Wednesday, September 30, 2009

coup de grace

The joyful scar…

There is something about a sword,
Tween the thrust and cut.
That makes even a thief a lord,
Only a blade you can trust no matter what,

In the hand the feel of steel.
Upon command it’s heart in field,
Accept the vows as thou kneel,
And by it’s wounds you’re healed,
For it is both weapon and shield,
And it’s kiss is doom sealed.

For it’s honor you pledge,
Deeper promises than to any lover,
For you keep it’s keen edge,
As it flies you discover,
The punishment of it’s birth sledge,
Felt by ghosts that above you hover

That to it, war is just.
And to it, you’re it’s master.
And to it, you hold your trust,
Fail it, brings only disaster,
And to it tween cut and thrust,
the riposte was even faster,

Saturday, September 26, 2009

I have a theory

Things not to put on resume or you will not find in Monster.com search engines. I know now why there are no super heroes – they can’t find day jobs.

Billionaire Playboy posing as masked vigilante,
Pirate or Privateer,
Mild mannered news reporter actually super-heroic alien,
Viking,
Camelot era knight transported through time,
Deep cover secret agent posing as billionaire playboy,
King of underwater civilization,
Cowboy fighting the good fight,
Mutant blessed and cursed with powers reviled by the general populace.
Time Lord,
Scientist blessed with super abilities from accident,
Smuggler with heart of gold,
Swashbuckler in disguise as foppish prince,
Mechanical genius posing as his own bodyguard,
Super-villain dictator of small eastern European country,
World War 2 anachronism, formerly frozen in ice, now embodiment of American ideals,
Super-villain running for president,
Blind Lawyer posing as masked vigilante,
Camelot era Demon with a penchant for rhyme,
Immortal being only killed by decapitation…

Friday, September 25, 2009

Yoo Ree Uhng - Ghosting drill

Yoo Ree Uhng


Ghosting

Menu Choices for practice

Attacks* – Head, Groin, LS, RS,LH,RH, Eyes, Robs, Wrist, Knees, Collar bone, Femoral , Pass Cut, Cavalier Cut,
Thrusts = retreat, reverse, under, over, straight, side
Hand to Hand = punch, kick , elbow, knee, choke, eye gouge

*( AS STRIKES OR THRUSTS )

Defense/Dodges – Defenses ( any parry of specified blows) Dodges - duck, jump, tuck, left side dodge, right side dodge,

Drill to be done, movement established between partners and rehearsed – Establish an Attacker and a Defender. When comfortable speed can be developed it can be really fast and really pretty.

The Greek letter references - ALPHA through GAMMA are spice you add to the fight they can be any of the following or make up your own.

1. LOCK/THROW – classic face to face push away
2. Wraparound drill – Choose 2-6 targets
3. Groin, Head, Eye variant – The groin head eye drill is a basic exchange – attacker goes for groin, defender head, attacker eye then defender groin, attacker head, defender eye. Choose any three-six zones.
4. Strike-Parry drill – two passes
5. Siniwali/ Cut as exchange drill
6. Any of the multiple Alphabet patterns as exchange drill
7. Displays – all the flourishes
8. Press attack – Furious attack
9. Wounding – one of the figters gets wounded
10. Attacker/Defender switch roles.



MOVEMENT
1. ATTACKER – Attack #1 (from any of the choices given)/
2. DEFENDER – Defense/Dodge #1 (from the choices given)/ Counter Attack #1(from any of the choices given)/
3. ALPHA
4. ATTACKER - Defense/Dodge #2 (from the choices given)/ Attack #2(from the choices given)
5. DEFENDER – Defense/Dodge #2 (from the choices given)/ Counter Attack #2(from any of the choices given)
6. BETA
7. ATTACKER - Defense/Dodge #3 (from the choices given)/ Attack #3(from the choices given)
8. DEFENDER – Defense/Dodge #3 (from the choices given)/ Counter Attack #3(from any of the choices given)
9. DELTA
10. ATTACKER - Defense/Dodge #4 (from the choices given)/ Attack #4(from the choices given)
11. DEFENDER – Defense/Dodge #4 (from the choices given)/ Counter Attack #4(from any of the choices given)
12. GAMMA
13. Attacker or Defender – Does the Kill

Kahl - a korean sword drill I was playing with

KAHL

Left Collar Bone, Right Collar Bone, Head – Right Rib, Left Rib, Groin

Left Rib, Right Shoulder, Right Hip – Right Rib, Left Shoulder, Left Hip

Left Hip, Right Hip, Groin – Right Shoulder, Left Shoulder, Head

Left Temple, Right Rib, Left Hip – Right Temple, Left Rib, Right Hip

Right Collar Bone, Groin, Left Temple – Left Collar Bone, Head, Right Temple

Rib strike, LS – Rib strike, RS

Collar Bone strike, LH – Collar Bone Strike RH

Eye strike, G – Eye strike, Head

song trapped in my head

She is a song you can’t escape,
A looping discord melody,
A misty image you cannot shape,
Of a tune you cannot yourself free,

There it is again that refrain,
I thought it I could kill,
The ancient favorite now I disdain.
Nostalgia bests the conquering will.


Where is the significance,
Is This victory Phyrric,
is there some deeper resonance,
please Just get off that one lyric,

SO there again it plays,
Her music fine but repeated,
But I got work to do these days,
Although by memory defeated.

Wednesday, September 23, 2009

peace of my heart

Peace of my Heart


Burning leaves and photographs,
Moments Etched in pages,
Cut the eyes as epitaphs,
As the old poet rages,

It’s been too long my half soul,
Since I’ve heard a sweet whisper,
Decaying Comprises this autumnal stroll,
Where leaves crunch the crisper,

In my bones The winter settles,
The once fired blood now chills,
In the quietus tween the battles,
Is Where the memory kills,

Were there lines I did miss,
When I acted my part in this play.
unmade by time, that promise,
When you’ve gone so far away,

Lights dim on our rented stage,
The actors played their wages part,
Embers scar the burning page,
For a piece of my heart

lamentations

just threw out a bunch of old pictures, bad poetry and love letters from a time long ago. Gods I miss them sometimes. Be safe my friends, my lovers, my old ghosts, I remember you and cherish you. And though you can't read these words realize my ...love for you is forever. See you in Valhalla. And know that in the process of transformation you took a bit of me with you. A sacrifice I would gladly make again.

