Two Husbands'... Part 1, Chapter 13

 

The Number Game

2 husbands at work

SMALLY

Back to numbers!

A long list, 5, 2, 3, 1, 7, 9, 8 vocalized out.

A sad, long list that we’ve agreed upon

and made the most of, so far, while inhabiting our world.

BIGGY

We’ve taken them and at our hands they’ve produced

mindless miracles. So, we’re responsible,

even though they were here before us.

SMALLY

Yeah, laying in wait.

Yeah, it’s the number game.

Build it up, make it your own, start counting.

Join the human race now!

BIGGY

Where do we go, what do we do without them?

Search for our wives?

SMALLY

We can always come to that conclusion.

BIGGY

Our wives are off somewhere

doing something...

SMALLY

We don’t know what?

And what do we have to do with it?

BIGGY

Nothing.

SMALLY

This is too bad. We are bound to go.

BIGGY

Yes, it can now be our ethic.

SMALLY

Yes. To go to save our two wives...

BIGGY

Or, just to find them for our own sake!

SMALLY

Yeah, selfishly directed, as usual!

BIGGY

Why not? We’ve got to go!

NARRATOR

Will the Two Husbands ever leave their office rooms?

Yet, the Two Husbands have nothing to do.

ONLOOKER

All the numbers

of their busy staff have gone,

ill-reconciled.

NARRATOR

Only the light and the smoky traffic air

in their office remains.

ONLOOKER

The Husbands shuffle around dumfoundedly.

Inconsolably. There’s nothing to look at -

nothing to see in their graphs.

NARRATOR

There’s nothing left to put into those squares.

ONLOOKER

All numbered quantities have fled.

NARRATOR

In short, math traces are obliterated, checks removed

and there is space for air and water!

(End of Chapter 13)

Two Husbands'... Part 1, Chapter 12

Floor Samples' Bird Warning  
 

2 Husbands in their offices, Bird says "wake up!"

NARRATOR describing the Two Husbands in their office,
Aren’t they something?
The feminine presence is missing
on the maidenly chair
but all the numbers are there.
And do they seem to be doing the trick?
Through the window what overlapping waves
and fragments say to the Husbands is, Wake up!

Those congealed, hardened, solidifying fragments
are what the world is turning into! For both of them!

(A Bird on the windowsill is feeling this way about the Husbands too,
and he decides to give them a serious lecture) 

"I have a message from your wives" said the Bird

BIRD
Wake up!
There’s a little planet
out there that’s your brain
covering up, half-freezing
and banding together
like a frozen agate stone.

And, in it, what was once a fluid
is instantly hardened, I say.
Caught up in layers of itself,
pushed down and completely flattened;
smoothly compounded
into a remote accessibility
and polished like a frozen planet’s
    ballroom floor.

    It is like the inside
    of an agate rock -
    pretty but immoveable.
You’ll not still be alive
when it changes its colors.

Yes, the feets of dancing aliens
    are upon your head
since your thoughts are stuck flatly,
    horizontally in the floor;
so flattened out and elongated that
    you can’t even talk.
You have not a voice-tone to ring or bring up.
Nobody, not even aliens, will hear you.

You are abandoned; destined for nothing
    in eternal silence
    beneath the floor!
Look at your little planet eyes
    peeking up!

Some kind of sticky green-padded feet
     are slipping over
and you are down in the floor
     not to be heard.

You’ll not recognize those beings dancing.
They are from way-outer space; from a place
you’ve never seen or heard about;
and truly never will, anyway;
as long as you lay stretched out
and compressed upon the inside
of that agate-like planet floor.

Don’t ask how you got there.
    It is happening now.
    Check out your body.
    Find ten usual layers
    of solid resentment.
Or, five eventual areas of recompense
    or revenge.
Or, even two areas of brutal mishap,
    mistake ambition
    and accident.
And they’re all there
counting up, layering your mind -
    solidifying,
    without a voice.

2 Husbands

They’re the stupefying forces
that will make another
huge, human rock-plate pattern
of mis-intended loss and regret
    and superficial pain;
    instantly molded
with a laid out floor plan
for other infinite beings to
    walk all over upon.

They slip and slide, ‘galumph!’
    Stomping!
Even drilling right through you
     with radar beams!
You’re like a fragmentary rock:
     sedimentary,
congealed, bonded
     and gassed up.
     Immoveable.

Your little eyes look up
and you can remember the Bird
that alighted at your office window today
and spoke out loud, Wake up! Wake up!
Is that not the only way to improve this over-burdening,
densely layering, stupid, daily
     construction project?
Is this not the only way to improve?

(The Two Husbands look confused. The Bird continues with advice)

Let go of the handles of the rock
and of the number surge that removes
your confidence and intelligent doubt.
    Instead, be certain.
    Wakefulness is all.

You can switch your doubt
from being dedicated to and dependent on
the un-usefulness of numbers to being

    charged with space
    that can’t be measured.
  
Zooming out of there, back to you,
your doubt dissolves into the mortally
present light, only;
    simple to handle,
    easy and wonderful to be
    and to be spoken of.
Impossible to harden here!

It sings a tune,
a note of play like a child.
    Once discovering
    the longed for hidden secret
    in sunshine,
    he goo goos!
He makes a joyful, silly sound.
And look, you are free!

NARRATOR
The Two Husbands roll over and suspend
all their disbelief.
Drinks now are on the house!
But they miss their two wives!
And, shortly, will disembark from their offices
to go get them back!

BIRD, shouts,
Hooray!
  

2 Husbands demand more but are interrupted

 

NARRATOR
And the city traffic moans on.
All the other infinite beings are
without recompense.

SMALLY concentrating on what the Bird has said,
What started out as waves
congealed to stone...

Waves upon waves
suddenly interlocking
with transverse veins
of hardening pressure
coming in between...

Emotional thought
flattened, planed-out,
wiped slate-clean
of all words and numbers...

Is the Bird describing hopeless feelings or fear?
And laid in between these, mirror-like,
a flat plate surface...

BIGGY
For feet of any kind
to stand upon,
upright or in dance.

SMALLY
Reflections here go up
and into
and out of nowhere!

BIGGY
Blasting gasps of air do not find thee...

SMALLY
No, you are laying flat.
No better than a slate screen between
the layers of mindless, empty, mineralized fats...

BIGGY
The mineralizing fats of Mother and Father Earth
squishing you together!

SMALLY
Are you already there, compressing?
And, if there, how to get out?

BIGGY
Mother and Father Earth are interested in
desiccating you harder;
melting you into tiny pieces of dust;
fluffy, pressed together inside of them.
Fluffy but tough and long-lasting.

SMALLY
But not beginning or ending up
any better than before?

BIGGY
Or just squeezed into oil?
Is that better? Sputtering up
men’s machines and engines!


Note To Readers: At this time, on the coast of Mexico, the Two Wives (as two solid coins) are carelessly gambled away to a Ship Captain by the Prince Giant. Soon after this, their ship departs on the Pacific and the desperate Prince Giant is left alone on shore.


(End of Chapter 12)