Sad Music – David Lohrey
September 29, 2020
Eminent Domain
JOSEPHINE
(SHE’s just entered, still in hat and coat.)
You’re not nearly as tall as I had imagined.
CHRIS
Josephine?
JOSEPHINE
Larry’s always liked big things: St. Bernards, Cathedrals, winter grapefruit. Do you have a big thing?
CHRIS
How did you get in?
JOSEPHINE
Take these doors. When we first moved in, a single entrance stood here leading out to the patio. Larry took a sledge hammer and just knocked it all out. He’s very destructive, you know. I always keep a key in my bag. Larry was very good with his hands. He put these French doors in all by himself. Do you like them? I always liked his fingers. You really should get yourself a purse. They’re very handy. You don’t love him, I suppose?
(Silence)
Then I really do feel sorry for you.
Catharsis
THELMA
(SHE sits among stacks of books piled on the floor beside her.)
Literature: it’s all bound up in blood and guts and semen and cunts and dicks and gods and meaning. Don’t you think so?
LOUISE
That’s so deep, so deep, like Plato and Aristotle and Aristophanes and Sappho. It’s the Greeks: they’re real big, and then the French and the epics, the poets. They’re all gay and if you like literature, that means you’re gay, too, like me and Thelma. It’s too deep for appreciation. This is passion.
THELMA
I’m Medea. Kill the kids, rip out their guts, this is it, baby. Bash their heads in, fuck their brains out, eat their shit. Why are we the only ones who love literature?
Lost and Found
I am not interested in any poem that begins,
“I found myself.”
I found myself in a den of thieves.
I found myself a Hershey bar.
I found myself some leftover apple pie.
I found a dead mouse in the kitchen.
I found myself in bed with my mother.
If I had listened to what mama said,
If I had listened to what mama said,
If I had listened to what mama said,
I’d be sleeping on a feather bed.
Forget it. I am not about finding myself.
I’m lost.
I am lost to this world.
I am lost to myself.
I am lost somewhere between 5th and York.
I am lost in my sorrows.
If I had listened to what mama said,
If I had listened to what mama said,
If I had listened to what mama said,
I’d be sleeping on a feather bed.
I hate all lies and the liars who tell them.
I am a self-hating Jew.
I hate what we’ve become.
I hate my neighbors for coming and going.
I hate my wife for leaving.
I hate the Department of Energy.
I hate my Adam’s Apple.
If I had listened to what mama said,
If I had listened to what mama said,
If I had listened to what mama said,
I’d be sleeping on a feather bed.
You can say that again.
You can put that down to luck.
You can go to hell.
You can give me $3 worth on Pump #6.
You can put that where the sun don’t shine.
You can shut your mouth.
You can give me a kiss.
If I had listened to what mama said,
If I had listened to what mama said,
If I had listened to what mama said,
I’d be sleeping on a feather bed.
Won’t I ever see you again?
Won’t you please be quiet?
Won’t you be applying to Princeton?
Won’t your parents find out?
Won’t you live to regret it?
Won’t you please get down from there?
Why?
Why not?
Because all my cares be taken away.
I’m Not a Robot.
I’m voting for more. Before I voted for less.
I looked into the mirror for the first time, and didn’t like what I saw.
I’d been taught not to interrupt.
I learned to talk without moving my jaw.
I stopped scratching my ears.
I practiced sitting still and, for my efforts, I got a job in the distillery.
I come in every day at half past the hour.
I am forced to take a urine test.
I take my dixie cup and leave a sample for my executioners.
I practice judo.
I park everyday by the coke machine so if I ever have to flee, I can buy me a soda.
Every morning for the past week, I have gotten a flat tire on the way in.
I submit a new invention every year to the patent office.
I mail it in, pay my fees, and wait to be rejected.
I stay in Jackson for the pig ear sandwiches.
I can’t say if the pig ear makes the hot sauce good or the hot sauce makes the ear right.
I make a point of thanking the waitress but I don’t talk to the manager.
Every day at six, I head back home. What with the flat, it takes about an hour.
I’m having me a four-leaf clover affair with a gal over by Normandy.
I can’t say why.
I knew we’d hit it off the day I met her.
I like that she won’t get dressed. As a result, we never go out.
I have no idea what my mother thinks of her.
Every night at ten, she goes out all alone and runs around the block.
Every night at ten past ten, she runs back.
She likes me to stand in the front waiting for her.
She’s younger than me but not by much.
She insists on shaving and shaving me, too.
She insists on wearing a beehive hairdo.
She and I call it a four-leaf clover affair on account of the fact we count ourselves lucky.