skit #98: someone else

The country boy reclined against the roots of the wise elm. He chewed the sweetness from the length of the final piece of field straw and gazed distantly. He gazed past the baled hay which accumulated over many months of days of hours of toil, past the very same space that occupied last year's harvest, only to find no familiar distances.

The work year ended. With the rest of the retiring country boys, he swaggered down to the autumn festivals. They celebrated what they had with what they had: pie-eating contests, ferris wheels, games of nominal chance, drag races, indiscretion, blue and red and white ribbons for exemplary domesticates, displays of machismo, saloons, muddy tractors, square dancing, plump lovers, plump wallets, youth under the unending night of the harvest moon. And since the night never ends, there is never another harvest.

The country boy writhes against the trunk of the forgetful elm. He gnashes some bitter grass into pulp and gazes desperately to find something he anticipates upon the horizon. But he can only find himself where he is. The unbaled timothy hay twitches anxiously like whiskers acutely receptive to an obscure present.

As he begins this harvest's work, he watches his fellow laborers thresh hay, fill silos, paint barns maroon, tune carburetors, play their fiddles at sunset, develop adolescent angsts, burn hay, slaughter milkless goats, father illegitimate children, elope to the theatre districts of various cities, forget arithmetics, obsess over dreams, obsess over lovers, drift to adjacent socioeconomic strata, consider ultimate questions of being, indulge, suffer, age, rest, and bale hay. Alongside these country boys, he works. Of all he does, some boys do the same, some do not.

The country boy will scurry among the boughs of the prescient elm. He will dine upon on the clovers, alfalfa, and rye of the known countryside, but never sate himself. He will scout the hummocked countryside from his treetop on the horizon and observe himself upon a former horizon, reclining against the roots of the wise elm, chewing the final field straw, gazing distantly; writhing against the forgetful elm, scurrying atop a prescient elm, inscribing upon the mute elm, deceiving the senile elm, deflowering the coy elm, pledging to the arbitrary elm; gazing towards horizons in all respective manners. In this countryside, every hill has its own horizon, and on each horizon is an elm from which he shall scout, and for each him atop other elms there expand other countrysides and elms and hims the country boy cannot see.

His eyes meet the eyes of another him and of someone else.

It was now spring. The seasons had begun to plant a new crop. He raised the hoe and struck it into the fecund countryside.

skit #97: timeliness

The steam engine sibilantly evokes progression and progression as it whisks down its uncompromising tracks past all the rural towns deemed too small to warrant their own railroad stations. Long monotonies separate changes in scenery: a limpid brook, some healthy livestock, a gap-toothed windmill. Dirt backroads reticulate throughout the empty in-betweens like capillaries sustaining vestigial tissues. The train passengers cannot fathom what purpose they serves, but provincials trek along the paths.

Stray farmers rarely encounter any one else upon these backroads. Without each other, they would quite appear lonely. An amber sunlight coats the farmers and their mules, encasing them in an anachronistic resin. They move slowly to stillness. A snapped axle upsets a rickety mule cart, flinging loose apples into the air. The farmers are frantic but frozen. The apples just hang, poised to enact their Newtonian schtick. The train travels by so quickly that nothing changes in the spectacle of that moment, leaving its passengers blind to whether the farmers laugh or weep at their misfortune.

Ms Stutz rides in a first class cabin. She meets Mr and Mrs Estoppey, her cabinmates, both of whom were very personable, though slightly fatigued; they have been traveling for as long as they can recall. Their banter turns solemn as their journey lengthens and as their conversation deepens to topics of dreams, values, loves, and fears. Wine reddens their words. The train travels through the void of night and soon none can locate precisely where they are.

When the train arrives in Berlin, Ms Stutz enjoys coffee with Mr and Mrs Estoppey before parting ways. She will forever remember their company, though her memories of their faces and words become familiar inventions by the end of her life. She spends the next two days with her sister before returning home to Basel, first class. She meets more characters with whom she enjoys an approximately unique intimacy.

Nearing Basel, she finds the farmers still preserved in the formaldehyde of dusk. The locomotive's speed affords her only one glimpse into the diorama, as they were and may always be, the farmers frantic, their mule carts collapsed, their apple crop suspended midair, the faces stern yet to laugh or weep.

Ms Stutz remarks on the invention of the telephone, that soon one needn't ride for days by train to see one's sister, that all communication shall become practically effortless, that an era of international communication and harmony shall ensue, that imaginations shall no longer starve for audiences, that the freedom of ideas shall accelerate progress, and so on she went with her puerile idealism. Her cabinmates gave no rise, still sleeping in the red wake of last night.

Very soon, a jetliner flies far overhead. Window passengers curiously peer through their portals. Below, a series of parallel stitches mend the interminable scar of timeliness of which the planet shall never heal.

Thereafter, teleportation folds intricate origami of the spatial dimensions, enveloping everything indiscriminately, making every possible point a destination.

skit #96: what counts

The oldest woman in Burbank remembered how things were before. She tried to explain to me and my sister.

She showed us a slender twig and a tin can. She told us these are two things. Then she counted everything else she could find: melted tires, another brittler twig, a palmful of fine silt, a sign dimpled by stray rocks, the frayed canvas tents of our camp, her, my sister, me, the other survivors.

We asked what counts as a thing. We asked if those count as one twig and another twig, or if they are two twigs. We asked if the berries still count, even if they're inedible and dessicated. We asked if the tires need wheels and if the wheels need a truck and if the truck needs a freeway to count. We asked if the letters each get their own number, and if the letters count, does the word. We asked how many grains are in her pile of silt, and how many people survived outside of the San Fernando Valley. We asked if we're people counting as one, or peoples as a few ones, or persons counting as a bunch ones.

She said she didn't know about our sorts of questions and continued her explanation.

She told us of plastic flora that required no water, of low-calorie strawberry ice cream, of love ballads played over radio waves, of plastic toy farm animals. She told us supermarket coupons, of traffic jams and speeding tickets, of public libraries, of prenuptial agreements, of streak-free dish washing detergents, of cell phone reception and inescapable service contracts, of breaking news alerts, of frequent flyer miles and cash-back rewards.

She repeated the legends we'd heard before.

She told us about how the fluorescent bulbs in every household generated a color that was indistinguishable from how they imagined pure white light to appear. The human eye just couldn't tell a difference. She told us how close they thought they were to perfection.

We were confused, but she said she didn't know about our sorts of questions.

After parted with the oldest woman in Burbank, me and my sister sat quietly on the duneside for a while, considering the beige color of the only landscape we had ever known.

skit #95: destination

As he waits, he futilely cycles through decorative variations like a colorblind florist. Per usual, no more preparations are necessary. Everything suffices. But when it comes to the reception of his guests, anxious Mike Williamson strives to exceed unremarkable sufficiency. Everything must be perfect, even if the guests are too crass to sense perfection. The floors are mopped. Steel surfaces are polished doubly. The setting is serene and dignified. The aimless endeavor of his guests' lives will culminate in the coming moments.

He smiles to himself, recognizing he is fidgeting in his pop's manner. When he was Little Mike, he would perch upon on Big Mike Williamson's knee up in the projection booth. Before screenings, Big Mike would sweep the aisles, air out the theater, pop the kernels, dust the organ pipes; then he would shuffle about the hallways, fidgeting incessantly. Not until the neighborhood kids poured into the aisles, mottled with smeared candy and bruises, unbridled by the school year's end, did Big Mike calm. Giddy, they waited in Big Mike's theater to be delivered from the burden of juvenile responsibilities to some fantastic island paradise or to some kingdom in the skies. That was the moment the kids and Big Mike and Little Mike awaited all year.

