Here is a new short play I wrote during my spring semester playwriting studio.

"Lemon Shark (1st Draft)"

"The Day I Met the Love of My Life"


On the day i met the love of my life
I challenged myself
to hold in my urine for as long as possible
So it happened
a day of school
then a dwindling in a dusty office
then a ride on the metro
then a dinner with dave
then a peering above a rail clenching hopefully yelling vai brasil vai nao solta da bola nao deixa chuta a bola chuta brasil chuta
We won though it was only an exhibition match


At home
I lifted the toilet seat
and pissed stingingly
vibrantly
like a roaring tiger cub
for three minutes

3 Conversations in Bed

By Sabato Visconti

1. Vera
   (Silent darkness, pink and fuchsia floral sheets.)

Did you hear that?

Wha-?

That shrieking? Did you hear it?

Shrieking?

Don’t tell me you didn’t hear that…

I didn’t hear anything.

It sounded almost like a child screaming…a distorted metallic child…

You should try to sleep.

I can’t… This room is haunted…

That absinthe was haunted…

It’s not just tonight; this whole week I’ve been feeling a strange presence in here, like spirits moving about…

Screaming like children?

I’m not fucking with you.

Is that why you came over last night? …I thought you were just horny.

I wasn’t horny; I was freaked out…

Oh…

You can’t tell the difference, can you?

No, I guess not… But have you ever thought that maybe you’re just…

Just what? Projecting shit? Out of some subconscious fucking need for self-validation?

Well, sort of, but…

Don’t give me that intro to psych bullshit. I know what I’ve been feeling. There is a real, almost tangible spiritual presence stirring here… You have no idea what I’ve been through this past week. It’s more than just the shrieking. Yesterday, after class, I found feathers under my chair. Chicken feathers. How the fuck did they get there? My door’s always locked… I’m going to have to move out of this room…

Isn’t that a little drastic?

Do you know what happened to me Monday night?

What happened to you Monday night?

I fell asleep around eleven and I woke up in the middle of the night and I couldn’t move. I was completely paralyzed. I couldn’t fucking move. I could barely feel my eyelashes batting. The rest of my body was gone.  I tried to scream but nothing came out. I was fucking terrified. Have you ever felt paralyzed before? I was so fucking scared that I prayed, I fucking prayed. I haven’t prayed since my first communion. I couldn’t even remember who to fucking pray to…

Why didn’t you tell me any of this before?

You never asked!

I’m sorry, it never occurred to me to ask if you’ve been asphyxiating in your sleep.

I heard the last girl who lived here was into Santeria…I have to move out…

You never finished your story… What happened with the paralysis?

 Um… Nothing. I kind of fell asleep and woke up fine the next morning.

Oh…

I still can’t sleep though. Could we talk for a little bit? I need to be distracted.

…

Well, are you doing anything tomorrow night?

I’m going to the concert.

Did you get me a ticket?

No.

Why not?

You don’t like going to classical concerts, you said they were pretentious…

Who are you going with?

With Jon.

2. Tess
   (Amber glowing through silent lampshades, monochrome patterned sheets.)

What’s in that bottle?

Absinthe

You keep a bottle of absinthe on your night stand?

It seems appropriate.

Well, then… You know, I can’t get that tune out of my head. I’ve just been hearing it ever since I came in here. I think it’s the lighting.

The melody was beautiful.

So were the girls in the string quartet.

Yeah, they were.

Actually, I thought the second violin had a weird face. It was too flat and she had this dull kind of grin that made her look like one of those stone faces in Cambodia.

I thought she was charming.

When you saw those four girls playing, did you think about sleeping with them?

What kind of question is that?

Well, you said they were pretty, didn’t you?

That doesn’t mean I thought about fucking them.

But you would, like if the Cellist walked up to you at a party and offered you a cocktail, talking and laughing in your ear. You would wouldn’t you?

Why this hypothetical?

You would…

Of course I would (in a fucking heartbeat). But that doesn’t mean I spent the entire string quartet thinking about it.

What were you thinking about then?

What is it that to you?