Tuesday, September 22, 2009

more ambient light

OFFENSE ( Female )

Where is the profit in taking offense to a whisper? I capitulate to calm the objectors. I know nothing he says. When I am a gourmand of the existential. My grim repast leaves me starving for something akin to magic. I compose myself for the oncoming. On this blotch of land with no space for too much money. And I smile through the scowl and seek recompense in jazz.

FROGS ( Male )

One day the princess who kissed the frog felt very sad. She ran away. The first prince treated her quite shabbily. She sat at the edge of the moat crying. A frog sat at the edge of the moat and asked.
“ Why are you crying?”
“ One kiss to save him,” she said, “That rotten prince charming.” “ I’m sorry he treats you bad.” The frog said, staring up at her. “But did you know the frogs are the purifiers. The ones who first brought the rain. To cleanse the earth. I’d be your prince.”
“ That’s beautiful,” she said
And with that, the frog leapt up. And kissed her. And they lived happily ever after. Prince charming never came looking.
The Moral: You don’t always kiss the right frog first time around.
Peaceful Dreamers come and play and take sides once in a while. This fence sitting nonsense has got to stop. If you’re going to vote pick a party. This self serving diplomacy of cowardice. It’s the side. It’s all about picking the sides.

SLUGABED SUB-LUMINARY ( Male )

My bed is my stronghold. It’s vocabulary of comfort calls to me. I can regale you with the stories of the bed. I love it with joy unrestrained. It is artful in its siryn song. And I am ill disposed to find any fault with it. Save when another man was in it. Now since he’s been in it. It’s lexicon is incomprehensible. But I have the acumen to not be aimless or angry. I will take safety back. I will have a revolt, a bloody coup. I never sold that part of me.

reckoning rose

THE RECKONING ROSE
By Scott Ferrara


FADE IN:

EXT. NIGHT
GRACE, An achingly beautiful woman is walking the streets, city unknown. Her walk is fluid, a dancers walk. Her eyes have a dreaming quality to them.
She seems to be following a MAN IN RED BLAZER, he has a rose in his lapel. He is handsome, jovial somewhat cherubic in stature. The MAN IN RED BLAZER does not see her. The camera pulls in tightly to her intense eyes.

GRACE ( V.O.)
I did my time. I loved once. I finally found him.

CUT TO:
MAN IN RED BLAZER seemingly on the make with an attractive young woman.


GRACE( V.O)
I was married for three years until I couldn't stand it anymore. The constant attention followed by periods of neglect. Lack of consideration balanced by unwarranted affection and I still loved him no matter what he did. Fists, sticks, belts, any old way.
Cupid wouldn't let me stop it.
It was in Grand Central where the night sky is held hostage on it's enormous ceiling I saw the man in red who once showed me the stars, we had met eyes and he had forgotten who I was. .
I've come to a conclusion.
Or at least a beginning. It was him all along. He never would stick around. Just inflict and leave.

CUT TO:
EXT. DAY – A HIGHYWAY

GRACE is walking down an abandoned stretch of road.

GRACE ( V.O)
I traveled seeking conclusion on that asphalt serpent. Destination rooting in destiny and I have never been more at ease. I climbed the dragons back and caught it dreaming. I overpass the landscape with a casual wonder that comes from too much venom and too many bites. A savage relentless infinity, I grabbed this serpent with it's bites and curses, it's epitaphs and epithets. I walked along its scales unknowing until I saw it staring back at me.

CUT TO:
INT. NIGHT – A BAR
GRACE is watching MAN IN RED BLAZER intently – Images of the abuse she had taken from her ex husband flash through her mind.
GRACE
I couldn't take it, just give me an answer, stay, go, yes, no. I need a reason. To me, there is no bigger obstacle than glorious ambiguity. He would bring stories to me from his escapades.

GRACE gets hit. The Ex Husband

Vodka made him silly. He would come home, only a few months after the wedding, fling open the screen door, 4 am, pounding on the glass because he couldn't figure out the lock.

GRACE gets hit. It’s the MAN IN THE RED BLAZER

I became his womb of foulness and his reason for self destruction.


GRACE ( V.O.)
Until, I became pregnant, or in a family way as my mother used to call it. Then suddenly, miraculously I became the Virgin Mary. The beating stopped. He catered to me. I was flabbergasted. 1,1 couldn't verbalize just how repugnant he was to me. I was too damn young to lock horns with this bull. I was at the point that no matter how much I thrashed my head our horns were hopelessly entangled. I was a mere kitten and all the magic had up and left.
My little boy turned two a few weeks ago. His father will turn him against me. Make him loathe me. Say I ran because I couldn't love him and be free both at once. I was glad it was a boy, I would have been scared were it a girl. I didn't trust him.

CUT TO:
GRACE alone on a bus. The MAN IN RED BLAZER sit behind her

GRACE ( V.O.)

I tried to go and see my son, I was trapped on this horrid bus between two awful men, both prophets, dealers in propaganda and poison. One was an ex seminary student, the other a criminal. They argued incessantly the entire way there. Neither one of them knew how to keep his pants on. One talked about his nine, and a pit bull he shot that he bought for his mother, the other talked of a vision he had of a glowing leaf falling in a Christmas tree pattern to the floor of a church. It was not earth shattering as vision go, but he was proud of it. I had to wriggle free.

The trip was long from the New York to Syracuse. The leaves were bleeding onto the road. We kept moving, to a sore of a town, where I grew up, was married, was battered and later ran away from. I was prisoner in that infection too long. Blood also binds us. Ties us together, and in many ways we are hostages to it. I had only one picture of my boy, at 14 months. He looked too much like his father. I escaped and stood.

