[Pregnant pause, suspended in the tender interval of a luxuriously elastic anacrusis.

No oxygen, please. Rather, a slow sticky treacle of warm maple syrup.]

Act II. [Dissolve. Evening.]

Seemingly empty trattoria, now coated with a thin layer of soot

and scattered with scintilla of various delicacies.

Dim leak of yellowing daylight through thick black drapes.

[Aftershocks of the afternoon’s incident animate the scene.]

Whistling again.

One by one, our friends emerge from under the white linen-topped tables, wriggling on paunch.

Bessie first. Assesses carnage, begins to munch.

Gulping sound. Whistling stops. Bessie surreptitiously fondles gut.

Resume whistle and munch. Moments pass.

Rudy (unseen): Stuff it! Whistling stops.

Rudy creeps forth, espies some scraps near Bessie, his face filthy with ash.

He cozies up to her weirdly. She unambiguously rebuffs.

Gus (unseen): Jackpot!

Cordula: Prairie oyster!

Gus: Giblets galore!

Rudy: Calf or lamb?

Bessie: Heart or throat? Hastily slithers back under table.

Cordula (to Gus): Now eat it up like a good little spy.

Rudy: Sphere or cylinder?

Bessie: Going fast-

Gus: (They crumble quickly when exposed)-

Bessie (mid mouthful): -fascinating little flora, bubbly and bright, some salmon, some sky-blue-

Rudy: Not those dear!

Bessie: -all speckled like fish eggs-

Gus: -and crisp, the skin-

Cordula: -the roe comes later (with the cakes)-

Gus (with relish): -like juice vesicles beneath skin of grape,

Taut, tensile (but balloon-like), and deliquescent under teeth.

Bessie: Kudos to the saucier-

Gus (zesty uptick): -fig and pomegranate emulsion-

Cordula: They really do a number in the galley-

Rudy (discovering something): Tar-tare! Nibbles with glee.

Gus briefly peeps his head out from under the table.

Gus: Soldered saps behind the beaten brass-

Cordula: I saw them through the slit-

Gus: Which? Linen closet?

Rudy: Sad things, really. All houndstooth and freezer char-

Cordula (intrigued): Freezer char?

Bessie: When will Wally let them go?

Rudy: Not before the rush, and only

Under strict surveillance.Cordula: Char?

Rudy: -To him they’re meats-

Gus: You know, they pucker and prune in black and burn with icy crystal-crust-

Rudy: Cruel, really-

Bessie: Cupidity, truly-

Cordula (audible glimmer of excitement): Psychosis, even.

Rudy: What? Slithering for smithereens?

Gus: Angels in ash like snow?

Bessie: -that Baldi dusts to find the feeders feet?

Cordula: Remembering embers and membranes of beauty... and they were such good company too.

Gus: Would always beat the bugs and finish before the other fauna wisen up. (turns)-Squab!

Rudy squeaks and quickly squirms under a table.

Gus steals out slowly from beneath another tabletop towards the tar-tare.

Rudy: One really feels the warming on paunch. Pause. Peers out at Gus.

Go lay an egg.

Bessie (glumly): We all will-

Cordula: Later.

Rudy (amorous): Oh, you are a smash, darling. Kissy noises.

Moments pass. Gus nips at the remains and, sniffing something afresh,

slithers back under another table.

Whistling again.

Moments pass.

Lester in bed in his lampless room.

Same dim evening ooze.

He flails, flops, smutters out spatterings of melody,

which swish and swirl about drunkenly in his sick-sad mind.

...“pip, pop. dib, dab. timp, tamp. blibper, blabper.”...

...“bitter platter”...

...“talling finsel (sickle tickle)”...

...[soft groan] mmmmmm... bitter red feenal- [hiccups.]

“like a lampless marble Mary smeared in tarpine [ooo-ooo]”

...mulsions... mulsions... stip! stop! [pip, pop. dib, dab. all in stimple]...

...[smiles] “dangle date bites fling (flop) florals in the sty” [caustic] (why, why!?)

...pitter patter tamping timbrel falling sickle bitter bladder trumpet trample birdy splatter ---

(violently coming to) unclean, unclean! ...re-quiet, re-quiet...

