Dreams raked from the cement sidewalk dregs of my psyche during the last week of September, 2008

The dream convenes with the mysterious blue woman in the parking lot of the seedy town where I am waiting to catch the bus. She had black hair and was dressed in a riveting blue dress. The night before I saw her sitting on her blue back pack (she wore a blue hat as well) waiting for her ride, going in the opposite direction of me. Now she sat there, again on top of her luggage like a gnome and a stump, drinking what looked like hybrid between champagne and cheap forties. She then picked up her champagne bottle before hurtling it into the pavement turning the bottle into a jigsaw of shattered i-ching shards. As I walked over to her to see if anything was wrong and if I could somehow console her an oriental manager sprung out from a nearby gas station in harangue informing me that she was sylvia plathing out of control and that I was not welcome on his premises in an effort to quell her personal demons.


I was picked up by the skinny effeminate Mexican male in a truck. He took me to a seedy hotel room where he asked if he could make love to me. When I declined he brought in two other females and one man and said I could have either one I wanted. Later in the dream we were driving through the town when I told him that I lost my bus fare back home. He then gave me a fifty and said I could have it to pay for my travel expenses. When I arrived back at the bus stop the girl in the blue dress was still sitting there, looking the opposite direction, staring over a broken pond of crystallized shards, waiting for something that would perhaps never arrive.

****

Later in the dream I found myself paddling down the bucolic slither of nature that is Turkey Run with Dougie Closen, a grade school friend of mine. Doug and I were on a canoe trip purportedly with our church youth group. I had canoed down Sugar creek with friends a month prior (we actually partied so hard we were asked to leave the campsite but that's another can of gummy worms). My Uncle Larry was the head of the group but for reasons of destiny the bevy of canoes had split up and we found ourselves alone on the creek scattered from the remainder of the adventurous herd.

The creek was serpentine and split off into many winding escheresque rivulets and tributaries.
Doug and I were certain we were loss when we duly noted an upside down canoe and scattered paddles jettisoned and bobbing as if a ship wreck has just ensued and that surely someone had drowned. As we paddled over to the wreckage we realized that we were no longer lost and that we had arrived back at our starting point destination after all. My Uncle Larry then met us at the shore and lead us into the canoe rental building where we were expected to return our vessel. The lady was upset that I had been drinking in the canoe, stating that this was a "Lutheran" campsite. I, in return, started quoting Luther's small catechism and the lyrics to "A mighty fortress is our God."

As we began to clear out the back of our canoe my uncle handed us two blue duffel bags and told us that he had captured something, insinuating that it would be best if we not open the bags. My Uncle then set out in our canoe, down the river to look for the remainders of our troops. After waiting a few hours Doug and I became curious and unzipped the blue duffel bag. Inside was bifurcated lynx that quickly severed like a dented yin-yang emblem, transitioning into two feral

Jaguars. The demonic creatures leapt out and began to terrorize the inhabitants. Doug and I ran to the top of a two story look out post rising above the river. The campsite was in panic and disarray until a wise aged African man who was some sort of modern day tribal leader appeared with a musket shot the mother jaguar, stating that her dual, the child would be able not to fend for itself without her.

***

I found myself with immortal White Sox Slugger Jim Thome, pillaging through a mountainous heap of Junk in my grandmothers old garage. I was sifting through sunken debris of my childhood and youth, looking for the springed metal bed frame on which I was conceived. When we finally came across the bed frame (burrowed, very deep, Jim and I were wading up to the caps of our knees with swollen antiques from my youth) the lady who first hired me at my job at the library eight years ago entered the garage and snapped the bed frame from us, claiming that it was rightly hers and that if I wanted to keep my employment I would obey her request and yield the springed mattress accessory. After I watched her depart I realized I was late for a reading with my mentor, the late David Foster Wallace (god rest his soul). Since his suicide many a days have been spent trying to splatter my heart on to the court of the page in homage, thanking DFW (by far the writer who has had the biggest influence on my work) for simply everything he has given.

When I arrived at the poetry reading I was informed of Foster Wallace's suicide and told that all of the poems read that evening would be dedicated in his honor. I sat at the back next to a beautiful skinned yoga-anemic black haired woman who had her up tied up into a knob on the top of her head. She was wildly scribbling out poetic images into her notebook. One of her poems was about Johnny Depp and I chided her by stating something alliterative like, "What's gaping Gilbert grape." When It was my turned to read the Mc announced my name and a thunderous applause swept through the room. I looked into the interopr of my mocha-colored satchel, the bag where all of my literary tithes are stowed only to see that I had nothing and that I stared listlessly in my satchel at the David Foster wallace reading like a ten year old boy looking into an empty trick or treat bag.

I walked halfway up to the podium and the expectant din of the crowd when Jimbo (the village drunk) came up to me, his breath heavy with the rough scent of alcohol, telling me that he believes in me.

The next day I phoned the late david foster wallace's office in Pomona, even though he had been dead for nearly half a month. When I got his perfunctory voice mail I left a message of gratitude, thanking him for everything he has giving me, telling him even (in a non gay way) that I loved him, stating; "Love you buddy." at the end of my verbal homage, a serenade of unalloyed thanksgiving for every blessing bled from the calloused swirls of his fingertips given, so freely, to the ears of those who care enough about the human experience to listen and to seek.

Dream where I was in a banquet with david and sandy hale and that Mme Suhr
Was instructing a French exam and by the time I completed the exam I looked
Down on to the sheet and found my ink response a la francais that I had struggled to
Complete was blank….

Later in the dream I was dating an already married Stacy Ferguson (from kids incorporated, later of Duchess acclaim) and she was married to steve sanders from 90210 acclaim and the y lived in a shoddy house (the house was the house on the corner of ayres and cooper) behind the house where I actually lived, where the young couple lived, my mosdest father embarrassed to watch the wife sunbathe…

The house was drywalled plastered in little ant hills. I kissed “fergie” twice and asked her about rashan”the kids” and she told me she was gay before telling me that her marriage was failing. We kissed again. And I awoke.

Dream morning of october 24th, 2007

found myself in the front row of an awards ceremony in the auditorium of my grade school. There was an award for Sasha Cohen (hotty, red headed femaleOlympic figure skater) only Sasha was crippled andI carried her onto the stage. As I was ferrying her upto the podium I whispered to her that nothing turns me on more than watching someone who is "suffering overcome"I then kissed her pasty neck (which perturbed her) and then returned to my seat alone. After the ceremony I was helping to tear down the podium and chairs on the stage when sasha clattered up to me. She looked ravishing, was wearing a reddress and red shoes ( here's a pic I found later the next day)and the minute I saw her accosting me I knew she was a mystic.She was no longer crippled and the second she came close to me She pushed me down, supine on my back, straddled her limbsaround my torso and demanded, "Give me your palm!" (Note:pleaseremember Sasha's straddle first technique the next time you read my palm) She looked at my palm and immediately inquired: "So what's her name?" So I relayed the whole Diggory-Polly antics of our beloved dance, mentioning your name to herin my dream. She then continued to loose herself inside mypalm like a mirror for what seemed like dream days. I toldher more about our rapport but she seemed lost solely in my palm...I know...talk to the hand.....

dreamt 1-17-07

....sprinkles of a four year old dream (sept 2004)

Oh......and I had a dream during my turbulent lone-kayak-bracing-the- Atlantic-hurricane breakdown. When I get depressed I almost always have bad dreams about my underwear-model ex-girlfriend who I dated for thirteen months (my longest romantic rapport ever) and then had to leave town. Most dreams we're fighting and throwing things. Some dreams we're actually married and miserable and trying to conceive a child only we can't. Anyway, I keep having this dream where my-exgirlfriend and myself are having furious arguements.....only in this dream, to get away from my-ex, I delve into a bar and start doing cocacine. I'm shoveling little Peruvian mountain peaks of coke up my left nostril in a swanky hotel bar to deal with the loneliness and who do I see but my own mother, looking professional and wearing a bussiness suit. Mom is conducting a lecture in front of all of these (mostly persian) people and she's surrounded by all my relatives in P-town....and it turns out she's teaching the faith and that she's radically very ardent and passionate about it (she's a passionate Baptist in real life).....

.....and in the dream (which relaxed me because I had finally lost dream-periphery of my ex-girlfriend) I yell at my mom. I don't know why, but I yell at her. I scream at her. I tell her to stop.......

The next day my mother entered uncle Mike's house for the first time to co-sign a loan for her eldest child, still learning after all these years.

Dream from April 07, 2008

In the dream I found myself in Paris waiting for a Bailey Shaw, a classy poet
friend of mine, in this swanky futuristic celebrity restaurant right on the banks overlooking the Seine where you needed to have reservations months in advance. The tables, chairs, plates and even the walls on the restaurant were all completely translucent, so you could watch the expressions in the people on both sidewalk and the river as they past by. Bailey and I had tickets to go see the opera and I was waiting for her to change into her evening dress before we conquered the cultural decadence that is Parisian nightlife To get to Paris Bailey and I had to traipse through the MC ECHERESQUEmaze that was located inside her sorority house (about a block away from my old house in the atlas of my dreams) where there was a staircase and a ceiling but no floor and we kept thinking we got to the deck on the roof even though we kept finding ourselves back on the first floor with fellow chi omegas, respectively jeering at us. When we finally arrived at the top of the Chi house we surveyed the neighborhood where I grew up and then we took a translucent plane to Paris (????) where he had plans to lavish ourselves inside a fancy restaurant before hitting up the opera.

While I was waiting for Bailey to change for the opera I decided to traipse around Paris and revisit a few of the haunts that I remembered visiting the first time I was enamored by the City of Lights fourteen years earlier. I decided to look for a Green cathedral (hmmmmm) that I had never seen before but that looked familiar and beautiful and was located in a dilapidated section of town. After I found the green cathedral I turned around and saw you, followed by your two children and sister, getting off of a train. We embraced for what seemed like hours and held hands (tight) and I escorted you back to the restaurant and introduced you as my muse and spiritual dance partner to all of the celebrities in the cafe (ok, Stiffler from American Pie admittedly isn't exactly a celebrity, but still). I could feel the light of your smile emanating on the back of my neck as I promulgated presence of my inspiration. Bailey then arrived, looking ravishing and I told her that I would have to jip the opera since I turned around and espied the color of the name of my muse.