Just as Big Mike's name never graced the film credits, when Little Mike's guests soon arrive he will seek no recognition, only transparency. This moment belongs to them alone. All extraneous beings, experiences, and phenomena form the vehicle that transports his guests to this moment. Little Mike is only one such apparatus. His duty to his guests to usher them to their destination, as though this moment will come to be with no intervention.

The promenade begins. The cattle clatter and moo. Little Mike ceremoniously welcomes his guests with a pneumatically actuated bolt, introducing cranial apertures so their souls may find levity when their bodies fail. Cleavers grant the favor of mechanically separating their impermanent flesh. Strong men clear the dais for newcomers. Runnels of blood ferry giblets away through the sluice grates until nothing remains. The earthy smell of unbounded life fills the room.  

Little Mike will forever remain unknown to his patronage.

skit #94: the fastest man alive

Here they come. Whoop, there they go. They're gone. These circular tracks are just clever as heck. With the finish line slapped down on the loop just any old where, like it matters a damn.

These races got it all, don't they? Got it all. The winners and the losers, a little wreckage, adoring fans, all these sponsorships with big-time corporations, the trophies, some birdies in bikinis paid-in-full. Yeh, got it all. Ain't quite entirely life itself, but wouldn't be wiser to elsewhere if you never been outside the racetrack.

Those other racers out there, they're racing this race. And after this, maybe they stay in some hotel, but then they're racing them other races on other tracks just like it. This race, that race. Not Astolfo Febretti. He doesn't compete with other men. He's motivated unlikely.

My cousin-in-law Tad is in the know. He sells the beers at the races and gets all the stories. He says he heard Febretti made a pact with the Devil. Febretti gave it all up to be the fastest man alive. But that fool Febretti don't know you can't never be the fastest man alive. You ain't never the man you just was.

Maybe the Devil was being all devious and mischiefy, interpreting Febretti real literally. But I don't think Febretti knew for a damn what he wanted before he put it in words.

Didn't give Febretti what he wanted, exactly, of course. Told him how to get it. The Devil says the secret was to get rid of all that extra weight. And the Devil said he could help Febretti rightly. Just advice, he promises, You're in control, Astolfo.

So it all can stand a change. Starts exercising good, off come sixty-five pounds of lethargy and pork. Gives up wearing denims and leathers, races nude. Shaved his golden hair, all off his head, his lip, his forearms, his -- well, right. Got some engineer types, built himself something real aerodynamic, looks like a black swan getting sucked into a blacker hole. 

Starts fasting before races, two pounds lesser. Gives him a little clarity of minds, meditation. Weight and drag exist everywhere, he thinks. Gives up the wife, gives up the mistress, gives up the kids, gives up the parents and grandparents, gives up the fans. Gives up his belief in winning or losing. Gives up his belief in laws of physics and the speed of light. Gives up on being the fastest man alive.

What if he ever caught the speed record, I wonder to myself. What's he going to do with all that nothing he's been racing around with? His life is gone. He cannot win it all back, he can only replace it.

Not a thing in the world stopping him. Febretti's just the thought of winning these days. Fast as all heck. He don't even race any more. Wins every time in none of the races.

Here they come again. Whoop, there they go. Circular tracks, clever as heck.

skit #93: stewed tomatoes

Freda prefers fresh produce, avoiding the canned vegetables altogether. Her cart sails without friction atop the waxed floors, but Freda falters and slows upon Aisle 9. A grocer diligently stacks tiers of dull tin cylinders containing stewed tomatoes. Half-way through her shopping list, this ominous ziggurat suddenly and privately reminds Freda of her past torment:

The post-war rations were tolerable. Stale bread, suspiciously nondescript meatcakes, preserved foods without expiry dates like orphans are without guardians, dull tin cans harboring salty and sweaty possibilities -- cans of chicken stock, green beans, stewed tomatoes.

Sometimes I would have to steal. Everyone had to steal. To be alive meant to be fed meant to be a thief. On these grounds, any citizen was reasonably suspected of crime. And under a brutal interrogation, all crimes inevitably became public.

Many boys enlisted as soldiers from an early age to avoid being bullied. These boys caught me stealing butter. Under Soviet disorganization, their bayonets imbued them with the wisdom to serve as judges and jury. They took down a concrete alleyway for my nominal trial. Subject to their leverage, I confessed. I confessed it all. After all was said, my butter had melted.

Before my punishment, they recited my confessions as itemized evidence at her improvised trial. They snickered and hooted between the descriptions of each perpetrated act 'gross moral indecency'. The list of my sordid crimes suddenly and privately reminded me of my past pleasure:

I presented that stolen key which allowed our clandestine nightly rendezvouses to the cellar. It was cold, but Gretchin was warm. The salty and sweaty possibilities Gretchin presented to my lips. She was well-fed, allowing her muscles to harden more powerfully than any woman I'd known. How she flexed until her vitality was drained and she laid lifelessly. How no other woman could ever compare to you.

And suddenly, privately reminded me of my past sorrow:

I discovered her in the cellar, her beautiful crown savaged by a rifle butt. My last kiss upon her tasted of her fatal wound, salty and sweaty. She laid disheveled, probably intruded upon. Someone must have discovered her sins. Had she been caught with me, I too should be dead. Or had she been caught with another woman, my weak heart should prefer death. I buried these conjectures. Gretchin evaporated with her vital fluids. How no woman could ever compare to you.

I remained in a state of moral and emotional fatigue. I no longer questioned why I, of all thieves, had been caught. I no longer questioned if what I had done was wrong. I no longer questioned who held the right to judge me, my livelihood. The oldest soldier executed my sentence, while the others snickered and hooted most dutifully.

She recalls her distaste for stewed tomatoes. Freda casually passes Aisle 9 and crosses the final items off her shopping list.

skit #92: balloonery

Wilcox has dreamed of this moment, but he cannot explain where he is or how he got here.

He grew up suckling on the stories of heroic balloonists: the innovators, the pilots, the poets, the daredevils; your Jacques Tarasques, your Sanjay Guptas, your Hugh Swifts; as is written: 'Ah, the balloon! -- the starlet of gas laws! the tireless Icarus! levity embodied! the inflated angel!'; all those forgotten unforgettables who died, flattened, after long wistful falls when the serene cerulean heavens, quite unprepared to receive guests, abruptly returned those men to their earth.

The boy who could tolerate the nagging gravity of this world should make a better mule than a man. As a child, Wilcox studied to escape the yoke but he began schooling an era too late. He never encountered any adventures through the London Academy of Dirigibility, only exercises in tedium. He remained moored. Wilcox graduated, laden with archaic knowledge and insurmountable debts.

Some War came and balloonery was entertained for warfare. He served as the officer of an airship squadron and his unit saw a single battle. A slew of malfunctions prevented Wilcox from flying at all. Warplanes were the fad of this war, casually sexy and casually lethal. Day-job dog-fighters mercilessly felled scores of balloons, like whalers upon a bounty. Wilcox remained grounded and was eventually discharged for incompetence.

The age of the balloon had passed. Balloons only filled the niches: surprise parties, weather instrumentation, stadium sportscasting, nothing of true practical value. Many out-of-work pilots were recruited into the factory floors who were paid poorly on pittances and nostalgia. Wilcox worked. He clocked in, stitched together these toys, he clocked out, got paid.

He goes home to his life.

High, adrift in one of the wintrier strata, he buoys in his masterfully engineered cloud. The gondola plummets as rapidly as the balloon lifts. He lives on daring. His tendons are taut, his hair bristles, his heart pitter-patter-pitter-patters.

Looking down, he finds his maps inaccurate. The earth bears neither lines nor names. It is difficult to read in dreams. Compared to his landscape of pastel papers and approximate shapes, crooked mountains and staggered pines contradict the tranquil uniformity described by his trusted cartographers. Below is so real, so pointlessly wild. It only matters that he is where he is.

