Anvil in a Lace Bootie

A story lay prone on the couch. A damp cloth was draped across its forehead. Sitting in a nearby chair was the story’s psychiatrist, notebook open and pen poised. The psychiatrist, by the way, was a box of rolled oats.

“What would you like to work on today?”

“Oh, I don’t know. I don’t care. What does it matter? All right, gunplay. There, I’ve said it. I have no gunplay. Why can’t I have gunplay?”

“How would having gunplay make you feel?”

“Like I was … I don’t know … Like I was … interesting, and not boring, which is what I am. So boring. So boring. I wish my sentences were shorter and more to the point. I ramble too much. Why don’t I get on with it? I mean, who cares about the wainscoting and the furniture placement? I’m all stopped up with quiet anguish. I hate quiet anguish. I just wish somebody would burst in, guns blazing. Moodiness. Torpor. Oh, the torpor. I can’t take much more torpor. Nobody would have to be killed. I mean, a mirror shattered, a few holes in the wretched wainscoting, something. Is it too much to ask?”

“What do you think?”

“It wouldn’t have to be anything big, just something to break the awful tedium. Let’s face it. The most exciting thing about me is when the parlor maid dusts! I mean, that’s it! Couldn’t, say, a police chase just happen to pass by with a few random shots damaging the mirror and the wainscoting? There doesn’t even have to be any bursting in. Just shots through the window, a shattered mirror, that sort of thing. Wake me up a little, it would, I tell you. That it would.”

“Is there anything else bothering you?”

“The interior monologues. Four of my ten pages are interior monologues. And if there is anything in this world more hideously boring than my interior monologues, please be kind enough not to make mention of such an unlikely possibility of a thing existing in my presence. My God! Listen to me! Can you believe that sentence? Gad. I’m being bored to incoherence. Oh yes, another thing. There are eight! meaningful glances exchanged in me. Eight! It’s positively infuriating. Gunplay. I really need gunplay. A tiny derringer would be enough. A single bullet to shatter the mirror.”

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

“Oh, Doctor, you can’t imagine.”

You can’t fool me, Hon. You’re in one of your little moods again, aren’t you?

WHAT DOROTHY MIGHT SAY WERE SHE TO FIND HERSELF WANDERING LOST IN A THEORETICAL FIELD OF PARTICLES

“Muons and gluons and quarks, oh my!”

CHERRY TOMATO

MUSHROOM SLIVERS

BACON BITS BLACK OLIVES

CHERRY TOMATO AVOCADO SLICES

LETTUCE LETTUCE LETTUCE LETTUCE LETTUCE

LETTUCE LETTUCE DEAD COCKROACH LETTUCE LETTUCE

It had the shakes. Its skin was blotchy and scabbed where the hair had been torn out in clumps. The hair itself was thin, dull, the color of weak tea, in a word, lifeless. The hamster jumped or spun insanely in circles at the slightest sound, say a leaf blowing against the window pane or the lazy buzzing of an elderly fly. Its nose was bloody from being pressed against the cage as its yellow teeth chewed on the mesh. Its wide wild eyes bled in terror. And all of this occurred during the peace of daytime. When, however, the coffin lid began to creak open at the dawn of night, what a racing and hurling of itself against the little cage walls was undertaken by the hamster, what an emptying of bladder and bowel. Was it any wonder?

……..friend…..friend….

friend…..friend…friend

……friend…..friend….

gifts………more gifts…..

……..riches

outcast…….

coal

The Rodeo Clown and the Sausage Maker: A Play in 3 Acts and 2 Intermissions

In Act 1, after the curtain rises, the rodeo clown enters stage left and crawls into the barrel situated center stage. Otherwise, the stage is empty. Flute music of the haunting Celtic variety begins to play. A trained bull is released and enters stage right. The bull proceeds to butt the barrel about the stage. It ceases when suddenly cymbals crash. Turning to the audience, the bull bows while lowing, and then exits stage left walking on its hind legs and saluting to the balcony with its right hoof. The rodeo clown warily emerges from the barrel, stands, takes his bowler hat with flower from his head, aims his painted red grin at the audience, and begins to tap dance, causing his pants on saggy suspenders to bob up and down. The orchestra strikes up a random tune from ‘Seven Brides for Seven Brothers’, drowning out the persistently annoying flute. Streamers are released from above. The curtain falls.

Between acts, an archery contest is held, and the winner is awarded a year’s subscription (the year being 1953) to The Ladies Home Journal.

In Act 2, the rising curtain reveals the stage strewn and draped and hung with sausages of all sizes and sorts. The sausage maker, with bloody hands and wearing a white, albeit blood-smeared, apron, enters stage left wielding a cutlass. He slashes at the sausages in a whirling frenzy while a tuba plays oom-pah music. After some five minutes have passed, the sausage maker feigns a heart attack and collapses. Stage right, the rodeo clown enters tap dancing while at the same time the bull enters stage left tap dancing. The music from the orchestra pit is now two fiddles and a glockenspiel playing ‘Rhapsody in Blue’.  An American flag is lowered and the curtain falls.

Between acts, each member of the audience is handed a tulip, and then punched in the face.

Act 3 is played behind the curtain, which never rises. Various sound effects are heard – a weeping lawyer, doorknobs dropped into a vat of nougat, a phalanx of heldentenors roaring ‘Do Not Forsake Me, Oh My Darling’, etc. Finally, silence reigns for a moment. Following on the round heels of silence are ‘Night on Bald Mountain’, Beethoven’s ‘Ninth Symphony’, the road company of ‘Annie’ singing ‘Where is Love?’ from ‘Oliver’, and the trained bull bringing the proceedings to a close with a short reading from the ‘Nighttown’ section of James Joyce’s ‘Ulysses’.

The audience is sprayed from the theater with fire hoses.

Imagine a tiny world in your hand. Hurl it through the nurturing cosmos into life. Experience the euphoric joy of creation. Be a God. Strike this sucker out.

One Way to Define Gertrude Stein

She did what she was doing while she did it.

What she was doing was done when she did it.

While she was doing it, it was not done.

Universal Disagreement

Two universes were arguing about a third universe, an acquaintance of theirs, while they waited in the diner for their orders to arrive.

“I say she is,” said the tall universe.

“I say she isn’t,” replied the blocky universe.

“Is.”

“Isn’t.”

“What’s the problem, gents?” asked the waitress universe as with an expertise born of long practice she deftly slid the large platters of dark matter onto the table.

“Harry here says Eunice isn’t collapsing. I say she is. What do you think, Marge?” asked the tall universe of the waitress he’d known for it seemed like forever.

“Well, boys, she was in here recently about a billion years ago, and I’d have to say from all the bitching and moaning she did, she was definitely at that time of eon. In collapse, for sure.”

“Ha, told you!” said the tall universe, triumphant.

“All right. So you told me. Whoop de doo,” grumped the blocky universe, stabbing at his dark matter with a forked comet.

Moral: Never argue with a tall universe.