The eternity we spent joyfully wading around the mystical labyrinth of Paris was nothing short of woods between the world vintage From The Vault Diggory and Polly can't stop firing IM's into the cyber island of her smile for the life of me Park bench peaceful and perfect in its entirety. It felt good to have the proximity of your voice and the syllables of your breath sail into the coast my body again. We walked along the Seine and through many old cobbled streets. I spent quite a bit of time running around with your son, before he became envious at all the time we were spending together and told his aunt that the scratch he had on his right palm was from me (he later tearfully recanted)....the dream ended with the five of us in a carriage, perhaps headed back to the train station for you to carry on with your journey.

***

After I awoke I thought of the Arthurian Legend of Sir Gawain and The Green Knight where Gawain jettisons the temptation of Lusts while audaciously arriving at the Green chapel to meet his presumed death. Am butt exhausted but still managed to piss out five pages today. It is spring, Here's to Paris and dreams and to changing the world and giving all and asking for nothing in return.

Dreams chronicled from the past year found while ploguhing into the cyber dregs of my desktop

I am all alone in a house that resembles 443 and 1116 Bradley avenue, in an apartment that is dilapidated and messy. Cat shit everywhere, heaps of books and manuscripts and clothes, all waiting too, in the immortal maxim of Iron John, be “bucketed.” The house was a mess and I was nervous that my roommate, the dapperly groomed Dave Thompson (perhaps the wild man,) would come home and find the house in a disorderly state of flux—apprehensive that he would be pissed that the house (his property) was not properly bucketed (or in the Iron John story, taken care of)…..my next door neighbors, B___ and Megan, came over in their panties and we began to dance. One is blonde and one is brunette and I cozened both of them into lower their panties to the bony caps of their knees so that I might gaze into the oracle of their dream vaginas. I then asked the blonde if I could make love to her and after hesitating a minute she nodded and I grappled her by the wrist, escorting her into the flotsam and jetsam of Dave’s bedroom, which I was supposed to have cleaned. I found an over sized condom (possibly used) on the floor and put it on even though it made my own virile inheritance seem small. After making love the blonde both of the dream sirens dissipated through the bedroom window. I was then worried because the house was even messier than before and that time was running out to clean it before my princely room mate arrived home. There was a knock and it was an old lover of my roomates whom I have never met before. He said he had a “key” that I was to give to dave when he arrived. The key apparently was to the apartment and it belonged to Dave Thompsons ex-roommate Dave Beamish who later on had betrayed Dave. I told his lover that I didn’t feel right taking the key since the house was still a mess but Dave’s ex-lover insisted and then continued to stay in the giant house, assisting me in my cleaning duties, showing me which drawers certain objects were meant to be contained in.

(Dreamt morning of sept 4th 2007)

****


Dream where I am watching my father on his deathbed (spoonfeeding him some sort of stew with visible carrots bobbing in the taupe colored broth). God (wearing a turban) was also in the room and I implored him, begged him, supplicated on the caps of my knees for assistance— beckoning the deity to spare my fathers earthly life--a request he sternly refused to grant. The dream was punctuated watching my fathers open lips empty into a chasm of death before I wielded the tips of dual middle fingers into the direction of God and damned him in spattered fume of anger and in words.

--later that morning I would hear from my muse that her sister's father-in-law had passes away at the time I was having the dream..........

Dream morning November 3rd, 2007, dreamt in a bedroom at moms house

***

I was living in a house on Moss avenue (right hand side if roving towards heading, perched black copper flat top arched mid-way between the zenith of the heavensit was an overcast day and my high school English teacher Larry Reents owned the building. I was flanked by both of my siblings. Inside the house there were riches beyond number (plus a funky looking arabesque escalator of sorts) but first we had cleaning to accomplish. Before we could finish all the work the house was broken into and I hid behind the emerald drape of a curtain, hoping never to be found

(11-4-07)

A temple Built from Unity and a Temple built for Light

Dream Friday morning, March 7th-8th:


I found myself getting ready for a dress rehearsal
of the play "Music Man"--it was the same play
I performed when I was 14, the golden-patches and
thick air conditioned evenings of the summer of 92
the summer of meaningful kisses and three hour
teen-toddling phone conversations--the summer in life
when the opposite sex becomes an orchard of wished of scent
blossoming petals of lips sweet and innocuous
The summer I found myself on stage, the conic eclipse of a stage
light imprisoning my every gesture in a bubble of light.
The play was being directed by the same director as it was
half-my lifetime ago the impeccable Miss Pamela-tucker White
who during rehearsal, would cackle out loud
and laugh at the scenes when no one
else would laugh at--The vivacious beautiful lanky Swiss
telaborone flesh of Pam White whose belief that I could make something
of myself has lead me to relentlessly devote a vocation of a life
in the arts. In the dream the theatre is dank and gloomy and I
am told that I am given another opportunity to portray charlie
the anvil salesman. I am nervous because I cannot find my
script to memorize my lines. While looking around the womb
of the dressing room (which in the dream was in the front of
the building, the area normally associated with the lobby) I saw
the first born son of my Muse and he beckoned me to follow
him up a ladder. As I did I found myself in my muses house
only the house was one apartment bedizened with day glow
colors on the wall (like splotches of finger paint) that were
cocooned shaped and toppling. I gave my muse a long
elongated embrace, sprinkled with the confetti of cosmic
energy and light that is the mystery of the universe.
Her son wished for me to follow him into
his mothers closet and even though she didn't seem to mind
thinking it uncouth I refused, and descended the ladder
back into the dressing room where my fellow actors were
doubting my Thespian ability to perform my role. I was
worried because I couldn't find the script. Pam then came
up to me and gave me a one-armed wrap around wing
hug, informing me not to worry, that I will be fine
performing my roll. I still lurched around the back
seeking my script when a dirty-rag muffin haired
toddler no older than four whispered to me

"Pssssssssst." She gestured. I walked over to her
and she handed me a copy of the book I have been writing
for the last 8 year. My 1200 single space overweight
eight year old mediation on the human condition phynchonian
progeny titled "Yellow Monkey Bars and Unbidden erections:
A failed Campaign."

As I looked inside my own book I saw the script for which I have been seeking.






I simultaneously grappled the script and ran
up to the front of the stage where the scene I was suppose
to be was being portrayed by a portly actor with a black
beard and glasses.

"You're not ready to perform so I'm taking your role."

The pirate-like actor informed just as I leapt onto the
wooden cleft lip of the stage and pushed the actor who was replacing
me aside. Just as I began to emphatically recite my roll
I found myself being baptized in a swath of regal burgundy
flavored stage curtains--the lower limbs of my anatomy
folding under my torso in a yogi-like posture
as my entire body began to spin around
and I watched through the silhouette of the stage
curtains as the bearded actor deemed to replace me
took my place and the show invariably
went on without me.

****

Later that morning I found myself stumbling through the arid
pause looking for a refuge where I could dry out (drinking too much)
I then found myself in front of this building, only it was dream like and maybe a thousand times
larger.

As I went inside I was the man dressed in all white seated on a thrown and the bald headed man was next to him, it was the same scene I experience and eternally blogged about two months ago, The out of body mediation where I find myself in reverence in a throne room telling an escort of God that I cannot bow before him alone if the person I feel one with at all times is not saddled next to me, bowing, worshiping, smiling in spiritual deference as well.

As I bowed in front of the Master he told me very acutely to, "Build a temple of Unity and of Light." When I told him that I was not an architect he told me very simply to, "Try."

I then was escorted to a vector of the shrine where I could "dry out" and put my decadent destructive drinking days behind me.

As I was drying out I had a dream where for the first time in two years, I say the Psychic Uncle Mike. I ran up with joy and elation to give him a hug and to thank him for teaching me about the faith, but he brushed me aside and rather sternly responded to the dimensions of my arms by uttering a sole monosyllabic curse:

"SIT." Was all he said to me in a gruff voice.

Later on that morning (it's the weekend so I dream late) I was in a semi-truck with my best friend Hale. The truck was huge and the traffic was intense and the day was bleak early depressing December weather sans the Christmas garland and it was snowing. My friend Hale offered to take over at the helm of the wheel but I insisted on driving, even though traffic was stagnant and our cargo was precious. We then stopped to help a fellow trucker who had skidded off the road. We parked our car on the lip of the highway and the fellow trucker began to cry. He was clean gut, bran shoulders and clad in flannel. He said it was a hard life and he cried even more when he talked about his young daughter who he never got a chance to see anymore. I thought about the young child from my dream a day before who had whispered "psssssst's" and showed me where my script was located. Hale and I then hooked the truck drivers semi up to our own vehicle and got him out of the ditch he was stuck in.

Later in the dream our cargo came across a tight tunnel. It was small and both Hale and myself thought that there was no way we could ever get through. Eventually, through the taxing darkness, we persisted and found ourselves at the other end, our vessel completely unscathed.

In my dream I can feel the syllables of her breath as the moist quill
of her tongue enters my left ear and brushes across the side of my neck
before her entire dream sonnet buoys in my mouth, even though
in the dream I am engaged to an African American woman--even
though in the dream the friend whose body I find myself
wading into like a pond is my friend Nellie, who speaks 8 different
languages and likes Ethan Hawke, whose hair is the refulgent color
leaves cast in late-Autumn reflecting a clean sheets of timeless invisible
sunlight--Nellie who I once kissed two summers ago in the quad
by the ribbed-cage monument known throughout campus as the
Silver Vagina because we were embracing in the whistle
clean lavender dusk of magic realism of early June, which she pulled
back, laughing, saying, "I can't believe you just kissed my mouth!!"
Which made me laugh, even though I felt more for her at the time.
Back pedal two hours earlier in the night and you will find a shirtless
author writhing alone on the altar of his mattress, bathing in a
fountain of random images, his eyelids REM'ing out of control as
he finds himself in Wrigley field of all places, blessed to be accompanied
by the buoyant spiritual silhouette of my father to my left, to my
right the son of the woman who inspires me to no end,
batting his curious ingenue-eyelids in the direction of the field
wanting to know if he could have a hamburger.....back pedal
two more hours in a cushion of sleep and I find myself
moving into my friends Tim Flanagan's old house on
Sherman---it was the house my dream muse first
visited me with a heap of books and a dilapidated car
four years earlier and I now found msyelf moving
from the front porch, into the basement
toy guts were splattered every where like
mascot intestines and in the room a man bejeweled in
white perhaps beckoned me to proceed.....