3. Vera
   (Darkness and faint music, monochrome patterned sheets.)

I’ve always wanted to smoke cigarettes in bed.

But you’ve quit.

I never started.

That’s the worse kind of quitting…

Do you know what I found out today?

No.

Apparently, thirteen years ago, some girl committed suicide in my room. She locked herself inside the closet and overdosed on speed. It took about a week for people to realize that she hasn’t been showing up anywhere. Then it took a couple of more days for someone to check inside her closet. She died wearing a designer chinchilla-fur coat.

No shit, in a closet?

The custodian told me all about it; he’s been working there for twenty years.

Do you think that explains the shrieking?

I guess… I don’t know.

Maybe you heard shrieking chinchillas.

Fuck you… I’m moving out of that place, I’ve convinced a girl with a smaller room on the second floor to swap with me.

Did you tell her your room is spooked?

God, No… Who’d want a haunted room?

So you’ll just let her fend for herself against all the chicken feathers and screaming children…?

Maybe she won’t notice… The place might not be that spooked.

Right…

An editor from “The Economist” is coming to speak tomorrow night… about resource conflicts in Papua New-Guinea… Would you want to…?

I don’t think so.

Beethoven won’t think you’re cheating on him.

It’s funny you say that. They played one of his string quartets last night.

Did you like it?

It reminded me of frogs.

Poor fucking Beethoven

No, the music was gorgeous… I just started thinking about tadpoles during the first movement: hundreds of little tadpoles darting in an old fountain filled with rainwater. When I was a kid, about seven or eight, I went up to a fountain to make a wish. I remember seeing all those crazy tadpoles and thinking that if I dropped my quarter in there, the tadpoles would eat it up like piranhas or something and my wish wouldn’t come true… So I kept the quarter and bought bubble gum.

Well…Beethoven does that to people… Did Jon like it?

Yeah… Jon loved it.

Teresa

By Manual Bandeira
translated by sabato visconti


The first time I saw Teresa
I thought she had stupid legs
I also thought her face looked like a leg.

When I saw Teresa again
I thought her eyes were older than the rest of her body
(Her eyes were born and waited ten years for the rest of her body to emerge).

The third time I saw nothing
The heavens mingled themselves with earth
And the Spirit of God returned to move upon the face of the waters.

"Seven-Faced Poem"

By Carlos Drummond de Andrade
Translated by Sabato Visconti


When I was born, a twisted angel
living under the shadows
told me: Go! be gauche in life!

The houses spy men,
chasing after women.
Evening perhaps would be blue,
were it not for so many desires

The subway's packed with legs
white legs, black, yellow
My God, Why so many legs, my heart asks
but my eyes
never ask a thing.

The man behind the mustache
is stern, simple and strong.
almost never speaks
has few, rare friends
the man behind the mustache and glasses

My God, why did you forsake me
If you knew I was no God
If you knew I was weak

Globe globe vast round globe
If I were named Job
That would be a rhyme, not a solution
Globe globe round vast globe
Vaster is my heart

I shouldn't tell you
but this moon
and this Cognac
moves us like the devil

See the original poem here

"Our Fine Trombone"


Under the auspices of Colonel Rakesworth-Kiellings we developed an abrupt and undecipherable case of typhus. In fact, it was typhus. Nothing more, nothing less. Ashok kept gesticulating wildly. He believed it was Jaundice. But Ashok failed to address the typhus stains on the shower tiles, on the shower curtains.

One evening we decided that Ashok no longer exists. We celebrated the breakthrough decision with a cocktail party. We did not invite Ashok. But I've heard that the Daniels, husband and wife, relegated Ashok's "corporal latitudes" to a janitorial closet with the aid of a swift blow to the back of the head. It was during that party that I met Angela Nunez in a glittery dress, holding a daiquiri in her left hand, a fashionable bag by the shoulder strap in the right. Angela Nunez wanted to know about the typhus. When will it take over the banks? The banks, she said, as if she legally owned an account. The nerve of that shimmerwoman. She took intermittent sips of her daiquiri, tasting it the way a tree nymph's toe tastes the surface of a midnight pool. Angela Nunez, your dress is the origins of the cosmos. Thank you, thank you, I have a peculiar cosmogony, you know. I don't know, actually. Even better, she said. Angela Nunez thought she was onto something. Preventative measures, she said, almost in a whisper. Prophylactics? You wish, she smiled wide as her hips. She had formulated a system, an emergency response protocol, a management philosophy of sorts. It involved handles of Rum, Whiskey. She had a thing of red label in her purse. No epidemic could stop her. Daiquiri sips. Her eyes swirled lavender.

