Pt. 1 – The come-on
“The number one killer of youth,” you said,
swallowing my prescription,
“is middle-age,”
2 sets
of twin satellites
scraped chalk
trajectories
down
to our
sunless
seas.
“Do you think I’m plain?”
but yer busy
reading
the ancient texts of your torn and bitten nails,
again.
The mp3 murmurs to the drywall,
“… True love is not nice…”
Yeah fireworks magnesium
sprinkle
above the charred coals of Friday night
– an anonymous yet erotic utility of Upper Paradise.
Pt. 2 – The come-up
Your pinched face
a yellow onion in the fireplace
of your bald head.
wrapped in fur to the eyebrows.
The song, “you could really get it on.”
Blancmange (you): Mad, Cowgirl?
Pyjamela (me): Listen, man-
Aw, the weekend: from denim to corduroy to finer knit seraglio flannels
Blancmange: – Don’t call me ‘man’.
Pyjamela: Let’s take two more.
Blancmange: Each?
Over and over in the breath required,
“Let’s leave this putard of a city.”
Pt. 3: The come-in
Construction crews
blast new holes
in my neural pathways
(stumbling across the old Xanax Pipeline).
Things are pretty backed up in there
but the Somniferous Special’s getting through.
Mix
the dope
with a lukewarm bath
of Vaseline
or tartar sauce
and you get
Walpurgis Stew.
You stare at my breasts
telling tall tales of
the Lund harbour seal
– recumbent in an oil slick –
of the Mystery of Goat Island
whereupon
your daddy died
like Neal Cassidy
between the ribs
of a beached and bloated mythos.
He had planted dill & daisies for the hippies of Powell River
(flowers for their vanished youth: 70’s kids sopped
into crummies,
fishing boats,
THE MILL;
sweet herbs for making borsht with their middling years).
In the tub my hair
comes out by the swansful.
Pt. 4: The come-out
Constipaste,
you are the clamps
on my fallopian
– huh this dope goes nowhere
I see you trying in vain to pull a hair
from your tongue.
A hair
that isn’t there.
Pt. 5: The cum shot
Yer stealing
from work
again,
Blancmange.
The sweats,
your upper lip,
“They thieve little 8hr shards
of my life
– why not liberate some dry goods in the exchange?”
After the canned beans and flax oil,
oranges and Muir Glen
are digested by your conscience
I’ll sing to you:
“Oh, night,
yer a fridge with a child trapped inside.
“Oh, lover,
yer a worm in the stomach
(another kind of lover).
“Oh, moon,
yer the view from the interrogation
room of vomit.
“Oh, sleep,
yer that field full of poppies
where the corpses come and go.
“Alright,
oh, night,
I’m wiped.”
And sure,
the stolen booze
was brand new second-hand,
nay
the dusty chambers
of a bagpipe,
but
we’ve heard
all the stories,
left the continent of bottled sorrow
and ragged,
fractured men
but punk sucks
now, anyhow.
MDMA
doesn’t,
not as a poultice
on the blight
of our souls,
anymo’
besides
you almost
died like Marat
in the dentist’s flat
as morning sparked
a whole lotta rosey
on the snows
of Elephant Mt.
Are we rolling, Bob?
The hash was, like,
wearing,
like,
a television, like yer watching television
but yer out in the world.
A kind-of (Tokyo roadkill),
the setting commonplace
amidst
the extraordinary flight
of living.
& One must
work
too hard
for
“the good porn.”
but
this
codeine
– “Coh-DEEN” you call it
with the twang of Simcoe –
Codone’s a delight
as in
waking from the dream
of old age
to find
yer 15
at summer camp
somehow
at play
in the warm
flannel
lapdog
of your genitals.
But
the kidneys
complain
and stomach like a vice-principal
otherwise
we’d do it
every night.
Oh
and
the
neighbors
get suspicious,
“It’s like a tomb over there.”
codeine.
codone.
Oxy the inevitable.
contin.
Codeine the Conqueror, laying waste your agenda.
codone the shuffles.
contin sleep of iron chain.
Sheriff Cohdeen
on the trail of the evil prospector
up in
Tired Woman Gulch…
Stare
into
the
sun
as
white
as
huuuuuuuuuuuuuhhhhhhhhhmmmmmmmmmmm…
3. More.
4.
See? how the day
won’t?
come?
rushing back.
See?
how shadows
won’t?
stay
in the dark?
Hear the mess of dishes
grinding noise in the apartment below
sirens
small child with sparking, broken toy
my head cracking the vacuum
who can say it is over yet?
or even at its worst
– we plunge from paradise
as swiftly
as we did at first.
I listen as you go on
at length
about your stuff,
“… Will not go back to that excruciating heart break
of a shit-eating job!
“… Will not retreat into my head-closet ANYMORE
as the creature
THE MONSTER puts on my pants
my glasses
takes up that ridiculous key fob
and
and
like a miracle of ugly obligation
‘rannana rannana’ Saanich-in-the-Rain ‘rannannana’!!
“… Cannot heft broccoli, apples, polish onions trim parsley
into little mounds of middle class
shine-o-la.”
I think
your face
yet reveals the child,
but yer prostate
and yer ranting voice
are
on the wane
and we both know
come Monday
in the
cold
light
of morning,
you will go.
“Oh, night,
yer a child with a fridge trapped inside…”
5.
Blancmange: What?
Pyjamela: What?
Blancmange: Didn’t you…?
Pyjamela: What?
Blancmange: I thought…?
Pyjamela: What?! Fucking WHAT?!!
6.
