— Macbeth has murdered sleep. I can’t remember my lines. My hands are bloody sleepy, bloody merry, Bloody Mary, with scotch on the rocks, and my heart just stands still for Al Pacino.
— I told you we had to practice.
— I don’t have to practice. I know it by heart.
— Don’t improvise like you did the last time, incorporating cheap shots into the text.
— You made me so angry I had to read what I was feeling inside, which was stormier than the way I wrote it. I wanted to see if you really felt the part. Don’t look offended by your lines. I didn’t invent these dialogues. They’re your words, Mr. Nice Guy. But you cringe with beet red shame whenever I quote you. I know it’s painful to be ashamed. We all feel ashamed sometimes. You thought we had it all rehearsed, but if I let you, you would steal the show.
— Steal the show! Everyone can tell you wrote it. You keep all the best lines for yourself.
— Everything is improvised one way or another. But all I see is one huge highway where cars don’t stop for anybody, and I’m waiting for a miracle or a solution to my dilemma — I have to cross the street, but there are no traffic lights — please, somebody, be kind enough to stop and let me cross, or everybody, please stop for a second to let me cross, or take me down the highway of destiny, where there is a lighthouse in the night, smoky air, and flickering candles — like a child lost in the night of a party, who sits in a crowd, wondering: Where am I? I look around. I am a child lost in the crowd of that party, showing his heart of music and pain. That’s me — drunk, wild and blue, always looking around the smoky air and flickering candles — like the child who, in the night of the party, feels lost in the cloud, the smoky air, and the flickering candles — showing his heart of music and pain.
I want to think the way men think when they’re tired of thinking. With dead eyes. I am dead. And it’s not a matter of surviving. I have survived. And I’m not proud that I’m one of the survivors. Survivors are not proud of having left the dead behind — they’re just as dead as the dead — and their smell stinks more than the stench of the dead. Just because you rise at dawn, and you walk, and talk — alive or dead — you’re more dead than alive. Stop talking about you — as if it were somebody else but you — me — myself — the dead — looking at the blank verse in a mirror every morning and brushing my teeth with the infamous cavity — right through the blank verse because it’s blank without verse or phrase or paraphrase — sound or mute — blank or empty — the eyes of the verse fill the blank verse and open each window of my verse, my veracity, my versatility.
Explain yourself in a better mood. Just because you’re young flesh and I’m frontal to my death. Why must I continue surviving and breathing for the rest of my life? When will I die without my breath stinking of immortality? Oh, come on, nobody is immortal nowadays. We continue living without possessing our lives — in mutiny — in futility — unmotivated by the immobility of immutability — invalidated by a certificate of mortality, immobility, immortability, tranquility, morbality, morbidity, mortability — we’re morbidly mortal before the tomb, rest in peace before time has passed for us to repose in lazy peace for the rest of our dying days before our clothes stink of the mortuary — and bring life to its feet, topless — we cry and sing.
Here, in silence, surrounded by stages to mount upon mount upon mount and climbing each step of a stair with cautious eyes to look around, upon a stair, I sigh, and look down there, where the subway runs and returns, and there is a noise that noises my nose, I take out my handkerchief, and of course, of course, of course, in the blank verse I blow my nose, hard and loud. I blow it out of proportions, out of dimensions and proportions — tiny and gigantic, certainty and certainly, danger and proximity, altitude and dexterity, enterprise of multiple choices — a wrong answer against a right attitude — fortitude of mind behind a window of desire, and perplexity and doubt, upsetting the nervous system of la cage aux fois.
Do it right. Or at least get even. Even if I stress my mind, I stretch my neck and bones crack my other fortitudes, and no one is certainly more certain than doubt and proximity. Even when dancing gets even with drinking and dining — and sleeping pills don’t sleep at all — but sour stress and bags under the eyes, frontal to mirrors and glances — taking buses and subways to come and go and get upset at the boss, not at me, honey, I am just counting the pennies to get back home and prepare your tasty supper.
Develop your argument, see you tomorrow, don’t miss the appointment, the opportunity of a decade, sounds good, honey, but I prefer to do it the right way, shortcut is longcut, if you cut it too short it’s never too long to grow back again, but remember you’ll have to wait, and patience is way off in your calendar. Dividends against multiplications. Cariolets against friendly people — or are you following the book of rules step by step and connoisseurs of wines and dines — and dividends and months and connoisseurs of time — and high-piled papers to fill out — no address, no phone number, no multiple choices, no way out against orders, responsibilities piling up, filling blank checks and multiplying dozens by thousands before falling asleep in the coma of retirement, golden age of sorrow and no return to the truths and blues of morrow, I pay homage to the dead, and return to my pile of work, paperwork, waste of time for the rest of my junkie life.
I open my eyes and I see, but I have seen so many times that I don’t see the way I saw love, blue of eyes, blinded, blindfolded, the first of times. I see love interested in how old are you, can you take care of me when I am old, I’m growing weary, will you feed me — so love is not blind madness — to be blind as love is blind is to be mad as love is mad and mad is blind — and love is mad if it follows the pattern of your life. I can assure you he is blindfolded, Cupid is mad, mad of love for you, he wants you to love calculating each step you take, and then you lose your chance, and you only live twice.
Can you finish your thoughts in a roundabout way? How can I play a fair game? Clear of gasses after red meat. Clear of thoughts that come to pass so full of paradigms and stratagems. So bloated and inflated with presuppositions and impositions from the dignitaries of discipline. Mandatories of embassies — always sending us messages — for avoiding troubles — when they come with the troubles they send to avoid newest buildings of monumental troubles and sorrows. I blew the horn to survive, and I blew the whistle to make it shine, and merried myself while shining the silver — and then I stopped believing in silver — and changed my money to wine. I jumped the horses of moneys I got and troubled my monkeys with horses of blue. Velvet blue and malgre tout, I love you, my cherie. Où sont nos amoureuses? Elles sont au tombeau! Oh, please, get me free of meee. Free of taxes and free of impossibilities and free of presuppositions and free of impositions and free of preposteritions and free of prepositions and suspicions and ammunitions and recognitions. I feel free from freedom, free from the statue of freedom, enslave me in a statue of freedom, my kingdom is a cry to freedom, you didn’t get it right, freedom, I want to enslave my freedom, with freedom, free alone is better with freedom than alone with freedom, and without freedom alone there is no freedom alone. I am not alone free.
Where are the stinky feet I am missing here? If I smell a stinky soaking sock and I suck and suck the smell that sucks these stinky sucking wet sucks that stink the socks of the smell I suck. I tell you, it’s rotten stinky. It sucks my blood, and it stinks of rot, it rots my stink, and it stinks my feet with stinky soaking wet socks, it’s dry and soaking wet, but if you soak it while you dry it, it sucks while its stinky smelly feet soaking wet become dry and hot at the same time, and it’s stinky, soaking wet. Sucks. Sucks and sucks.