...mulsions...

...mulsions that make tooth

to hole and thaw to think;

They look me down -

They buzz by lips at me -

I was for as drill of fire

(evacuate; evacuate) -

...“yellow-bled-and-glue-breen spindles in the dye”...Seen all sunful by bitter red;

Sitting down; rising up:

(dejected) I am their music -

[coverly as moth or fisherfly

(after the lamellae and mesh enmold

my arms, enamels: pulps-]

...“tamping timbrel falding sinckle bitter bladder pinter panter birndy splatter”...

Flowed they did waters over this sunshiny head,

Flowed they did like (s)butter yellow molt of blading brass;

Ba(n)d bane, bane - Swolten blande,

Blandily definding,

Yellow waste of yolk.

Sickle sun, anemic -

Red by my lip of eye and

Showing for all; crustcraven, bloated

By the bellows (handyband knot

Flameflush) birndy, birndy, birndy girds -

In-outing, in-outing; ‘gain, ‘gain:

Blow oblivions! [bitter;] butter fed renal stink(g) -

(g)all augury and organry -

Blow blow; for blithereens!

My accordions billow at the breach!

(abject) [the] musics become me - always becoming -

(like hollowing in tooth) - when days for bye I would

love to look at all the musics it would as drippingly

like candle cry into my fleece I swell now even one

molt of brasses makes for watersty and cloddermelt -

(soft groan) mmmmm...

Birndy chased me down sore, as watching eye,

(sniffs) without cause -

I looked him in face - (he opened my door) -

we were a lone a lost the linen lines:

[(low) dark-white, dark-white]

Beak all brandy-blued saw I the eyes of it -

Pause. (and he by blue he peeped my pipe)

The waiter, wading, (Birndy), waiting me through,

wandering wavelessly (till the rupture)

Pause.

Everything passes me through -

[bitter platter...] -

sack for skin - horn for dust -Ghost. Sheet in the bed.

Longsomely, lampless -

Enmulsionmine -

Re-quiet, re-quiet;

(lower) cloundglulp...

(whimpering) ...mulsions, mulsions...

Picks up Gedeon Bible from nightstand, opens to random page:

“flip, fleck”-

Eva appears from underneath the cloth,

slinking sullied in mink. Meat-magnet, she flanks

the tar-tare before returning to her linen domicile.

Love-eat-a-kiss thirnteen and fordy: [Reads:]

“And the man whose hair[n] is fallen off his head,

[with emphasis] he is bald [!]; (wader waiting me through wader wainting me---)

[relieved and quizzically amazed] yet he is clean.”

Smiles. Keeps flipping.

[Yet clean, yet clean...]

Re-quiet, re-quiet; [Reads again:]

Two King Two Two Three Two Four:

“An[d] he wen[t] up from thence unto [squints] [Birdle]: an[d] as he was going up by [the] way, there

came forth [(smiles)] little children[s] out of the city, [(muses)] (like when of young for yearlongs bye,

hapipily repeatiating like parrots: birndy, birnd!) [Continues.] an[d] mocked him, and said unto him, Go

up, thou bald head; go up, thou bald head. [upset] (flow they did stunshiny, slow they fled shunstimy)

“And he turn[ed] back, and look[ed] on them, and [emphasis] [coarsed] them in the [mane] of the ------

[gasp, encore più] And there came forth two she bears out of the wood,

and [turning in horror] tare for[d]y and two children of them.[!]”

Shrieks in cataleptic spasm, flinging bible on floor.

(raving) Instruments! - what fore tares and wheatles!? [dark-white, dark-white]

Technologists!- nort childrens to the (rupture)!? Rip, Krundje, Slurrb it by the underwhite -

Trampet treacle, yellow, yellow nacre naking mercies for the guessing knive -

Clutted glaw for hundry bearn in wade me through the jigjag mawths of bingely cat:

Sandtongue, sunndgklutt, show me shape and [emphasis] stripe bine rafeing crusticle; rent, drip bind drip;

Bellyswell, thighdrot- by gaul of asps with him be! -

Sicklesaw the white white hands of prill and princk-

Scour me off; refúse, refúse by gore(d) an[d] scour-a-gain, of-(v)off, of-(v)off -