(morning March 18th)

weekend dreams, mornings of March first, second, and third, and fourth (respectively)

There was the dream over the weekend where I was with my adoptive mocha- skinned brother who I had never seen before this dream and we had decided to "fuck all" and eschew the manacles of work and society and go for a bike ride into a very Bob Dylanesque "North Country" milieu. For over a decade now dreams of Wisconsin and Minnesota and Canada arrive to me in a vernal topography quilted in many distinct pastures of green. My adoptive brother and myself continued to pedal our tandem bicycle-like contraption over the lushest variegated dales and northern hills of the coniferous pasture until we arrived to a Norwegian like city which could best be described as pastel Saturday-evening- post- miniature-Christmas-village- with-innocuous-train-hooting through townish like. When we arrived to this innocent hamlet we debarked off the arabesque seat of our shared bicycle and looked into a map. By his calculations was only a few miles up the road and that he would go on ahead while I spent the night in this town. He pocketed the map and continued forward, into the diaphanous nectarine planks of a streaking sun. When I arrived in town I made the acquaintance of Two voluptuous inn keepers Their bed and breakfast was an abandoned stationary locomotive-engine train car that had been refurbished into a bed and breakfast. The stationed vehicle had quite a bit of significance to the tourists who kept snapping pictures of the vessel. The inn keeper seemed to take a liking to me and I inquired if I could have a tour of the facility. She then shepherded me into the basement of the locomotive where my "bedroom" was waiting for me. The room was small and mangy, and coated in an emerald green. The bad was about four feet long and the ceiling was maybe five feet high. What looked like pointed guitar string-stalactites dripped from the top of the ceiling and scathed my flesh.

I looked into the cleavage of my hospitable Virgil when she told me that this was my room and that it was the best room in the house.


Morning of March second.

I slept entwined in the limbs of my seasonal bride The dual glens of my She woke up and allowed me to sleep for four extra hours- The magic eight ball of my skull then waded into the stage lightening of the unconscious. I found myself seated in the balcony of the Lutheran church were I was confirmed. In the front of the alter JZ Knight (below) was giving a lecture for the congregation about following the mystical chord of bliss and unity burrowed within the sleeves of our own unique skin.






During the sermon a lady in front of me in the balcony that was dressed in a long denim skirt and a skull cap rag top brazenly stood up directly in front of me and vehemently denounced everything she was saying as blasphemy. The congregation as a whole remained seated during her two minute long diatribe with the exception of a disciple who floated from below, up to balcony, hovering in the air, politely informing the ranting apostolic Christan to refrain in her histrionics, beckoning not to doubt what is unknown.

I then found a foreign coin in my hand,

round yet chiseled with triangular groves
some sort of celestial token, a currency
which I could use to mete out just how far I had come in the
psyche of this lifetime.

Later that same morning I had a dream where my lover and myself
went to burger king, ordered all sort of RAW MEAT
before leaving are package at the fast food restaurant
and going to the community college I once attended--
the college shaped like an over head parabolic ash tray
In the dream I told my nocturnal companion
that I once met the man who was the architect
of this building, which was true, only in the dream
I told her that I said to him,
"What the fuck were you thinking?"


Morning of March the third:




I found myself in my mothers garage, the same house that belonged to my
grandmother, the house where a week before in the stitched
canvas of my dream world I witnessed a Holiday celebration
with my muse. In this dream I found myself lying in a
supine position on the hood of my Unlce's vintage 64 dodge
the hood was littered with vacant cheap beer cans
like white trash confetti and I was lying next to my
former cross country coach. Mr. Ricca. In the dream

I tried to thank Coach for everything he taught me and tried to tell him that I was sorry for disappointing him senior year when I was the captain of the team and quit, devoting my senior year to scribing maudlin passages of juvenile heartaches--I tried to evince my gratitude to Coach Ricca in the dream only I couldn't--instead I asked for his e-mail so that I could send him a link to my blogg--when wrote out the e-mail the letters blurred and floated

across the sea of my unconscious periphery

There was the dream on the morning of March the fourth

where i was with my mother driving up North

to see a dear friend of mine who is leaving the country.

We stopped at a giant gorge and deeply peered into the
sylvan dells below there was a chestnut ice socket
below that looked like a wounded giant eye
a mandala, a welt into the soil of the flesh of the planet
as if staring into the orifice of the earth and
seeking for something that would one day
sprout and bloom.


Mom then pointed to a sign. Apparently this
opening was an anomaly of nature
and would be gone and in the spring,
the sign said.

"On an Apparent Intention in the Fate of the Individual," points out that when you reach an advanced age and look back over your lifetime, it can seem to have had a consistent order and plan, as though composed by some novelist. Events that when they occurred had seemed accidental and of little moment turn out to have been indispensable factors in the composition of a consistent plot. So who composed that plot? Schopenhauer suggests that just as your dreams are composed by an aspect of yourself of which your consciousness is unaware, so, too, your whole life is composed by the will within you. And just as people whom you will have met apparently by mere chance became leading agents in the structuring of your life, so, too, will you have served unknowingly as an agent, giving meaning to the lives of others, The whole thing gears together like one big symphony, with everything unconsciously structuring everything else. And Schopenhauer concludes that it is as though our lives were the features of the one great dream of a single dreamer in which all the dream characters dream, too; so that everything links to everything else, moved by the one will to life which is the universal will in nature."

-joseph campbell

Variegated Slide show of my dreams, culled from the last week of February, 2008

There was the dream where my best friend John came to visit me
on Christmas day in my old house (good ol' 2013)
and we had a fort in the garage and my father was
still alive and both John and myself were drinking
cheap domestic working class lager (ie, Hamms
Colt 45, PBR) in our fort and occasionally shaking
the cylinders like spray paint cans before
spewing forth the liquid coopery contents
in celebratory jest at one another.
John , calling home to his catholic mom and
telling her that, "You'll never guess, they're not
catholic, not Lutheran, but he's a bah----"



There was the dream in the last week where
I am with fellow reference Librarian Diane H---
and we are tunneling through the WHITE SOX
spring training camp, although the camp is
being held at Detweiller park,
the park on the rich vector of town
where hapless, culturally illiterate
progeny of doctors
and lawyers and executives

get buzzed off cheap beers

attired in their polo shirts

and shorts hair cuts....

We traversed through an underground

tunnel and later met with
the seedy low-lives who
orchestrated the underworld.

A bald headed chemotherapy child
was also in the room.



It was the dream
I found myself in Chicago, broke,
hungry and all alone in the world
Needing to get home. I found myself
taking a cab through a neon
theatre district and later found myself strapped into a carnival ride
(the ride was located inside a big mansion house on the lakeshore)
The ride was configured like an upside down
octopus and I was strapped in next to a young boy
who the caretaker of the machination
informed me that it was my job to protect
When I was on the ride the entire
room began to cartwheel and slip upside-down
and the young boy to my imminent left
began to laugh and giggle while
I batted my dream eyes into a shush
and the entire room transitioned
into the interior parallax of a pinwheel
on a windy March day

The conductor then said that
there was a monetary contest
whoever could find the key
and I jumped off the ride
(abandoning the boy)
and rushed to the front of the
room which kinda
resembled the entrance to my
junior high gymnasium, dual
oak tablets with a slight
Rectangular socket. I was trying to
get through the door when three
sexy models began fighting their
way past me, in search of the
reward. I pulled their hair and
found the key beneath scurrying
out of the room, down a long
velvet draped hallway. I
kicked it down to the bottom
of the hallway where I used the
key to unlock the "bosses door"
The boss was a very chubby-jowled
overweight black man reminiscent of
Stanley from the office. He looked
at me, said that it was "about time,"
before handing me the money
so that i could once again
get home.

..It was the dream where I found
myself riding on a trolley
Through down town Peoria
Looking at the denim contours
Of the female in front of me
snapping photographic
vignettes of her anatomy
with a cell phone in my pocket.

I then left to pay a bill
at a restaurant that was once
known as the RED FOXX a gay
bar I used to frequent because
it was the only place I could
go crazy and dance on the dance floor
without hoity toity females
flipping up their noses at me
like light switches.

The gay bar in the dream
had been transitioned into
a diner with saw dust on the
top of tables. I was having
diner with Rick Moody in
the dream who was portrayed as my
friend Aaron Felder as I opened up
the menu a photograph of my
hot aunt fell out--in the photograph
she was straddled leg peeing behind
a fence in the country and as I
went to fetch the photograph I was
imminently hurtled out of the restaurant
where I found myself walking on the chin
bluff of High street, near the mansion
where I used to live.



There was the dream where I was with
the women whose body lulled me to sleep
last summer--the beautiful cancer survivor
I was telling her that I was sorry (in real life)
that I showed up in her back yard drunk
over the holidays. I then tried to make
her laugh and hid bottles of beer
in the ventilation shafts around her house in an
until a smile finally cracked into the
pasture of her lips...


I have been dreaming about retails
and about malls and labyrinths. A dream
where I was in my old book store
backing up items once again. A dream
where the mall had been transitioned into
a NOAH's Ark and that I found a Catholic
church burrowed within the alters
of retail where both my old Pastor
an assistant pastors had chosen to worship.

There was the dream early last thurs
morning where I found myself sauntering
in a labyrinthine retail setting. Where
the majority of shops had been transitioned
into "Born again Christian" youth shops
with finely groomed youth raising there
hands in the shape of a Y and swaying
back and forth, blind hosanna’s echoing
from their lips. When I tried to avoid
their hallelujah harangues and get back
to my hotel room door "store"
a black police officer asked
me to follow him and then immediately
began asking questions about "Rwanda,"

The very next day at work I received
a phone call where a high school
senior asked me what the capital of
Rwanda was....



