Me
by Kirk Wood Bromley
The earth is my womb.
Look at my madness.
Here is death.
Here is life.
Do you know what you want?
Come to me.
Me1-This is a play called Me.
Me2-It’s about me.
Me3-Like once I had this friend who said to me:
Me4-I just think people are more interested
In you than The American Revolution.
Me5-And I, or you in this case, believed him.
Me6-Re-proving “I am me” and “I want you
To love me” but two sides of the same word wall
Still unbuilt after years of fermenting
Dead lakes into soundproof, see-thru arguments.
Me7-So, here it is.
Me8-If it is.
Me9-It is if.
Me10-The real decoy.
Me11-The made-to-order kluge.
Me12-The no-show tell-all.
Me13-Liberty and death!
Me1-Me.
Me2-Of course, it isn’t really me, right?
Me3-It’s me as I exist in some actors.
Me4-Which seems to be as me as me can be
Given the medium.
Me5-And hey, that’s me.
Me6-“I’ll take a medium, please.”
Me7-So, for me,
That is the question.
Me8-Never being one
To ask if I should be without knowing
What I would be were I not.
Me9-What is me?
Me10-Careful! Belief is the first sign of wrong.
Me11-Me is the matter which, stimulated
By an outside agent or inside current,
Is experienced directly by me.
Me12-Me is my experiential awareness
Of being an internal agent outside
Unfeeling matter whose stimulations
Are directed indirectly by me.
Me13-Me is a stimulus defense system
Around the misdirected awareness
Of a feeling agent whose inner/outer
Experience currently matters to me.
Me1-So me is circular?
Me2-Like a new stain.
Me3-Or an autoerotic beeline.
Me4-Or a gifted and talented donut.
Me5-Speaking of just saying things, I say
Me is a grammar torn apart by speech.
Me6-Me is a half-baked machine that crunches
Cooked-up data according to a code
That scrambles on reverse engineering.
Me7-Me: A Reflection of the Inimitable.
Me8-If I’m not being me, am I still me?
Me9-Me is the excluded middle between
“There is parental love” and “There is not.”
Me10-So me is a cap on my emotional
Investment in the pantomime extortion
Racket of emotionality set
By core values with no investment in me?
Me11-Me is fuck and fight, tho not always in that order.
Me12-Me is all the cute and cuddly lizards.
Me13-Me is a boss with no business.
Me1-Me is a tower running thru mud.
Me2-Me is 13 degenerates trying
To figure out who’s causing all the bad luck.
Me3-Me is my mom…
Me4-Minus the weather…
Me5-Plus a moody sandwich…
Me6-Divided by that tattoo I might get…
Me7-Over the infant morality rate…
Me8-To the power of…
Me9-I quit.
Me10-I often quit to win.
Me11-How can I find me in a play called Me
When the plaintiff can’t be the judge without
The procedure turning impartial, which is,
To speak thru my knees, illegal law?
Me12-The problem is a play’s no place to say:
Me13- “I swear to speak the truth, the whole truth, and
Nothing but the truth.”
Me1-So help me, someone.
Me2-Who can help me when everyone is me?
Me3-How define a being when that being
Is losing being while being defined?
Me4-The closer I get the farther me seems!
Me5-Don’t listen to me.
Me6-Please listen to me.
Actor enters with a birthday cake.
No beginning to me
No beginning to me
No beginning dear no no
No beginning to me.
Me7-Make a wish.
Me8-The cake is catching fire!
Me9-Might me, like a wish, spoken not come true?
I blow out the candles.
Me10-And then, out of the darkness, it hit me.
Enter the Fish.
Come the fish
Beautiful fish
Openly inconceivable teetering symbol fish.
Come the fish
Critical fish.
Unbelievably organized intimate alien person fish.
If you can’t feel the fish
Then you can’t reel the fish
If you can’t be the fish
Then you can’t free the fish
If you can’t lose the fish
Then you can’t use the fish
If you don’t know the fish
Then you are so the fish.
Come the fish
Mystery fish
State-of-the-art primitive obsolete future fish.
Fish-I am the chosen fish, chosen by me
To save the planet from humanity.
Me2-Excuse me?
Fish-I am the chosen fish…
Me3-Yeah, I heard, but what are you doing in Me?
Fish-I am me.
Me4-Stop acting.
Fish-Look who’s talking.
Me5-I see who’s talking, and it isn’t me.
Fish-Look, I know that part of me…
Me6-Call it me.
Fish-Doesn’t think I’m a fish, but another
Part of me…
Me7-Call it me.