He leaves his moment to return to his task, to where he is, to how he got there.

Wilcox sews his balloon during the midnight hours after work. He can envision exactly how his balloon will look a million stitches from now, a billion stitches from now. He can envision exactly where he will travel. Maybe this balloon never needs to fly. His scarlet fabrics are unfurled throughout all the chambers of his apartment, like a deflated heart in a ribcage. He blows breath into an unsewn opening to watch it beat gently.

skit #91: my phantom twin

We've met a few times before. Maybe more, probably continuously. You often forget my name, my face, my voice, my dimensionality. But, no, I never forget you. So rarely apart, we are. To be politely forthright: who else would complement you like I complement you? You can count anything as two, but a pair is rare.

A while ago, you began. You exist on the terms of standard contract that precedes your existence. It's around, somewhere. Unimportant details, very standard. All the big stars sign it. Chock-full of loaned matter, you are.

And more specifically, I've had your sort before. Quite mammalian, silly manes, rabid fabulists, right. All pulpy and gangling, all full of whimsy and wrath. Certain you're yourselves forever. But each of your sort so inevitably returns to me. Or I return to them. Like rainwater reposited into a river. An assimilation either way. Right back to how things were before all this particle jockeying.

All predictably spry and youthful. A new body. You roamed, wanderlusty. As though you could go anywhere outside me. Savoring the pittances earned by your franchised life. Of course, you own nothing you possess. You possess only facets of me. Other subcontracted yous. To them, though, they are them and you are me.

I've never been ubiquitous, per se. But universal complementarity probably isn't too different from ubiquity. Maybe instead of being yourself everywhere, you're everything else everywhere. It doesn't sound glamorous, but it's essential. What could any one thing be without everything else? A universe composed of singletons is scarcely a universe at all.

We're both here because we have to be. I'm without you as you're without me. Fifty-fifty, standard between all the other mes and other yous.

You're shaping up nicely. Proud to partner. I've been around, seen things, heard things, just like you have. Some of my complements don't make much use of their loans. You know the types. Barren moons, gratuitous plasticwraps, comfortable mosses, remote barnacles.

I admit I'm being a bit flippant. Judgmental. Who knows who I complement. I am haunted by my phantom twin I have not yet met. Who will chastise me over my misspent material expenditures. Galactic billiards and menageries, a cosmic waste. Read my soul off like an inventory of cheap trinkets.

But we make what we can with what we have. My phantom twin made me, after all. But you and me, I think we're not bad. Not bad at all.

skit #90: the two

So you can put them into two categories. Err, I mean, there's more, but. Well, you know how rules always have gaps in their smiles.

You got the obsolete traditional types, who go around looking all regularly hideous. Really, most of those got killed way back when. You know, knights and exorcists and whoever. People can barely tolerate spiders, and even they have exterminators. No one talks about jabberwockies anymore. So don't worry about all the ugly monsters.

But, yeah. Then you got the newer-type clever monsters, who go around looking like people. Real regular-type people. Real sly. I figure there's a whole rude zoo of those monsters right under the skin of people you see every darn day. Engineers and aunts and veterinarians and clarinetists -- yeah, anyone, maybe, doesn't matter who. Sometimes the windows to their soul look all smudged up.

This ain't all bad. There's an elegance to this dichotomy. If your monster looks like a person, then you don't really have to worry about being gobbled up, because people don't have massive jaws and fangs. But if your monster looks like a monster -- well, no one's going to jail you for destroying some regularly hideous-type monster.

Huh? Yeah, a few. I've tangled with my share of monsters before. Lost these six fingers to the whorl worms of Patagonia. Went all higgledy-piggledy in my ladyparts. Yeah, I've got a few wriggled up inside me. Parasites -- the whorl worms of Patagonia. These things don't really turn me into a monster, per se. They just eat my flesh and reconstitute my likeness with wormflesh. So some whorlwormy chap will be doing wrong in my name. Or, who knows, maybe I'm doing good in his name.

Hell, even had someone spot me for a monster. They chased me down all of 32nd Street with a shotgun. No way you can really disprove it, neither. Just have to steer clear of them. But that's what I mean, I guess. The sly monsters look just like people. But, heh, maybe you're taking advice from a monster.

Well, yeah. Then there's three, technically.

Those third ones are the worst monsters. Don't look like anything. More abstract. A misplaced shadow. Awkward and protracted eye contact. A painfully trite malaise. Thoughts of aberrant geometries. Existential hangnails. The kind of monster you can never fight, can never dispel. That inauspicious happenstance that can never be confronted or defined. When something feels wrong.

But. Those have been around for a while. Best to stick to the two.

skit #89: the moon

The night swallows desperately as the midnight express lodges in its throat like an unpalatable placebo. The coach bus slows and stops. White noise wafts from the coastline waves and the constellations make promises of stale fates. With the bus stopped, the night would be still, but acrid smoke from the engine provokes its passengers to disembark.

But not Erma. She remains on the bus. Erma is supposed to be somewhere. She does not know where, or even that there was a particular somewhere to be, but she could have been there nonetheless. She could have undergone the latent thing was supposed to happen to her. She stays on the bus even though it will not move. The smoke makes Erma's eyes water, but that's about it.

The passengers shiver in the coastal drizzle, occupying themselves by speculating idly or raging futilely. The driver, though competent and affable, bears no hope of repairing the bus. Everyone senses this -- the passengers, the driver, the bus, the smoke, the constellations, and Erma.

The smoke dissipates as the drizzle becomes heavier rain. Everyone returns to the bus. A repair truck finally arrives, but the mechanic will have to special order the damaged component. An opportunistic motel begins ferrying passengers to its pay-per-hour rooms until its capacity fills. Erma remains on the bus. The driver announces his company will cover any bills 'within reason'. The repair truck leaves until tomorrow afternoon.

Erma can't sleep, so she stares out the plexiglas window. The garish neon cursive spelling 'No Vacancy' mutes the subtle stars, giving the vain moon a full stage. The moon shines white, then red, then white. Clouds fog the scene, snoring upsets the serenity. No one cares about a lunar eclipse, not even Erma.

The bus resumes its course tomorrow evening. The mechanic is paid. The driver is competent. The motel has vacancies. The passengers are late. The moon is white. The thing is unknowable. Erma is supposed to be somewhere.

skit #88: ANIMAL FUN-DERSTANDING

ANIMAL FUN-DERSTANDING

with Dr. Barbara Dorber

Granddad wakes me up when I'm still tired! He calls me a lazy monkey, but monkeys don't look lazy! Which animal sleeps the most during the day?
- Peggy P., Toledo, OH

Tell your grumpy grampy humans aren't monkeys but primates. As humans get old and cranky, they tend to need fewer hours of sleep. Most humans sleep between 7 and 9 hours a day, sleeping less than any other primate. Elderly humans, like your granddad, may sleep as few as 6 hours a day. Most of our primate cousins, including chimps and baboons, sleep approximately 10 hours a day. The laziest monkey, the owl monkey, sleeps 17 hours a day, devoid of any remarkable personal responsibilities.

So which animal sleeps the most? The nostalgic koala is known to sleep up to twenty hours per day, often dreaming about how elegantly she danced when she was younger, leaving her only four hours to pout in front of her full-body mirror, her middle-age flab extruding from the limb-holes of her joeyhood leotard. Why koalas practice in that which will inevitably depress them remains a controversial question among leading animal behaviorologists.

Why is my dog is so slow! It takes forever to play fetch with him. I want a faster pet. What should I get?
- Shelton F., Tulsa, OK

Do you like polkadots? Consider getting a cheetah! The cheetah is the fastest recorded land mile, sustaining speeds up to 68 miles per hour when sprinting. This is fast enough to run alongside a car on the freeway, and certainly fast enough to catch any prey that looks yummy.