Then there was the beautiful dream

where I found myself traipsing through
an aqua-marine labyrinth tint of
commerce that may have been the mall
in Joliet where I sometimes look
for my friend Esmeralda

I looked for Esmeralda like I did
that day when I decided to surprise her in
mall at Christmas time,
missing her by
only forty-five minutes,
telling her co-worker
to please, five her an intense holiday hug for me
when she got in)

I would search all over the deep blue of the mall and end up
in a vector of the mall that looked like
it was contained in a giant blimp
I then exited the mall at the very
southern orifice and found myself
in a desert where a pink convertible
of Latino insurgents picked me up

Later in the dream it was Christmas morning and I was holding
the white palm of my Beloved muse in my hand
We found ourselves at my mothers house

My dark haired Muse was
wearing glasses and i asked

her if she wanted to see something which she nodded
her head. I then escorted her into the kitchen
and showed her the snowy pastures of my
mothers backyard--almost the same picture
as printed below--the same back yard
Adorned in a sleeve of holiday white





we then proceeded to have Christmas dinner.
My pastor from the church where I was confirmed
was there as well as her servant-oriented Grandmother
who passed away last summer. I began sitting up
tables as more and more of our relatives
began to filter into the small brick oven
of my mother’s house. I almost ran out of tables
but all of our relatives were there
rejoicing over the birth
of a spiritual renaissance of the heart.

And we were happy

...I find myself living in the house on Heading Avenue with the Psychic

and my best friend John (who sadly I only get a chance to see maybe

four times a year if I am even that fortunate) has driven down to P-town

to visit me. And we are celebrating. We walk through a long parking lot

that for some reason is in my back yard and talk about the seedy looking

serial rapist who purportedly has been lurking behind the fence near the

dumpster. When we arrive at John's sports car we immediately head out

to celebrate. I tell John about the relationship I am currently in with

the classy grad student, how she insists on keeping our romantic rapport

surreptitious. We drive past the corner of Western and Heading

(appears in dreams weekly) stopping at the Pakistani run conveient

store to get more booze so we can celebrate upon seeing each other once

again. We pick up several bottles of wine and even some wine coolers (????)

and I toy with the idea of purcahsing several 100 dollar cigars. Inside the

conveint store the meat is rancid and had bugs lying eggs on it but the

poor and in need are still buyin meat while John and myself purchase

booze in the onset of celebration. Upon leaving the store John and I

began to drink and cruise before seeing my current girlfriend

clattering chicly down the side of the street, her head tilted into

her cell phone, tilted into her shoulder blade as if clueless and pondering

the deeper metaphysics of life at the same time. My arms twisted into

a weathervane of oscillating limbs as Johns car breezed past her and I told him

"Quick, make a youturn, that's her." Which he did, even though traffic was

was heavy and we narrowly avoided a sever collision. Marshalling his vehicle the opposite direction, we skidded upi next to the elusive angel and I imminently jumped out

and ran up to her, to which she pretended that she had never seen me before in her
life, screaming for help!!!

From the Vault dream--scribed October 10th, 2007 (scraped from the coda of a letter to a dear freind the date therof)

Here's the dream-- It was a dream that happened the night after I had the dream where you were a cool hippie chick working at this really cool record shop bald with the exception of one beautiful long strand of hair that lingered from the top of your head like a tassel. In this dream was a dream where everything was extremely FLAT and ELONGATED, akin to the "esculent" dream I had a year and a half ago where I was both physically and metaphysially with you in the next world and I woke up dancing (ie--it was a dream where I was literallty there).... ***

I found myself with my mother in the parking lot of the House of Worship. We were in our old family station wagon and the House fo Worship was located in a dilapidated Hispanic Neighborhood, but it was still a Holy and sacred place. My mother was dubious to enter the building but she walked in next to me. When I entered the presence of God was ubiquitous (think flatland the the rich fresh snow white of the dome and the floor where nearly at the same level even thought they weren't)...inside the House of Worship the Golden Emblem for the Greatest Holy name was everywhere, only the gold contained different hues of rich gold that emblazoned in the Persian name in a refulgent teeming cursive of eternity. The House of Worship was nearly empty with the exception of a Moorish Man (he looked kind of like Snoop-dawg clad in a rich burgundy Turban) in the center of the building with a film crew who said they were producing a movie on the Dawn Breakers (or something hold of that nature)....I told my mom a little about the faith and then told her that I needed to adjourn to the cornerstone room to get, "spiritually refreshed."

Since everything in the dream snapped out in front of me in a long elongated hallway the cornerstone room was in the same level as the main dome or throne room. As I approachedthe corner stone room I noticed it was wallpapered with crayola drawings of Abdul-baha...hundreds of drawing that were drawn by little kids so there was a certain spunk and sloppiness about them (perhaps it was a portent to you teaching Sunday school). It was beautiful. All these sketches of Abdul-baha drawn by little kids. As I walked up to the cornerstone I knelt in the exact fashion I dropped to my knees on that beautiful spring day a year and a half ago when we held the stone as one spirit. On that timeless day, I held the relic with my left hand over you right hand. IN the dream, I was holding the stone with my right and it was sending a jolt of peace through my entire body and it felt like it was reading my palm. I thought of you (of course) in the dream and when I turned to my right looking for you there was an empty baby carriage stationed in the exact position where you knelt next to me on that beautiful day.

I smiled,feeling refreshed as if God had just squeezed my hand in encouragement and hope and walked out past the empty baby carriage, past the crayola'd pictured of Abdul-baha, back into the main portion of the House of Worship.

When I entered the dome there was music. The building was FILLED with worshipers and in the center of the dome was a beautiful violinist playing the most beautiful song I had ever heard. I walked near my mother was and bumped in David and Marianne, a cool Baha'i couple I used to hang out with when I was living with Uncle Mike. There three kids were with them as well (the oldest daughter, Katie, I was close too and left my art books for her when I left Uncles Mikes house....David was the gentleman I was standing next to when I attended your BRILLIANT lecture five years ago at GreenLake) It was peaceful being surrounded by so many followers of the faith. I embraced David and Marianne and the three of us cried and I told them I missed them. I then walked back to my mom where she was holding up a pamphlet on Jesus and tried explaining to her the relationship to Christ within the lineage and tenets of the Baha'i faith. I then put a CUBS HAT ON (Talk about hiding the COLOR OF YOUR NAME) and then escorted my mother out back to our vehicle where it was raining....waking up seconds later into a serene atmosphere of Early September light..... more stories to tell but t'night....superpoke foreheadkiss goodnight........

this architectural bliss appears to me in dreams at least once a week.....

Dream Hammock :On Valentines day I dreamt that the world was snapping shut into a giant silo and time was due for a harvest....

Morning of February 16th

I left the mocha-geometry of my lovers arms at rest and danced home across continents of glass of puddles early Saturday morning thinking that perhaps I had been relapse in extinguishing the fiery pupil of candles in my apartment, realizing that I was seeking the nest of my futon, the hollowed foam of my dream train ferrying the inside of my skull with a laser light show worthy to make even the most devout strung out Pink Floyd fanatics blush with crimson envy. The welcome matted dawn of February morning the gravitational lull and sway of a planet nursing my every whispered ambition as if the atmosphere of my planet served as a stratopsherical crib to lullaby me into a upside down umbrella of dreams a mobile cumulus of angels skirting somewhere near the piano keys of my clasped eyelashes--shut as if wild in meditative prayer.

The first dream movement I found myself visiting Gary and Deanna, a rural Baha'i couple who reside in the sprawling yawn of prairie that is central Illinois. The house we were positioned in was a modern day log cabin. Joe Whitby from my youth was with us as well as Hippie Nikki. The congregation was socializing when I looked out the transparent sockets of the window and noticed that dual gyrating tornados were funneling towards us, emitting a Herculean sear across the deep gray of the plains. I herded all of my cohorts into the basement, looking for Hippie-Nikki before finding her cocooned in a beachwood kitchen cupboard, marshaling her into the basement where my peers were taking cover by adorning themselves with green tarps.

We turned on the radio to listen to the shrill and broadcasted caveats transpiring around us. The first tornado zipped into the direction of the house and then boomerang around it so, slicing into the house next door. The next tornado breathed and gushed in the distance and eventually slipped into a cement-colored sash and eventually into nothingness. While everyone was still burrowed in their mountainous clans downstairs I went outside to assay the damage. The farm house next door was completely demolished, but the overall dali-esque monorail that constructed same-colored suburban houses and shift them one by one into the suburbs remained functioning and unscathed.

I then continued to walk out in the dusty pasture and, upon finding my old white station wagon (the vehicle I once lived in five years ago when I was homeless) entered the back of the vehicle like a corpse and slowly drifted into rest.


*****


Two days earlier, on Valentines day, I dreamt that the world was ending and that
a select cadre was chosen by a universal secret concourse to be planted underground and survive the pending rapture. We would stay underground for 100 years and then
rise to perpetuate the aesthetics of humanity for a new group of men. When we were below, mutiny broke out and I was chosen by a small group of radicals to lead the insurgents into the welcome matt of a new age (which, incidentally involved murdering some of my gradeschool bullies)....after the sub-strata revolution deemed itself a success, I found my self in a dome watching the movie below:





As I watching the movie as beautiful shoulder-length black hair
woman wearing glasses appeared in the vacant seat next to mine.
She was attired in a marshmallow-white blouse and during
the flashes of Armageddon, she grappled my palm
as if she was seeking the answers to an esoteric enigma
before placing my palm on her left breast. I spent
the remainder of the movie groping her breast, listening
to the sound her lips would create when touching her
in such an intimate fashion. At the end of the movie
the lady turned to me and screamed. A middle-aged
man appeared near her opposite shoulder and claimed
to be her husband. He was wearing glasses with a slightly
bald egg-dome of flesh peeking at the top. I politely
told him that I was sorry, that I had no idea that
the radiant creature next to me was in fact his spouse
and that I was deeply sorry. The woman then said that
she was going to charge me with molestation and that
I would lose my post as the savior for the underground
new race of man. I told her then that there was
no way I molested her since she placed the lines of my palms
on her own breath and seemed to need them their while the
Armageddon movie transpired.

She then yelped and I found myself surrounded
by what passed as futuristic authorities and
I caterwauled my lips into the corporeal welcome
matt of yet another day.


