Attempt at a Play

Lessons

SETTING

A few bar stools and maybe a bar, that’s all that need to be on stage.

CAST

CAS                                                                             Guy of about 25, short black hair, wearing a suit and tie, loosened but still to stuffy looking for a place like this

KITTY                                                                         Girl of about 24, wearing a rather tight hot pink dress

DEAN                                                                         Guy of about 26, short brown hair, wearing t-shirt and jeans

                                                                       

Lights come up on the empty stage, after a beat CAS walks on, looking awkward and uncomfortable. He notices the audience and then launches into his monologue. He drifts towards the bar and sits down during his speech, never fully relaxing.

CAS

            I’m here for Dean. No wait… not for him. Not for him. Not for him.  I mean, I’m here with Dean, he’s the one who dragged me here after all. I mean, this is nice and all, but lets just say that it’s not really my ‘scene.’  When Dean called he said it was an ‘exotic dancing show’ which I took to mean something completely different. Homeschool will do that to a person; make it easy for a ‘friend’ to trick you.  And of course I just so happened to make exactly the kind of friend who would trick me into driving him to a strip club. That’s him over there (points out over the audience) the one with the glazed expression and the large wad of ones. Why you ask? Why the glazed expression or… oh right, the friendship. Well that’s a very strange and unnecessary story that you don’t really want to – (cut off by the entrance of KITTY, 23-27, who is wearing is very tight, short, alarmingly pink dress).

                                                                        KITTY

Well hello handsome.

                                                                        CAS (looks terrified)

M-me?

                                                                        KITTY

‘Course you! Don’t see anyone else fits the description half as well as you, sweetie.

                                                                        CAS

Uh… Miss I think you have me confused with someone else, I’m just here with my friend…

                                                                       

KITTY

Oh yeah, I know. Saw you two come in together. But looks like he’s having enough fun with Sami over there and you just looked so lonely with your big blue eyes and fluffy hair (she leans over to try and ruffle his hair but CAS leans away, frightened) That trench coat is doing wonders for you by the way.

                                                                        CAS

Well- thank you… I um, I think you might have gotten the wrong idea, I’m just here with- for my friend.

           

                                                                        KITTY

Oh you mean the one you keep making puppy eyes at over there? Never would have thought.

           

                                                                        CAS

What?! I think you’ve got this quite wrong.

                                                                        KITTY

Oh do I? Well just in case I don’t, I’d just like to point out that your ‘friend’ looks like he’s about to break a few laws with Sami over there. You might want to do something about that, even if you’re not in love with him.

                                                                        CAS (looks off stage ‘at Dean’ exasperated)

What- not- you’ve- oh Dean, not again! (looks back at KITTY) Um, er… excuse me (he runs off).

                                                                        KITTY (stares after him for a minute then sighs, opens her purse and lights a cigarette)

 Oh boys, they’ll never get it right will they? Always concentrating on the wrong thing, never seeing what’s right there in front of them. I knew this guy, client, once who took me out to this beautiful party. Looks like we had stepped into some kind of dream with gauzy streamers and fake snow everywhere. The Champaign glittered on ever surface, making it look like we were dancing among the stars... but anyway, this guy. We danced the whole night, swirling around the dance floor; him in tails and me in this flowy pink thing that Madame – my boss – said made me look like a princess. I felt like it too, a princess in a perfect starry winter wonderland. At least I felt like that until the end of the night, when were in the cab home and I asked for my money. He just gave me this look. Was I kidding, he asked, we hadn’t even gotten to the fun part yet. Then I gave him a look. That was the fun part, I said, now give me my money. Not until he got everything he had paid for, he said. He didn’t seem to understand that he had paid for an ‘escort’, someone to go to a party with him and make him look good, someone to dance and have interesting conversations with. He didn’t get that even though it was right under his nose. Didn’t get it, not at all.

 (Looks off into the distance for a while, takes a drag of her cigarette) Guys are just so… thick sometimes. I had this friend in high school that I never really liked, you know in that way, but by the time we were done with that hellhole I knew I loved him. I loved him in a friends forever, kindred spirit kind of way. So the night before graduation we were over at his house, lying on his roof and talking about stars and life and the future, and I told him. I said I loved him and do you know what he did? He leaned over and kissed me. Then he told me he’d wanted to do that since the moment we met as freshmen. Then he kissed me again. He didn’t get what a I meant, that I loved him, but not it a hormonal rage kind of love, not in a skin on skin love; in the kind that lasts, the kind two people have for their entire lives. (Zones out again for a minute then seems to come back to earth and takes a drag) I haven’t seen him since graduation, when he gave me his college info and told me to visit. I never did. I hope that if I see him again he’ll understand, he’ll get that my love was forever before his love made it a one night stand.

(KITTY sits at the bar for a minute, smoking and drinking. Then CAS and DEAN come staggering on stage, DEAN’s arm over CAS’s shoulder, DEAN obviously not quite sober)

                                                                        CAS

Dean, just wake up will you? We need to get you out of here. (He sees KITTY still at the bar and stops) Oh, you’re still here.

                                                                        KITTY

Yep. Don’t get too excited.

                                                                        CAS

I’m- sorry, I’ve just got my hands a little full at the moment.

                                                                        KITTY

I can see that. Not the first time this’s happened is it?

                                                                        CAS

No, he’s making quite a habit of it-

                                                                        DEAN

Yes, I’m gettin real ‘noying to Cas, but he’ll ‘ever tell ‘nyone cause we’re besties.

