[ToC]

 

FROM THE INVENTION OF MONSTERS / A PERFORMANCE IN ONE ACT

C Dylan Bassett

[scene]

The body is gone but the breath remains. When one thing becomes another, the other is free to become something else. A man who is dead is like a child. A horse in a meadow falls before it’s shot. A horse who is dead has eyes like a man. Grass lives forever until it dies. A dead horse makes a sound not even God can understand. A tongue inside a stone.

 

 

 

 

[scene]

Moreover, the stage has vanished. A little boy dances beneath no music. A telephone ringing, but no one to answer it. I pretend to be a pirate, then become one. I eat alone and I become my age. An actual body is always surprising. Don’t look! A vampire mask made from a paper plate.

 

 

 

 

[scene]

God, who is dead, puts his hand inside the puppet of his own hand. Barely I catch myself in a window, but no one’s there to witness it. Aspirin unravels in a glass of water in which a ship begins to sink. The world is the rumor I tell myself. The mask beneath my face is melting ice.

 

 

 

 

[scene]

These are not my cheekbones but I wear them like I always do. I am the tiny person inside my skull. I am not used to being alive. The world is plastic apples. The ghosts line up in Christmas sweaters. Death can be whatever in hindsight. A light shining 24 hours on a parking lot. A mountain in a swimming pool. You misunderstand, my funny demon voice is my real voice.

 

 

 

 

[scene]

First a voice, then a corresponding jellyfish. I wake up with the same feelings. I touch her lips, forgetting she’s not there. I stand on the edge of no cliff. The ocean sloshes in a pitcher. The audience applaud not exactly knowing why. Most souls are just radios. Choose carefully your victim.

 

 

 

 

[scene]

God lends me a body but nobody in it. (Toy monkey, green lamp.) The hands overtake the hands. One of us is real, says a mirror, but which? Fear is what the sign says. A bird in purgatory flies in circles. God walks into a man and a baby goes to sleep. God’s face is an egg and I am the rhinoceros.

 

 

 

 

[scene]

Moreover, a mother who is dressed like a father. When the elevator goes down it is for good. A baby says something and I say it back. God means very small furniture. Night means my eyes inside your mouth. Was it raining while I dreamed? It happens that I get tired of being a man and become myself. Slowly dogs chew corners off a house. I go to church to be alone. I am Russian nesting dolls.

 

 

 

 

[scene]

The sentence begins in terror. The soldier wakes up and I am him. It takes years of practice to put a war inside a thimble, or a thimble inside a war. Loosely the planet turns away. The voice says something as it goes. The gunshots scatters birds like blood.

 

 

 

 


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"The face has a great future but only if it is destroyed, dismantled." — Deleuze and Guattari