Faster still, field biologists routinely sight hoofprints created by large game traveling at an estimated 82 miles per hour. Scat analyses identify these runners as wildebeest; further, kinesiologists affirm wildebeests' musculature may potentially produce as much thrust with each leg as a junior varsity football team! Wow!

Yet this shy specimen has never been observed moving any faster than what is expected of it, a mere 50 miles per hour, a handicap merrily exploited by trailing hyenas and lions. Under midnight, away from any audience, thundering wildebeests are tracked by seismologists hoping to understand this bashfulness. Regarding the wildebeest's nature, we ask ourselves what hyenas mock us, what cheetahs best us, what of our thunder rarely rumbles, and under what midnight we are free.

Most wildebeest opt for the conventional life: grazing on the savannah, succumbing in negligible numbers to predators, rearing calves, breaking no land speed records, and other matters well-documented.

My mommy is the best mommy for people, but what is the best mommy for animals? I want to draw her being best mommies with the animal for her Mother's Day card.
- Jess M., Las Vegas, NV

There are many kinds of mommies in this world. And just because she's your mommy doesn't mean she's not an animal. Human mommies take care of their babies longer than any other animal! There are all sorts of ways to be a good mommy.

An elephant seal mommy transfers up to six hundred pounds of fatty milk to her pup, draining her of vitality. She serves only as anonymous loins within a harem, then as vessel for nourishment for the parasite she calls her child, eventually returning to the frigid sea without her fat reserves, her lover, or her child to warm her. She finds her place on a chain of existentially-contrived links.

And the kangaroo mommy stows her joey in her pouch, taking her baby wherever she goes. Imagine the weight of it. Utterly responsible in every regard to a living being that is half hers. Now she must carry out her life a time and a half over. And always embarrassing her with caterwauling and odors. Humiliating her at the gala, delaying her attendance dance recitals, thwarts her important interview, dribbling on the forms at the unemployment office, getting her evicted from the flophouses. The weight of it. At least the weight brings them both down.

Above all reigns the rabbit mommy, who abandons her children upon birth. She sets the precedent, freeing her children from the obligation of motherhood, ensuring no rabbits have my regrets by their age.

skit #87: Sweet Osogovo

Shorn summer flocks saturate the Osogovan mountainside like a superfluous sweater. Their unshaven chaperons dawdle in that leisurely way that makes idylls so imperturbably idyllic. Sweet Osogovo poses her hills in rows and rows of verdant mammaries, irresistible to sheep and shepherds alike. She promises an easy day, enticing all creation to indulge.

Stojan haloos Vlatko from afar, his ebullience echoing over and over over the din of bleating. Vlatko, visibly pleased, slips his slender oak kuval from his shirtfolds and begins fluting a low droning note. Stojan approaches, quite unconcerned with whatever his headcount should be, his nibbling flock strewn a league behind him along the buffet. The shepherds all admit the sheep and shepherding are convenient excuses, accessories, only means to this music. Giddy, Stojan eagerly extracts his own kuval from his knapsack.

Like a stolid usuror, Vlatko drones that low uncompromising drone, bedrock on which Stojan gambols freely. Slowly, the players forfeit control of the ezgija's melody, which flourishes as an evocative thicket of brambles and blossoms: fusillades of Slovakian arpeggios, baying of octaval wolves, contemplative wooden textures, and all the contours of Osogovo -- Stojan's and Vlatko's and all the shepherds' insatiable mistress.

When Stojan tires, he drones and Vlatko drives the melody. Perhaps different notes, but it is the same song, for the same idyll, for the same Osogovo. Dozens of shepherds join and leave the ezgija. They dare nothing, coddling every note, repeating this ritual. Worship tolerates no creativity. So they play until lips loosen, until fingers blister, until summer grows cranky. Sweet Osogovo hibernates and her men retreat to Baraklija until next summer awakens her.

Six months linger each year. The village becomes awkward and quiet and manly. None play music.

While their masters mope, agitated black and white wool commingles and demingles in cramped square pens, very reminiscent of the static produced by the defunct television Gjorgji procured this winter. During lucid moments, his television offers occasional glimpses of the world beyond Osogovo: Macedonian not Yugoslovia; how acting now may save 15 denari; St Petersburg not Leningrad; how all ruminants have four stomachs; and other matters inane and grave. These are all diversions from their beloved Osogovo.

The wool grows bushy. The television programming stays bland. The seasons change too slowly.

When summer returns, so does Osogovo. And so do her idylls and their sheep and their shepherds. And so do their kuvals and their ezgijas. And so do their dronings, their melodies, their blossoms, their brambles. And Stojan is there, and Vlatko and Risto are there, and all the shepherds are there. Even Gjorgji, who everyone now calls Television-Man. The ezgijas begin. Stojan goes, then Vlatko goes, and it's just like every year. Osogovo always receives her melodies so nonchalantly that one cannot tell if she receives them at all.

During the trek to the pastures, Gjorgji had confided his mind spent its winter far from Osogovo, far from Baraklija and far from Macedonia, to whereever his crystal ball directed him. It's his turn to play atop the shepherds' drone, his angular and perplexing melodies gouge the round easiness of the pasture, polluting it with whiny traffic horns, fluttering receipts, the syncopated chatter of data computations, terse telephone niceties, the crescendoing inflation of floundering economies. Under these sounds foreign to Osogovo and rare to Baraklija, the shepherds' drones start to falter then give away completely, leaving Gjorgji playing his thin melody a solo. The misfit Gjorgji dismisses himself. The shepherds continue, trying to resume their frivolities.

Summer goes, Baraklija populates with awkward men, summer comes.

The shepherds and sheep return. So does Television-Man. He brings electric guitars, theramins, pyrotechnic rigging, subwoofers, garish costumes, personnel to webcast the ordeal, fettering record contracts. The few sheep his flock retained seem common when hoof-to-hoof with the other shepherds' flocks. But within Gjorgji's herd of ibex, cassowaries, capybara, ride-on gas mowers, and whatever else, the shepherd's sheep remain unique.

skit #86: Zergoff the Mindmaster

Washed in spotlighting, flamboyantly attired in his trademark sapphire-sequined tuxedo, somehow Zergoff the Mindmaster appears naked when on stage during tonight's performance.

Zergoff declares monotonically:

"He should have been an obedient son.
"He should have stayed out of his mother's closet.
"He should never have searched for the shoebox of heirlooms.
"He should never have taken his grandfather's pocketwatch.
"He should have honored the dead.
"He should have returned it when mom wept.
"He should have laid awake, undone with guilt.
"He should never have stayed up all night with it.
"He should never have admired its golden shine.
"He should never have lost himself in his reflection.
"He should have believed in magic instead.
"He should have gone into rabbits and top hats and sawing lovely assistants.
"He should have stayed out of people's heads.
"He should have feared so much power.
"He should have hidden the pocketwatch for a much later age.
"He should have waited until he was old enough to appreciate it.
"He should never have watched so many cartoons.
"He should never schemed so mischievously.
"He should never have practiced on Rufus.
"He should have thought more about what it's like to be a dog.
"He should have issued his instructions in woofs and howls.
"He should have taught Rufus something benign, like a trick or two.
"He should never have put human thoughts into a dog brain.
"He should never have imposed such existential crises upon loyal Rufus.
"He should have learned how to undo it.
"He should have confessed when mom wondered why Rufus was acting so very odd.
"He should have learned from mistakes made.
"He should never have practiced on Wally.
"He should never have practiced on Samantha.
"He should never have practiced on the guy who so adamantly insisted on being called dad.
"He should never have practiced on the teacher.
"He should never have practiced on the principal.
"He should never have practiced on mom.
"He should have really learned how to undo it.
"He should have retained a few authority figures.
"He should have learned some rules before bending them, before breaking them.
"He should never have left New Orleans.
"He should have been erased by Katrina.
"He should have felt lucky.
"He should have begun again, a simple life.
"He should have learned to accomplish things the normal way.
"He should have paid for brunch-time waffles.
"He should have rented his one-bedroom studio.
"He should have met someone nice.
"He should have met Lucy.
"He should have asked where she grew up.
"He should have asked how she got that barely-noticeable scar on her wrist.
"He should have politely yet confidentely asked her for her phone number.
"He should have asked her out for gelato, her choice of flavor.
"He should never have crammed up next to her in the subway.
"He should never have swayed that pocketwatch in front of her eyes.
"He should never have left her so confused the next morning.
"He should have met Melinda.
"He should have met Else.
"He should have met Hu.
"He should have met more people.
"He should have met anybody.
"He should never have met nobody.
"He should have felt brave without his pocket watch.
"He should have been strong enough on his own.
"He should have confessed how deceptive he is.
"He should have confessed how miserable he is.
"He should have been honest all along.
"He should have hypnotized himself.
"He should have committed himself to this admission.
"He should have felt relief.
"He should have felt clean.
"He should never have learned how to do it.
"He should never have learned how to undo it.