CUT TO:

GRACE standing outside a modest suburban home. An Older WOMAN and a SMALL BOY at the door,

GRACE ( V.O.)
Finally there I was, the dusty roads of Nowhere New York. I walked from the station to my house where my parents had Jonathan. He took one look at me and bawled his head off. He was wailing at this stranger in jeans and sweatshirt, gone half his life.

GRACE runs to the small boy, holds him tight and he struggles.

GRACE (V.O.)
Jonathan has big eyes, too big for his little head, like the characters in Japanese cartoons. He moved jerkily, no coordination. When I grabbed him he struggled with his little toy body against mine. He couldn't pull himself away. I held him a long time. He wailed himself into unconsciousness. I was mute. In silence, I gave him back to my folks and went back to my bus. Pulled back to my life now by a two year old stranger who cut my strings.

CUT TO:
INT. NIGHT – An empty room

GRACE physicalizes herself as a giant puppet. She struggles against the invisible force and struggles.

GRACE ( V.O.)

And up we go dancing for your amusement, doing violent little dumb shows where we beat each other with stick. The strings are hooked into my flesh. Controlling my moves. I have no other choice, just manipulation. Servant of the black beast in the dark with a thousand eyes. I am cast in its image. I wonder at times when I sleep alone on 118th street, separated from the other I live with by a blanket, cocooned around me. I wonder if butterflies every come from creatures like me. Call me all right. What does he know of love. He professes it. Claims to be it’s incarnation. He has blood of rose petals.

CUT TO:
The MAN IN THE RED BLAZER – going into his Blazer and drawing a compound bow.


GRACE (V.O.)
Look at him, stirring another disappointment,

CUT TO:
The MAN IN RED BLAZER takes aim and fires.

GRACE
I never asked why he was cheated. Was it the booze, although a phantasm is good enough for me? Was it the hooch or some deeper longing? He has other names – but he was almost invariably a son of a bitch to the women he was with. Although universally thought as a hunter, The Man in red and tonight Cupid dies.

CUT TO:
EXT STREET NIGHT
GRACE charges the MAN in RED BLAZER he turns to her bow in hand. She strips the bow from his hand, and starts to beat him senseless. He produces an arrow in his free hand and lunges at her. She catches the hand with the arrow and forces it into him.

GRACE
I love you too.

FADE OUT:

Thursday, September 17, 2009

more ambient light

BACKWARDS & FORWARDS ( Female )

Jack was a palindrome, the same way no matter how you looked at him. Backwards and forwards completely lacking in mystery. He was way-worn with a wolfish grin, meticulous to a fault and oh so full of life. But the place I’m going to is frought with dangers that are worse when imagined. And I mean to criticize. If I wound you. The gash can be covered in bandiages and the infection will consume with neglect. He is sweet and a little meddlesome. Brazen, glib, immature and stupid. We were just babies when we married. I will remove myself from him and his stinking edicts. But I may suggest one immutable fact that appeals to both reason and heart. I don’t want to be alone. I’ll be succinct and without exaggerated sorrow. Some folks especially the perky positive ones just need a good killing. There is no room for argument and there is no other way. I’m a day from barbarism. There is no other way to remove him from the equation. It’ll complete me when he’s gone, out, away. There will be no more us, and that is the essence of the action. A cerebral bauble. It’ll give me something to play with as dusk eases into night.

U 853 ( Male )

U 853.
Explain. He said.
U 853 - May something 1945 , a day after Donitz called off attacks on civilian shipping. She sank the Blackpoint. She’s submerged a couple of miles off Block Island, she is upright on the bottom, but the hull is in pretty good shape. All hands were lost. Two blast holes. I’ve dove her she’s a pretty dive. You can look through the hatches and see the remains. But there are nights, above the wreck you swear you hear men screaming in German.
You know once?
I got a bunch of copies from the Eugenics records office at cold spring harbor.
What’s Eugenics you may ask?
The attempt to breed better humans by encouraging people of good genes to marry, screw and have lots of kis , while sterilizing the people of who they considered having bad genes, or what is the word, defective germ plasm. They made these huge charts and pedigrees. Like horses or show dogs. Try to uses so-called scientific facts to justify their deeds. Considerrd it moral. But the negative side were those who believe in sterilization and culling of those least able to preserve human fitness. Leading to segregation of the races and sterilization of the insane, the criminal and the sick. Evolutionary models, Mendel’s laws and natural selection. All contributed to eugenic theory. Medicine advocated it. Clip them and snip them, Vasectomy and Tubal ligation were the preferred methods of keeping America pure and safe from idiocy.


Well many respected scientist of their day supported Eugenics. Science is a product of culture. Science is as much faith as logic. Eugenics developed in the wake of the Civil War and mass immigration. There was mechanization of industry and the migration to the cities had major health and social consequences. Labor pools were forming unions; there were outbreaks of disease. Economic depressions. And a lot of these problems were thought by the progressivist social engineers at the time to be the product of defective genes brought into the American gene pool from those immigrants: Poverty, alcoholism, feeble mindedness, criminality and prostitution
When I am grown, I thought I will be one with all things. I will be smart and strong and fast, and callous and flawless and cruel and self-righteous. Well at least that’s the plan.

History is not for the timid.


CHEAP ( Female )

Cheap is how I would describe him. Cutting things in half until the atoms split. This can be forgivable. But nothing wrought in cuts ever bodes well. There is the Connequot river, a halcyon scene descibed by an acidic tongue. Never laconic or ostentacious I deride the twilight. And I exalt my mother the moon. With her comes respite and even in total darkness she is there. I can’t describe the inherent horrors in what she sees. This is just too much for one poor troglodyte to comprehend or raise objections. The outburst of tears in no substitute for good old fashion violence. It takes a spark to lead to conflargration. Sarcasm is what it is. The quest for contrast and contradition, hyperbole and pathos. The right metaphor to plumb the archaelogical depths of familiarity like strata.