*****


After the twin-tornados and station wagon hearse I found myself
competing in an Olympic size swimming pool, trying to impress
the judge, Tiffany, one of the dual money-grubbing
shylocks I owe 500 bucks to. I was swimming in a relay
using an empty GUINESS box to bucket water and bring
it back to land. When I arrived back to land (after
traipsing through a wooded quest) I found myself
in an academic classroom, vertically assaying
old books cached a single glass roll.
The pedantic prof.'s got into an intellectual
discourse where we were trying to one up the
other with our knowledge on Western civilization.
I quoted him Wittgenstein as well as James
Joyce's "Ineluctable modality of the visible."

The prof then said I could pick out any old
text to have a study. As I would pick out a book he would
say, "no, not that one." And then I would select again
with similar results. Eventually the only
book I was allowed to take was a sallow bulletin
titled "MISCONCEPTIONS ABOUT CHRISTIANITY"

I then found myself walking outside of the
school ensconced in a thick blizzard of snow
tears of ice flecked the side of my cheek as I
walked to the parking lot where my mother would
pick me up in a very fifth grade after academic
bow practice fashion. I waited in the snow and began slipping in the
ice and eventually found myself in the wrong parking
lot, realizing that I had to trek even further
in the cold and ice to get
to the destination, to find the vehicle
that would certainly take me home.

snowflake drizzle and a weekend of scurrying dreams....

Friday, February 15th....

Eye-lids peeled open to reveal the dream
concavity of night a tye-dyed panoramic
pond of images where
I found myself endeavoring to scale the precipice
of a staircase that was gradually foundering
after my every step. The stairs were part of an
old building in west Peoria, now defunct, that
I used to deliver papers to. The front of the building
showcased a ma and pa restaurant simply titled
"the coffee shop" that was a potpourri of
finger nail grease mingled with working class smoke.
The back skull of the restaurant housed 90 degrees
staircases with apartments above. In the dream I kept
endeavoring to get to the steeple of the staircase,
although the staircases kept collapsing beneath the soles
of my feet every time I endeavored to trudge in a direction
that would lead me to the carpeted welcome matt. At times
the staircases formed a petting zoo like cage of
Byzantine proportions. At times I feared for the
voluble interior fabric of my dream anatomy
yelping as my square step with capitualte below
my upward movement, towards the top. Part of the
dream I remember hearing the vocal chimes of my
mother above me, instructing me to configure my limbs
in a certain fashion, stating that if I did so, I would
be able to avoid the frangible architecture collapsing
around my and reach the zenith. After half and hour
of getting stuck in the quagmire of skeletal grates
I finally reached the summit where an old man
(he looked like a moribund trucker) welcomed me
with a nod, snapping at the ash of his cigarette
Opening the door to the den of souls above
where both my mother and my sister
were already somehow stationed
waiting for me simply to join them.

Beautiful distilled dream
where I was in front of my old
house on Sherman in a moving
truck with my late father.
All of my bric-a-brac and
various supplies were located
in the back of the moving
van. The van was choke full.
I was in the passenger seat and my
dad was at the wheel.

Tears than began performing a
strip tease on the geography
of my cheekbones. I told my
father that I missed him
and that I was sorry
that we would never have a chance
to go to any "Sox" games
or just have a chance to
converse about grown up things.

The bony knuckles of Dad's fist
then groped the clutch,
I was already holding the clutch
so I found his hand on top of
my fist tightly, squeezing it with
intensity and vigor.
He looked back,
a flash of tenderness
sunken into his brow
identical tears splashing
and he told me that
he was sorry that he
couldn't (physically)
be there too.


We sat in the moving van
outside my old house
father and son
and exchanged tears.

dream morning Feb 10th


It is morning and I am late for
my paper route. The papers are
stacked together in an interminable
pyramid configured heap on the
corner of Western and Sherman
one block in the direction
of the rising sun from the dream
house where I was conceived
directly across the street
from the house she once arrived
ferrying a pagoda of books
driving a dilapidated vehicle
in tears......

The last three years of junior high
and the first three of high school
I was a paperboy. My father would wake
me up at 4:30 in the morning
and (often together) he would
escort me down the arteries
of West Sherman and Moss,
father and son delivering
scrolled squares of recycable
inks fraught with opinions
and outrage into the
porches of droopy visage
houses, the chill of morning
accompanied by the blush of
clouds in the east
the incendiary bald head
of the sun gradually
illuminating the scalp of
the planet into another
day of chronicled
activity and breath
the bulletin I perched
in their doorway
rubber-banded like a telescope


At least twice a year
I have a dream where
I have overslept and I am
late for my assignment
late for my job as a
paperboy. Worried that
do to my (dreams, my
sleep truancy) I miss
waking up on time for my
route.

In this dream I am
late for my route
and the papers are stacked
like Vedas or snow embankments
on the edge of the street
I am overwhelmed by how many
papers I have yet to deliver.


I walk up to the fountain
of bound newspapers and
realize that I am late,
a week late, a month late
the truss bundles resemble
orphaned babies of expires
print, Moses waiting to
float down the suburban
sidewalks of a middle-class
Nile before being flung
on the welcome matt of
a random americana domicile

AS I waited in the parking
lot of what is now
Khoury’s (pharmacy) the
parking lot of the former 7-11
where I used to deposit quarters
into the winking chrome slits
of the payphones when I was thirteen
dialing long distance to talk
to Ambra Haake, the beautiful
silk-haired radiant skinned
femme who lived 45 minutes
away and who I was too coy
to call in the company of my
own parents being present within
the house.....


In the dream I began to
wade through the bundles of
papers, in a very king of
the mountain third grade
February recess style, until I was
finally on the summit of
clasped exposition and editorial

When I looked down I saw that
Karen Whittier, sixth grade
side-pony tail late
eighties crush
was in the back of a
pick up truck and that
her father was driving.

I then abandoned the mountainous
heap of jaded journalism
and found myself in the back of the
pea-green truck with Karen.
As her father drove our
limbs wriggled out of our
respective raiment and we
began to dip into each
others bodies
wading in a stiff
pier of pubescent skin

As our loins proceeding to
bite and snap and smile
in the back of the truck
I realized that her father was
driving up the the lolling
hills near my grandmother’s house
the house my father was living
in while diagnosed with cancer
the house my mother inherited
still after all this time.

dream pebbles over the past week, noturnal ripples in the pond of a wished for sleeeeee........

There was the dream this week where
I was endeavoring to help my cool
boss host a wedding reception
for his daughter and ended up
working for the mafia instead
(Seriously, they wanted me to
to wound a person who was
randomly attending the reception
and when I vehemently refused
to do so I found out that the
AL Pacinoesque angular countenance
gangsta I was working for was really my
father (!!!)....the dream
spilled out across the ring bearers
pillow the night on the
anniversary of my father's death
six years and on the exact day of the
week (Tuesday) since his ill-timed
demise that I dreamed I was playing
for the Chicago Bears only the field
was in our old living room replete
with chandelier overhead and I broke
my nose playing against Peyton
Manninng, the no none shit
don't fuck around with me coach
cupped both of his sandpaper
paws around my nostrils and
cracked my olfactory beak
in a way that I felt
the bone shift and snap
before the coach lambasted
my work ethic and told me to
go on out their and halt Peyton
Manning...the dream continues
with my mother and sisters
driving myself across BIG SUR
topography to find my fathers
grave. IN the sea bluff
cemetery where my father
was to be bury was dotted
with THOUSANDS of pastel
life size figurines---think
the illuminated semi-nauseating
Nativity plastic fire hydrant
size replicas of Mary and Joseph
you see flanking the front lawn
of protestant America during
the month of December....only
these replicas were of
Families dressed in Sunday
school garb-pastel glowing
inert figurines of fathers
in bad ties and Sunday pants
and outdated jackets and mothers
in dresses and children attired
in blue buttons and pink Easter
bonnets and when I inquired to my
mother (over looking the tens of
thousands of stagnant mannequins
all facing the roar of the Pacific)
what they were she answered
"They are the Mormons."

Dream I had late Sunday night
was that of Comiskey Park
(which appears in my dreams
in a different poetic angles
a blurred nest of bodies, the
park oscillates and tilts as
I try to spot certain players)
I was walking with my best
friend Hale. The park was
brimming over with patrons
and we had a hard time
seeing the field from where
we were seated. The bullpen
was on a bluff and we talked
about just how shitty the sox
pitching staff is due to be
in 2008. The next thing I
know I was in my friends
basement who lived down the
street when we were growing
up. The house where he lived
has long been demolished
to make way for a wal-greens.
____ had an older sister
and in the dream the sister
escorted both myself and my
friend into her bedroom and
we took turns making love to her
and in the dream I could feel the
pale-white of her belly
the wink of her pinched navel
and the bulbous white of
her bosom pressed heavily into
my chin, as if taking my breath
away in strokes of suffocation.


(dreams danced with the first week o' february 2008)

In the dream prism of sleep she had the most beautiful face I have ever seen...

....and I was seated next to her at the back of a Jehovah Witness Kingdom Hall--
located (from what a dream compass could navigate while bathed in the nocturnal atlas of sleep) in Bloomington, Illinois. She was lanky, but not anemic in her semblance--her hair was a shoulder length of inky tresses stylishly pulled back and tucked into a fashionably knob behind the back of her head and alluring, as if her stowed dreams and heart would spill out from the wild ponds of her eyelids if one were to simply tug and reel on the back of her hair.

We sat in the back of the Kingdom Hall, our attention seemed focus on the inscrutable mystery behind what the preacher was blathering about. We seemed more
content with searching for a vision of God than we did in hearing what
the masses quite simply felt compelled to comment about his veiled presence.

And in the six feet that separated us, we felt like one being.

The pews were reclined on were like a sofa- couch and we sat on the back of what
I have learned is the Kingdom Hall.

Her skin was a sprinkled metaphysical montage of every shade of flesh known to man. It was smooth
burnished copper, an ashen frost forehead in winter,
a delicate cinnamon flavored
mocha. Mix the hue and tint of mankind’s 200,000 evolutionary
Dance since we were crowned homo sapiens in a blender
and the color of her countenance and cadence of her
cheekbones shall surely be announced
with every blink of her eyes.