Zergoff finishes abruptly. The mesmerized audience, his strangers, applaud in a suspiciously rigid unison. The spotlight switches off and the show concludes. Eventually, all the patrons and performers leave the venue to return to their various done and undone lives.

skit #85: all inconspicuously

It's around afternoon, maybe even after that. Nightfall seems an impossibility. The sun holds an ominous promise like the rancid orange on my dashboard. The air conditioning exhales sticky breath drawn from the tarmac-buttered road. Traffic is stopped, or I can't tell. We commuters lurch together in inches through barren scenery devoid of the landmarks necessary to appreciate progress. Relentless tans and yellows, relentless plains: neutrality wages its effortless war of attrition. I succumb utterly. I contemplate land tortoise, the treasury bond, the graham cracker, and other matters slow and stale.

The freeway insists forward we go. Dotted lines divide the lanes, outside of which we swerve as the heat warps our senses. The traffic flows so slowly that mortal accidents are rare. Death's Buick taps my bumper and by hand I limply waive the guilt of his second offense having learned the futility of honking years ago. Commuters of this freeway strive for civility, even in this traffic and heat.

My legs fall asleep from non-use. I can't tell if my foot covers the gas or brake. The billboards are large and colorful, mercilessly legible. They are my only stimulation, otherwise I'd slip underneath the dogged weight of this dog day. I can read these words, but my fatigue yields only sun-curdled thoughts. The car dealers on the billboards don't sweat, don't look human. They grin flat grins, ignorant of the suffering they've dispensed upon the traffic. Barbara Buckleys and Red Coulters and Joey Petronis gloat from above as we slog along under their serene faces.

I watch the cars, unending processions, cars, cars, cars. We drive forward. Forward, going. Behind, coming. The rear view mirror frames the Buick, still tailgating me. Draped over the steering wheel, I see Death subdued by the same malaise afflicting all us commuters. He looks peacefully still when he slouches, as though he is a spring unsprung. I too wish to be unsprung so. For a moment, we share our misery. But Death taps my bumper a third time, startling him from his laze. He raises his hand in flustered apology. My patience spent, I whip my head around, and glare darkly at Death's ineptitude.

Ahead, tail lights wink. My windshield allows a brief sense of freedom, shattering completely.

An inadequate dose of anesthesia renders me mute and numb as I watch my surgeon earn her paycheck. Her paper mask nullifies her identity, but I know who is in her body, still recklessly tailgating me.

I heal over some years and resume life as normal. Both my accident and brush with Death, mostly forgotten.

Pickles are half off, so I buy two jars. A clumsy skeletal hand reaches for the kalamatas, elbowing my rib during the grab. In that flustered apologetic way, Death's open palms beg a forgiveness, presumptuously accepting that which I do not grant. He rattles my shopping cart as he tries to scoot by, sending my vitamin-enriched Wonderbread to the polished floor. Nonchalant and unaware, he continues to nix collected items from his shopping list in other aisles.

I doubt he even recognizes me, though we've met before. Even Death hates to wait; I position myself two patrons behind him in the Express Line. I count the items in his basket: 14, counting dubious multiples as singles. He remains oblivious as I cleverly spy from behind a tabloid. I notice my two fellow patrons also spying. Dozens of patrons, most of the cashiers, and two managers also spy. Perhaps Death adopted his oblivion so not to face all those he's acquainted professionally.

I hastily load my groceries into my car and manage to follow Death's Buick as he exits the parking lot. I trail him by a full city-block of space; I congratulate my inconspicuousness. I notice the entire grocery store, the entire neighborhood, the entire city trails him; all inconspicuously.

Death drives home in the traffic we once created. Ahead of him, drivers nervously watch their rear view mirrors, congesting matters in their wake, resulting in this elegantly necessary traffic. The dog days chase their tails and summer persists.

skit #84: Wriggly Hookins

No, nuh uh. No fishes today. But look what else I got. In the old farmers pond out back I found him. Right there mixed in with the rest of the bait. Fattest one of em all. Knew he was lucky. See, look at all his luck oozing right out.

I wash the dishes. My son's rambling bothers me.

Mama, yer not listening. Wh--

Today is a weekday. Why did he not attend school?

W, w, well, I was fishing for all day long with Drew instead. School dont miss me. Social studies dont miss me. See, you could look it in the book! Presidents ago still got elect if I were there or werent. Nothing changed. Heck, you barely miss me.

He caught insufficient fish. His excursion was of no use.

But there werent barely no fishes, mama. That aint my fault. I did get this fattyfatty, by the grace of Wriggly Hookins. Fry him, mama. Im hungry.

He holds up a small box. His puny fish shall not satisfy me. He has a worm left. He must explain.

Used up all the other worms, because they don't mean nothing. I told you, Wriggly Hookin's lucky. You can't waste lucky worms. Dont you know nothing, mama? Haw, you probably never had a lucky worm in your whole life. I bet daddy had a million.

My son is foolish. Worms do not posses luck. Roy left us long ago. I mother poorly.

No, no, no. No. I used up all the littler worms and caught nothing but wet. Those littler worms are a penny a piece, nothing. Wriggly Hookins got us this fish. He caught the one all the other boys were after. Pete, Johnny, Tommy, all the rest, and even Drew tried. But they only had little worms too.

I had Wriggly Hookins. I cast him way deep in the pond. And sure enough my line tugs like I caught a mutt with pork chops. The boys all started hooting and clapping, yelling how I caught the fish, I caught the fish, I caught gnarly old Bubbubb! Some big old evil fish from back from before whenever, they gossip. Well, he aint all that big. But big for pond fodder. For dinner.

The boys kept cheering. But I didnt want some ugly fish. I wanted my lucky worm. And right when I get blue, when I reckon what trade Id just made, I see Wriggly Hookins squirming out of Bubbubb's gills. See, lucky as he is fat. And look at the bounty he brung.

The fish is absent. I wash more dishes.

Wait. Whered the fish go? It was right there, right in the box. Dont move. We have to find Bubbubb. He probably snuck back into the pond through the toilet tubes.

His nonsense must end. My son will attend school tomorrow.

No, mama! I have to catch it again! You dont have no sense. You cant let no wicked fish swim around your own backyard! Doubt youd martyr for hump diddlysquat. Wriggly Hookins wou--

I wallop the insolent boy. He sobs and flees to the fishing hole. He never attends school again.

Behold: Wriggly Hookins. He died for our dinner. Up on the hook. He unlocks the badness in Bubbubb like a key, sets it free. Well I can't remember all of it, but it's something like that.