I lost interest.

Angela Nunez was one of those girls that always hung out in the Northern wing Library, the one ostensibly dedicated to the Colonel's grandmother, a frail, residual creature named "Lourdes", whose portrait above the fireplace hung upside down. That library had a small collection of African drums. Angela Nunez was a child of rhythm. I am a child of the wine cellar. With my casket leeches and undiscerning women. A matter of misaligned regionalism, that's all. Next time. Maybe next time it will be one of the Negroes from the kitchen, they always happy.

What about the Jazz band, drumming Angela Nunez asked. It’s November, the jazz ensemble play summer and spring. Now, they have waltzes. Would you like... I sent out my hand, my waltz entreating hand. Angela Nunez sighed, sipped. Always a sip, a pipetted sample sip. Nothing more, nothing less. I don’t… do… Angela searched for the right words, closing her eyes to browse her thesaurus eyelids. Mouth slightly parted. My hand recoiled. Angela Nunez opened her eyes, light chasing lavender swirls. Mouth slightly parted, lips slightly concave.

Waltzing, she said with deadpan indifference, is for people who are too guilty to drink, fuck or plunder.

A Haiku for Ingmar Bergman
(1918 - 2007)


Dear Mr. Bergman
Today you've become like God,
thoroughly silent

There is a point
I guess
Where the fleshy tethered past
gently begins to unfasten
tendons loosed
blushing marrow through the shards
oh those shards

There is a point
or better yet
a junction of space-time
where the past
spirals out of orbit unseen

There is a point
No
a threshold
a chalky line
a tamarind
No
There is a gap
an unnoticed gap
a blinking abyss
There is something
some rule
some guiding ordinance
some vast and unutterable
elegance
(I hope)
anything palpable
at least words
whiffing words
just somethin to say
about that vacuum
that searing nothingness
where memory
becomes fiction

1. Sex is Biology
2. Biology is Existence

Hence

Sex is Existence

Last Saturday night I remembered Jasmine Braga for the first time since ninth grade. My father met Jasmine's mother, Cynthia, at some social function at some Brazilian church. Cynthia was into journalism. She wrote, edited, photographed, laid out, printed, distributed, and recycled her own Brazilian newspaper from her one bedroom apartment, all while witnessing to her slovenly condescending non-believing husband and raising a five year old boy, a ten year old girl, and Jasmine, who was fourteen or fifteen when I met her.

Jasmine was physically endowed like a typical Brazilian teenage school girl: Thin callipygian contour and perky breasts. But what really struck me was her face. She had proportionate features with soft cheeks encompassed by straight polished citrine strands catching sunlight inches above her shoulder. Her eyes were uniquely slanted, betraying the Western European influences of her parents and siblings. Her eyebrows would have appeared to be too strong or too thick, if they didn't arch so gracefully over her jet black eyelashes like onyx dolphins piercing air above a tenebrous thoughtless ocean. She had wide, thick, bright red lips, painted on her mouth with a sure, nonchalant brush stroke.

I enjoyed talking to her. I enjoyed her friendship. But I was an immature middle school brat, who just discovered South Park, porn, rap music, masturbation, and big words. In other words, I was a bitch to her more often than I should have been. Once at a Best Buy, she told me to fuck off in a playful way that greatly tantalized me. Some time later, I called her a "Harlot of Babylon" and she asked me what a "harlot" was and I laughed at her.

I remember another time, I was walking back from the beach with her, her brother and her father. I remember her father teasing her with his slow drawl about some Brazilian boy who worked at a supermarket. Jasmine didn't appreciate the allusion. Her father told us that this boy would constantly grab her ass. Jasmine got pissed off. I remember being quietly enraged that some Brazilian profligate would take such liberties on my Jasmine, though the idea of touching her ass appealed to me then like never before.