                                                                        CAS

Oh god, you are going to kill me in the morning

                                                                        KITTY

It’s ok, he probably won’t remember most of it anyway, looks like Sami gave him the Friday night special, purple nerples all around.

                                                                        CAS

Somehow that doesn’t make me feel any better.

                                                           

            DEAN

Hey Cas, Cas, can I sit down? My heads kinda dead. Ha! That did the thing, whas it called? R…rh…

                                                                        KITTY

Rhymed?

                                                                        DEAN

Yes! That thing! Cas I like her, can we stay a little longer?

                                                                        CAS

No, we should leave this lady alone and get you home.

                                                                        KITTY

Oh, I don’t mind, this is pretty amusing.

                                                                        CAS (Indignant)

If you thing this is funny, you-

                                                                        KITTY

Oh I don’t mean the drunk part, I mean the way he’s hanging all over you.

                                                                        CAS

I don’t- well it doesn’t really matter what you mean. We’re leaving.

                                                                        DEAN

But Cas!

                                                                        KITTY

No he’s right, you should get home. A little tip though, hair of the dog. Hair of the dog.

                                                                        CAS

Thanks we’ll keep that in mind. Come on Dean, let’s go. (They turn to go and are almost off stage)

                                                                        KITTY

Oh, one more tip.

                                                                        CAS

Yes?

                                                                        KITTY

Don’t let him kiss you. It just makes things complicated.

                                   

                                    CAS (smiling slightly)

Ok, we’ll keep that in mind too. (They exit)

                                                                        KITTY (sits and smokes for a minute)

You know it’s funny, people have this thing were you say love but they hear sex. You say “I like you” but they hear “we should make out” and that might be true, but really that’s not the point. The point is that, when you get right down to it, physical crap isn’t nearly as long lasting as emotional crap. And some of that might not be good, emotional scars and physical ones and all that, but that heals right over and you learn. You learn and you love and you live, no matter how many lessons it takes.  (Lights fade to black)

Haiku

Crocuses bloom

our baby takes

her first step

Winter dawn

bird feeders

hang silent

Autumn storm

her wedding ring rolls

across the floorboards

Friday night

lipstick kisses

fill the trashcan

Snow drifts, silently

she signs the note

"goodbye"

First snow

the dog’s footprints

gone by noon

Adirondack summer

no bear sightings

yet

Gemma Mully Tomb Poetry Cycle

Time Signatures

She was spun from a sonata,

born tap dancing across ledger lines

and spiting key signatures like

cherry pits. Treble and base;

one hand spidering up, up, up,

along the ivory of the hospital bed,

the other only a pitter patter

along her mother’s palm.

Her father pays for lessons

in brush strokes; coating

the teacher’s house with red.

His brush moves in time

with his daughter’s Breval;

dripping half notes down the siding,

splashing angry quarters

along each window sill,

and

The pigment, red like the poppies

growing outside her window,

 is worn into his callouses for weeks,

matching the dress she wears on Sundays

to her lessons after church. He picks her up,

swings her like a rag doll, singing and proclaiming

her to be better than Mozart,

finer than Shirley Temple.

Life Sciences

She enters the class room

and the rustling stops.

Boys clinging to childhood,

Letterman jackets and class rings,

Stare like the men they are

Here to become.

She’s one of two girls;

All hips and hair

And painted nails.

Their eyes roam

as she takes her seat

behind the black slate table.

Her curls, caught up gracefully

In a practical collegial twist,

Are the color of her father’s coffee;

Two sugars, one cream.

Chills

She had never liked ice cream.

The coolness of it against her teeth,

The way it froze, first her mind, then her body.

From the inside out.

But she sculpted it perfectly.

All that summer, filling the sticky

Hands of children with chocolate fudge swirl

In exchange for mumbled compliments

And sidelong glances.

A widower they would murmur

over the boiling fudge,

swatting away the pink hands

of six motherless children.

They where like ice cream,

Sweet and cool and temporary.

They would grow, up and out

As their kind always did,

Which would leave her Ben,

His shy smile and odd ways.

But first there was school

So she could pay the bills

With more than milk bottles

And spun sugar

Chemical Illness

She’s spent too much time in hospitals,

straightening grey starched sheets

around withered bodies, holding

leathery hands, sleeping

in hard plastic chairs, skin itching

with sickness and antiseptic.

She’d seen too many bodies, laid out

in suits or in dresses or in urns,

smelling of roses and formaldehyde.

Too many bodies to call them cadavers,

to easily slice and stitch them-

the once loved- on cold metal,

surrounded by the watchful eyes

of everyone but God.

Manic

1.

Manic; the word cool against her teeth

like ice cream, freezing her tongue

to the roof of her mouth, like licking

a cold pipe in winter.

She had never imagined his fits

to be more than rages; storms

to be weathered. His sadness

wasn’t depression, it was his nature,

the quiet that had drawn her to him

that had fostered her love like

the baby bird Michael brought home

in a shoe box.

2.

A widower she whispers to herself,

helping another woman’s children pack

their entire lives into rucksacks

and carpet bags. One last visit

to the hospital, walking past ghosts

of patients and reapers of doctors,

to see their father one last time.

He loves the girls, tells them to be good;

shouts at his sons, do they know

what happens in the army?

He’s still shouting as they leave,

how could they leave him,

their father, here of all places?

3.

Make him better mama.

Michael’s carrying a bird,

lying on it’s side in defeat,

it’s wing bent out of shape.

Found on the long walk home

from a new school, the bird

is one of a million

little things that would

make him cry.