scabbed
tick tock
tick tock
the tire’s flat tick tock
tick tock
the cock goes soft tick tock
tick tock
the keys are lost tick tock
tick tock
the engines drone tick tock
tick tock
the old bones
groan…
M: Question.
C: Hmmm?
M: What do they do with the leeches full of bad blood?
C: Sprinkle them with holy water and set them on fire.
M: Then the demons escape into the open air?
C: I couldn’t help but laugh when Jesus opened Pandora’s box and seven dwarves came out salsa dancing…
M: I’m green with clover envy.
C: That’s an illogichronical firecracker.
M: I simply want to colour outside and into the street…
C: To see skyscrapers drooping under the weight of bright pigment!
M: I dreamt I couldn’t get to sleep.
C: I had a nightmare where I couldn’t dream.
M: Did you still embrace the day and drink opportunity?
C: I kissed my old lady’s ass and guzzled a bottle of mouthwash.
(pause.)
M: So what of your brother?
C: Promised his liver in a poker game and lost – hiding out in the Cayman Islands.
M: Is he still a field of fallow evenings, unfurrowed and unseeded?
C: Very often, yes.
M: I am an increase in volume to disguise a discord.
C: A knife that cuts to the bone in the brain.
M: I very recently swallowed a lead egg.
C: “I can track its movement through the body by sensation alone.”
M: My words are me made manifest.
C: A touch too elegant.
M: If you divide my mind by my life, poems are the remainder.
C: Are you trying to reduce me to a simple equation?
M: I’m trying to multiply the meaning.
C: So you think you’re greater than me?
M: Word games are a fraction of my vision.
C: Your hypocrisy is growing exponentially.
M: So what’s the solution?
C: Fling English everywhere, like dung… like a violent, enraged ape.
M: Like Even Steven, still off on a Mormon mission in Tahiti, I believe.
C: Even Steven who’s pulling six figures (easy), and says he owes it all to voodoo?
M: Even Steven, who says you can double you money if you just cross your eyes…
C: Even Steven who has a stuffed ferret that tells the future?
M: Even Steven who saves on toothpaste by eating rose petals…
C: Even Steven, who gave his toes to charity.
M: Even Steven, who sleeps in his neighbour’s garden.
C: Even Steven’s brother’s sister’s monkey’s uncle just landed ass up in Pennsylvania…
M: His mother just slit her wrists in a bathtub full of vinegar. But what of his cousin
Dennis?
C: Fuck ‘em. The shattered pieces of my cranium now rise to the heavens and perforate it.
M: The heavens heal quickly, without scars.
C: No! It runs its fingers over the white flecks which are my legacy!
M: Like hell it does. Your sharp lights are dulled by the rocks you steer through…
C: The stumbledown bumps on your skull are nuggets of fool’s gold.
M: You carry a gun loaded with empty names!
C: You are oblivious to the great plots of pigeon shit which grip your skull.
M: I am stupid, and I don’t know why.
C: Very often, yes. (leaves.)
M: …Bless your streaking heart spotted naked between trees! Bless your wild, gnashing teeth! No one tell the king or queen, but here is where we could reign supreme on stolen throne fuelled by coal with shards of next year’s broken mirror nipping heels…
The eggshell dance is joyous when the golden goose is still alive, well-fed, and sometimes pressed to my breast to sniff her feathers and write her songs of praise – what is the lifespan of the average hen?
Set down again for clasped hands across horizon spiral. A heady wrap of tender flesh and gentle urges in twisted blankets. Breathe in. Crystalline life mist diffuses into muggy ether. There’s a cricket. Faucets don’t drip in night ink outside. It’s humid. I hear your breath. On our backs in the grass, we pick our own constellations
C: (returning) The more bitter the lemonade, the better it is remembered….
M: Is your pocketwatch still in pawn?
C: Along with my libido… still covered in lipstick fingerprints.
M: I’m trying to maintain my balance like a one-legged pony.