I would sit next to her, in the same reclining sofa
shaped pew, in the church of the kingdom hall
feeling the invisible gossamers of her pulse
horizontally throb across from where I sat

At night I would leave the Kingdom Hall
(which, come to think of it resembled
somewhat of a log cabin on the inside)
and would return to my old bedroom
good ol' 2013 west Sherman
the room where I decided to become
a writer/lost my virginity/slash prayed
every night for my wayward soul
the house of my childhood that appears
in my dreams at least once a week.....

This happened for three consecutive days.
Each day we would sit in the same pew
where I would find myself closer in proximity
to there aesthetic electricity of her
smile than I would the previous day
we would both look at each other
feel each other, move closer to the
elusive other, although, with the
exception of stargazing into the
vicinity of the others forehead for lengthy
periods of eternity no word
was ever verbally boomernaged
between us. The third day
(waking up in my old
bedroom, heading back to the
pew in the Kingdom Hall church)
We found ourselves in the same pew
our bodies were now
sitting closer than they had ever
sat before. We were close
enough to grope hands
and I could feel the
time signature of her breath
beckoning me to come close
even closer to her body if
possible.

At the end of the
long day I turned to
her and finally spoke
asking her, very simply
and somewhat coy in a
junior high "need a
date for the sock-hop
last minute I'm asking my
band geek partner" sort of way
if she would like to meet for coffee

She replied back with a smile that
ricocheted flecks of light from the
world to come. I told her I would meet
her at a Denny's (????) for coffee in a
half hour and exited the Kingdom Hall
floating, emotionally elated
that I had a date with the
most beautiful girl I had ever seen...

On my way to the Denny's I found myself
ensconced in the arteries of an
emerald labyrinth of a futuristic
Barnes and Nobles. I went over
to the waterfall shelves where
I knew my books would one day
be displayed. There were lime-
aproned employees who kept
badgering me to make a purchase.
Visually I racked the shelves
searching for a rose to deliver
to my spiritual companion
after searching for an hour
I realized that the only thing I was
to give her was already in my chest
and that the gift would by metaphysically
reciprocated by the atmosphere of her
heart and eternal scent of her voice
close to my pulse. The bookstore
employee kept on badgering me
to make a purchase but when
I refrained they grew bitter
that I had monopolized so much time
within the contours of their
store and left them without a
single commission.

As I walked out into the
sunlight, anticipating the sight
of her smile I found that one
of the store employees had
stashed a puzzle (of a tree)
in my pocket as I walked out
Upset, and thinking that they
were trying to frame me as a
thief, I took out the puzzle
and smashed into jaded
fractures outside the store.


I saw the Denny's where I
was to meet my beloved.
It lay just beyond a bridge.
As I was attempting to cross
the bridge I saw that the
President of the University
where I work and the Basketball
team were drowning in a boat accident.

Without thinking I plunged into the
river fishing out each individual one
or two at a time. By the time I was
done saving prestigious members of
my university I realized that I would
never make across the bridge to see
the smile of my beloved.

I was too late.

Two rejection missives from a small literary journal no one has ever heard from and a cup o' coffee....

...is how I begin my day. My body toddling across the academic soil where I work weird hours during interim session, clad in the shirt from last night that she told me to wash because of the maroon oval imprints of her lips still bitten into the collar like a crimson welt from my chin--like in late 80's movies where the husband who is having an affair always swipes his collar with his thumb before he fishes around the interior of his ash tray for his wedding ring. It feels like it is 10 degrees outside and the emerald aproned Pharaohs at Starbucks inquire why I am bundled up, looking like an out of work eskimo as I try to resuscitate my vision and smile, leaving to go work 12 hours, proof-reading my brothers manuscript, anticipating the nest of her limbs, her smile, her face.....

excerpt from novel dealing with corporeal loss and suffering of the interior limbs of the heart....

…And she is coming, groping, biting her nails in to the back of his palms, feeling, fucking, levitating above him. Her sweat glistened forehead alone seems to be hovering above him like a helium balloon hovers above a cornered vent. And now she is coming. Bulbous chins of sporadic cloud poofs, he can feel her coming—he can feel the movements of his body responding to the subtle titters and sighs of her body, can feel her felt, can feel her idioms lost in scattered translations, of alphabetical shapes and slashes, biting down, oppressing inside the cultivating feeling, the feeling of flying, floating, fucking, fucking her body, lids closing and brushing opening and fighting to be free- a momentary release, pressing down hard, pressed, above, flying-and this is how he wants her now. He wants her to fuck him from above. Drill deep, almost there, he can tell by the way her forehead dews with sweat that she is arriving. Can tell by the writhes of her body, the syncopations of her breath that something is about ready to happen. Can tell by the way she clutches and jerks and closes and opens her mouth and eyes at different intervals that something beyond what he thought could possibly happen is about to indeed occur. Presses hard. Just a minute. Above land there is no need for a saftey belt. Jeans sloughed and tangled in a corner, burrowed beneath sweat stained thong and jester boxers. Just a little more. The mattress appears to be levitating. A mass of sweat and hurt until finally, he jerks and she caterwauls, her lips falling from her face, screaming, taking a new breath of life—her eyes nailed close, the feeling coming inside her like a newborn planted release and here, right at this very moment, this is the way her body meets his body. This is the way they enter each other, the subtle thrust, the feeling of leaving, the lips bitten down and half-sawed off-the feeling that you have left-have to deported, only to have tediously arrived at the place you have always been-the place you have always felt welcomed-the place that feels more home to you. Her body continues to pry itself open with you inside, as if it is offering a vacancy that has previously been filled. Her mouth jarring out accolades, salutations, hullo’s. her mouth blossoming between her legs, opening. Swiftly pedaling, yawning, griping-it is the grip of her smile—her every electrons, her teetering toxins, kissed simply by sashaying the back of her hand. And she is coming. It is slow at first. It takes a while. Waiting, looking at her watch, wondering when an opening will allocate itself—to push herself open-the terminal hanging heavy ribbed grafters, a ticket of rectangular proportions folded four creases inside itself and squashed in her back pocket, a carryon, her body is mostly sweat, water, the treacle of perspiration, precipitating her pores, open, touching her button notch near her waist-yawning-the flight where Patrick once took three years past scratching his dead lice yucca moose and wondering out loud to a priest, while, gazing out the window looking out, mulling over the direction and general vicinity and overall discreet possibility of the afterlife. Wondering to himself, out loud, where the angels cache their wings in buttered scoops of nipple clouds.

ST CECELIA'S PLAYGROUND








David A. Von Behren

TREATMENT

St. Cecelia's Playground is a hip, late-seventies retro drama chronicling the lives of the Cotton brothers Melvin (or "Black Mel" our posh afro-sporting protagonist) and his much lighter skinned twin brother Marquette (or Mark). The film serves as both an inquiry into the economic slavery evident in lower-income Americana as well as a street meditation on the recurring theme, "What's the difference between God and Man?" The answer being that man, flushed with all of his foibles, has the capacity to change, whereas a fixed notion of a deity often tithes emotional incarceration in lieu of individual forgiveness.



THEME: What’s the difference between God and Man?




ACT ONE

1.)
Our story convenes in ATLANTA, GA 1967. Bickering barflies SEYMOUR “SCRUGGSY” SCRUGGS(29) and portly jovial CLEVELAND TUBBS (31) loaf at a bar stool with JERZ LORDS, owner of BOO RADLEY’s, (41) a popular Afro-American Jazz Dig. The bantering comfortably evolves around drink, debauchery and the dulcet soprano voice of BROWN SUAGH (24), performing later that night. Enter BLACK MELVIN, our stories protagonist. Orphaned at a young age, MELVIN COTTON (20) was raised inside ST. CECELIA’s ORPHANAGE in a downtown vector of Atlanta. MELVIN is dressed in camouflage military garb. In two days he will be deported to Vietnam. MELVIN is a jazz phenom and has his SAXAPHONE CASE with him in tow. On the far corner of the bar an OLD MAN jaded by the peril of life ruffles newspapers headlines and mysteriously walks out. MELVIN seems to have some sort of affiliation with the OLD MAN but remains reticent when Cleveland inquires.

In struts sergeant MARK (20) a corrupt, arrogant white Atlanta cop. He is followed into the bar with two of his badged toadies. MARK cracks lewd jokes about lynching and gets into a verbal scuffle with a stoned CLEVELAND TUBBS. JERZ LORDS placates his multi-cultural clientele with free drinks. Sergeant MARK walks to an opposite side of the jazz club.

As the carousing continues MELVIN and SCRUGGSY have a heart to heart about ST. CECELIA’s, the institution they both attended. SCRUGSSY brings up the name FATHER ANTOIN and MELVIN seems distant. He is anxious to leave ATLANTA. Something in the past seems to be bothering him and MELVIN seems anxious to start life anew, even if it is in the war torn tattered republic of Vietnam.

On stage an ILLUMINATED CONE encircles the ANNOUNCER. Claps are heard as GRACIE “BLACK SUGAH” begins to sing. MELVIN momentarily forgets about his mysterious past and stargazes on the angelic countenance and smooth vocal tendencies of GRACIE. A HISPANIC WAITER clears martini glasses from the tables.

After Gracie has sung the ANNOUNCER focuses his attention on MELVIN, informing the raucous audience that MEL is leaving for NAM come two days time. After a little verbal nudge from his cohorts, MELVIN picks up his saxophone and heads towards the stage. His sonorous tunes rivals GRACIE’s in terms of tonality and beauty. The audience remains awed.

Following MEL’s performance clattering and cursing is heard in the back of BOO RADLEYS. Apparently, the HISPANIC WAITER has inadvertently spilled part of a drink on one of the WHITE OFFICERS. IN a fit of rage the WHITE OFFICE overturns the table, pins the HISPANIC WAITER into the floor and endeavors to beat him comatose. When JERZ LORDS endeavors to make PEACE, OFFICER MARK fires several random rounds into the air, informing JERZ that, “even though things thave CHNAGED in this town, things haven’t really CHANGED.”

