Cast:

Yistawn : Aggressive Male

Saranathan: Seductive Female

Toomell: Fragile Female

Gizac: Fragile Male

Luchelle: Watcher

Rukesayer: Balance

Rukesayer:

Culture Question

Consider for a moment the question of Culture
Every human society engages in
Culture
Expending
Time, Energy, Resources
Every human society . . .

Why?
What is the survival advantage of Culture?
Some fluke of the Universe?
Then why kill for it?
Why die for it?
We're willing to destroy this planet
Preserving this thing.

Pretty big thing
This Culture
Too big to go unexamined
Now
Where can we go to get
The Bright Spots
the Dancing Shadows
The Dark Grottos
Of Culture?

Submitted for your perusal
Museum of Light and Dark . . . .

Luchelle:

Doors

To the House of Seven Doors
They come
Carried on coach and foot
Walking across wind
Traversing the sea
All coming
Coming to this place
This Museum of Light and Dark

Some stand outside the door
Debating merits and means
Leaving
Without entering

Others charge in
Treading on everything

Then the others
Lingering a moment
A day
A week
Finally with timid steps
Holding hands
for comfort
strength
They pass through the
Threshold

Some
Into the places they want to go
Others
Places they need

Gizac:

Desert

This door opens
On a dry, desert plane
The wind comes hot
Everything above the sand ripples
Mirage and fancy

In the distance
Are the dead rising
piercing the silvered membrane
Or are they living
How will we answer
What will we say to them

Yistawn:

Stricken

The room itself is suffering
Gloom oozing from under the base boards

Rain rushes into the basement
Smelling of mud and Chaos
Old hats and scum swirling down there behind the door

It always happens here
in your head
without your permission
We all do it
The fear of dying

I just wanted to leave footprints
Mud on the carpet

Toomell:

Empty Shirt

Lurid moon
a languish of stars
Milky night sky
Occasionally troubled by clouds

An empty shirt on the clothes line
Somehow transmuted
Ghostly pale
Iridescent
Luminescent
Dancing with the wind
In the moonlight
Lift
shifting
Left . . .
Then Right . . .
Pausing only for an instant
at the apex

Saranathan:

Repose

Sleep well my lover
You're tired

Sleep this game you play
When you've had your fill
Throw off this childish notion
Open your silent eyes
Walk with me
Once again under cyan skies
Untroubled by clouds

Luchelle:

First

First came the scientist
Poets
Writer's
All with pens, pads

Next people who thought
they might like to see their own work displayed
People wanting to scoff
People thinking it'd be grand
Just to be seen there

They found rooms
Airy spaces above the World
Where danced whisps of ice

Rooms dim
Misty subterranean grottos
Filled with acrid
Funky odors

Rooms with a view
Rooms with ambiance
Rooms where
They dropped the pens and pads
with which they had dreamed
Of catching the ghosts of the place

Yistawn:

Magician's Scarf

The ebon night flows
Delicate
sable silk
Through my fingers

Stars
Tiny silver flecks
In the satin jet
above the world
Revealing . . . what?

Gizac:

Guidance

No one will tell me
Which doors open Up
Which open Down
Is this the escalator
to the Crystal Palace
The walkway
to the Dancing Shadows
Or the shaft elevator
piercing the Dark Domain

Saranathan:

Falling

This one drops you
From way up there
On the roof
Straight down
I swear I can't see
Where they hook the cord
That crash at the end . . .
Totally realistic

Enjoy your soul
You've paid for the ride

Toomell:

Beads

A beautiful amber-autumn afternoon
Flows through the curtains
Curls around the sofa
Enfolding me
Illusions creep along the wall
Glistening motes
ghost angels
Feather fingers touching
soft as shadows
I move quietly
From room to room
One moment to the next
Each second another bead
on the string of Time

Luchelle:

Creatures

Bring up the next slide please
You can see
One of the critters

Here it overcomes
its initial revulsion
Of eating meat

Here you can see
It running all over the place
eating its fellow creatures

Here's where
they gang up
And kill it

Yistawn:

Screaming

You are moving again
I can feel your vibrations
restless
Peace!
You will see Light soon enough

Oh go ahead
Scream if you want
It makes you so unattractive
And no one will hear you anyway

Please
Give it full throat
so that you may know the measure
Of every human howl
Both living and dead

There
satisfied?