Fish-Thinks I am a fish, and to that part
A third part…
Me8-Call it me.
Fish-Has shown support,
So another part…
Me9-Call it me.
Fish-Has withdrawn support, causing
A fifth part…
Me10-Cal it me.
Fish-To jump to the defense
Of that part, so a sixth part…
Me11-Let’s just say there’s a conflict here.
Fish-And I, the fish, am come to end all that.
Me12-But how do you freeze the flash of me?
Fish-Stop acting.
Me13-I’m not acting, I’m asking.
Fish-I’m asking me, but I am me,
And to ask a question to which one knows
The answer is acting.
Me1-Must I not act if you are me?
Fish-I’ve lost me.
Me2-All me’s in me are me, yet as a me
In me I’m not always fully aware
Of what other me’s in me are doing
In the name of me, and this
Not always fully aware is acting.
Fish-That makes me a fishy democracy.
Me3-That makes acting the essence of me.
Fish-So, acting like a fish, I am a fish.
Me4-If you’re a fish, why the fishy get-up?
Fish-I’m a fish in progress.
Me5-How did “make a wish” become “fake a fish”?
Fish-Thru this fish I get my wish.
Me6-And thru this fish you lose reality.
Fish-Reality is the wish of the fish.
Me7-So my wish come true is my fish come false?
Fish-I said it, I didn’t.
Me8-What does it mean
That I
Me9-With my two lungs
Me10-Two legs
Me11-Mammaries
Me12-Hairy skin
Me13-Warm blood
Me1-Viviparous birth
Me2-Four optic brain lobes
Me3-Chain of small ear bones
Me4-Deep feelings
Me5-And excellent resumé
Me6-Am a fish?
Fish-O it means so many things.
Me7-Deign to name.
Fish-It means I am the savior.
Me8-You’ve either just saved or damned your position.
Fish-I’m a fish. Everything dams my position.
Me9-How does I’m a fish mean I’m the savior?
Fish-That’s for me to know and me to find out.
Me10-Actor.
Fish-I know I am but what am I?
Me11-Talking to me is like gluing water.
Fish-And the right bike for that job is a fish!
Me12-How convenient our crazy has become.
Fish-How crazy our convenience has become.
Me13-We got us a real stage shark.
Me1-A loyal boy trout.
Me2-Be prepared.
Me3-In olive oil and dill.
Fish-My fellow fish, I am come as a fish
To say: I’m a fish.
Me4-On a human scale.
Fish-To prove I’m a fish, I will show you my holes.
Me5-My what?
Me6-My fins of omission.
Fish-I will show you the holes
In my body, my family, and my story.
Me7-He’s got genus envy.
Fish-And once you see
Thru my holes, you will see I am holy.
Me8-A classic cod complex.
Me9-Deus ex mackerel.
Me10-Brutha still ain’t got no sole!
Fish-And seeing I am holy, you will see
I am a fish.
Me11-No, you’re a bad actor.
Me12-He can be my underwater study.
Me13-Give him a swim on part.
Me1-In the choral reef.
Me2-He can sing bass.
Me3-O, no. He’s too coy.
Fish-And seeing I am a fish, you will see
You are a fish.
Me1-Yeah, I’m a tuna you out.
Fish-And seeing you are a fish, you will see
I am the chosen fish, chosen by me
To save the planet from humanity.
Me2-Let’s spin-cast this red herring back to school!
Enter Mujimo in labor, Xingba and midwife at her side. They pull the fish costume off the actor and lay it in a tub of water.
No waters divert
O bathe me in soil
Anoint me with dirt
Refresh me on spoil.
Mid-Push, Mujimo, push!
I sprang from the earth
To earth I shall sag
She feeds me her birth
O smear me with slag.
Mid-I see the head.
O cover my corpse
With the source of my soul
That I live in the loam of her love.
Mid-It’s a boy.
Sodden I come
And sudden I go
So dress me in the sod suds I’m of.
Xing-What is that?
Mid-Your daughter.
Muj-I have twins?
Mid-Yes
And no.
Muj-Why no?
Mid-She is inviable.
Xing-Is she dead?
Mid-Yes and no.
Muj-Your fearful care prolongs my injury;
Speak straight and cut the cord whereby I feed
Myself with scenarios worse than truth.
Mid-She may live in uterine simulation,
But drowns in the air.
Xing-Are her lungs defective?
Mid-She has no lungs, but quite exquisite gills.
Muj-Gills?
Mid-In the womb, your daughter breathed and fed
And fought for her brother, but only he
Is fit to wander beyond the waters.