OFFICER MARK swivels the nozzle of his pistol from JERZ into the forehead of the ANNOUNCER. Without a word the trigger is pulled. The announcer falls over dead. A sick look of shock etched into his face. OFFICER MARK re-cocks his pistol, aiming it in the direction of the battered HISPANIC. As he is about to fire the pistol he is forcefully shoved aside by MELVIN COTTON. AS OFFICER MARK misfires the pistol, the wayward bullet enters into the chest of his fellow OFFICER. The third officer rushes toward MELVIN and MARK, only to be placed in a headlock by CLEVELAND TUBBS. MELVIN and MARK continue wrestle. The gun gets kicked aside and is quickly picked up and emptied by JERZ LORDS.

The scuffle between Mark and Melvin continue. Mark accuses Melvin of not knowing who he truly is. The two continue to flagellate the other with their fists. MARK MELVIN on the ground, choking him. He lifts up an empty bottle of JACK DANIELS. MARK attempts to christen MELVIN’s face with the bottle by shattering it over his head. The moment he swings the glass gavel, MELVIN moves and the bottle smashes into the floor. Melvin then maneuvers on top of MARK and quickly presses MARK’s own face into the pool of GLASS SHARDS.

MELVIN gets up. Blood has sopped through his Military garb. He is breathing heavily. BOO RADLEY’s has for the most part completely emptied. He looks at the fallen bodies of OFFICER WARREN and the ANNOUNCER. The HISPANIC WAITER slowly sputters and groans into consciousness.

CLEVELAND TUBBS nods his head. Scruggys bends over and begins to drag the dead bodies near the alleyway door. JERZ LORDS brushes back descending tears from his sockets and begins to vent out a nervous breakdown. LORDS begins to crack open BOTTLES OF BOURBON in rage. TUBBS and SCRUUGSY nod their heads back and forth in shame. MELVIN endeavors to calm JERZ down. Unsuspectingly, a bloody faced MARK bats the inside of his pant cuff, unveiling a knife.

More bottles of Bourbon and other Liquor break. Melvin tries to calm down the proprietor, unaware that MARK is behind him brandishing a KNIFE. Seconds before MARK’s KNIFE slices into MELVIN spine, the battered Spanish waiter screams out a Hispanic warning and MELVIN turns. The slicing knife scrapes the side of MELVIN’s cheek, granting him with a MARK of CAIN welt.

Unable to control himself, JERZ lashes at OFFICER MARK and is immediately stabbed in the stomach. Melvin turns around, launches his entire body in the direction of MARK. The two fall down again and begin to wrestle.

MARK is on top of MELVIN pummeling him several times. MELVIN lifts up his boots and tosses MARK into a barge of TABLES still dim lit with CANDLES. The CANDLES skid off the side of the table and land on the bar, where JERZ LORDS broke bottles of BOURBON in a maniacal rage. The bar soon erupts in flames. MARK gets up and lashes his feral limbs towards MELVIN again.

Innately clumsy, pissed off and stoned, CLEVELAND TUBBS, in an endeavor to do the RIGHT THING, picks up several bottles of whiskey and baptizes the flames. The fire snickers and crackles. The whole bar and half the club is swallowed in flames. The screech of FIRE SIRENS becomes audible.

TUBBS is pushed out the door by SCRUGGSY. Inside the bar OFFICER MARK and MELVIN continue to stab each other with their fists. FLAMES ensnarl the building.

The SOUND OF SIRENs continue to blare. MARK is on top of MELVIN and continues to gash MELVIN’s face into the earth. BOO RADLEY’s is now HADES. Black MELVIN and WHITE MARK have now become a metaphorical nemesis. MELVIN appears to be completely enervated, weak.

Mark launches one final pummel into MELVIN’s face. The bruised MELVIN locates the KNIFE MARK stabbed JERZ LORDS with, beaming in a quivering strip of flame. AS MARK launches one final blow, MELVIN deftly grapples the knife, slicing it on the left cheek, similar to where MELVIN’s face is scarred. The two rivals stumble. TUBBS and SCRUGGSY haul a battered and bleeding Melvin outside BOO RADLEY’s just as the establish soars into flames.

2.) Melvin awakes inside CLEVELAND TUBBS’ bachelor pad. SCRUGGSY doctors Mel’s welts with a BOTTLE OF VODKA. He reads a newspaper Headline about Boo Radleys then reads an obituary for JERZ LORDS. TUBBS makes a point of noting that MEL and Sergeant MARK have the same last name. Disgruntled, MELVIN notes that the spelling of their last name is slightly different.

There is a knock on the door. As SCRUGGSY answers it the room is filled with bullets. SCRUGGSY falls down dead. TUBBS shoves MELVIN towards the window. Looking MELVIN straight into the eyes TUBBS tells MELVIN that, out of the three of them, his job is simply to stay alive. TUBBS then kisses MELVIN on the lips. MELVIN is shocked. TUBBS steps back, smiles and forcefully pushes MELVIN through the glass window. He then turns around, wielding the empty bottle of VODKA like a sword.

MELVIN falls three stories down below. Upon hitting the cement he realizes that he fell straight on top of an OLD LADY walking her SCHANUZER. As MEL attempts to resuscitate the OLD LADY he hears more bullets. The BOTTLE OF VODKA smashes on MELVIN’s left hand. TUBBS is DEAD.

MELVIN takes off running. The Schnauzer chases after MELVIN. When MELVIN finds himself cornered in an alleyway, he picks up the snapping dog and tosses him against the brick wall.

MELVIN finds himself entering a DREAMWORLD. He is cornered on all sides. SILHOUETTES of the PAST encroach him. He finds himself looking at his demons. He sees himself as an ELEVEN year old boy talking to FATHER ANTOIN at CONFESSION.

3.)Melvin awakes in the apartment of GRACE HOLIDAY, the lounge singer who goes by the name of BROWN SUGAH. The two have been making love. GRACE hints that MELVIN should be thankful that she saved him. The two make love and Melvin informs GRACE that he had to leave town, but not before he attends to some unfinished business.

4.) Melvin enters the interior of St. Cecelia’s parish. He enters into the oak confessional booth. Without saying a word, MELVIN grapples FATHER ANTOIN and, inexplicably, begins to pummel him. MELVIN demands that FATHER ANTOIN “If he has sinned.” FATHER ANTOIN damns MELVIN as MELVIN drags the priest into the front of the cathedral, sodomizing him with a crucifix.

As Melvin exits St. CECELIA he spots the HISPANIC WAITER. MELVIN accuses him of starting all this, claiming that if the waiter could just hold a Martini glass straight, none of his friends’ would be dead. Without saying a word, the waiter pulls out MELVIN’s SAXAPHONE. It is polished and bright. MELVIN accepts the gift and when he inquires “what the fuck is going on?” all the waiter can respond is ¡La paz de Dios!

ACT TWO

1.)
In Vietnam MELVIN becomes lonely. He scribbles epistles of timeless love for GRACE. He is placed in truculent SGT. "NO SHIT" MOORE’s infantry. In the infantry MELVIN becomes known as BLACK MEL. His best friend is a Mexican-American street-legal pothead named JESUS DE CIELO (21). A bevy of other soldiers are also present including nerdy pocket-calculator toting Ralph Whickers (17) knife-wielding Jordie Reents (19) ex-hippie Abby Brooks "A.B"(23), semi-portly comic relief Chuck "CHUCKLES" Hungslow and coy, Oscar wildish cross-dresser Thespian Tommie Newman.

BLACK MEL: Your name geez-us, as in JESUS CHRIST what the hell is going on.

JESUS: It looks like Jesus but its pronounced Hey-zeus. Like the other God. The god of all them other gods.

BLACK MEL: So you gonna turn that water into wine first or you gonna raise my black ass up from the dead when I'm shot.

Jesus (toasting a libation): Both.

One night, after a series of battles, BLACK MEL is in his sleeping bag, masturbating, and thinking about GRACE. Tommie thinks of this as a come on, enters BLACK MEL sleeping bag and tries to fool around. MEL rightfully snaps, pins TOMMIE and almost kills him if not for JESUS stepping in between them. Jesus and Mel have a heart to heart in the dense foliage abutting Saigon. Jesus rolls a joint and the two men reminisce of home.

One night SGT. MOORE is chomping down hard on the spittled end of his cigar, contemplating. Chuckles is entertaining the group with anecdotes about the Asian whore "PUSHIE HONDA." SGT. Moore disciplines CHUCKLES and whips into a diatribe. BLACK MEL ignores Moore’s comments and continues scribbling a letter to GRACE. SGT. MOORE confiscates the letter and reads it aloud to the fellow troops. At first the troops laugh, treat the scenario like a locker room. Soon though, the SGT. himself chokes because Black MEL words are so poetically poignant. Sgt. Moore stops just short of the last paragraph and crinkles MELVIN’s epistle into the size of a golf ball.

SGT. MOORE: If only all of you fuckers knew you were fighting for something you could come home to.



2.)
In Vietnam Sgt. Moore's battalion has one week left. It is a quiet night and crickets are heard chirping oratorios. Black Melvin is playing his saxophone thinking about GRACE. RALPH is showing JORDIE how to fix a radio transmitter. Abby is listening to the DOORS PEOPLE ARE STRANGE. CHUCKELS is fixing a sandwich parodying a little tummy-jiggle dance of pending freedom, discretely pointing his utensil in the direction of TOMMIE (who is brooding over a volume of Oscar Wilde) every time Morrison says the word strange. Jesus is rolling something seedy and green, licking tobacco paper with his tongue. SGT. Moore takes something out of his pocket and examines it.

There is a close-up of BLACK MEL humming into his sax and then there is an inexplicable explosion followed by cursing. The whole entire planet seems to fall into itself, into the dank casket of the earth. There is mass confusion and emotional pell mell. Black Melvin is trapped by shrapnel and to his left he sees the empty sockets and bloody head of SGT. Moore. His saxophone is melted. Black Mel looks around and sees RALPH and JODIE wailing in pain. BLACK MELVIN yelps out for help and CHUCKELS is heard laughing.

CHUCKLES: DEATH. We're dying. HA!!!!!! This is it. This is the point of the movie where the credits begin to roll. Death! HA!!!!!

Chuckles continues to slowly hum People are Strange before being swallowed into a military obituary headline.

"When your strange, faces come out of the rain. When your strange, no one remembers your name."