DEAD MEN ( Male )

Please ..


TROPHIES ( Female )

Sometimes you got to love it when you are a prize to be won.
There are things to be said for competition.

A capitalist to the last.
Or.
Or what?
There is always an or.
Or a mere thing, an obstacle to some greater goal.
There is always an or I don’t know why that is. Something about being the grail I suppose. It’s almost flattering in its vile servitude.
I know now never to let Beth talk me into anything. She’s a sweet girl, a little confused but, sweet, She met this guy Charlie at the bar.
A wolf with the disturbing malady of becoming a man once in a while.
We hit it off.
He left me there, apologetic as always.
We walk the forty or so blocks home.
I didn’t care; there isn’t a man alive who can touch me. They approach like Perseus in a ruined temple of Aphrodite.
Armed to the teeth, shreds of fear falling of him like a tattered shroud.
I had a garden of statues and the solitude became too much to bear. I wonder if Aphrodite took pity on me. At the time it didn’t seem so. She ushered me back to life and gave me Pegasus, the winged stallion, beauty born from my blood. Knights don’t come on white horses or chariots of clouds. Pegasus was mine. And that animal for the longest of times was all that mattered. I would fly over the worlds looking for those I could be around; the blind are very good for that. I just won’t let them touch my face or my hair will bite them. Some people courted me, over the years, mostly for a notch on their belt. Halloween is the easiest time, anytime I can were a mask. Pegasus changed over the years, He like him go were the only ones of our kind. I let him go or a got lucky, he’d be all chipper. I’d brush and groom him, sing him songs. He’s transformed become a big white Mustang convertible. I got him in a garage I drive him once a year and see how far I can go. I can never escape until the hero comes, I drive or fly or run from dawn to dawn but when the first rays hit, I’m back at the tower. In my statue garden.
This man here, ginning madly, snuck in thought I was a sculptor like him. Wanted to tell me what an admirer of mine he was.

hope and consequences

Biding time, feeling rhyme,
Lost and found for your sake,
To the altar of gods lupine
To the deepest ache

Memory sicken, pulse quicken,
Giving the blind a keener sight,
The blessed curse which I am stricken,
The child of the night,

Moon is full, feel her pull,
Form heightens the sense,
This hungering too powerful,
The meet, meat of recompense,

Eternal stars, bear the scars,
Of the forever drunken black,
Not all cages made of bars,
And hope won’t bring it back.

Tuesday, September 15, 2009

vocabulatory origami

Paper plane and plain doth twist,
In the tiniest of sheet,
To create unwritten form in tryst,
When nothing and something meet,

Papers can fly or flower emerge,
From the subtlest and cunning fold,
Tongues too twist the written dirge,
Just as free to entice as scold,

Written word and spoken sets,
Can form a myriad of truth,
From praise to implied epithets,
Though you are never so uncouth,

Just beware that paper cuts,
SO of these phrases make the most,
A paper blade oftimes rebuts,
The clever verbal riposte,

So within this tiny folded world,
Or swan, horse, or simple prose,
The flower now is better unfurled,
I give you this rose…….

Thursday, September 10, 2009

Ambient Light 2

SLIGHTLY MAD (Male)

I don’t want to be a cavalier curmudgeon , I think we all went a little crazy when the towers fell. The American human snapped collectively. We all went a little crazy. Force is what I realized only respects force. I’m tired of being incommunicado. But I happen to be a cursed with a paladin complex. Here is where I dwell between the voices. Knowing enough and not enough at the same time. I’m being stalked by a tiny skulking cat, leonine in bravado. It moves with a grace and panache I admire. I follow him through the maze of courage and carnage. Then I cross a bright shining line. The quiet brought by sleep and pills. There isn’t enough of us to form a majority. So I just get grumpy and wait to get shanghaied by the next shiney thought coming at the speed of dark. I seek quietus. I seek rescue in the visage of some woman coming, coming to save me. My whims are mercury affected by the cold and the hot. So I apologize because that is the heart of wordplay.

ERIC
X ( Male )

You know excuses really piss me off.
There is nothing more annoying than an ex alcoholic. I don’t mean the ones who are being good. I mean the vitriolic, rabid ex alcoholics that treat the program like It’s a religion. They found the devil in booze so god wasn’t too far behind, waiting there with open arms and group therapy. They painted themselves into such tight moral corners, they had no choice but to look to the heavens. I still drink cause I’m no quitter and I don’t go to meeting. I also don’t drink and drive, drink till I hit my wife or piss myself. Moderation being the key. I don’t go to meetings. I don’t tell the world this is what I am and that I have a disease. The algorithm is wrong. I don’t blame nucleic acids and upbringing. You want to feel this. You want to heal me. Don’t bother. I will be blind deaf and dumb to your sermons.

Dude let’s face it, you were a hell of a lot more fun when you were drinking. Now you just exist. The whole drunken dimension is gone from you and now all you are is a self righteous pain in the ass. And you know what bugs me most.

It’s like those ex smokers who’ve become tobacco nazis or even worse those whiney ass never smokers who claim they get sick when they smell smoke. They can just relax.

You were the one that hit your ex-wife

Felt fucking great didn’t it.

You were the one who smacked up his car.

You were the one who pissed himself. Not the booze. You.

SO do my a favor, you can preach the efficacy of your cure. I never claimed to have willpower. I never claimed to be strong. I’ll revel in my weakness. And that makes me way stronger than you. You see I got the cure. The panacea that’ll fix you. Not snake oil.


HUNGER ( Female )

Nothing is real but hunger, I starve, go without and learned never to prize more than what you can carry. Never eat meat in a war zone. Boil everything and learn to blame. Like when the old Irishman say “ It was never cold in Ireland until the English came..”

There is only hunger that drives the human and his conditions. Hunger is a rule, a law and a truth. She dwells in the very pits of me. The hole that gets greater the more you take away. . It is naked hunger that defines. That’s driving servitude is what will cure me.