Xing-Will she develop?
Mid-Develop what?
Xing-Recognizable humanoid characteristics.
Mid-Like arms and legs and care-free suicide?
Xing-You act like she were better off deformed.
Mid-She is perfectly formed for what she is.
Muj-How did this happen?
Mid-The prenatal being
Practices breathing, filtering water
Thru reflexing pulmonary organs,
But when the cordal oxygen levels
Deflate, for whatever reason, it stops.
This is called the paradoxical response,
For, to survive post-partum, the new life
Must do the opposite, breathing deeper
When oxygen depletes, indicating
Some profound rewiring occurs at birth,
Which the nautical fetus opts against
By responding to gas with paradox.
Xing-How much will this simulation cost me?
Muj-Xingba!
Xing-Our resources are limited.
Mid-We have a sliding scale.
Xing-I’ve slid such scales,
And they drop at the dump.
Muj-She will remain
In the tank for as long as she requires.
Xing-What if I release her in the river?
Muj-Xingba, stop.
Xing-It’s her natural habitat.
Mid-She would live, but to you forever lost.
Muj-She is our child.
Xing-It is a fish.
Muj-Then she’s our fish.
Xing-I will not give what I will never get.
Muj-And what does she not give that you are due
From one who never askt for what you give?
Xing-It cannot love.
Muj-Is not to live to love
What gave you life, even by contorsion
Of neediness that makes of lack full rage?
I gave life as I loved, so is that life
My love, and in that blindness see return.
So if that love-defaulting life demands
More love than allows a sharing profit,
The gap is in the budget, not the goods,
For even by that love I lose, the life
I give gives me love past all accounting.
Denying that deserves not love nor life.
Xing-You keep her in that tank for you, not her.
Muj-She needs to know me.
Xing-At what cost, mother,
Do you keep her from her kind?
Muj-Is it kind
To reject what nature begs protected?
Xing-Nature is her mother, and she’ll decide
If she’s to keep; our counsel counters us.
Muj-Thanks to her, we have him. Is death our thanks?
Xing-Your death is the only life.
Muj-Xingba, no!
He exits with the fish costume.
Me4-I want my mother! I want my mother!
I stick my head in the tank. Enter Tartalisa, singing.
Tart-You reach for her,
It’s me you touch,
You’ll never have so little much;
It has to be, yet on you fret,
O let it go,
The missing know
What has been is ever not quite yet.
The actor comes out of the water.
Me6-Nope. I can’t do it. I can’t act that feeling.
I mean, I could, I have, I can, but I
Can’t anymore, cuz I’ve started to sense
There might be something prior to that feeling
That I’m really feeling, really acting,
And once I act it, I won’t have to act,
I’ll just be that feeling, or I’ll just be
Something other than I’m feeling right now,
And since I’m acting, what I’ll be feeling
Will be real, acting prior to feeling,
Feeling prior to acting, me as fish.
Who are you?
Tart-That depends on who you are.
Me7-And who I am depends on who you are.
Tart-Back to square one.
Me8-Or still on square zero.
Tart-Maybe square zero is where one goes
After square one.
Me10-It’s all a lame translation
For vagitus uterinus.
Tart-Excuse me, but the bellhops of square two
See no cause for defeatist linguistic snobbery.
Me11-Has anyone ever really seen square two?
Tart-Square two is crammed with those who, unlike you,
Aren’t convinst square one’s the final circle.
Me12-I want to act.
Tart-And yet you want to act.
Me13-Acting is the opposite of acting.
Tart-That makes me the audience you invent
That you might lose the fear of plunging off
A metaphor that doesn’t feel like you
And just be on this stage.
Me1-That’s at least a start to what’s long done.
Tart-What less do you want?
Me2-I want to know what “be on this stage” means.
Tart-As long as I’m on this stage, it means
Without your mother.
Me3-I brought you on to give me what I want.
Tart-Blood?
Me4-And love.
Tart-And blood?
Me5-And love.
Tart-Love with blood?
Me6-Love thru blood.
Tart-I guess we nailed that baby on the head.
Me3-My urge to create you is a sickness.
Me4-Or a rusticated sculpturizer.
Me5-Or a parallel regress.
Me6-Or a marketing mistake.
Tart-Or none of the below.
Me6-But be that as it may…
Tart-And it may not be…
Me7-It’s about maintaining my hold on life
With crumbling, dreamy hands.
Tart-A life you do not feel you’ll really live
Til you give life to something real.
Me8-And by real I mean dramatically effective.
Me9-Spoken with an air of ancient law.