My son and his make-believers look solemn by the pond shore at sunrise: Pete, Johnny, Tommy, all the rest, and even Drew. I sense they secretly hope never to catch their wicked fish.

skit #83: hue from her heyday

She nibbled with gumflesh at the balustrade then pouted. Her rotting porch no longer tasted sweet enough to lure even the chubbiest of prey. Yyrja was growing thin and left to eat her unpalatable bait. She swept away the stale gingerbread crumbs with her expired, inanimate broom.

A wooden sliver roused a bud of blood from her pinky fingertip, whose pain she inspected as a curiosity of such things physical; such minutia which, as she aged and her sorceressliness waned, littered the floor of the confines of her life. Yyrja considered the vermilion, a familiar hue from her heyday: ink for infernal pacts, potions from virginal menses, steaming mounds of sacrificial goat offals, but never something she had bled; she never knew she contained that same rich hue.

Yyrja watched the neighborhood girls stroll the street with their sweethearts, squandering all that fervid blood.

Oh, how she longed for her sordid youth. She missed the sunless sinning. She missed sleeping with the Antichrist. Though they hadn't spoken in a millennium, she still remembered him as her malevolent little Beezeypie. They lost themselves, babbling the things romantics do, slurring sweet nothings, entwining their profane tongues. Her Beezeypie ditched her to stud for another of his vast and infernal harem.

Her love seemed antiquated and misplaced. The suburbs held no arboreal orgies. The streetlamps kept things too well lit and the shrubs were shorn too low.

Much of her twilight was spent observing the time, wallowing in the end of her days of witchery. She moped through her condo, impeccably tidy as a result of ample time rather than a hatred of filth. All her magic spent. Her wand lay limp. Her incantations merely malarkey. Her mirror mirror on the wall would not answer her at all. In it, Yyrja saw herself: utterly benign.

Yyrja wondered if she were still a witch at all. She felt listless, impotent, irrelevant. The forgettable and ephemeral magic of her youth was gone, so instead substituted what life presented her with memories: the jostle of public transit for madcap broom flights, the inanity of television for her nights as a gibbering mooncalf, pork butts for curious kinderfolk. She knew what it was to be a witch, and that perhaps that was enough. Her fingertip had clotted.

Some pudgy girls from next door ring the bell. Grandmotherly Yyrja invites them to relax on her porch, offering them scrumptious cookies.

skit #82: your ruckus

The miserly jungle minds what she misspends, calmly reclaiming her bitterest fruits, her clumsiest birds, her laziest hogs, and her unfittest mothers; conserving her losses by the ways of worms and mulch. You were born by these jungly notions. Shortly after birth, the ants redistributed both your unfit mother and your limp placenta accordingly. Yet they spared you, abiding by some unknown etiquette.

When you neither stood nor stirred, I feared you too may decay. When you finally cried, I feared the tigers may near. Standing, you rose too high, out-of-arms-reach to rout up a meal of grubs and tubers, and I feared you may starve. I feared the many fears the jungle instilled in her denizens. You were my kin but hardly my kind. I did not yet know you were fashioned for survival.

Cradled by haphazardly thatched palm fronds, you gurgled and warbled so curiously. Your ruckus attracted no predators, only witnesses: the bears and lions, subdued by awe; the parrots and cicadas, quietly confused; the centipedes and snakes, neutralized; the apes, agape: My perplexed brothers hung from branches above, dolloping upon me gobs of dubious silence in place of the congratulations and condolences respectively due to a new father and widower. They were ominously still, very wary, sensate to the supernatural: of the jungle's many gambles, you were a rare yet portent cast, as enigmatic as six pips for six dice.

Your debut elapsed that night; and the jungle, but not your father, forgot about you.

Among the treetops, I introduced you to the ways of me, your father, of your passed mother, of my perplexed brothers, and soon, of you. You never felt at ease. Your furless body shivered itself to sleep, sending the canopy boughs fluttering all through the night. When the troop meant to migrate, you desperately moored yourself to the sturdiest branches, distrusting your agility and gravity's stern reputation.

I offered my hand to help you down and I noticed our digits did not interleave. In fact, you hadn't digits at all, but fine fingers and a stubbornly misplaced thumb, attached all wrong. Certainly from your mother's side, the defuncts of baboonery. I considered wrenching the deformity into its proper place, but it made sweet memento of your mother and the peculiar love we shared. So the two thumbs remained.

I knew you would leave us soon. You lost interest in ripe mangoes, in male bonding by brawling, in sharpened sticks, in hooting to claim domains, in courtship and in copulation, in peeling bark, in territorial scents, in lice, in the jungle's etiquette. At all this, you observed us simple creatures, twiddling your peculiar thumbs.

skit #81: Dwayne-Boy

I.
Lo! Appetite-men of the Iowa, of the Kansas, of the Dakotas.
Sated on maize-whiskers, on soya and bran-meats,
Barbed by cockleburrs, and wooled by heavenly cotton.
Lo! Appetite-men made grown from fed appetite-boys,
From bulbous wombs bequeathed children and calves,
And from teats all suckled on copious dairy-wine.

Know that fertility abundanced the Midwest of yore,
With manly and herbly and meatly plentitude.
Farmer-Mother whose loins some Farmer-Father took,
Sprouted the heroic child-crop Dwayne-Boy,
Heightened by bovine milk left pure by nature,
Sipped unquenchedly, by hands and stones did grow,
Nourished to bull-strength -- by whose udder!
By the bosoms of the mooing prairie-angels!

Rumors make Dwayne-Boy's innocent life undone,
Tavern lore tells of Farmer-Father, merely a sire,
His nine sons by nine virginal Farmer-Mothers,
Numbering eight known by leveraged hedge-funds,
Numbering one known by keeping milk-faith and crops.
Of the one half-brother who dreamed little,
He lived humbly, and loved his wife, and his nine childs,
And sought only sustenance and perhaps a minivan,
Whose simple life his eight half-brothers dismissed.
Of the eight brothers did lust in excess of farmer-wives,
Tantalized by dreams of sating all men by their nutrition,
And tantalized by dreams of owning many of diesel tractors.
They with Modo bargained fiercely and shrewdly,
Without sleep for four days and five nights negotiated,
And the eight brothers brayed with glee, 'Hie!' and 'Ho!'
When wily Modo agreed under eight blood-scribed contracts,
To a business conglomerate by their greed and his sorcery,
So was signed their certificate of incorporation,
Whence born the golem known by name of the Monsanto,
The engine necromantic! The human un-being!
The fist of alchemy! The gene-muddler!
Borne with maw whose appetite consumes indiscriminately,
And borne with malice which schemes unscruplingly.
From one sire derived both Dwayne-Boy and the Monsanto.

II.
Never days passed when the Monsanto left farms unravaged,
Leaving hine and hands no fields to plow, no teats to pull,
Come each autumn, more farmers rallied at the harvest fete,
Where more to commiserate over pastures made fen,
Where more to starve, desperate for mutton and millet,
Where more to join militias, so futile against the Monsanto.
And among them arrived the minivan of Dwayne-Boy,
Who had no need to come to the Autumn Festival,
With his fecund wife, with his hardy boys nine,
With his hearty maize, with his pure milk,
With his peace, with his industry, with his bull-strength,
Farmer-Mother took her toddling son here afore,
But Dwayne-Boy grown found nothing remembered,
No honky-tonk played, and no sour-mash quaffed and,
No courters danced squares, and no rope-wars tugged and,
Dwayne-Boy found welcome as one of few farmers,
To endure the Mosanto! To preserve the Midwest!
Thus, the starved farmers championed Dwayne-Boy.
Huddled hundreds around the Hero-Propitious,
Of the Monsanto, they spake of their trials in turn.