Dig downed, dig deeb in theave me out: (ten.) remoof(f), remoof(f)- necktrogolists!- raw moon eye hide,

Gnaw my strill and stin(g) you dig me magly[lige]-

(caustic) Goatst, Sheeded. Goatst-

(defeated) whit(d)e, whit(d)e Pause. ghosss-

(turns) by go- I see for other white -

(Filamist) - [flowerwind,]Ravainly as dewdawn norn -

Mile liken(n)ess: glovely of hand,

Through-tiful and see as milk like glass;

(wondering) the little blue trees of under eye (delicately)

Paleful he was and clear as drip by music

All beryl body by this butterbrain - Madonnis

Diaphony vanlucense - moonlylike - Veen is,

Piiterpant on waterpane, morndrawn [bright] by ash of snow -

Human or pharynx, lumen or caul?

White gloves to hunt my step and fill my days -

Milkwash who saw I through but did not see

Me back he sang to look into display and gave me bird

By silver and prong of three to put upon my pipe -

I was covered then, my mulsions could not rest for

Lest[er] they be ruined of their roundlessness -

Stay me to my mulsions, roundripe and ruinous -

[Crystalcry, clairvoyeurcy:]

(I fear for reek of rock) Lester is -

[For when stone sleep king guard (e)sophagus behind by ground]

But down, down for [food of] wormb my laced stern linens go forsume

And scanty bone be drink key pipe for fing or tree

Yet by flesh I see, no other, the eye to hold (though rains be ate insides of me)

I see, I see (bye) Birdy, icy he there, down, down, dark.

Numen or larynx, flume (inner call)? Culling, cauling, [gaul], hullshallow to shamble

Me Lester, or shade on the shellhollow side of my black receiver- dim, dim - dark dimpling sing(k) -

Dark room that gives me tongue (to talk my dreams)- Long pause. Incomprehensible muttering.

Ring, (g)ring, (g)ringr--eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee- [tinnitus]

[(barely anything)] No more mulsions noma mewlsincs (mewl)sincssssnkssssnkssss...

nuppin(g) numm(p)in(g) nummmmm[b!]...

Soff noises on the edge of hearnings, [(listens...)]

(Forest fuzzies of the min(d)...) Moments pass.

Cordula: Avalanche of slough from our

Little red astronaut, astounding really,

A second course even, in the

Moonbooties.

Bessie: Sheds like her piggy-

Cordula: The insatiable thing-

Bessie: A mudful of mouth.

Rudy (knowingly): Did a number with the dour sop-

Bessie: -the dapper sow-

Cordula (low): Heard it was foul play.

Gus: Like something in the ear-

Bessie: -or in the bath-

Cordula: -or finishing among the koi-

Gus: -(space cowgirl is packing heat)-

Rudy: Came by this afternoon, the calamity,Looking for something- Moments pass.

Cordula: Anything new?

Bessie: Lots to glean by mirrorplay-

Rudy: Arby’s camel straw.

Gus: Our coup de glace.

Cordula: -(prison-spoils of reflection)-

Bessie: Bowerbird continues to collect:

A diadem in daffodil or asphodel,

Husks of hyacinth and iris whites,

Satin spread in deep crimson,

A mountain of myrrh, and a few

Languid candelabras like some

Gussy grindhouse.

Gus (peckish): -mmm gothic-

Rudy: Don’t spoil it, pumpkin!

Bessie: Various unguents.

Gus: -a claustrophobic mise-en-scène-

Bessie: Fluids too, strong and sweet-

Grappa, maybe, or gas-

Gus: Where’s our pirate prince anyhow, Cordula?

No response.

Bessie: Must have packed her own lunch.

Rudy: Always at moonrise, Gus.

Like a thief in the night.

The grayer the better.

Solid journeyman for a royal.

Eva wriggling again, though much dirtier now,

and to a different corner of the room,

having espied some now puddled aspic.

Gus: Small token of redemption

At least, for all the missing. Pause.

A pretty plume of smoke: Ada in tight-fitting gray-and-black

pin-stripes, pipe in mouth, slithers towards the puddle,

mid-puff. She twirls Eva’s hair and plays cat-like

with her squalid coat while she laps.