Hunger requires nothing and the answer to the riddle of what is greater than god.

review from Ambient Light

ERIC

THE ANATOMY OF MONSTERS - Introduction

No sir, we are not leaving here without her.
The world went black, at 4:20 ish. It was mid August. A fine day for a lot of people just to walk. It was a slow day. One of my co-workers got caught in an elevator. So I decided to break the door off to get her out. Since 2001 the company had a ton of building emergency equipment especially for such eventualities. A few were paniced about looters, this is New York. But after 2001 it seemed a lot less likely. The thoughts raced through our heads in the beginning were we hit again. Were we hit again. And once again I wanted a particular man’s head on a pike.
( The sounds of metal on metal )
The door finally gave way and we made the long walk to the ground floor from the 36th floor.
The walk to the bar reminded me of another long walk a few years earlier. Wounds still fresh. My mind wandered.
You know they used to bury suicides at crossroads. And New York is the crossroads of the world. It was time to go and I established myself well in the pecking order. The place is packed and the alpha in me scream for dominance. I decided to go to my bar. The refirgeration was shot so there was a lot of free beer to be had. And I needed a drink.
I walked into a room of furtive glances, No man should be the master of another. And I froze when the recognition hit that I too served someone. Cause if that spiteful animal of regret sees me it’s over. The last shall be first, I’m a poet not a politician. I keep my loyalties secret. Even with injustices clouding my mind. There is savage repression quelling the dissent and “the uprising must end here” the elite are thinking to themselves. An execution is really quite personal. It’s not so easy to kill the boogeyman. There is blood in the water and all I smell is the slaughterhouse. I cannot weep with my head so full of lead. Tonight I’ll hear the footfalls. And yet I’ll be safe as your guest. Criminal poets only die in their sleep. Our slogans will ring again. Some names have been changed to protect the guilty. Others to wait for the statutes of limitations to end.
I decided to through a party for the suicide that stopped our train, even through we never knew him. I thought someone should mourn him. It just seemed wrong that everyone else was bitching about how late they were going to be. I was way after last call. Over the past year we had been to more than our share of funerals, some thought fate finally catch them, some were just unlucky, and some had their bodies turn against them.
Monsters are what I know best. Spend enough time with them you begin to identify with them. You see your own inner monster, but also something else. A fragment of radiance peering under the door. The ambient light. This collection of monologues all speak in some way to that. These are stories collected by me from all the lovely lunatics, I’ve met rambling and roving trying to find a form. This play is my boneyard. These are my orphans, my pieces without a play. They are the homeless creatures under the bed, the derelict things in the closet, the dwellers in the dark, and they are the ambient light. That ray of eminence that strikes some as a mirage and others as a beacon. It was always that light which kept the monsters at bay. The ghosts in their graveyards and the suicides buried in their crossroads. Maybe now they can finally get some rest.

BETH

LETTERS BETWEEN LOVERS

Letter writing is a lost art. Few do it nowadays. That’s how he got me. But that’s also how I got him.
But now my passions need reinvigoration. Where is the fierceness. Like the love lingering after a betrayal. Knowing how weak I am. It’ll soon be time to revisit the past and reinvent it Where I get all the really killer lines. Memories are tangible things. But the horrible thought lingering like a slow kiss is still there. Where would I be if I was still her.
I know I love him although thoughts of strangling the toad in his sleep also appeal to me.

Sunday, September 6, 2009

Peace another old piece from the archive

SCENE 1
( A long duel, multiple weapons, Men vs Women )

GRACE
Intimacy

ROSS
You hunger for it.

JACK/GRACE
Completion.

DAWN/GRACE
Connection.
GRACE
But it can kill

JACK
As surely as a life without it can.

DAWN
So where do we stand?

GRACE
It would be great.

DAWN
If no one ever hurt.

ROSS
And friendship was always the last result.

JACK
But I hate.

GRACE
I lash out.

JACK
I hide.

ROSS
I wait.

GRACE
I weep.

DAWN
I follow.

ROSS
All for our standard causes.

GRACE
Until.

JACK
It's lost.

GRACE
Abandoning the ship.
DAWN
Rocks ahead.

ROSS
Into the waters.

JACK
The vessel.

DAWN
The hard won self.

GRACE
We can't.

ROSS
So easily.

ALL
Sacrifice.

DAWN
Reconciliation. Is useless without understanding.

JACK
That is what I want.

GRACE
Isn't always what you need.

DAWN
Forgiveness.

ROSS
Deny it all you want.

GRACE
Which doesn't seem to matter.

DAWN/GRACE
Needed.

JACK/ROSS
Wanted.

ALL
Acceptance.
JACK
But in the front lines.

GRACE
Shells exploding in your head.

DAWN
Wanting them to hurt.

ROSS
As much as you do.

JACK
Even more.

DAWN
I will have no.

GRACE/ROSS/JACK
Regrets.

DAWN/ROSS
No one ever listens.

GRACE
Live.

DAWN
Love.

ROSS
Learn.

JACK
Grow old.


GRACE
And die.

DAWN
But the aftermath is always.

DAWN
Dust.


ROSS
The sky clears.

GRACE
And then and only then

DAWN
The understanding comes,

ALL
At last,

DAWN
In that bout with kindness.

JACK/DAWN
Wounding your pride,

GRACE/ROSS
A middle ground,

JACK/DAWN
There are absolutes.

DAWN/ROSS
Then you will never love.

GRACE
Grey hues,

JACK
A pretty damnation,

DAWN
And for the not committed,

GRACE
Frightened.

ROSS
I confess.

JACK
I want to love you. But

DAWN
No buts.
GRACE
No clauses.

ROSS
Loopholes.

JACK
A contract.

DAWN
Sealed in a kiss. We love, despite our best interests.

JACK/DAWN
Not withstanding.

GRACE/ROSS
That is what you do.

ROSS
And that.

ROSS/DAWN
And you.

GRACE/JACK
And I.

ROSS/DAWN
With grave reluctance,

GRACE/JACK
Brings us kicking and screaming,

ALL
To peace.