By Waldo: 'My crops! My crops! Left to twist as weeds!
Oh, how the Monsanto transmogrified my livelihood!
Left with morsels first unpalatable and second scant!
My family left as scarcely fed as my granary is full!
By Yttrius: 'What the woman churns does not yield butter!
From the congealed sick-sap emanates an odor, an odor!
My two gluttons for sons consumed much and died,
And I see the cows graze, brewing toxic potions within.
By Mortimer: 'Mine crops grow so tall only to fall,
And plagues curdle the soil, making none else grow,
The sweet soya and bran-meat forfeit their fallow-home,
Left limp and dead for smug weeds to dance upon!
By Hullup: On fish my family always have dined,
But the Lakes bearing Greatness have tasted PCB,
And the trout-fleisch festers with a vile sheen,
Bringing rashes and runty kin and miscarriages upon us.
By Boggo: Our cattle now lurch like snails through pastures,
Leaving a trail of residue like a snail that wilted grass,
Their udders bloated with by insidious hex of rBST,
Like a moored zeppelin, their milk-sacs blistering with pus.
By Paltrow: The crops brought no longer cotton soft,
But wisps impalpable and dream-puffs useless,
No better than the promises advertised in pamphlets,
In droves, in thousands, farmers suicide themselves,
For debtors knock and the Monsanto has left nothing.
At the festival remained those few prideful and alive.

III.
These sad words brought Dwayne-Boy to weep openly,
And remember the impossible legends of the Monsanto,
And the recall rumors of his kinship to the Brothers Eight,
Who did partner by unsavory pacts with the CEO Modo.
The brave farmers of the Midwest asked not for sorrow!
But nor for sympathy! But nor for salvation!
All souls human and bovine and botanical would succumb,
To the Monsanto's devastation lest one intervened,
So went Dwayne-Boy to beseech his brothers unmet.
Traveling many days and nights by the coach bus Greyhound,
Subsisting on grilled cheese and corn flakes of greasy spoons,
Tasting foul, and Dwayne-Boy knew the Monsanto was near,
And nearer, until inside was he the corporate headquarters.

Past security desk and by elevator rose the One-Brother,
To the highest of ninety-nine floors which had no number,
In the executive penthouse laid the brothers eight in wait.
He, garbed in overalls with hay clamped tween his teeth,
They, garbed in suits pieced thrice and ties of power. But!
Dwayne-Boy nary trembled under evidence of class-disparity,
And so regaled the lamentations of the Midwesterners,
Telling of the weeds ubiquitous! Of the weeping salt-grain!
Of the misery-lowing kine! Of the purulent milchers!
Of the suicided farmers! Of the fatherless families!
Of all the misfortune and malady dispensed by the Monsanto!
Tearful Dwayne-Boy wept for the fate of the Midwest,
To which the brothers eight kept stoic and unmoved,
Dismissing all claims of harm brought by the One-Brother,
And unfurled charts and graphs and figures incomprehensible,
And calculated p-values singing statistical insignificance,
Citing research-evidence and statutes of the High Judges,
Proving the brothers eight and Modo and the Monsanto,
Unrelated to any adversity unto the Midwest beyond doubt,
Which did confound the humble-brains of Dwayne-Boy,
Who left defeated, not knowing why he went at all.

IV.
It was decided then-there by his insidious fraternity,
That Dwayne-Boy was no brother of needful keeping,
And did not represent the kind of Farmer-Father's guile.
The brothers eight invoked the sanguine-chant,
And drew the blood-icon. Thus summoned the CEO Modo!
Puppeteer of the Monsanto! The Stomachless One!
The wretched Modo paged the Monsanto only once,
Then informed by phone how Dwayne-Boy must end,
To which the Monsanto obediently complied and went.

Sullen Dwayne-Boy plowed his fields with dull sticks,
He irrigated his ditches with tears and plumbic-water,
And no crops did grow with vitamins or calories,
Leaving his crops dormant or wee, his draft horse brittle,
And himself pale and atrophied and lesion-spotted,
His family dead by disease, with his cough his only friend,
With wistful eyes, he briefly considers to suicide himself,
But instead resolves to triumph through diligence. When!
Afar upon the horizon, what invades his acreage? Behold!
The Agricultural-Giant, the Monsanto, razes the lands!
With minivan and pitchfork and blunderbuss goes Dwayne-Boy,
To end the Monsanto, with perish in mind for himself or it.

Never had Dwayne-Boy seen the Monsanto so close:
Under leather-hide writhed sinews sprung for predation,
Eyes which see germs, and ears which hear stars,
With eight arms and eight taloned hands to rend things living,
The perfect-mutant of no beast or tree known to the Midwest,
Towering above all moral responsibility stands the Monsanto.
And against him, the earthly Dwayne-Boy, the Bull-Child,
Who among men fared many hands high and stones heavy,
But still only a single man battling the Ever-Million Gened.
Whose pitchfork bent against the Monsanto's ferric-bone!
Whose pellets as useless as seeds upon the Monsanto's skin!
Whose minivan crumpled under the hoof of the Monsanto's fury!
The Monsanto battered Dwayne-Boy, ignorant of mercy,
Pulverizing his toes into jelly, his bones splintered to many,
His ribs imploded to stab the throne of soul-being, his heart!
Beaten, awaiting death, Dwayne-Boy coughed blood in rivers,
Which puddled about the Monsanto's feet unsuspectingly.
Contrived in the laboratory, Modo crafted the Monsanto,
By a design blind to all inventions natural to the earth,
To surpass them all by fortitude and cunning -- Alas!
The virulent cough of Dwayne-Boy spread by haste,
Infecting the Monsanto thoroughly and fatally,
Who went from sniffles to splotches to irreversible death.
And collapsed under the weight of its own engineering.

V.
The triumphant sought retribution upon the brothers eight,
Violently quartered to make thirty-two punishable portions,
With twenty-four quarters to fertilize the new crops of the Midwest!
On oats, on triticale! On barley, vetch, red clover!
On cotton, flax, and rye. On sorghum, maize, and spinach!
On buckwheat, rapeseed. Kale and marigolds! On cowpeas!
And mustard, canola, and turnips! And soya, hemp!
On horse beans, field peas, and mung beans!
On alfalfa and on millet! And the crops grew high and rich!
With four quarters sacrificed to the deities to protect the dairies!
To protect the eggs, the milk, the beef, the poultry!
And with four quarters sent North and South, East and West,
As warnings to those business-farmers who dabble,
In the black witchcraftery kept secret as GMOs and pesticides,
And displayed forever for all entering the Midwest to see.

Dwayne-Boy healed, nursed by the fruits of the farmlands,
And when he stood, became the Farmer-King of the Midwest.
All farmers prosper, and the harvest returned to the familiar,
Where honky-tonk played, and where sour-mash quaffed and,
Where courters danced squares, and where rope-wars tugged.
So peace again found the farmlands of the Midwest,
As before the Hunger Age of Modo and the Mosanto.

But with great prejudice, foods deemed impure were eradicated,
And only in old age did Dwayne-Boy understand the legend,
That the Farmer-King and the Monsanto were intolerant alike,
And starved the people by the pursuit of ideals without reason,
With that, Dwayne-Boy left the Midwest, never returning.
Ending the Hunger Age forever upon this world and his people.

skit #80: the manor

You traveled too far. You promised to return with peach preserves and candied pecans, but you accumulated only an irreversible distance.

Upon your return, gossip of your presumptuous repatriation reached the queen. As prescribed for any ant, she denounced you as a defector from the colony. The anthill predictably aligned itself with her vapid propaganda. What punishment the queen invented was none but a formulaic product of the royal whim; The queen only sought obedience from the loyal ants, not harm upon the disloyal. Your sorority concurred to make you unwelcome, and I was part of that sorority. You remained unperturbed while your only family shunned you. At that time did I both admire and pity you.

The queen insisted we each are capable of, and in fact destined for, treason against the hive. Even the queen may betray the hive, whereupon all truly loyal citizens shall demand a new queen.