Gus: Strange beat, to tip off one’s own-

Rudy: -spill one’s own beans-

Gus: -bag one’s own cat-

Bessie: Veen is a common surname,

Like Peat, or Bog,

Gus: -or Gall-

Rudy: Sad sap-

Gus: -dour sop-

Bessie: -saturnine dope-

Gus: -sour splat-

Rudy: You know he’s sick;The white coats have him on regimen:

His thirteenth under the knife- always returns

In a bundle, an endless reel or spool of-

Bessie: Well he certainly splits-

[How about the] Pool?

Gus: Stuck-

One in three parts bitter (want of drain)-

Sure to be breeding ground for

The naiads and nymphs-

Rudy: One lone ribbon floating in their tears-

Bessie: Damselflies?

Gus: Fat chance-

Gulping sound.

Another (sharper and more deep).

Bessie: Chuckles-

Eva groundhogs from her puddle, interest piqued.

[Tick tock tick tock tick]

Crepitooting like crippets...

Longsharp, longsharp the masticaking of my clicky drimples [drimp drimp drom(p)]-

Is theren a wanter in my walter closet?

Who are they for sinksong (bu(t) seals, bu(t) seals(k!))- (pebble babble, purple bubble, boil blabber...)

Iterating ‘nintervals for skin by creep [of flush] (flish, flake. flesh(k), flack)

[Eye of slow eating (salve, salve)] Pause. (Snake, snack(s);)

Clock........... Gets up slow. Takes clock off wall.

Torque talk. [tip, tip; tip, tip]

Licks clock slow and lovey-like

Birndsong. (singsunk.)

Roundliness. [(melting) (delistrium...drimp, drimp, drom(p)...

[(smiles)] listnenliss(t)...)]

Sicklesaunce?

Lipplyful ellipse-

Slurp. Rudy, Bessie, and Gus all peer out from beneath the cloth.

Everything slows.

As though suddenly smothered in some butterbalm of lubricious loveliness:

Like ringround wrungings (loaming in longsomeness) [no whirry, no more whirry]

Never wreaks knod silck vrum whirrly? Yellowly plurred? (very soft) plurrrl, plurrrl [blurrble]

Muses to eat of the dye (ink of times) Smiles. (hear how here and stay its awaybegone) [birndsonk]

[Flaunderplane-] [diphthong] (flowervein, everbegum;)

[Blizzardoom, dezzardbloom]

Lunglyness refeeling

[Blackdark, blackdark] tenderval and lawmb by beats (I want to k’ress it, [k’ress it]),

its wheelze its whimpler w(h)een(m)bs,

in-ing in out-ing [‘gain, ‘gain] (hull willowy an[d] wheelwine [winnow; winnow])

(lower) [Betweenliness, ruilionous.]

Melhollow baste for me (melting again) [mile wanter drink]Returns to bed fondling clock.

Lige clut for laawmb blue sleepuff spill(n)

No stimpin(g) no stimpin(g)

Wash whynd, wash whynd,

Laawn flow, laawn flow,

[Know mulsions, snow mulsions,]

Soff whi(d)te, Soff whi(d)te,

Snow mulsions, snow morn, no morn mul(jjjjjj)... (mmmmm...)

Dissolve to melodious muttering...

Rudy: He should be breaking soon. Pause.

Charlie spends his evenings in the theater.

As Ada caresses, Eva, now indifferent, listens entranced.

Gus: He has been down there all day -

By boiler, [lade], and sluice - arm and lung betray

Extraordinary labor and resolve -

Rudy: None can wring the wrench as he -

(In his palm an instrument of ecstasy) -

Gus: They are not our pipes to play, Rudy -

Though I feel the clot is tugging at the roots.

Bessie: Underground?

Rudy: They are our reason for the hacking, dear -

Gus: Below the floors and in the wall.

The condensation draws them near;

Slow and sallow, though unswerving,

The tendrils stay their spiral course:

Swathing tighter and tighter, biting

Ever sweeter-

Rudy: -(first heat, then cold turns

Metal stiff and brittle)-

Gus: -they need only

Breach by pore to suck the steel

As we (with moistened marrow) bone.