Saranathan:

Raven

Sable silhouette
Ebon shadow
lithe, quick
Flicker dancing
Gothic Poet
she lifts the pen
the shadow stiletto
With cool
gentle hands

Employing the subtle
delicate
Movements of a surgeon
She cuts the page
it bleeds black
She opens the wound
releasing acrid stench
There is no sound
save her rustling silks
The mutter
sputtering of the candle

When the lesion is squeezed dry
She lays aside the pen
Touches her slender
alabaster finger
To the wet ink
Lifts it to her pale lips
staining them

Gizac:

Aunt

Hey
I know she's my aunt
But she was hot man
And she was fifty feet tall
And a fox

My aunt was real mad
Cause there was this guy
Who lives over on Elm Road
Well you know . . .

She went after him
And my mom followed in our mini-van
My aunt didn't hit a single power line
Didn't kick over anything

Anyway we got to Elm
He was standing outside
Guess he just couldn't believe
Idiot

My fifty foot aunt
She stomped his ass

Luchelle:

Holy One

So Red
So rare
Consider the chromium steel
Crafted by the Sublime Hand
The master Artisan undulating in
Throes of one cataclysmic orgasm

Never before have the streets known one such as this
Mechanized Messiah
Incomplete in stillness
Fulfilled only when plying
the sacred ways
Singing praise and worship
Hymn of the Infernal Combustion Engine

Saranathan:

Exit 76 - Union

Boogums and vampires
Don't scare me
You wanna know
What really Frightens me?
The kids had become . . .
You know
a liability
So she parked them
in the lake
Staying long enough to be sure
the car went under
Long enough to hear . . .
And blamed a black man
any black man would do

Another story
She leaves the dance
Walks into the bathroom
drops the fetus into the trash

Now that
Really scares me

Rukesayer:

Wire Hydra

The phone rang then played dead
So I asked
Who is this really
A metallic voice
Raspy
impassioned
Whispered
I am the Wire
Demons and Angels
sprout from my chest
Running wild across the Land
I am
The Hydra of Many Hands
This is the hand that Kills
And this the hand that Heals
The scolding hand
the caressing hand
The hand that bites
and smites
and smiles

I am the Tooth of Reason
The foot of Empire
The grain of sand
that speaks the Desert
The ever opening flower of Heaven
The hour of the time after Time

I am the sound of Billions
Pounding the Earth
pounding it flat
The thunder of every living heart

I live there now
In the Wire
in the golden City of Dreams

Yistawn:

Myriad Rivers

Suck me into your emerald eyes
Pull me all the way down
Your optic nerves

Slithering around
The back of your mind
I ache for the acrid
smell of your wet fur

You snap bolt upright
your eyes abruptly wide
As I slide down your spine
In quest of your adrenals

You shiver as I
Golden fire
Course the myriad rivers
Under your skin

Finis

Saranathan:

The Sun descends in crimson robes
Plunging into the Horizon
Where Earth meets Heaven

Toomell:

Timid at first
The silver stars appear
The Moon dawns full
in raven arms of the East

Yistawn:

On shifting Sands
Two figures float
In the velvet Night

Daughter of the Stars
Walks without treading the sand
Son of the Sun
Moves as one with the Wind

Gizac:

Gently at first the merest whisper
She sings a tone poem
He answers
A throaty hum

Saranathan:

With gathering force
Her eyes wild
She speaks many prophesies
Shouting
Whispering

Yistawn:

Always compelling
He answers without words
Life begins and ends a thousand times
in the night
Forces that are not rightly understood
are released and contained
Great waves
of resonate chord build and crest
Each cadence gathering a greater voice
Each beat building into the other
Quaking the Earth
Shaking the Sky

Toomell:

Yet within All
Balance is retained
Chaos in enveloped
Anima and Animus
Eye of one within the other

In one vast crashing Crescendo
Everything becomes One thing
Thunder echoes across the Land
And the night moves toward Dawn

Gizac:

The End