Graeme on November 30, -0001 at 12:00 am said:
Hitherby Dragons as a musical! Maya and Siddhartha would of course be in the Bollywood style, but what about the others? For some reason I see the Monster as a character from “Tommy”, a film I’ve only ever seen very little of.
rpuchalsky on November 30, -0001 at 12:00 am said:
(The Qwik Club players are in disarray! The audience is gathered, the curtain has come up, and there’s no play. One of them emerges from stage left:
“Hi, everyone, we’re still working on our next play — these things take time! — and while the stage hands are setting things up, I thought I’d read one of my own works. It has vaguely Hitherby-similar themes, though it wasn’t written for Hitherby or with Hitherby in mind. (Calls of “get on with it!” start to emerge from the audience). All right, here it is. (The player pulls out a piece of paper and reads:))
Curbside
I should have been prepared
By those TV shows
“Touched By An Angel”
“Joan of Arcadia”
How many actors have dressed up as God?
I used to wonder
If I, too
Could clip a halo-light on to my collar
Deadpan “I am an angel from God”
And become a religious experience
I should have been prepared
By all those actors
When the limo pulled up on the busy late night street
And the window rolled down
I saw his expensive tie
As he looked out coldly
And I thought “Must be some obnoxious rich guy”
But it was God
I should have been prepared
Couldn’t he appear as anything, anywhere
A burning bush or a light from the sky?
This time he had a dome light
He turned to look at me and asked if I was saving something
I assumed that he meant the parking space
I was standing in
And said “not for you”
That may have been a mistake
I should have been prepared
There’s a long tradition about how to talk to God
Humility, personal virtue
Reminding him of his good side
But of course he knew how I’d answer
And now I’d said it
“I am the creator of worlds”, he said
“Where were you when I made the stars?
I am the Alpha and the Omega
And that parking space is mine
Your soul is mine”
And all of a sudden I knew who He was
He didn’t have to do tricks like the TV actors do
When God wants you to know it’s Him, you know it
I should have been prepared
I stuttered a bit
And having started with bravado, went on stupidly
“You are the destroyer of worlds too
The same stories that tell how you
Reimburse people in heavenly small claims court
Tell how you put others away for eternity
And when we say we don’t understand
You start going on about how we’re children
Or sheep. How we’re your shiftless slum tenants.”
He stopped me with a look
I should have been prepared
But He was merciful anyway
After all, He’d heard my kind of blather billions of times before
Silently I knew that I’d been given another chance
And I stepped back out of the parking space
His. His.
And as his limo pulled up
I started to sing Hosannas
— Rich Puchalsky 2004
(audience survey cards are handed out)
admin on November 30, -0001 at 12:00 am said:
Pretty cool, Rich.
Metal Fatigue on November 30, -0001 at 12:00 am said:
Great poem, rpuchalsky.
Personally, if I believed in the Old Testament God, or for that matter the God of the Pauline epistles, I’d become a Satanist.
I can just about credit Yeshua of Nazareth as a prophet, though.
GoldenH on November 30, -0001 at 12:00 am said:
here’s what i wrote up a few nights ago, I was going to post it for the (Audiance) but don’t have the energy to make it meaningful, truthful, or even sound nice.
//ok use lolita, woglie hunter, she enters a first-grade classroom on christmas even to destroy the woglies that are shown to the children until they are accustomed to them and used to their presence. A startled gasp gives away her presence – Dalia, a student who forgot her shoes and came to get them after class, but found herself locked in the school. As lolita begins to teach about the christmas woglies – found in red & green chains used to cound down the days until christmas (tower symbol – idolitry – accepting woglies one by one into your heart) they are interrputed by the classroom mobile – a sentinel created from elmer’s glue and paper mache that talks in riddles and the pictures hanging from it’s many limbs (eg cat + apple + pillar) ????
defeat it by throwing her sombrero at it, then lolita and brownie ride off into the sunrise on a horse.//
though you may have plenty or you may be poor
on christmas day you must have more
so cry and tease and beg and plead
for christmas joys you shall recieve
I have a couple more ideas that have promise (a riff off of 1984’s golden pyramid, and that twilight zone episode with the librarian who breaks his glasses) but they have promise so i’ll show them off later.
David Goldfarb on November 30, -0001 at 12:00 am said:
There’s dissension in the Martin Fan Club. They can’t agree on what he is!
“He’s an angel!” “He’s not an angel!” “Is too!” “Is not!”
Sandy tries to mediate. “Calm down,” she says. “Let’s work this out. Just what would it mean if Martin is an angel? How would that be different than if he’s something fundamentally new?”
All the quarreling voices turn on her. As one they shout, “WE DON’T KNOW!!”
Sandy has accomplished one thing, anyway. There’s no longer dissension in the Martin Fan Club: they are united in being mad at her.
rpuchalsky on November 30, -0001 at 12:00 am said:
November, Metal Fatigue, thanks.