I guess this meant that I had a crush on Jasmine. I was a silly kid then, as all middle-schoolers are. I was too drunk on the novelty of South Park and Profanity. I didn't understand people, much less women, much less life. But then, have you ever met a middle-schooler who did?

My father and Cynthia had a falling out at some point before my eighth grade year, over money or something to do with Cynthia's Newspaper. With that falling out, Jasmine fell out as well. Around this time, I remember that Jasmine called my dad as he was picking me up from school to inform him of my misbehavior, such as a time when I dared to call her a "bitch". My dad gave me plenty of shit for that and I, in response, was terribly offended by her call. What a sell-out thing to do! Especially since she was no angel herself. She did tell me to fuck off.

I haven't given any thought on whether I "forgave" her for ratting me out until last Saturday, when I suddenly remembered her at three in the morning. Not that I held a grudge, I just never considered it. Today, I remember feeling slightly relieved that Jasmine only disclosed the "bitch" incident and not the numerous other f-bombs and p-mortars and s-mines that I liberally disbursed. Now, I imagine that maybe, she chose not to mention these things, because she didn't really want to get me into trouble. Maybe her mother coerced her into ratting me out. Who knows?

I remember how one night she tucked me in and talked to me for two hours past my bed time. I remember that after I fell asleep I dreamed that she kissed me by a magazine rack in Walgreens. I remember a feeling fond of her, for tucking me in and talking to me, so peacefully, with quiet laughs and observations. I guess... well, I hope (if one could hope for such things) that this fondness absolves my other indiscretions, at least in terms of what remains: scattered memories and broken recollections.

The Lord HaShem said to Moses and Aaron:
"Bring me a red cow"

Moses put his hand to his mouth:
"Lord HaShem, who reigns in benign intervals, why oh why oh why?"

HaShem replied:
"For the holy baptism water requires the ash of a red cow."

Moses awestruck:
"Lord HaShem, who created asparagus, what about a white cow with black blots?"

HaShem clarified:
"I said red."

Moses stupefied, agreed. But Aaron, wizard-minded inquired:
"How about blue?"

HaShem gasped:
"No oh no oh no! Red!"

Aaron continued:
"How about a red flower, shaped like a small cow?"

HaShem roared:
"Red I said, not yellow, not taupe, not maroon, not scarlet...
but Red...
Red like a Ferrari
Red like little Abigail's Marriage Consummation
Red like a doomsday button
Do you understand?"

Aaron unrelenting:
"How about a cow...
not just any cow, you see,
a meta-cow
a cow that spans spectrums wide and high
a cow that blushes whatever hue at the slight tap of your fingertip
against it's metallic meta-nose
a cow wider than the firmament
a cow with hooves so musical
that little peasant children offer up their abortions
on little paper plate altars
and pour libations of Chamomile, Myrrh, Hydrogen Peroxide.
Yes, Lord Hashem,
whose name cannot be written upside-down,
This is one hell of a cow.
How about that?"

HaShem was silent
The children of Israel journeyed the wilderness for forty years
and littered the desert ecosystem with fetid Jewish carcasses.

You are an insolent child
yes you
you don't brush your teeth
you merely eat toothpaste
it taste sweet don't it
it tastes of fluoride candy canes
it makes you think of Schubert
early Schubert
when he too ate toothpaste
the fluoride spun him crazy
but Schubert had melodies
melodies that twist your heart
as if it were a soaked rag
a double helix
a bible
But you don't have melodies
you merely prattle on your phone
and watch cartoons
ugly lazy post-modern cartoons

(Today's cartoonists forgot how to draw
how to laugh
how to lust)

You insolent child
I ought to cast you in a corner
fling lampreys at your face
vampirefish at your genitals
cartoonists at your knees

As of tonight
you will bursh your teeth
with bile

Moon,
tonight I caught a passing glimpse of your face
peering over a fence of toothpick trees
bloated red pale
drained of wine and cocaine
with lingering traces of junk
and what else you may
slightly fading though not quite yet
hoping to forget the wailing starry sirens
awaiting the last step at end of your shift