BLACK Mel yells out. He hears Tommie call MEL Othello saying that he can go fuck his own five-fingered Desdemona, big Black fuck. Apparently Tommie has found a way out.

BLACK MEL begins to hallucinate. It seems like he has been down here for days. He thinks about TUBBS wearing a nuns habit. He thinks about the pensive expression plastered on the lips of the Virgin MARY while he was sodomized FATHER ANTOIN with a crucifix. MEL reaches around his neck and thinks about GRACE. He reaches the scar on his right hand side and thinks about officer MARK. He feels that he is slipping out of his earthly attire.

Black MEL looks next to him, he sees a scarred Jesus. Jesus says that he can help BLACK MELVIN but only if MELVIN says Jesus name.

BLACK MELVIN: Hey-Zeus. Hey-Zeus.

Jesus: NO, say my name. Say my name the way your mother said my name in church. Say my name the way you said my when you were taken away from my mother.

BLACK MEL asks if JESUS has lost it. He asks if JESUS is fucking crazy. Finally, he says JESUS name as a vulgarity and JESUS asks him one question.

JESUS: DO you want to go back home, or do you want to come with me?

BLACK MEL: I just don't want to remain stuck. Shit. Jesus Shit. I been stuck all my life. I've been stuck all my life!

Jesus slowly trudges over to BLACK MELVIN. He loosens the metal detritus and, playing Virgil to BLACK MEL's downtrodden Dante leads Black Melvin out of the wreckage into a DOME OF WHITE LIGHT. The two shadows eventually coalesce into one integer and Balck Melvin is surrounded by rescue workers. Baffled, Black Mel looks around. He sees the bodies of Sgt. Moore, A.B., Chuckles, Jordie and Ralph piled up in a funeral pyre. Then he sees Jesus dead body heaped onto the pyre as well.

Apparently BLACK MEL was buried alive for 72 hours. Jesus' body was exhumed charred and deceased ten hours after the initial blast.

When BLACK MEL feels around his neck, he sees a dog tag. On it is the name JESUS MARTINEZ.

3.) MELVIN wakes up in a psych ward. BLACK MEL is confused. He spends days in a psych ward where he finds Tommie Newman alone one day and immediately begins to pummel him. When Melvin is refrained from TOMMIE it turns out that what Melvin was actually hitting was a picture of the cross.

Inside the Psych ward MELVIN is called JESUS de Cielo (since that was the dog tag he was wearing) He begins to have long sessions with his sexy counselor VICTORIA MEADOWS. He tells VICTORIA about his friends who died in ATLANTA before his departure. He tells VICTORIA about his friends who died with him in NAM. He tells her how he feels that he is nothing more that a character in a novel where weird shit keeps on happening and everyone who he loves or cares for dies.

Slowly he begins to reveal more intimate details to Victoria. He tells her being rapped by FATHER ANTOIN at a young age. He tells her about his mother, LADY GREGORY, who ran a brothel. When VICTORIA inquires whether JESUS is aware of any other family members MELVIN’s face remains silent. Rubbing a finger down his facial SCAR MELVIN tells VICTORIA that he once had a brother.

On the day of their last session VICTORIA and MELVIN kiss. VICTORIA (still calling Melvin Jesus) implores him not to go back to Atlanta, fearing that his life may be stake. MELVIN tells VICTORIA not to worry. That even Jesus was met with a pretty big reception when he re-entered Jerusalem. The two make love on her therapist couch. Melvin thinks about the playground at St. Cecelia’s.



4.)
Back in Atlanta MELVIN has usurped the identity on his savior’s dog tag, JESUS DE CIELO. The city has become even more segregated and oppressed

Slowly Jesus begins to become an alcoholic. He is 27 years old. He sports a full afro, wears vinyl jackets, walks with a limp, drinks forties of STROHS LAGER out of brown paper bags. There are dilapidated scenes of MELVIN's old neighborhood. We see the rundown WHITE ONLY water fountain. We see the ruins of the CHURCH. The neighborhood is in financial decay. Only St. Cecelia’s seems cleaned up. They have a new fence. New playground equipment. It is no longer solely an orphanage but a parochial school.

Walking past St. Cecelia, drunk, Mel notices a young girl of six in pigtail and a catholic skirt running across the street. He feels some esoteric, bloodline connection with the girl. Across the street he sees GRACE. Though seven years older her skin is still refulgent and smooth. The young girl leaps into Grace’s arms. Melvin begins to walk he sees SARGANT MARK, doff his police hat and place his solicitous arm around the two of them. They are obviously a family.

JESUS is stunned. A car beeps. MARK looks at JESUS and tells him to get out of the middle of the street.

JESUS limps over a cemetery and finds FATHER ANTOINS grave. Without giving a second thought, JESUS (Melvin) unzips and urinates, pouring out the rest of his beer and then smashing the bottle on the FATHER's grave. Melvin then begins to cry. He damns God. He damns his father. He rips off the JESUS dog tag and tosses it into the ground.

Feeling all alone, JESUS saunters past his old haunt. He hears the sound of a jazz trumpet. Turning the corner he sees a portly man in a wheelchair with no feet. The man is wearing a derby cap and is blowing smooth jazz tunes. There is a BOTTLE OF VODKA next to his wheelchair. It is TUBBS.

TUBBS immediately recognizes MELVIN. He is excited to see him. MELVIN tells TUBBS that his name is really JESUS. TUBBS becomes disconcerted. He claims that he took bullets and became paralyzed so that MELVIN could be free. MELVIN insists that his name is JESUS. TEARS begins to drip down TUBBS fine chin and he tells MELVIN that it served him right that OFFICER MARK married GRACE, even if she was pregnant with you-know-who’s child. MELVIN becomes silent. Slowly he continues to walk without looking back. TUBBS throws his trumpet in despair.

TUBBS: I wait all these years for use to come back and use don’t even know whose use is. Fuck you then, Melvin, Jesus, whatever use names bees, fuck use.

MELVIN continues to walk. He gets another forty and walks past a boarded up and dilapidated BOO RADLEYS. Sitting down at an abandoned BUS STOP outside, he hears a voice. The old man who MELVIN saw seven years inside the jazz club is seated next to him, reminiscing about JERZ LORDS fine establishment.

JESUS shares his forty with the old man who goes by the name of DRUNK HAROLD (54). Melvin says that his name is Jesus but that none of his friends’ know him. DRUNK HAROLD disparages JESUS, telling him that he never did know who he was—even growing up. Slowly, JESUS becomes aware that the old man knows something. It turns out that DRAUNK HAROLD is MELVIN’s father.

HAROLD tells MELVIN all about his mother, LADY GREGORY.. DRUNK HAROLD explains that actually, his LADY GREGORY was carrying twins fathered by different males, at the same time. A genetic possibility but one that is rarely heard of. MELVIN is Harold’s son. When MELVIN inquires about his brother, HAROLD runs his finger down the side of his cheek. MELVIN remains silent.

The father and son roll a joint. MELVIN begins to ask his newly found father for advice. DRUNK HAROLD offers insight, tells a drunk and stoned MELVIN that sometimes in life, you gotta go back to the place where shit happens and fix everything.

MELVIN thinks about this and smiles. He gets up and avails a revolver from the inside of his pants. Without saying a word BLACK MEL shoots DRUNK HAROLD.

“Looks like god the son finally get gonna come back after all, Tubbs.” He says.




ACT THREE

1.)
BLACK MEL is lurking outside of St. Cecelia's Playground. There is a catholic sister and a small class size playing duck duck goose. The school has cleaned up considerably but it is still located in a shady part of town.

Without saying a word BLACK MELVIN leaps over the fence. He whips out his gun and presses it against the nun's heads. When the nun asks who he is, MELVIN says that his name is JESUS and that he has come back from the dead to take what was rightfully his. MELVIN forces the classroom out from the playground and back inside the school. They enter the sanctuary. BLACK MEL is crazy. A locomotive stream of vulgarities erupts from his lips. He forces the kids down in front of the statue of Virgin Mary. He tells them to pray. Pray that there is a god and that God cares enough about your ass to let you live. Pray for verification.

Melvin bolts the students in the sanctuary. Slowly Melvin escorts each student to the confessional booth. He asks then the question, "What's the difference between God and man?" He tosses the children down and fetches another one. The last student he interrogates is MELODY (7) the daughter BLACK MEL conceived with GRACE before he left for Vietnam. The daughter MELVIN has never met.

Outside MELVIN hears the sharp whirl of police sirens begin to escalate. He looks at his daughter.

MELODY: IF you is, Jesus than why you black?

MELVIN looks at his daughter. He removes his nozzle and points it sharply onto his daughters temple. MELODY tells MELVIN that her dad is a police man. MELVIN (JESUS) tells MELODY that his dad is a God. The two look at each other. MELVIN kisses his daughter on the forehead and tells her to kneel down in front of him and pray. As soon as Melody closes her eyes, MELVIN puts the nozzle of the gun into his own mouth. He closes his eyes and is about to pull the trigger before he hears the sound of a saxophone, humming in the direction of the playground. It is a sweet dulcet sound. MELVIN drops the gun and picks up his daughter. They walk down a corridor and look into the playground. Near the jungle gym, both Melvin sees the Hispanic waiter, humming into a saxophone. The waiter is shrouded in a corona of LIGHT. The sound of jazz is beautiful and sweet and hovers above the shrill of the police sirens. MELVIN turns to his daughter and tells him that she needs to know who she is as a person, before she knows or accepts anything else in life. He asks his daughter if she sees the man playing the saxophone and she innocently nods. MELVIN tells his daughter that that’s what an angel sounds like. He picks her up and together the two walk in the direction of the white light. The moment the door to the playground closes—Bullets are heard thundering across the playground.

2.) There is a close-up of MELVIN’s body lying dead in the middle of the playground. The HARD LIGHTS of police vehicles reflect shades of red and blue. MARK steps up, steam hovering above the top of his rifle. He looks at his BROTHER and feels the fissure on his own cheek. The moment MELVIN COTTON-BLACK MELVIN-JESUS DE CEILO’s body is escorted away in a black shroud a sound is heard. The office looks behind him to see his daughter, MELODY, inexplicable groping a shiny brass saxophone. MELODY blows in the horn, erupting flat notes and sour chords. Slowly Melody, is learning to play.