Rudy: Ours are especially plum.

Rich in sediment: the more stew,

The more savor.

Bessie: Stealing it right back

From the whet, whet water thief: we’ve

Come full circle, or coil;

Gus: Concentric. Pause.

Charlie is their keeper, lion-strong and

Honey-sweet. Toils silently in smoke;

Culling, withholding:

Rudy: Odd-jobber fantastic.

Bessie: Not the only service he provides-

Gus: Or the only one to whom he provides service-Rudy: Oh Bessie darling, give Rudy a kiss- Puckers up.

Gus: (You won’t believe what we found in old mudmouth:)-

Tap, Tap, Tap. [The movie.]

Gus: Showtime!

Bessie: Enfin!

Rudy: Like Christmas!

Veen is seen in twilight, beckoning through the glass.

He begins to scale balconies from the outside while Bessie, Rudy, Gus, Eva, and Ada crawl back under

cloth, then through the oubliette, and trace his steps through the ventricles. (Whistling again.)

The traverse discloses a panoramic mise-en-scène:

[Lester romances the clock.]*

Cordula, having absconded from the trattoria, descends to HVAC. Smells about, listens for the gulp.

She sees the boiler room door ajar, peers in with fear and excitement.

Then enters, closing the door behind her.

Above, extreme unction: Dolly performs viaticum,

belated but tender, for her beloved,

now peacefully interred in a lamé-gilt shrine.

Baldassare attends, solemn, ceremonious, sapless.

She motions to Baldi, who bequeaths wafer and water.

She holds an extravagantly bound book. Reads:

“Accipite et manducate ex hoc omnes:

Hoc est enim Corpus meum,

Quod pro vobis tradetur.”

Bends over and whispers to Ciacco:

(That means: enjoy my body.)

Places wafer in dead dogmouth. Stops.

(lower) I suppose a few more will not harm you now, my sweet.

Obliges assumption, continues:

“Accipite et bibite ex eo omnes:

Hic est enim calix Sanguinis mei...

Pauses to listen to faint whistling heard through the vents.

Motions to Baldi, continues:

...Novi et aeterni testamenti,

Qui pro vobis et pro multis...

Baldi brings over a tray bearing seven fabergé eggcups.

She pours the first five over his head.

...Effundetur in remissionem peccatorum.

Hoc facite in meam commemorationem.”

(intimately to Ciacco) This is for the ferryman.Takes a gold coin from the sixth egg and puts it in his mouth:

“Percussit saxa et duxit

flumina ad terram sitientum.”

And this too:

Removes heart-shaped lollipop (ABC from earlier this afternoon) from eggie number seven.

(He’s a greedy runt);

You’ll have to place it on his tongue, comme ça:

Puts lollipop in his mouth, whispers very close:

(Sometimes he gets lost along the way.)

Pause. Dolly loves you. Leans in and kisses forehead.

Baldi relinquishes a single lachryma,

and wipes it away with white glove and guileless gravitas.

Without regarding, she shoos him off with a flick of the wrist.

Eyes closed, incanting to herself:

“Percussit saxa et duxit

flumina ad terram sitientum.”

Eva, stealthily spilling into an alternate capillary

(by caboose), peels off from the group and makes her way

to the shuttered theater, where Chuck, backlit

by the silver screen, and seen only in hulking

shouldershade and scalp, watches his favorite

suppertime something in silence.*

Eva, assiduous, studies its

black geometry, drinking

the scene by scene, breathe low,

breathe deep. [dark-white, dark-white]

“Accipite et manducate ex hoc omnes:

Hoc est enim Corpus meum,

Quod pro vobis tradetur.”

Inspector Wally goes down:

bleary-eyed, malnourishments...convex, convex

flume lade leet flue sluice clodder of the threesecloth

waterglog more bladderly for plaunchous glutturals [gaulk]

bloaterated, blue-green, greeding glass, broiluler

aquaphorniclade, strayng pneumonic riverwork... thrung, thrung

oubliviable lavaloaves slitchenslide, [glaulk,] gloard for bluttn brandybine...