Me10-Pivotal in the polar bear crisis.
Me11-Popular because pugnacious.
Me12-Large, beyond debate, and terribly agreeable.
Tart-The universal transitional object.
Me13-Something that fixes me so seamlessly
To the fear I still can’t seem to feel
I stand surrounded by what I surround.
Me12-Surrendered to my forfeit.
Me13-Out of awe with all alone.
Me1-Totally disbanded into my surface.
Me2-Which, as it is me, garishly whispers
My secrets to the concupiscent critics
Like they were dinner specials made of us.
Me3-The unstuck muck of inseparable strangers.
Me4-And this process requires love thru blood.
Tart-That’s what you think.
Me5-And so that’s what you think.
Tart-That’s what you think.
Me6-Stop that! That point’s been made, and it’s grown
Fucking dull with your constant cutting off
Your nose to spite the faces that blank when lit.
Tart-Okay, but what do you want me to do
That tenuously combines to your liking
Full frontal propriety with sexy back?
Me7-Bleed for me on this stage.
Tart-I’m an actor.
Me8-And I’m always crying
Without ever being able to cry,
And I’m crying because you’re an actor,
And I can’t cry because you’re an actor.
Do you know what that’s like? No, you’re an actor.
Tart-Act or what?
Me9-Act or you lose reality.
Tart-Reality is all in retrospect.
Me2-Despite your being me, you must have misst
The big local special on my problem.
Tart-Which problem?
Me3-My only problem.
Tart-Which only problem?
Me4-I am way too obsesst by reality.
Tart-Since what boring day is that a problem?
Me5-I used to sit and dream.
Tart-What is it to dream?
Me6-We do not know.
Me7-And when we do, we won’t.
Tart-Foresight delays.
Me8-For spacious hours I would sit and dream,
Sifting bodily semantic seedbeds
Of fibrous timely linkages innate,
Belief become, each issue I embraced
Embracing me, the wild ancestral lust
My fluttering eyes, free because I loved
What I could not be. Now, I sit and fret
On every little what-not of my life.
Me9-I wonder if that one guy responded
To my email.
Me10-Am I in the moment?
Me11-Should I get one of those?
Me12-Why can’t I control my eating?
Me13-Was that the right thing to say?
Me1-I wish my daughter showed her anger
Less angrily.
Me2-Am I aging?
Me3-Do I want to be here?
Me5-Are my gestures of need sufficiently
Aloof?
Me6-Use less stuff. Use less stuff.
Me7-How does that make me feel?
Me8-Is he better than me?
Me9-Africa or Asia?
Me10-Didn’t I pay that bill at point of service?
Me11-Is my look working?
Me12-Should I kill again?
Tart-I wish you had more imagination.
Me13-Make up my mind!
Tart-Do you mean hide your mind,
Lie about your mind, forgive and forget
Your mind, cuz you’re acting, and when you act,
I don’t get you.
Me8-I mean, which do you want:
Imagination or reality?
Tart-How to choose between identities?
Me9-I’m so terribly confused.
Tart-Welcome home.
Enter Xingba beside the Yangtze holding the fish costume.
Xing-I just had a baby, and it’s no good.
It’s broken. It’s a broken baby. See.
The doctors can’t fix it. It’s broken real bad.
So I’ve decided to throw it away.
But I’m not throwing it just anywhere.
I’m placing it where it belongs. Out there,
In an element suited to its state,
But not to mine. I won’t be there for it.
Its future rests on its own broken shoulders,
And there’s something beautiful about that.
I feel you looking at me, and your look
Lacks respect. What do you want me to do?
Drain my pith into chance monstrosity
For the smirk of smug devotion, fattening
Fiducial defect with effacing sweets
To preserve heckling bogus being’s blot?
I can’t. What coddling, crippling engrossment
Has hereto posed for love I shower with shame
And claim my right to an honest action
That parents desire with design, and guides
The hand that gropes to feel itself to bloom
And let its seedlings, feck or stooge, disperse
To deeds no myth can match. Here is my love.
This pampering rejection, this abandon
So caringly performed, all for love, and that
The greatest love to live because it placed
Its life before its love, for I must live,
Not for futility, but as a man
Who gives to what grows, and the rest be damned.
He throws the fish costume in the river. Baiji enters.
Baiji-Damn the man who demands what grows must give.
They fight. Xingba gets the upper hand.
Baiji-Father, no!
Xing-Why do you call me father?
Baiji-Aren’t you a father?
Xing-Yes, but not your father.
Bai-Where were you the night of the 26th?