Curled in a cozy nook off the path in a tunnel wall, you held staid and supine. You fasted and slept for days. We sisters took turns pestering for answers, but you explained nothing. Even when I visited you apart from the factory hours and alone from the queen's cohorts, you would not divulge your new demeanor. Whatever epiphany spurred your reticence remained a mystery to your sisters. Behind black and chitin-curtained eyes, you safely stowed your secret. I told you how your silence served no purpose unless the hive understood your vow, my stubborn sister.

As we passed you on work days, some of the snider sisters passed judgments, threatening your expulsion, your excommunication, your execution. Unprovoked by these insults, you remained in that cozy nook, idle and aloof. They had been right, and I could not defend how you abstained from our very livelihood which sheltered and nurtured you so. Dismissive of you, we continued with our labors.

Your scandalous return did not rile the older sisters. They had seen many sisters come and go. Departing the hive changes each lady incurably, they noted; Some joked with uncertainty whether it was something to cure at all. They brewed their stagnant wisdom from complacent homesteadiness. And they promised that one day I, should I never defect, may drink their bland ambrosia too.

Shifting through grass chaff for seeds, a sister in my platoon described how she found you. She found you deep within the manor as she searched for honey. You were in a deplorable state: not working, not moving, not eating; incapacitated, dried and dessicated; an empty husk like the chaff we tread on. She carried you from the pantry, down the cupboards, out of the kitchen, under the window jamb, through the garden, back to our formicary. She could have returned with gobs of honey, but instead we regained you and your ingratitude.

No matter how we wish vitality upon your thorax, my stubborn sister, you refuse it. No matter how we set morsels in your mandibles, my stubborn sister, you release it. You show no remorse as you let it all spill to waste.

All ants must bring fertility to the colony, actively or passively. Looking to gain favor, the younger sisters enacted the royal punishment. They buried you into the food store to compost, and you did not resist. Only the antly would struggle against such lethargy. Some of the older sisters attended your burial, recounting among themselves all the times they'd each seen this ceremony, tallying their sadness by means of morbid arithmetic. The hive lost a sister.

I recalled how the nursery raised all of us sisters in the same manner. The matrons diverted all the nymphs with the same fables honey-lakes effervescing deep in the manor. The legends made exclusive promises with you and not with me. The colonial life satisfied me, but you looked afar for peach preserves and candied pecans.

Weeks later, my daily duties determined me to feed your lifeless body to our nymphs in the nursery.

Now I am an older sister, brimming with stagnant wisdom. All the nymphs I raised on legends of honey-lakes have grown. I see you have returned, reborn among the young. I show you which door jamb allows your entrance to the splendors of the manor.

skit #79: the racehorse

Riley mopes about the grandstand, burdened by the inverted levity of having nothing. Congruent with the bookie's odds, for every ebullient face unlike his, he finds ten dismal twins. In name and notion, the Downs makes no pretense of how Riley shall collapse. His uniform buries him beneath denims and dungarees. Only does the Downs provide a slit through which he may peep upon his dream.

The stadium sets him far away from the spectacle. In the center of the racetrack, wee mammals run useless circles, saddled with even weer mammals. Over the chatter of his fellow losers, he can not hear the giddiups or whinnies of jockeys or ponies; At this distance, the racers seem to move at such a lazy pace that even he could outtrot them, though Riley forgoes this feat.

His fingers grope for change in the abyss of is pocket. The few coins he retrieves are rigid in form and petty in value. He reverses and re-reverses his nickel from no to yes to no. Far too predictable for gambling, so instead he invests the coin in the predictable sort of dream. Riley clicks the coin against the bar to buy a golden draught, not caring which face shows.

The plight of the racehorse inspires Riley to ask no one, 'Gawd. Who's on my back.'

'That's why you're here, isn't it? For a little freedom? Let them go, let them all go,' replies the clean-shaven man to his right.

'Ha, can't go nowhere without a ticket.'

'A ticket doesn't win money, it buys a fantasy. Might as well imagine yourself a ticket.'

'Hell, spent all my imagination on this beer.'

The clean-shaven man chuckles wisely, “Don't get down on yourself, brother. Money means nothing, what does – '

...
AND HURTLING FIRST THROUGH THE GATE IS BLUE COLLAR BOBBY
FOLLOWED BY STRANGE BOON
WITH INEVITABLE ALLEGORY PLACING THIRD
FOR THE NEXT RACE FRESH FROM THE HAYSTACK WE HAVE
...

' – yaaaaahooooooo!'

The clean-shaven man returns with generosity to match his mirth. He does not mind when his full billfold molts a few notes onto Riley's lap. After the clean-shaven man bids farewell and departs the Downs, Riley bets his spoils on Entry #56. Riley sits in the bleachers besides the thousands else, each with their own wishes and their own betting slips. Riley's slip reads:

MONEY TALKS
Louis Bragnan

Over the loudspeaker, an announcer's tongue frantically speeds in league with the horses' legs.

...
THERES THE PISTOL MARK
AND THEYRE OFF OUT OF THE GATE
HOME SWEET HOME SEIZES THE LEAD
TRAILING COME MY FAIR LADY AND A LITTLE SUGAR ON THE SIDE
YAHWEHS FAVE CLOSES THE GAP AND CUTS INTO THIRD
PUTTING CORNUCOPIA OUT OF THE TOP RUNNERS
A LITTLE SUGAR ON THE SIDE DRIVES THE INSIDE
PASSES HOME SWEET HOME IN A WIDE SWEEP
AND THE QUARTER MARK
HARMLESS FUN AND MONEY TALKS MAKE THEIR WAY
THUNDERING PAST YAHWEHS FAVE AND MY FAIR LADY
A LITTLE SUGAR ON THE SIDE STILL UNSHAKABLE
MONEY TALKS AND YOU OBEY
YOUR HEART BEATS TO THEIR HOOVES ON THE TRACK
THIS IS WHERE YOU SPENT THE WEEK
THIS IS WHERE YOU BELONG
UP TO THE HALF MARK
SHE LEFT YOU ALL OVER SOME HARMLESS FUN
BUT SHELL COME BACK ONE DAY
THEN YOU CAN TELL HER SHE HAD HER CHANCE
SOON YOULL BE TANNING IN THE SUN
DRINKING TOP SHELF MAI TAIS WITH NUBILE TAHITIANS
YOU DREAM HARD ENOUGH AND ITLL COME TRUE RILEY
THREE QUARTERS
MONEY TALKS USURPS FIRST PLACE
UPSETTING A LITTLE SUGAR ON THE SIDE
FOLLOWED BY HOME SWEET HOME AND CORNUCOPIA
MONEY TALKS SETS A STRONG LEAD
SHES FLYING LIKE SHE BUSTED OUT OF A GLUE FACTORY
LOUIS BRAGNAN TAKES MONEY TALKS TWO LENGTHS AHEAD
FIVE LENGTHS AHEAD
SIX LENGTHS AHEAD
THIS IS UNBELIEVABLE
NINE LENGTHS AHEAD
OH NO
WHAT IN THE HECK IS LOUIS BRAGNAN
NOW FIFTEEN LENGTHS AHEAD
OH LORDY
OH MY
THIS AINT GOOD
SIXTEEN LENGTHS AHEAD
MONEY TALKS SETS THE FIRST LAP
...

Louis Bragnan stands as tall as he can stand. So does Riley. His arms rise to the sky victoriously. So do Riley's. The rest of the crowd remains seated; Riley scoffs at those who dared not vote for the underdog, #56. Money Talks slows from gallop to canter to walk. The remaining racers thunder past the mistaken champions, considering them competitors no longer, only irrelevant obstacles. As Riley sprints to collect on #56, the race continues without his attention.