Friday, September 4, 2009

STONE an old play from the archive

SCENE 1

JACK
I see myself standing at the foot of a bridge, Dawn is on the other end. Do I turn back or do I go to her. Does she turn back or does she come to me.

As I said, we are at a bridge and all bridges have their guardians, from Bifrost to the Triboro. They have the watchers of the path. Their trolls, their ghosts, the sentinels. Trust me, was all she said. I'll wait. I always could for the other shoe to drop. Eternally patient. Betrayal is never hurried, never runs, like time was an obedient dog at it's side. Betrayal I though I would lead it and not be lead by it. Control was her eminence's fixation. The idea of order burned onto my skull. I am a man in love with the measurable. Ain't no drama if their ain't no death. Death used to be the greatest threat. What part was I going to wrestle back from him? I still have the paladin complex. I misjudged my sentimentality. I just realized sometimes you got to pull the arrow through. Clever, a little brutal, but still .... still is what I am, frozen and hideous, scaring off the demons in my gargoyle splendor.

Tommy and I were a team, when I was young, drunk and high and feeling alive. It was cool as early December. Flawless is form and deed. One night we were coming back from Rocky Horror it was so late and we're in this guy Patrick's car, a real piece of shit. So we're going at a really good clip when, KA THUMP, KA THUMP, KA THUMP, Flat tire. I knew I was going to die. I was in high school I didn't disobey. So we went into the trunk to get the spare. And there wasn't one. So after much deliberation we went into the local neighborhood late at night to steal a tire. We found the tire we needed and started tasking it off. Just as we got the last lug off, we heard the resounding click of a loading shotgun. So we ran. They of course threw the tire to me. The guy never caught us. We get back to the car. Throw the tire on and get under way. I was only an hour or so late. It's explainable then as I felt at ease. The car slowed down. Patrick never told us the gas meter didn't work. We pushed this car down Sunrise Highway, about a mile or so when a cop pulls up. We all were scared shitless, until he offered to help us and we got to the gas station. I got home as the sun was coming up on Saturday morning, knowing full well I was a dead man when I got home. I opened the door, sneaked to my room, only to face my father who said, you’re up early, you want to go fishing. I slept. I had this bridge way out in the woods over a stream, where people would camp, abandon cars, fuck, shoot bottles. Deep in the woods only the train went out over the bridge. We went out that Saturday night to the bridge. I made a pact, read too much Cummings, Plath, Ginsburg, Kerouac and Buckowski. That night I made a promise in front of Orion that we would always snatch life from the jaws of death. I would always risk and live until the earth swallowed me up or until I consummated myself with my own fires. I don't know who I am right now. A shell. Missing a hand from being slow snatching that bit of existence. Attacked by the demons of my dreams.
Tommy laughed at me.
( JACK runs to where he sees TOMMY and tries to catch him . ) Trust me he said, once upon a time, then he threw himself off the bridge.
( A man appears, the two men start fighting hard hand to hand, JACK is a boxer and fighting a shadowy adversary. The ORION fights like a martial artist. He defeats JACK and clasps his hands around JACK’S throat. )


ORION
You owe me Jack. For a promise made long ago.

JACK
What promise was that.?

ORION
Watch and learn. I am the son of Neptune, I run on the waves and tread the waters and I walk your depths. I took Merope and was blinded by her father. And I followed the cyclops hammer’s sounds till sun restored my sight. I hunted with Diana until she shot me by mistake cause of her brothers jealousy. She made me of stars. And once in a rare while I can come back again. When called.

JACK
I never …
ORION
Never to compromise, that was your promise. Your friend was the sacrifice that was needed. But I see you wear failure on you like a shroud. I’ll explain a thing or two for you. A man is nothing without his word. Now I’m going to force you to snatch life from my jaws. And if you don’t you’re life is mine. I am a burning in your skull. I’ve always been with you since that night. Watching the train wreck over and over. The macabre looses it’s taste after a while and so I need to talk to you. You have 3 months, one for each star in my belt, when I return to your sight you best figure out the means to kill me. You must find love. One word and one kiss is all. If not, I’ll take you all. You, my Gargoyle , for you are my sword, and my old love Medusa my club , my Dog Sirius and the Lioness sewn my lions skin as well. Heed me. The hunt has been long in coming.



SCENE 2
(JACK and DAWN, and ORION re-appears to JACK. )

JACK
Last night I heard someone on the roof, so I wait. I'm vigilant. I dream of the day I will feel rapture through these numb fingers. I dream of the day I will experience joy from these crude digits. I dream of the day I can touch again. Hatred is a petty passion, so is vengeance and in the great dream, they play but bit parts to the great diva pain. Hatred is a side effect to pain, which I can no longer feel through these callous hands.

I love the rooftops. Alone is a thing, a beastly companion, remarkable only in his ability to remind you of the truth. There is no one. I love to look out on the city lights, pretty lights, deceptive. Who are you kidding? I watch the world below as the sound rises like the scent of sweat in a closed room. Alone at night and very quiet I hear a man playing with the lock, sloppy, almost virginal. I go swoop down and face the source of the footstep. A man tries to break into my building to get high and is surprised when I beat him. He tries to steal my security by breaking my lock, and being apologetic is supposed to curb my rage. No, unacceptable.
I am a guardian. I have electric eyes and am motion sensitive. I have a yell that can rock the walls of Jericho.

I see the school, the mosque, and the bridge. I see the concrete bunkers and the gated storefronts. I see old encumbered shadows on the walls. I see newspapers used as curtains and cardboard boxes used as fortresses. I see shopping carts become caravans and paper cups become piggy banks. I hear the lovers, dreamers-deluders and the inevitable and unenviable seekers who came to 10 million equally confused humans in search of an answer. I need love. I had is once, it evaporated. One day after three years of loving, someone took it when I was distracted. I wait for the thief to return and take what's left. They can watch me crumble when I saw her, I became stone, hard, solid, unfeeling, cold, the same old hard rock that holds 10 million dreamers from falling in on themselves.