Strong arm in arching shadow, convex, speak tongue to her,

make hush hungry full of pant by vent,

she draws her into thick darkness whereit wakes, slow lurch to merge

mink ash black cloud, (circumventing clamaclysm or

oystercaust but knock by bucket, heel),

sitting down, rising up, swatheling (by bough),

shape succumbs shade,

becomes it (bye)

herself (watching, watching).

“Accipite et bibite ex eo omnes:

Hic est enim calix Sanguinis mei

Novi et aeterni testamenti,

Qui pro vobis et pro multis

Effundetur in remissionem peccatorum.”

Opens boiler room door: Cordula eating book (small book).

Pageful of mouth. And big of eye. [dark-white, dark-white]

Sit on the water hot. Rising up. Wally takes book: spine, spine.

(Middle are the water parts.)

Wally: You eat this food.

You stay below.

Nods.

Exit Cordula. Open Wally.

“Hoc facite in meam commemorationem.”

Cordula, Cordula. Trunk, Boxes, Beak, Pumice, Soak, Bucket, Baggie, Spy.

Char? Slit. Look, look; dig, dig. But where? (Scratch, scratch.)

...Ascending the grand staircase, leeverting in verlis mallay...

By spine, by spine. Iris whites (feed heavily).

Stock, stock. (For meat and water parts.)

Dear, dear Baldi joins our friends in the crawl space

(but DVV is back behind the blue curtain, sillycakes);

they watch, watch, watch the show downside up

in their own special [dark room, dark room]

creaked by a peekhappy crickcrack in the

Mister WallyWalterWaterWall.

Who’s thirsty?

Lights on Ivory Tower. All tummies for butterflies and fairy tales. Enter and arrive Ms. Norma Veen.

Action.

A bedroom. A carafe of something piquant, maybe brandy. Satin spread in deep crimson.Vines of sepia-stained reel droop down from the ceiling, woven arachnid in rings concentric.

Petals of hyacinth, larkspur, blades of iris whites, scatter limb-like about the satin as laving river nymphs.

The floor is blanketed by ash-gray newsprint and amber-gold resins, incendiary, aromatic.

At the foot of the bed a diadem of daffodil and asphodel, two lush palm fronds, one unravelled reel.

Above, center, one blue ribbon of sea silk, elevated, strong, and strung wide as an aureole of pearl.

Norma in doorway, sylphic in sheer.

She studies her design in a convex mirror that faces the head of the bed, speaks:

A composition:

Ingres might have laid her here, off-right,

A stone-sad gray,

Elongated by limb and line,

A slew of vertebrae to spoil the eye

With tendonless tenderness,

Or hips that turn

In soft glissade along the spiral curve

Of her lazy inflorescence,

Or fingers that weave skin with silk

And shush with breath;

A backward glance,

In whose easy hollow

One can reave

Whatever one likes:

Bloodless beauty,

Obscure, chimeric;

Perfectly unknowable,

Without batting a lash.

Pause.

Will the rouge of her

Anemones stir the still

To torrid life?

Pause.

Their blush will be subliminal...

Lines unremembered, language lost...

Pause.

Gray lady for a silver odalisque.

Long silence, shallow, acerbic panting, tremulous;

A foamchurned slew of something vile,

Withheld with eroding restraint:

...asleep... ...all sleep......they will not see... ...the cuticles that lacerate...

...or feel the brush of friction’s culling rake...

...follicles en pointe... ...poised and expectant...

...ice to slink along the spine...

...seep, lovely venom of the nape...

...viscid, tart...

Raises unravelled reel.

Long, slow disgorge: an excoriating exorcism - tonguespeak:

(low, then sharp) I figli uccido- [Callas, Serafin; 1960]

She begins to bind her limbs,

Swathing tighter and tighter,

Biting ever sweeter:

Every unravelled reel and every

Reviled benediction:

Who can unsee the latent image?

Or rewind sweet night’s indelible dissolve?

Will someone flatter her in color?

Before the fairy dawn entombs her in grisaille?

Phantom or phoenix?

Numen or hull?

Puts on the silver sleep mask.

Where will she wander in her

Sightless medium?

To a paradise of jewel-laden trees?

Gathers handful of scattered butterfly wings.

