Two Cans
Are Shared
 |
| Two Husbands across the table from each other |
BIGGY
We’re sharing our mugs!
SMALLY
I know.
BIGGY as the numbers go
to and fro into their glasses or cans,
What’s this got to do with
anything?
SMALLY
It has to do with filling
up.
BIGGY
And sharing.
A fantastic miracle!
SMALLY
But useless for math, isn’t
it?
BIGGY
I don’t know? What does it
mean?
SMALLY
It means we’re just using
all the numbers up
until they are gone.
BIGGY
Settling in to our cups
and dried.
SMALLY
And dusty.
BIGGY
Like dried mushrooms.
SMALLY
Like old math book mould
that shaves off
and litters my bed as I
read!
BIGGY
Once they are like this,
what do we do?
SMALLY
Forget about numbers!
Think again hopefully of our
wives.
BIGGY
And get out of the office!
NARRATOR perplexed,
We want to know what two
cans are worth?
ONLOOKER
But with numbers filling
them both up - not just one or the other!
Two
Husbands Across The Table
From Each
Other Hold Steady
 |
| Two Husbands in the office! |
NARRATOR
Two Husbands across the
table
from each other dreaming
with their mugs in hand.
As if the coffee fritters
would adjust them
to some other world other
than abject failure
and despondency
toward goals finished and
beyond;
toward working out their
silly city puzzles
with the answers to be
always kept to themselves
until some roach got it out
of them.
It’s as if the number train
rainbow wreck
didn’t exist. It just stands
still
and pilfers them; reducing
them to abjectives,
poor despondents, in their
office.
Yet, (sigh) here they are surprised...
SMALLY
Our coffee cups are willing
and needing to be sharing
in all the graph’s wisdom
yearnings
pokering down into our
bowls.
Lucky, we drank all that
blackening brew.
Now that it’s gone the
numbers all fit in.
BIGGY
Is that good?
SMALLY
We’ll see.
BIGGY
The graph seems to solidify
liquid
or gas up above our
conference table.
And the numbers keep
appearing in...
SMALLY
Showing in...
BIGGY
Back and forth, flowing in!
And we avoid the
wastebasket, don’t we?
SMALLY
Like a painted snake the
numbers
flow in and there’s nothing
we can do.
BIGGY
There’s something pouring
in and out, back and forth,
around and about, backwards
and forwards,
in and out,
pulsating broadly
like a radio wave,
from our graphs above.
SMALLY
Coming down, plopping;
landing like a cube of sugar
in our cups.
BIGGY
Contracting intensely into
a loose filler
that bends and bows to
either side;
layering and whipping over
to your cup.
SMALLY
My can!
BIGGY
And communicating what?
Nothing?
SMALLY
But look what it can do;
look at what it’s doing for
us!
BIGGY
What? What is it doing?
Swiveling, glaring,
broasting above our useless
table?
We can’t be certain to
formulate anything
about it down.
We can’t even control it.
Our numbers are not our own
anymore.
(The phenomena
intensifies)
They are turning about above
our table
and flaringly flaunting all
restrictions.
SMALLY
They’re turning back and
forth
on their glimmering graph
sheet.
BIGGY
And popping out
and diving into our cups.
SMALLY
And dissolving there
without sound.
BIGGY
Or hope! to be heard, to be
added up,
to be profited from in any
way!
SMALLY
To be successfully combined
for our benefit.
BIGGY
You and I, brother, are just
sharing them
without being able to stop
it - all the time.
See our cans?
SMALLY
Yeah, we’re just sharing
but we’re not individually
profiting.
No, we’re just mixed up;
looking back and forth
as the wavy snake skin of
graph numbers
fills and refills itself
within our mugs
above the table.
BIGGY
What can we do?
SMALLY
Hold steady.
Something unusual and
unexpected
is bound to come of it.
(Later, the Two Husbands
with nothing to do,
muse about coffee and
numbers)
BIGGY
Sparkling black-stained
dust.
Numbers left over in a
coffee mug;
dried up and willing to go
up to the heavens.
SMALLY
Brown taste (coffee beans)
into black thought (numbers).
BIGGY
Brown, black,
oily, wet or dry,
it all comes from the
jungle!
SMALLY
Yeah, from the numbers pool,
some where in the jungle,
filled up with oil or tar
or any such thing.
BIGGY
With blackening gasses,
that thick penetrate
to the surface of our minds!
SMALLY
No, up to the surface of
the earth
to be found under stones and
rocks
by mathematical geniuses and
put up
on walls as measurements
with charts
and graphs and
cross-hatches and pokers.
I mean, pointers.
SMALLY
And there are lecture boxes,
lecterns and stools.
And all classes of
‘studentias’ grouping together
year after year,
century after century;
grouping and looking and
learning
and applying the maxims
and the rote customs of
rules and numbers.
And now, in 2010, you and I
are destroying them all!
Figuring them all out of the
box
(by various bio-physics and
so on)
BACK INTO OUR COFFEE MUGS!
BIGGY
Yeah, where they’re canceling
each other out.
SMALLY
Or waiting to be all dried
out.
Some things do that.
(End of Chapter 19)