(mono radio drama voice)
this is Buzz Light-head calling Space Control! Come in, Space Control! Hmmm, that’s strange… Light Head-buzz calling Sparse Control, come on, hem, huhhhh, come on,
Cream Rinse wash away our sins
with your Comfrey Breath.
Come
washer woman
smooth away the wrinkles
in our aging souls
as we water polo
the only question
worth
asking:
what do we mean
when we say “wet”?
(a slight jumbly in my tumbly
as a gastrointestinal Hindenburg
aflames to bursting)
7.
“Formication n. 1. a sensation, real or imagined, of insects crawling on the skin, your skin; 2. the idea; 3. the very idea; 4. cause for cessation of opiate indulgence (you’re not Alistair fucking Crowley, you know); 5. soon, you must shit; 6. or die trying.
Fortuna s. the arbitrary goddess of fortune (Rom. Myth & hobo legend).”
– Seven Pillows of Wisdom, ch.8: Sermon of the Fire Ants
Octo (8).
In the Epic Now Known Capriciously as, “Oxy: Your Foster-Foster Mammy And All The Comforts Therewith”
The stage is black, except for some shiny wetnesses here and there, as though the stars have come poking out. a short row of teeth-like apparati hang from the uppermost stage curtain, as a corresponding row forms a fence along the stage-front floor, behind which all the “action” takes place.
(enter Pyjamela, dressed as Henry David Thoreau, serenading an enormous onion, which is festooned with massive eyebrows.)
Pyjamela: Your foot agin’ mine,
lahk the Velvuh-teen!
Inna many ways,
A night-mayer
I jus’ witness seen:
Rivers all bin boiled dry,
trees cut down
an’ lef’ tuh die.
Smoke done fill
th’ smoke black sky
– but gasoleen is 20 cents! –
so we, yes you and I,
we die-e-e-e-e-e-e-e!
Let the itching begin. it’s time to seriously consider nappy-time.
The Onion (somehow): whatever can you mean?
(exeunt.)
(enter two gi-normous white tablets, with legs like RKO dancers)
Pill 1: Water! water! A glass of goddam water!
Pill 2: A thousand cups and blanketsful of water!
(enter Pyjamela and The Onion. she/he dances with the Pills. the Pills attempt a sandwich maneuver. Pyjamela rebuffs their advances.)
Pyjamela: Let the itching begin in earnest!
(enter Pills 3 & 4, who join in the dancey pursuit of Pyjamela about the stage.)
The Onion (somehow): 8000mg? That seems ill-advised.
(Pyjamela, attempting to dodge the Pills, begins to lose control of the enormous onion.)
Pyjamela: The place is a mess – who will clean the place?
The Onion (somehow): Everywhere’s a mess – do be careful! The ghost of Sputnik yet orbits the Earth – watch it! – an eyeless skull going ‘round and ‘round. Who shall clean the heavens?
(enter Pills 6, 7, 8 and 5. they join in what is now a rigorous moshing of Pyjamela.)
Pyjamela: My armpits, my crotch, my head!
(enter Pills 9 – 16. the stage is filled with white light.)
The Onion (somehow): I’m falling!
(The Onion shatters. all movements cease.)
Pyjamela: (reciting to the fragments of The Onion)
Almond, vanilla:
to bed and to pillow –
(the Pills drop to one knee, mourners now.)
Pyjamela: To pillow, to pillow,
though seas bump and billow –
All: Oh, damselfish fellow,
to bed and to pillow!
(the Pills become prostrate.)
Pyjamela: (Gathering pieces of The Onion in her/his arms) in the face of the leviathan we struggle to be free and happy. Is this the point of living?
The Onion (somehow): Not likely. What we settle for when we fail counts most.
All this flailing, struggling:
the comforts of the shallows are preferable
to the terrors of the depths.
the Pills: (gleeful, like radio janglers)
Chasms! Caverns! Abandoned places!
The Onion (somehow): Failure.
the Pills: Failure!
Pyjamela: The foundering ruins in our souls: error, haste, fear, sloth, even lust – it’s failure that really counts.
The Onion (somehow): Failure, it stains the soul.
Pyjamela: Failure.
the Pills: (Taking off their pill forms to reveal bearded, haggard men) Failure.
Thoreau: It lasts a lifetime.
(From the rear of the stage, an all-encompassing tongue, probably red-purple cloth, emerges to cover the scene. curtain, as lips.)
9.
In Which We Return To Simpler Times (approx. 6pm)
Blancmange: Whew, what a day at the store!
Pyjamela: Tough day in the trenches?
Blancmange: I tell ya.
Children’s store mannequin: (explosion).
Pyjamela: I managed to get some amoxicillin for my monotuberculasthma –
Blancmange: I’m glad! we should start buying bullion –
Pyjamela: – And an entire bottle of Oxy for these darn headaches.
Blancmange: Headaches? What headaches?
Pyjamela: Hah?!
Blancmange: Oh?!!
Together: Ah-ha ha ha hah! AND A-oh ho ho! To the merry old land of Oz!
10.
Red thread,
bedstead
blush
spills
everywhere I look
like
screw cap wine
in a motel 6
like my flushed
engorged
hand
going
down
your
pants
as
though
I
suddenly
recalled where
I
left the keys to the Rambler
how
could
any
body
be
this
horny
yet
turned off
at the same time?
(my jaw is hanging by a rubber)
I
recalled
every
person
I
ever met
just
now
and
for
got
them
all
a
gain
(this time it’s for the better)
sweater?
no
I’m burning up
but
close the door
I can see
the back
of my head
from
here.
clay mccann 