Or a riverbed of dun silt?

Crushes them in palm.

My last bequest

To the barbarians of reflection:

Releases plume of their glitter-dust, powdering her face and torso.

Enjoy this wasted rind.

Gets up on bed.

Entomb it in monochrome.

Positions neck.

Christen it with kerosene.

Spills carafe about pyre of nitrate and press.

A kiss for the wrinkled fans;

Drops it on floor. Takes out cigarette.

One last suck for the bygone rivergirl.

Lights it.

Drags it down to the filter:Quilled honey-scroll of ash.

Veen emerges from gloom behind the curtain,

relinquishing a silver sliver of Art Deco moonrise.

Norma glistens in pseudomorphosis.

...Ravished through sinew and bone...

...Struggle collapses with lung...

....Liver and language fail between them...

We all know it well:

Leans forward, extends arm, dangles cigarette.

Pictures flitter in the mind;

Performance is forever.

Veen takes it gently from her hand. Draws the last puff.

Norma stands motionless, blind, mum, limned in moonlight.

Veen: Don’t be frightened-

I was sent here by the evening star

To cull her pearls and requite her vanity,

I heard you through the clefts of the rock,

In the secret places of the stairs,

And watched you, peering through the lattice,

A tower song hung from your lips,

Dark sentences woven therein,

They were beautiful, Norma;

I could not let you leave me.

I could not let it end.

The west wind carried you here,

Stole you away in violet

For my sake.

Can you hear me, butterfly?

Norma: Break my branches

To broach my speech;

Veen: But will you crumble

By the glitter of your wings?

Norma: Windflower or rivertongue,

She is sick for spring,Her petals pressed in parchment,

Their cities buried deep in

Cindersnow.

Veen: Ashangel,

Don’t you see? We are

The flowers of a womb

That is failing: disfigured

Silhouettes traced

Long ago.

Follow me

Beyond the sighs and

Wrinkles of reflection: there,

There will be sift no longer,

Neither sun nor moon nor wind,

But idyll, still and windowless;

Soft rain of red and white

Through shuttered eyes,

Their cloudlakes greening

On the curtains,

A downy dragonbrail brush

Between the sheets,

The scent of fresh laundry

And a few faint, fading

Memories in aquarelle;

A loveliness revealing:

Maybe a lily pond

With plum blossoms,

Or a stream that causes

Sleeping lips to speak.

Norma: I am gored in you,

Veinless flow of blue;

Bind and spill until the

Lamps return, lest I wake

From your waterspell.

Veen: You’re crying, Norma,

Though tear and time will pass away;

Let go your language,

And let me tell you

the becoming of our world:

She slowly descends.

He: She:

Mauve evening, unmoor,

Mauve evening, unmoor,These love-worn runes,

My olive-laden limbs,

Your vine-woven ore,

Culminate me Norma,

Raven of fulfillment,

Numen of limbs unmoored,

Lovely of moon-wan morn,

Rewind me,

Revile me,

River of love-vain loam,

Lave in my minutia,

Rain-laven Norma,

Lumen mine,

Limned in rime,

Seven vials of evening

(Eleven veils of evening,

Limn me in moonlight,

Leering, mine,)

(Relieved in your lime,)

Love-lain ruin of hours,

Reave my alluvial mire,

Relinquish your valence,

Unravel limb or line,

I lave in your ivory mire,

Swill my rains,

You reave my vermillion remains,

Swallow my remains,

Gnaw our names, Norma,

Gnarl our vines, Van,

Our remains, Noma,

Marl, my veins, Vanna,

Or mum, Morna,

Our remains, Vanna,

Orna,

Avva,

Ovna,

Avna,

Vonna,

Navna,

Varna,

Novna,

Arna,

Nomna,

Amna,

Omna,

Omna,They sink in satin.

Darling,

I’m happy.

She draws him in.

Stray limb summons the gramophone’s chinchilla-soft cicada song.

Endreel (make like Goya):

The eyes gape widely.

White knuckles sink along the spine.

Torn pages hang from his mouth.

She strokes a diamond-studded revolver.

Gramophone crepitating in concentric obligato.

(Snuffs the lights.)

Hot kliegs.

Fade to white.

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