(The two begin to speak to and at each other. Their words overlapping.)

DAWN
I watch him.

JACK
I watch her.

DAWN
A maze of silent gazes.


JACK
And backward glances.

DAWN
I reside in the corner in his eye. He doesn't feel privileged enough to give his eyes full dominion.

JACK
I watch her.

DAWN
I watch him. I despise his restraint. Why doesn't he do anything? Instead he is above looking down.

JACK
I despise her recognition. She knows I'm here.

DAWN
Do something.

JACK
I must see her.

DAWN
What are you waiting for?

JACK
Touch her.

DAWN
With a moments hesitation

JACK
Taste her.

DAWN
Fate answers someone else’s prayer.

JACK
Smell her.

DAWN
I can’t come to you.

JACK
I feel nothing.


DAWN
That’s not the way it’s done.

JACK
I am nothing.

DAWN
You must come to me.

JACK
Solid, immovable.

DAWN
Pass the test.

JACK
Sure as the earth.

DAWN
For the heartache to stop.

JACK
No longer the animal.

DAWN
Who are you?

JACK
No longer flesh.

DAWN
You statue.

JACK
I am stone.

DAWN
You mannequin.

JACK
I am.

DAWN
Where is your life?

JACK
I
DAWN
All I ask.

JACK
ALL I ASK.

DAWN
Is that if you are the one?

JACK
Is that if you are the one?

DAWN
I need to have you.

JACK
I need to have you.

DAWN
Close.

JACK
Close?

DAWN
Close your eyes.

JACK
WHAT?

DAWN
Your eyes ... are they closed?

(Then JACK reluctantly does as he's told.)

My hands are tight, all my joints are. And I see you have come a long way to see me and must be weary from you're adventure.

(LONG PAUSE)

What are you waiting for? Take me. I'm yours. Mind and body and we needn't worry about the soul, it's been foreclosed. I just want to see you're eyes first. Look at me, just one look. Not enough to get a clear description, not enough to see you're eyes shine. One second, a tiny second is all I'm asking.

(JACK shakes his head "NO")

Well nothing gets you nothing. You should know that. Say something.

(JACK remains silent.)

QUIET! QUIET! Speak you fool. I see hypocrisy hear. Let me teach you a tiny bit about seduction. Can I touch your hair? Seduction, don't always assume nude. You men focus on two areas. There is so much more. It's the fingertip on the cheek, the caress of the hand, the invisible breath. Are you searching for something to say, something clever, yet threaded with melodrama like blue jeans? Too many absolute axioms all convoluted, indistinct.

Just beware my fangs and if you look close enough you'll see my denim scales writhe. The
concerto began and ended with a little girl, young and tiny, easy because beauty is unattainable. She had a strong taste in the same breath as the words love. She loved horses. She cried often, and I assured you her tears were real, every last one. They were like pebbles falling from her eyes. The actor, after much rehearsal, left her under the highway her sorrow had left. But he wasn't done with her yet. Her lovely face was taken away. Then ever after, her suitors had permanent smiles. You all court me the same for the same reasons. But they all froze at the last minute will you.

(Then JACK shakes his head no.)

Then one last request, a kiss. Please?

JACK
I need rules. I don't trust anymore, you're just waiting for the next betrayal.

DAWN
Then you'll never be disappointed. Any comfort in that?

JACK
What do I do then?

DAWN
Then sir, you must commit.

(The two fight for all they’re worth. It is real and aesthetic, beautiful and violent.)

DAWN
Don't explain. You of all people are forgetting the simplest rule of the seduction.

JACK
And that is.

DAWN
Honor me. Trust me.

JACK
Trust me. Honor me.

DAWN
Surrender.

(JACK searches for words. DAWN disarms him. He bows to her. He then takes her sword, kneels and places it to his bared throat. ORION cringes at the word “Surrender” as if struck)

JACK
My life is yours.

(DAWN pauses for a moment, puts the blade aside and kisses him. She smiles turns and leaves.)

( ORION appears and bows deeply. He goes into stance, the two fight and JACK defeats him. Lights Fade. )

Thursday, September 3, 2009

Cold Steel and Cigaretts

COLD STEEL AND CIGARETTES

By Scott Ferrara


I stood there at the gate, reality melting away like a snowman in hell. And I knew deep down that this could only lead to tears.
In the Shardlands, the Nightmare lands that form the borderland between death and dreams I stood waiting. I lit a cigarette, inhaled and calmly exhaled, sweet nicotine, you’re so good to me. I knew I should know better. But what the hell you only die once. It’s dying again that’s a bitch and dying here. Well that’s just a bad way to go. I take one last long drag and hide.
The preist of the Harvest had found his victim in a lost soul named Amanda. She was a skinny little, scantily dressed, club kid who had done way too much heroin. I had tracked him here by muscling one of my snitches and by following a trail of gore left in a ratty ass Tribecca loft.
A trail of blood to open the portal here.
The gate was unfathomnably old and kind of nostalgic in a sickeningly-violent blood-sacrifice kind of way. Makes me all misty.
Old school black basalt monoliths, with several millions year old dead languages carved into the surfaces. A table, well more of a tub lay fifteen feet in front of the aperture. Channels cut into the surround stone so that rivulets of blood could feed the dimensional maw.
The black glassy stones reeked of a dark time in the way distant past best left forgotten. Thousands of pre-human skeletons littered the avenues and alleys of the old city. The eerie sigils along the city started to glow a luminescent green.
The few scholars knowing about the strange glyphs on crumbling black basalt find themselves hearing tittering laughter in the shadows, seeing red lidless eyes in the corners of rooms and spend the rest of their tormented existences in the material world drooling into cups: the world after that being even worse.
Amanda was crying and begging. The priest, was a lesser acolyte wanting more power than he could conceivably handle. He was not a bad looking man when compared to say a lump of ground meat. The illusion he used to cover his face was fading in and out. Eventually turning two dimensional, so he was a damn handsome man when looked at straight on.
Saving Amanda was my number one priority.

