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.