They'll really have it at you then
they'll flatten you out on a ice metal tray
they'll fasten you up real tight
they'll stick in tubes and devices
they'll dilate your pupils
they'll suck your poison dry
they'll condemn you and set you aside
they'll enumerate charges and cloud you with infractions
they'll reform you and convert you
you're not supposed to dally
you're not supposed to binge
you're not supposed to make crude jokes in mixed company
you're supposed to stick to the course
that eternal course
like clockwork
like bureaucracy
like military marching
like god's once begotten son

Then Moon,
once you've dwindled
once you've withered
once that sinful blush
is flushed down the tides
then they'll bring you back
you'll be born again
you'll be all duty then

But don't worry, Moon
I'll be waiting for you
I'll bring you caskets
and treasure troves of forgetfulness
your thick lips will taste obscurity once again
and you will laugh and roar again

Do you know what I hate?

Spelling Bee's.

Not necessarily those small school/county-wide spelling bee's where kids try to spell "elocution", but that big national one they broadcast on ESPN with all the Colonial West India Tea Company Brown people and the gawky awkward home-schooled children who blush and shit themselves between letters.

It boggles my mind that these secluded little souls pour so much time into memorizing the spelling of words, not because the computer age has made "intermediate to advanced" spelling obsolete, but because spelling is at most, a mechanical mental task a notch below memorizing trivia and baseball stats.

The thing about spelling is that it is so reductive that it borders absurdity. Just because you can spell prodigiously, doesn't mean you can write, it doesn't even mean that you could speak English. I can imagine some autistic Ukrainian kid with a knack for Latin/Greek/Germanic etymology spelling "Gargantuan" on cable television without actually being able to successfully order food at McDonald's.

It's like being able to shout out all the notes to a Beethoven piano sonata, doesn't mean you could play the damn thing.

A century ago, well... forty years ago, being a good speller could get you somewhere: as a copy editor for publications, or as an English teacher. Being a good speller gave you the sacred privilege of hitting little children with a yard stick.

But today, with spell-check available everywhere you type (even this LJ entry was spell checked, thank you Firefox!), the whole quasi-obsession with national spelling bee's amounts to nothing but a reflection of the great American tradition of rewarding the assembly line mentality.

Turn a wrench.
Spell a word.
Spell a really really big Joycean word.
Here's $25,000.

May Taylorism triumph!
May the creative human forces that breathe color into our cold calculator stone age be spurned to the back of the bus.
Along wit da brothaz. Ya dig?

But then, on the other hand, when else would anyone see home schooled people and Indians on ESPN?

When I was fourteen
I sat with a wise old tree
her name was Umbreen
her voice echoed dryly
when she spoke to me
of the nineteenth century

She said:

"I used to have sessions
with a young fiery psychiatrist
named Sigmund.
During the third session
after an awkward pause
I clenched my eyes airtight
and confessed in broken sobs
'I want to fuck my mother.'
Sigmund smiled
and gestured like a wizard would
'Don't worry' he said
as he laid out a few lines"

Gaytanamo



GAYTANAMO!

Remember those abstracted picture of African Children I posted awhile ago? (if you don't, you can click here for the 1st installment)... Well fortune held it necessary for a second series of images detailing the harsh life of African Children.





"Little African Children: Ebola Wagon #1"








"Little African Children: Ebola Wagon #2 "








"Little African Children: Ebola Casket #1"








"Little African Children: Ebola Casket #2"

First, a Poem by Bukowski

"8 Count"

from my bed
I watch
3 birds
on a telephone
wire.
one flies
off.
then
another.
one is left,
then
it too
is gone.
my typewriter is
tombstone
still.
and I am
reduced to bird
watching.
just thought I'd
let you
know,
fucker.

Not that I'm a fan of Lindsay Lohan, or naked actresses, but i think this is a great picture





I feel I should offset the ecstasy some of you might be feeling by posting this picture as well



and this one



Maybe that was too much... How about this