“Hey Sparky.” I yelled as I charged headlong into him.

No blood, please no blood

The handsome face turned to see me. It was fading more as his real chop meat appearance bled through the illusion.
I’ll kill her. He yells. He has a wavy bladed sacrifical dagger to her bared midriff.
No blood, please. no blood.

So ‘Sparky’ starts to scream and brings his blade on high. I close, take a punch then snap his wrist like kindling to take that very dangerous knife away. He cries like the punk he is.
“Go ahead. You honestly think that the Harvester coming out of that Gate is going to look at you as anything other than a food source or were you expecting to hear Barry White when it lays it’s eggs in you.” Amanda was alert and pissed.
“You Okay?”
“Yeah, “Amanda mutters barely audible.
“Lets jet. This isn’ the…”
Just then the stupid little club kid punched ‘Sparky’ in the mouth. Busting his lip wide open.
And a single drop of blood hit the stone.

“RUN!!!!!!!!!!”

Run you stupid little girl..


The tears in the dimensional fabric broke like black lightning across the monolith surface. A hole in space time like a sucking chest wound spewed the reddish atmosphere from the hellish place that spawned the masons of this monstrosity.
Foreign blue stars winked and amber alien moons appeared on the strange horizon.
It was coming.
The Harvester. I could hear it’s screaming, it was making noises no organic thing had a right to.
It resembled a mix of mantis, scorpion and spider. It was 8 feet tall at the shoulder and weighed over a ton. Black and crimson covered in exo-skeletal plates, it’s lower quarters resembled a scorpion while it’s upper quarter were reminiscent of a praying mantis.
It was driving four armored twisted undead humans in front of it. All armed with scimitars cannibalized from a vanquished hive mate. Very few Harvesters can reach this dimension but it only takes one to breed millions. They assimilate all the knowledge and power of the beings they slay and they lay their eggs in their corpses making their egg hosts a hive ghoul. The hive ghouls host insidious larval worms which when the mature become miniature Harvesters. Then the larvae are fed a rich diet of blood, flesh, and souls.
I called my Spirit Weapons to my hands. There appeared a pair sun moon sabres . They look like an overlapping pair of crescents, one covering the fist the other making the handle, creating a quartet of grim smiles.
I crashed into the undead first, they were going to be problematic. The first hive ghoul swung wildly for my head, I parried and drew the second blade across it’s throat. It’s head fell neatly as the black putrid ichor of undead freely flowed.
The second undead lunged with his blade, I trapped it with my blades and twisted it’s blade from it’s grasp then carved a crucifix in it. I split it from shoulder to shoulder and stomach to throat. It’s interior spilled onto black stone.
The third unfortunate egg host paused. I took its eyes and with a pirouette of cruel arcs I disemboweled it. The fourth undead spun its blade with skill and feinted with a strike to my left shoulder while changing direction to my right knee, I dodged, It then thrust mid body which I parried.
All the while it’s master watched.
I lead the undead on. Moving as if I was concealing a weakness to my left side and it took the bait with a frenzy of attacks. It overextended: I took it’s hand off at the wrist and then it’s arm.
I was waiting to unleash my secret weapon. ‘Sparky’ was blathering, and fell prostrate before the monstrocity. It quickly lanced him with his forelimbs, brought poor ‘Sparky’ to it’s mouth and orally deposited it’s eggs.
Not one to rest with a demon intently watching . I spun from the final hit and threw my sabres at the creature. My ‘Brothers Grimm’ flew spinning like buzzsaws.
They flew like a pair of silver owls crunching into the beasts shoulders It wailed and then they pulled out to return to my hand. Green sulphuric smelling blood trickled from the wounds.
It’s tail came down like a stone fist, hitting me square in the sternum. There was a crunch and I spat up blood. My Spirit Armor protected me, but the impacts broke a few ribs. It caught me with one of its sharpened forelimbs and pierced my calf.
I’ll heal if I survive but it hurts like a bitch. It withdrew the limb and I rolled away, Its tail slamming the ground, I moved further into the ruins knowing it would follow.
Where to next?
The wounds were starting to heal. Always a positive thing. I threw the sabres again to buy time. And hid amongst the monoliths. It was screeching and running, it climbed up a wall after me to get a higher vantage point and then leapt.
It hit the ground like a truck dumped off a skyscraper. My blades were diving and cutting it. They were more of a nuisance to it now without my will controlling them. I ran further into the ruins. The Harvester, hot on my heels, I saw an blind alley within the stone structures. It barreled after me, crunching stone and the pre-human skeletal remains that littered the ruins.
I focused my mind. I dove and rolled away and held up my hands just as the sabres returned through the creatures head. It fell, rudely in a pile. Then I went to the nasty work of cleaning up. The larvae still needed killing. I found the little buggers with no effort. They were starting to jibber in the poor priest. The illusion of his face was still holding.
“You see. You see. “ he babbled.
“Yeah, I see.” As I picked the whiney punk up , and threw him through the gate to close it.
I found Amanda a couple hours later. Huddled in a corner. I gave here a twenty and a full Metrocard.
“Who are you,” she asked.
“My name is …..unimportant, “ I said, “I am a Namer , a Shardwalker, a demon hunter who exists between two worlds and walks the borderlands between the dreaming and the dead.”

I paused, went to grab another cigarette. But the pack was crushed beyond even my magic. She gave me one of hers and collapsed in my arms. I held her gently for a while, cast a small incantation and put this thought in her mind.
“Forget “was all I said with a small kiss on her forehead.

Namer’s Prayer -

We are all here
All Namers
They are with me
The dark has come
It surrounds

We are all here
To face fight and die
But we cannot die

We are all here
We will not go gently
We are here on the edge of the abyss
I know it’s name
The war wind comes
The flood overtakes

We are all here
To live, love and die
To stand and spite the shadow
To meet evil with will
And the songs of our deeds
Will be carried on the winds
Forever