C: Am I mistaken?
M: I mistook you for a phonebooth once… that’s why I whispered in your ear.
C: That’s right! You rang the wrong number.
M: I am the twentyseven minute-long message selling sacs of powdered water.
C: Then I’m glad I kept your quarter.
M: There are broken clocks everywhere…
C: Hands are moving, faces state something…
M: But you cannot trust a thing they say.
C: I am a novelty clock made with red plastic dice, deadest forever at 2:27…
M: Battery died?
C: Never installed. You?
M: Grandpa’s fat trophy trout forgotten in a basement box… hands stuffed in my mouth and the gears keep on grinding.
C: It’s not easy to be a narcoleptic nymphomaniac.
M: I think I just lost the last of my baby bones.
C: If I could stitch together all things that buzz, I could dress in something that covers completely.
M: A mosquito tuxedo, most likely.
C: I imagine the forehead of god splotched with mashed bodies of angels, squashed haphazard like blackflies on a hot summer’s night. Little fat flattened gameshow host grins on butterfly wings groaningly scrubbed off the next morning. Non-stop good intentions fluttering round in eternity must irritate the creator. Perhaps he might omnipitize angel repellent into existence, except they don’t even bite… content with hovering around, playing harpsichord muzak, he swallows whole hosts as he snores away Sunday sunrise and sunset…
M: Am I still a string of white outdoor Christmas lights, six missing, six burnt out?
C: Beautiful people glow in the dark.
M: It makes it hard to sleep.
C: My mind’s eye is my two eyes and heart combined. And to maintain a panoramic vision of the world, we must spin in dervish circles…
M: Or walk in a spiral, eyes rolled to each side…
C: Or perhaps periscope our necks and watch from above with a post-fecal grin…
M: Too dangerous. Although there is a certain poetic beauty in being blinded by a comet…
C: I suffer and I love it, because there’s so much.
M: If you wore the horizon as a necktie, it would be hard to find shoes that match.
C: Best go barefoot, maybe.
M: I hate the feeling of anticipation when something squishes between my toes.
C: Anticipating what?
M: The worst.
C: Mistakes exploding like impacted ketchup packets?
M: Far worse.
C: Desire steaming like dropped fish on august afternoon?
M: Far worse.
C: Failure like vomit of zootsuited churchgoers drunk on jesus blood and gingersnaps?
M: Too much, though admittedly, I am a slow motion implosion, a mouth that swallowed itself –
C: Like Even Steven, even.
M: I want to wash away all loathing left…
C: With perfumed soap?
M: Bottom shelf.
C: Fine – but I’m a first run feature film winning all kinds of awards.
M: It was a book first.
C: But with unbroken spine.
M: I’m trying to
develop an ever-
telescoping straw, that I may drink from a bottomless well…
C: Your imagination?
M: My confusion.
C: 5:00 a.m., Saturday: A raging Greek lady screaming at me – how the hell did I get here? And what happened to my 10 pound jar of peanut butter?
M: 3:15 a.m., Tuesday: There is broken glass and a broken chair and Marcus has a scar that he gave himself. When the cops arrive, I am ashamed of my nudity.
C: Wednesday, exact time unknown: I said I thought I might love her, she didn’t ask if my love was upper or lower case.
M: 2:00 a.m., Thursday: I did not quite drop the burning pizza on the infant; but it was close.
C: 4:00 p.m., Friday: Discover a note to myself saying “The power of being yourself and someone else at the same time.” Was there a war being raged in the fascist state of my own mind?
M: 11:00 a.m., Saturday: Dreamt I was hit by a truck – must remember to play the licence plate number in the lottery tomorrow.
C: My hands are closed in prayer
M: Mine are open.
C: Ready to receive missals
ML Through the doggy door;
C: Closed circuit.
M: I am the model and the method
C: The medium and the message
M: The functional form
C: Of a formal function
MC: So why am I alone?
© 2006 c t staples