Two Husbands'... Part 1, Chapter 6

Chapter 6

Helpless Useless

2 husbands at work

 

BIGGY

The numbers are flying everywhere!

    Outside, inside,

    on their backs,

    on their sides, all around,

    upside down and so forth.

Sometimes in a smoke they are

filling up the room.

SMALLY

Now they’re coming off of the graphs

out of the smaller black squares

    and they’re enlarging,

    getting bigger,

    blaspheming -

    getting out of hand!

BIGGY

That’s why we are fatigued and exasperated

and can barely hold on.

Even though the straight number profiles

are crystally clear, outlined in black,

we still don’t know what to do!

SMALLY

Because all the numbers are conglomerating in chaos;

bunching together. And their number stick-legs and arms

are sticking out of piles like jigsaw puzzle pieces,

without rhyme or sense.

BIGGY

What do we do with these piles?

Sort them out? Pull them apart?

Senseless and hopeless it seems;

because we cannot use the numbers for anything.

SMALLY

Nothing is doing any good!

BIGGY

Earlier today some of the numbers popped off

and we handled them. We picked them up and

examined them.

SMALLY

And they were nothing but numbers!

And little good now

could they do for us.

BIGGY

Who are missing our wives.

SMALLY

Yes, missing our wives!

BIGGY

But look at the manipulating numbers!

Now, like portals of straw, they are mocking us!

SMALLY

And how many thousands of men and women

behind us, coming up from the past,

have learned all the numbers’ secrets

and passed them on? How extraordinary!

But we won’t do it now, because the numbers

that we use are flying around the room!

BIGGY

Like buzzards, like flies,

like over-heated cement blocks

(but not of danger, just useless and clunky).

SMALLY

And as stupid as us!

So, we’re stopped.

BIGGY

I would say stuck!

Looking out at the window

and at the free birds

    and children -

at the washing and the laundry,

    the tree leaves, the sun -

and wondering seriously

    in a cold panic,

What are we doing here?
 

2 husbands at work

Our papers of precise but obstruse symbols,

confusing to others, are shuffling.

Our drinking water is all used up.

Our numbers just like that -

like our empty water pitcher - are all used up!

We’re useless, helpless husbands!

Not earning a nickel anymore.

Not saving the Universe

but being argumentative pigs,

useless conjecturalists, questioners

    and imaginers,

trying to qualify the Universe

and say what it means.

And it means, just now, to us:

THAT WE MISS OUR WIVES!

that we Husbands are unified

in sympathetic spirit together in this room

and SHOUT THIS!

(They look at each other seriously)

So where do we go now?

SMALLY

Out the door?

(The Two Husbands do not leave the city.

They return to work the next day)

(End of Chapter 6)