Sing With Us

***This was our Performance Studies class final project
Performers were Ben, Biz, Cori, and myself (Phil)


ALL: This is the one song everyone would like to learn;
the song that is irresistible:

ALL: This is a hymn

BIZ: When you hear me singing
You get the rifle down
And the flashlight, aiming for my brain,
But you always miss

And when you set out the poison
I piss on it
To warn the others.

You think: That one’s too clever,

PHIL: That one’s too clever

BIZ: She’s dangerous,
BEN & CORI: She’s dangerous

BIZ: because I don’t stick around to be slaughtered
And you think I’m ugly too
Despite my fur and pretty teeth
And my six nipples and snake tail.
All I want is love, you stupid
Humanist. See if you can.

Right, I’m a parasite, I live off your
Leavings, gristle and rancid fat,
I take without asking
And make nests in your cupboards
Out of your suits and underwear.
ALL: You’d do the same if you could,

If you could afford to share
My crystal hatreds.
It’s your throat I want, my mate
Trapped in your throat.
Though you try to drown him
With your greasy person voice,
He is hiding / between your syllables
I can hear him singing.

PHIL: I am the heart of a murdered womana
Who took the wrong way home
Who was strangled in a vacant lot and not buried
Who was shot with care beneath a tree
Who was mutilated by a crisp knife.
BEN: This is what you changed me to.
ALL: There are many of us.

PHIL: I grew feathers and tore my way out of her:
I am shaped like a feathered heart.
My mouth is a chisel, my hands
The crimes done by hands.

I sit in the forest talking of death
Which is monotonous:
Though there are many ways of dying
There is only one death song,
The colour of mist:
It says Why

BIZ & PHIL: Why (Phil continue on with poem)

CORI: Why

BEN: Why

PHIL: I do not want revenge, I do not want expiation,
I only want to ask someone
How I was lost,
(beat)
How I was lost

I am the lost heart of a murderer
Who has not yet killed,
Who does not yet know he wishes
To kill; who is still the same
As the others

I am looking for him,
He will have answers for me,
He will watch his step, he will be
Cautious and violent, my claws
Will grow through his hands
And become claws, he will not be caught.

BEN: This is what you changed me to:
A greypink vegetable with slug
Eyes, buttock
Incarnate, spreading like a slow turnip,

A skin you stuff so you may feed
in your turn, a stinking wart
of flesh, a large tuber
of blood which munches
and bloats. Very well then.
CORI: Very well then.
PHIL: Very well then.
BIZ: Very well then.
BEN: Very well then.

Meanwhile

I have the sky, which is only half
Caged, I have my weed corners,
I keep myself busy, singing
My song of roots and noses,

My song of dung. Madame,
This song offends you, these grunts
Which you find oppressively sexual,
ALL: Mistaking simple greed for lust.

I am yours. If you feed me garbage,
I will sing a song of garbage.
This is a hymn.

CORI: This is a cry for help
(small beat)
In the arid sun, over the field
Where the corn has rotted and then
Dried up, you flock and squabble.
Not much here for you, my people,
But there would be
If
If

In my austere black uniform
I raised the banner
Which decreed Hope
And which did not succeed
And which is not allowed.
Now I must confront the angel
Who says Win,
Who tells me to wave any banner
That you will follow

BIZ: Therefore sing now…

CORI: For you ignore me, my
Baffled people, you have been through
Too many theories (others whisper “too many”)
Too many stray bullets
Your eyes are gravel, skeptical,

In this hard field
You pay attention only
To the rhetoric of seed
Fruit stomach elbow.

You have too many leaders (others whisper “too many”)
You have too many wars,
All of them pompous and small,

You resist only when you feel
Like dressing up,
You forget the sane corpses…

BIZ: Pray for me,
Not as I am but as I am.

CORI: I know you would like a god
To come down and feed you
And punish you. That overcoat
On sticks is not alive
BIZ, BEN & PHIL: There are no angels
But the angels of hunger,
Prehensile and soft as gullets
Watching you
My people, I become cynical,
You have defrauded me of hope
And left me alone with politics…

PHIL: We have been underground too long,
We have done our work,

BIZ: We are many

ALL: And one

BEN & CORI: We remember when we were human

BEN: We have lived among roots and stones,
We have sung but no one has listened,

CORI: We come into the open air
At night only to love
Which disgusts the soles of boots,
Their leather strict religion.

BIZ: We know what a boot looks like
When seen from underneath,
We know the philosophy of boots,
Their metaphysic of kicks and ladders.

ALL: WE are afraid of boots

CORI & PHIL: But contemptuous of the foot that needs them.

CORI: Soon we will invade like weeds,
Everywhere but slowly:
The captive plants will rebel
With us, fences will topple,
Brick walls ripple and fall,

PHIL: There will be no more boots.
Meanwhile we eat dirt
And sleep; we are waiting
Under your feet.

ALL: When we say “Attack”

BEN: You will hear nothing

(beat)

ALL: (whisper) At first.