Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman  Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman

Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman  Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman

Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman  Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman

Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman  Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman

Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman  Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman

Production and Sound Design By Kevin Seaman  Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman

Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman  Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman

Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman  Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman

Production and Sound Design By Kevin Seaman  Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman

Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman  Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman

Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman  Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman

Production and Sound Design By Kevin Seaman  Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman

Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman  Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman

Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman  Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman

Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman  Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman

Production and Sound Design By Kevin Seaman  Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman

Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman  Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman

Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman I Am!BY JOHN CLAREI am—yet what I am none cares or knows;My friends forsake me like a memory lost:I am the self-consumer of my woes—They rise and vanish in oblivious host,Like shadows in love’s frenzied stifled throesAnd yet I am, and live—like vapours tossed Into the nothingness of scorn and noise,Into the living sea of waking dreams,Where there is neither sense of life or joys,But the vast shipwreck of my life’s esteems;Even the dearest that I loved the bestAre strange—nay, rather, stranger than the rest. I long for scenes where man hath never trodA place where woman never smiled or weptThere to abide with my Creator, God,And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept,Untroubling and untroubled where I lieThe grass below—above the vaulted sky.  Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman

Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman100th Episode  Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman

Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman The Fascination of What’s DifficultBY WILLIAM BUTLER YEATSThe fascination of what's difficultHas dried the sap out of my veins, and rentSpontaneous joy and natural contentOut of my heart. There's something ails our coltThat must, as if it had not holy bloodNor on Olympus leaped from cloud to cloud,Shiver under the lash, strain, sweat and joltAs though it dragged road metal. My curse on playsThat have to be set up in fifty ways,On the day's war with every knave and dolt,Theatre business, management of men.I swear before the dawn comes round againI'll find the stable and pull out the bolt.  Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman

Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman Little ExerciseBY ELIZABETH BISHOPfor Thomas Edwards Wanning Think of the storm roaming the sky uneasilylike a dog looking for a place to sleep in,listen to it growling. Think how they must look now, the mangrove keyslying out there unresponsive to the lightningin dark, coarse-fibred families, where occasionally a heron may undo his head,shake up his feathers, make an uncertain commentwhen the surrounding water shines. Think of the boulevard and the little palm treesall stuck in rows, suddenly revealedas fistfuls of limp fish-skeletons. It is raining there. The boulevardand its broken sidewalks with weeds in every crackare relieved to be wet, the sea to be freshened. Now the storm goes away again in a seriesof small, badly lit battle-scenes,each in "Another part of the field." Think of someone sleeping in the bottom of a row-boattied to a mangrove root or the pile of a bridge;think of him as uninjured, barely disturbed.  Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman

Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman Misery and SplendorBY ROBERT HASSSummoned by conscious recollection, shewould be smiling, they might be in a kitchen talking,before or after dinner. But they are in this other room,the window has many small panes, and they are on a couchembracing. He holds her as tightly  as he can, she buries herself in his body.Morning, maybe it is evening, lightis flowing through the room. Outside,the day is slowly succeeded by night,succeeded by day. The process wobbles wildlyand accelerates: weeks, months, years. The light in the roomdoes not change, so it is plain what is happening.They are trying to become one creature,and something will not have it. They are tenderwith each other, afraidtheir brief, sharp cries will reconcile them to the momentwhen they fall away again. So they rub against each other,their mouths dry, then wet, then dry.They feel themselves at the center of a powerfuland baffled will. They feelthey are an almost animal,washed up on the shore of a world—or huddled against the gate of a garden—to which they can’t admit they can never be admitted.  Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman

Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman The Forgotten Madmen of Ménilmontantafter Jacques Prévert Do not look sadly at days gone bydays below days like a river running under the starsDo not listen to the bluesor speak often with priestsDo not think the rich women enrolled in the college of nightfallwill always smell the same way Everytime the tree works the leaves dream Everytime I carve the dead wing my namein the dark lamp of the outhouseI said everytime I cut my namein the old wood rotten as a tugboatI know I am always with you Everytime the schoolboy’s bad moondowses blood from the virgin’s stone thighsI know I am handsome and young and drunketernal as a weed It will not smell the sameEverytime I open a bottle of wineand see a snake doctor under my bedI know there is something coming and eternallike taking off a white coat over the body of the dead Poets have done this beforePoets have made love and gathered at the cheap jointsthey’ve cut their fingers toasting one another’s death Poets have made loveand remained thickthey’ve gotten cold feet at the crucial momentswhen left alone with the students with sad eyes Do not die in the wintertimefor there is no okra or sailboats It will not smell the samethat twig of blood or the chiffonier Do not listen to hunting dogs in autumnor tie yellow flies for the small lips of desperate friends Poets have done this beforeand they’ve wandered off alone and unheard ofto bury the caul of their own stillborn Like a voice the odor has changed Dust under the hooves of a horserunning side by side with the foga book in the hands of a fool Cheese and fish and spinstersare the body of the poetfor the poet does not eat black breadhe gives it to the poor Everytime a mare throws a foal in an exile’s countryI know I am with youa gun in the hand of a fool The poet forgets in remembrance of youhe is the lunatic’s left hand manon Sundays the acolyte of the moonhe is night following other nightsthe eyes of the blindthe stranger your wife leaves withwhen you’re still talking with your youthstowed away on the ship of deathand it will not smell the same Everytime I see a young mantuck his knife back in his vestI want to say forget it and drink   Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman

Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman   Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman

Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman PhrasesBY ARTHUR RIMBAUDTRANSLATED BY WALLACE FOWLIEWhen the world is reduced to a single dark wood for our two pairs of dazzled eyes—to a beach for two faithful children—to a musical house for our clear understanding—then I shall find you.      When there is only one old man on earth, lonely, peaceful, handsome, living in unsurpassed luxury, then I am at your feet.      When I have realized all your memories, —when I am the girl who can tie your hands,—then I will stifle you.          When we are very strong, who draws back? or very happy, who collapses from ridicule? When we are very bad, what can they do to us.      Dress up, dance, laugh. I will never be able to throw Love out of the window.          —Comrade of mine, beggar girl, monstrous child! How little you care about the wretched women, and the machinations and my embarrassment. Join us with your impossible voice, oh your voice! the one flatterer of this base despair.    *    *    *        A dark morning in July. The taste of ashes in the air, the smell of wood sweating in the hearth, steeped flowers, the devastation of paths, drizzle over the canals in the fields, why not already playthings and incense?   *    *    *         I stretched out ropes from spire to spire; garlands from window to window; golden chains from star to star, and I dance.   *    *    *       The high pond is constantly streaming. What witch will rise up against the white sunset? What purple flowers are going to descend?           *    *    *   While public funds disappear in brotherly celebrations, a bell of pink are rings in the clouds. *    *    *       Arousing a pleasant taste of Chinese ink, a black powder gently rains on my night, —I lower the jets of the chandelier, throw myself on the bed, and turning toward thedark, I see you, O my daughters and queens!   *    *    *  Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman

Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman The Truth the Dead KnowBy Anne SextonFor my Mother, born March 1902, died March 1959and my Father, born February 1900, died June 1959 Gone, I say and walk from church,refusing the stiff procession to the grave,letting the dead ride alone in the hearse.It is June. I am tired of being brave. We drive to the Cape. I cultivatemyself where the sun gutters from the sky,where the sea swings in like an iron gateand we touch. In another country people die. My darling, the wind falls in like stonesfrom the whitehearted water and when we touchwe enter touch entirely. No one's alone.Men kill for this, or for as much. And what of the dead? They lie without shoesin their stone boats. They are more like stonethan the sea would be if it stopped. They refuseto be blessed, throat, eye and knucklebone.    Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman

Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman To ElsieBY WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMSThe pure products of Americago crazy—mountain folk from Kentucky or the ribbed north end ofJerseywith its isolate lakes and valleys, its deaf-mutes, thievesold namesand promiscuity between devil-may-care men who have takento railroadingout of sheer lust of adventure— and young slatterns, bathedin filthfrom Monday to Saturday to be tricked out that nightwith gaudsfrom imaginations which have no peasant traditions to give themcharacterbut flutter and flaunt sheer rags—succumbing withoutemotionsave numbed terror under some hedge of choke-cherryor viburnum—which they cannot express— Unless it be that marriageperhapswith a dash of Indian blood will throw up a girl so desolateso hemmed roundwith disease or murder that she'll be rescued by anagent—reared by the state and sent out at fifteen to work insome hard-pressedhouse in the suburbs— some doctor's family, some Elsie—voluptuous waterexpressing with broken brain the truth about us—her greatungainly hips and flopping breasts addressed to cheapjewelryand rich young men with fine eyes as if the earth under our feetwerean excrement of some sky and we degraded prisonersdestinedto hunger until we eat filth while the imagination strainsafter deergoing by fields of goldenrod in the stifling heat of SeptemberSomehowit seems to destroy us It is only in isolate flecks thatsomethingis given off No oneto witnessand adjust, no one to drive the car  Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman

Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman Ode on SolitudeBy Alexander PopeHappy the man, whose wish and care  A few paternal acres bound,Content to breathe his native air,                           In his own ground. Whose herds with milk, whose fields with bread,  Whose flocks supply him with attire,Whose trees in summer yield him shade,                           In winter fire. Blest, who can unconcernedly find  Hours, days, and years slide soft away,In health of body, peace of mind,                           Quiet by day, Sound sleep by night; study and ease,  Together mixed; sweet recreation;And innocence, which most does please,                           With meditation. Thus let me live, unseen, unknown;  Thus unlamented let me die;Steal from the world, and not a stone                           Tell where I lie.  Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman

Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman Mystery and Solitude in TopekaBY MARK STRANDAfternoon darkens into evening. A man falls deeper and deeper into the slow spiral of sleep, into the drift of it, the length of it, through what feels like mist, and comes at last to an open door through which he passes without knowing why, then again without knowing why goes to a room where he sits and waits while the room seems to close around him and the dark is darker than any he has known, and he feels something forming within him without being sure what it is, its hold on him growing, as if a story were about to unfold, in which two characters, Pleasure and Pain, commit the same crime, the one that is his, that he will confess to again and again, until it means nothing.  Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman

Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman NocturneBY LOUISE GLÜCK Mother died last night,Mother who never dies. Winter was in the air,many months awaybut in the air nevertheless. It was the tenth of May.Hyacinth and apple blossombloomed in the back garden. We could hearMaria singing songs from Czechoslovakia — How alone I am —songs of that kind. How alone I am,no mother, no father —my brain seems so empty without them. Aromas drifted out of the earth;the dishes were in the sink,rinsed but not stacked. Under the full moonMaria was folding the washing;the stiff  sheets becamedry white rectangles of  moonlight. How alone I am, but in musicmy desolation is my rejoicing. It was the tenth of Mayas it had been the ninth, the eighth. Mother slept in her bed,her arms outstretched, her headbalanced between them.   Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman

Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman Soonby Joe BoltonSoon, these great stadiums will be empty,Standing coolly at twilight, lit onlyBy the twilight, and there will be no sound,No echo, and no memory of sound. Soon, these mansions along North BoulevardWill fall into disrepair, then will fall,Their foundations given over to grassUnder the vaulted naves of the live oaks.These freeways won’t dream of rush-hour traffic.These towers won’t give you the time of day.These storefronts won’t show the season’s fashion.Nobody will try to take your money.Soon, no one will remember how it wasTo drive home at the end of the long day,To hear a song you thought you’d forgotten,To sleep and rise and not know quite what for.And no one will remember what it wasTo try to live and love and make love liveIn these times we belong to but call ours,Near the end of what looked like forever.after Horace  Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman

Production and Sound Design by Kevin SeamanPillowBy Jana PrikrylHow solitaryand resolute you look in the morning.A stoic in your cotton sleeve.Do you dream of walking out rain or shinea truffle balanced on your sternumand passing me on the sidewalk?Or is that a smile because you interpret nothingand statelessness is where you live?How calmly you indulge my moods. See you tonight, by the sovereign chartreuseceramics at the Met.Let's hear what you'd do differently.  Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman

Production and Sound Design by Kevin SeamanSMOKEBy Philip LevineCan you imagine the air filled with smoke?It was. The city was vanishing before noonor was it earlier than that? I can't say becausethe light came from nowhere and went nowhere.This was years ago, before you were born, beforeyour parents met in a bus station downtown.She'd come on Friday after work all the wayfrom Toledo, and he'd dressed in his only suit.Back then we called this a date, some timesa blind date, though they'd written back and forthfor weeks. What actually took place is now lost.It's become part of the mythology of a family,the stories told by children around the dinner table.No, they aren't dead, they're just treated that way,as objects turned one way and then anotherto catch the light, the light overflowing with smoke.Go back to the beginning, you insist. Whyis the air filled with smoke? Simple. We had work.Work was something that thrived on fire, that withoutfire couldn't catch its breath or hang on for life.We came out into the morning air, Bernie, Stash,Williams, and I, it was late March, a new warwas starting up in Asia or closer to home,one that meant to kill us, but for a momentthe air held still in the gray poplars and elmsundoing their branches. I understood the moonfor the very first time, why it came and went, whyit wasn't there that day to greet the four of us.Before the bus came a small black bird settledon the curb, fearless or hurt, and turned its beak upas though questioning the day. "A baby crow,"someone said. Your father knelt down on the wet cement,his lunchbox balanced on one knee and stared quietlyfor a long time. "A grackle far from home," he said.One of the four of us mentioned tenderness,a word I wasn't used to, so it wasn't me.The bus must have arrived. I'm not there today.The windows were soiled. We swayed this way and thatover the railroad tracks, across Woodward Avenue,heading west, just like the sun, hidden in smoke.  Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman

Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman 4 A.M.by Kenneth FearingIt is early evening, still, in Honolulu, and in London, now, itmust be well past dawn;But here, in the Riviera Cafe, on a street that has been lost andforgotten very long ago, as the clock moves steadily towardclosing time,The spark of life is very low, if it burns at all.  And here we are, four lost and forgotten customers in this placethat surely will never again be found,Sitting, at ten-foot intervals, along this lost and forgotten bar,(Wishing the space were further still, for we are still too closefor comfort)Knowing that the bartender, and the elk’s head, and the portraitof F.D.R.,(All gazing at something of interest beyond us and behind us,but very far away)Must somehow be aware of us, too, as we stare at the coldinterior of our lives, reflected in the mirror beneath and inback of them.  Hear how lonely the radio is, as its voice talks on, and on, un-answered;Notice how futile is the nickel dropped in the juke-box by acustomer,How its music proves again that one’s life is either too humdrumor too exciting, too empty or too full, too this, too that;Only the cat that has been sleeping in the window, now yawningand stretching and trotting to the kitchen to sleep again --Only this living toy knows what we feel, knows what we are,really knows what we only think we know.  Soon, too soon, it will be closing time, and the door will be locked;Each of us will be alone, soon, with something ravaging fora name --(Our golden, glorious futures, perhaps).Lock the door now and put out the lights, before some terriblestranger enters and gives, to each of us, an answer that isthe final truth.  They say the Matterhorn at dawn, and the Northern Lights ofthe Arctic, are things that should be seen;They say, they say --------- in time, you will hear them say anything,and everything.What would the elk’s head, or the remote bartender say, if theycould speak?The booth where last night’s love affair began, the spot wherelast year’s homicide occurred, are empty now, and still.   Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman

Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman The PomegranateBy Eavan BolandThe only legend I have ever loved isthe story of a daughter lost in hell.And found and rescued there.Love and blackmail are the gist of it.Ceres and Persephone the names.And the best thing about the legend isI can enter it anywhere. And have.As a child in exile ina city of fogs and strange consonants,I read it first and at first I wasan exiled child in the crackling dusk ofthe underworld, the stars blighted. LaterI walked out in a summer twilightsearching for my daughter at bed-time.When she came running I was readyto make any bargain to keep her.I carried her back past whitebeamsand wasps and honey-scented buddleias.But I was Ceres then and I knewwinter was in store for every leafon every tree on that road.Was inescapable for each one we passed. And for me.                   It is winterand the stars are hidden.I climb the stairs and stand where I can seemy child asleep beside her teen magazines,her can of Coke, her plate of uncut fruit.The pomegranate! How did I forget it?She could have come home and been safeand ended the story and allour heart-broken searching but she reachedout a hand and plucked a pomegranate.She put out her hand and pulled downthe French sound for apple andthe noise of stone and the proofthat even in the place of death,at the heart of legend, in the midstof rocks full of unshed tearsready to be diamonds by the timethe story was told, a child can behungry. I could warn her. There is still a chance.The rain is cold. The road is flint-coloured.The suburb has cars and cable television.The veiled stars are above ground.It is another world. But what elsecan a mother give her daughter but suchbeautiful rifts in time?If I defer the grief I will diminish the gift.The legend will be hers as well as mine.She will enter it. As I have.She will wake up. She will holdthe papery flushed skin in her hand.And to her lips. I will say nothing.  Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman

Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman The Whole Mess ... AlmostBY GREGORY CORSOI ran up six flights of stairsto my small furnished room  opened the windowand began throwing outthose things most important in life First to go, Truth, squealing like a fink:“Don’t! I’ll tell awful things about you!”“Oh yeah? Well, I’ve nothing to hide ... OUT!”Then went God, glowering & whimpering in amazement:  “It’s not my fault! I’m not the cause of it all!” “OUT!”  Then Love, cooing bribes: “You’ll never know impotency!  All the girls on Vogue covers, all yours!”I pushed her fat ass out and screamed:“You always end up a bummer!”I picked up Faith Hope Charityall three clinging together:“Without us you’ll surely die!”“With you I’m going nuts! Goodbye!” Then Beauty ... ah, Beauty—As I led her to the windowI told her: “You I loved best in life... but you’re a killer; Beauty kills!”  Not really meaning to drop herI immediately ran downstairsgetting there just in time to catch her  “You saved me!” she criedI put her down and told her: “Move on.” Went back up those six flightswent to the moneythere was no money to throw out.The only thing left in the room was Death  hiding beneath the kitchen sink:“I’m not real!” It cried“I’m just a rumor spread by life ... ”  Laughing I threw it out, kitchen sink and all  and suddenly realized Humorwas all that was left—All I could do with Humor was to say:  “Out the window with the window!”  Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman

Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman For the Sleepwalkersby Edward Hirsch Tonight I want to say something wonderfulfor the sleepwalkers who have so much faithin their legs, so much faith in the invisible arrow carved into the carpet, the worn paththat leads to the stairs instead of the window,the gaping doorway instead of the seamless mirror. I love the way that sleepwalkers are willingto step out of their bodies into the night,to raise their arms and welcome the darkness, palming the blank spaces, touching everything.Always they return home safely, like blind menwho know it is morning by feeling shadows. And always they wake up as themselves again.That’s why I want to say something astonishinglike: Our hearts are leaving our bodies. Our hearts are thirsty black handkerchiefsflying through the trees at night, soaking upthe darkest beams of moonlight, the music of owls, the motion of wind-torn branches.And now our hearts are thick black fistsflying back to the glove of our chests. We have to learn to trust our hearts like that.We have to learn the desperate faith of sleep-walkers who rise out of their calm beds and walk through the skin of another life.We have to drink the stupefying cup of darknessand wake up to ourselves, nourished and surprised.   Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman

Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman Late Spring -By W.S. Merwin Coming into the high room again after yearsafter oceans and shadows of hills and the sounds of liesafter losses and feet on stairs after looking and mistakes and forgettingturning there thinking to findno one except those I knewfinally I saw yousitting in whitealready waiting you of whom I had heardwith my own ears since the beginningfor whom more than onceI have opened the doorbelieving you were not far   Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman

Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman In the CorridorBy Saskia HamiltonI passed through, I should have paused,there were a hundred doors. One opened.In there, someone whose nameis not yet known to me lived out his middle years in simple terms, two chairs,one place laid for early breakfast, one platewith dry toast and butter softening. Therehis mind raced through writings he had memorized long ago while he triedto get hold of himself. Oncein his youth he had studied with lovein the corners of old paintings matrices of fields and towns,passages intricate and particular, wheat,columns, figures and ground,classically proportioned in lines that were meantto meet, eventually,at vanishing point. They continued,nevertheless; they troubled the eye. He collected sets of books printedin the nineteenth century, unyieldingpages, memoirs of the poets,engravings of rurified private subjects in times of public sector unhappiness,frescoes of human oddity in gatefold printing.Why does it continueto chasten me, he says to no one. It does. It is a painful mistaking,this setting something down,saying aloud, “it is nothing yet”when he’d meant, not anything— but then nothing peeredthrough the keyhole, nothingtook possession. Snow on the roofs,snow in traces on the ground, passersby with wet trouser-cuffslooking to the pavement as the hill rises,light gathering in the riverand gradually spreading.   Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman

Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman  A Certain LadyBy Dorothy ParkerOh, I can smile for you, and tilt my head,      And drink your rushing words with eager lips,  And paint my mouth for you a fragrant red,      And trace your brows with tutored finger-tips.  When you rehearse your list of loves to me,      Oh, I can laugh and marvel, rapturous-eyed.  And you laugh back, nor can you ever see      The thousand little deaths my heart has died.  And you believe, so well I know my part,    That I am gay as morning, light as snow,And all the straining things within my heart    You'll never know. Oh, I can laugh and listen, when we meet,    And you bring tales of fresh adventurings, —Of ladies delicately indiscreet,    Of lingering hands, and gently whispered things.And you are pleased with me, and strive anew    To sing me sagas of your late delights.Thus do you want me — marveling, gay, and true,    Nor do you see my staring eyes of nights.And when, in search of novelty, you stray,    Oh, I can kiss you blithely as you go….And what goes on, my love, while you're away,    You'll never know.  Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman

Production and Sound Design by Kevin SeamanAll My Pretty OnesBy Anne SextonFather, this year’s jinx rides us apartwhere you followed our mother to her cold slumber;a second shock boiling its stone to your heart,  leaving me here to shuffle and disencumber  you from the residence you could not afford:  a gold key, your half of a woolen mill,twenty suits from Dunne’s, an English Ford,  the love and legal verbiage of another will,  boxes of pictures of people I do not know.I touch their cardboard faces. They must go. But the eyes, as thick as wood in this album,  hold me. I stop here, where a small boywaits in a ruffled dress for someone to come ...  for this soldier who holds his bugle like a toy  or for this velvet lady who cannot smile.  Is this your father’s father, this commodorein a mailman suit? My father, time meanwhile  has made it unimportant who you are looking for.  I’ll never know what these faces are all about.  I lock them into their book and throw them out. This is the yellow scrapbook that you beganthe year I was born; as crackling now and wrinkly  as tobacco leaves: clippings where Hoover outran  the Democrats, wiggling his dry finger at meand Prohibition; news where the Hindenburg went  down and recent years where you went flush  on war. This year, solvent but sick, you meant  to marry that pretty widow in a one-month rush.  But before you had that second chance, I cried  on your fat shoulder. Three days later you died. These are the snapshots of marriage, stopped in places.  Side by side at the rail toward Nassau now;here, with the winner’s cup at the speedboat races,  here, in tails at the Cotillion, you take a bow,here, by our kennel of dogs with their pink eyes,  running like show-bred pigs in their chain-link pen;  here, at the horseshow where my sister wins a prize;  and here, standing like a duke among groups of men.  Now I fold you down, my drunkard, my navigator,  my first lost keeper, to love or look at later. I hold a five-year diary that my mother kept  for three years, telling all she does not say  of your alcoholic tendency. You overslept,she writes. My God, father, each Christmas Day  with your blood, will I drink down your glass  of wine? The diary of your hurly-burly years  goes to my shelf to wait for my age to pass.  Only in this hoarded span will love persevere.  Whether you are pretty or not, I outlive you,bend down my strange face to yours and forgive you.  Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman

Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman Waitingby Raymond CarverLeft off the highway anddown the hill. At thebottom, hang another left.Keep bearing left. The roadwill make a Y. Left again.There’s a creek on the left.Keep going. Just beforethe road ends, there’ll beanother road. Take itand no other. Otherwise,your life will be ruinedforever. There’s a log housewith a shake roof, on the left.It’s not that house. It’sthe next house, just overa rise. The housewhere trees are laden withfruit. Where phlox, forsythia,and marigold grow. It’sthe house where the womanstands in the doorwaywearing the sun in her hair. The onewho’s been waitingall this time.The woman who loves you.The one who can say,“What’s kept you?”    Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman

Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman This Morningby Charles Simic Enter without knocking, hard-working ant.I'm just sitting here mulling overWhat to do this dark, overcast day?It was a night of the radio turned down low,Fitful sleep, vague, troubling dreams.I woke up lovesick and confused.I thought I heard Estella in the garden singingAnd some bird answering her,But it was the rain. Dark tree tops swayingAnd whispering. "Come to me my desire,"I said. And she came to me by and by,Her breath smelling of mint, her tongueWetting my cheek, and then she vanished.Slowly day came, a gray streak of daylightTo bathe my hands and face in.Hours passed, and then you crawledUnder the door, and stopped before me.You visit the same tailors the mourners do,Mr. Ant. I like the silence between us,The quiet--that holy state even the rainKnows about. Listen to her begin to fall,As if with eyes closed,Muting each drop in her wild-beating heart.  Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman

Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman Upon NothingBY JOHN WILMOT EARL OF ROCHESTERNothing! thou elder brother even to Shade:That hadst a being ere the world was made,And well fixed, art alone of ending not afraid. Ere Time and Place were, Time and Place were not,When primitive Nothing Something straight begot;Then all proceeded from the great united What. Something, the general attribute of all,Severed from thee, its sole original,Into thy boundless self must undistinguished fall; Yet Something did thy mighty power command,And from fruitful Emptiness’s handSnatched men, beasts, birds, fire, air, and land. Matter the wicked’st offspring of thy race,By Form assisted, flew from thy embrace,And rebel Light obscured thy reverend dusky face. With Form and Matter, Time and Place did join;Body, thy foe, with these did leagues combineTo spoil thy peaceful realm, and ruin all thy line; But turncoat Time assists the foe in vain,And bribed by thee, destroys their short-lived reign,And to thy hungry womb drives back thy slaves again. Though mysteries are barred from laic eyes,And the divine alone with warrant priesInto thy bosom, where truth in private lies, Yet this of thee the wise may truly say,Thou from the virtuous nothing dost delay,And to be part with thee the wicked wisely pray. Great Negative, how vainly would the wiseInquire, define, distinguish, teach, devise,Didst thou not stand to point their blind philosophies! Is, or Is Not, the two great ends of Fate,And True or False, the subject of debate,That perfect or destroy the vast designs of state— When they have racked the politician’s breast,Within thy Bosom most securely rest,And when reduced to thee, are least unsafe and best. But Nothing, why does Something still permitThat sacred monarchs should at council sitWith persons highly thought at best for nothing fit, While weighty Something modestly abstainsFrom princes’ coffers, and from statemen’s brains,And Nothing there like stately Nothing reigns? Nothing! who dwell’st with fools in grave disguiseFor whom they reverend shapes and forms devise,Lawn sleeves, and furs, and gowns, when they like thee look wise: French truth, Dutch prowess, British policy,Hibernian learning, Scotch civility,Spaniards’ dispatch, Danes’ wit are mainly seen in thee. The great man’s gratitude to his best friend,Kings’ promises, whores’ vows—towards thee may bend,Flow swiftly into thee, and in thee ever end.  Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman

Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman De Profundisby Georg Trakl It is a stubble-field where black rain falls.It is a dark-brown tree that stands alone.It is a soughing wind that swirls round empty huts –How dismal this evening. Passing the hamletThe gentle orphan girl still gathers scanty ears of corn.Round and golden her eyes feast on the gathering dusk,Her lap yearning for the heavenly bridegroom. On their way homeThe shepherds found the darling bodyRotting in the briers. I am a shadow far from desolate villages.God’s silenceI drank from the springs of the grove. Cold metal meets my temples.Spiders seek out my heart.There is a light that guts in my mouth. At night I found myself on a heath,Stiffening with dirt and dust from the stars.In the thicket of hazelsCrystal angels once more sounded.   Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman

Production and Sound Design by Kevin SeamanThe ApplicantBY SYLVIA PLATHFirst, are you our sort of a person?Do you wearA glass eye, false teeth or a crutch,A brace or a hook,Rubber breasts or a rubber crotch,Stitches to show something's missing? No, no? ThenHow can we give you a thing?Stop crying.Open your hand.Empty? Empty. Here is a handTo fill it and willingTo bring teacups and roll away headachesAnd do whatever you tell it.Will you marry it?It is guaranteedTo thumb shut your eyes at the endAnd dissolve of sorrow.We make new stock from the salt.I notice you are stark naked.How about this suit——Black and stiff, but not a bad fit.Will you marry it?It is waterproof, shatterproof, proofAgainst fire and bombs through the roof.Believe me, they'll bury you in it.Now your head, excuse me, is empty.I have the ticket for that.Come here, sweetie, out of the closet.Well, what do you think of that?Naked as paper to startBut in twenty-five years she'll be silver,In fifty, gold.A living doll, everywhere you look.It can sew, it can cook,It can talk, talk, talk.It works, there is nothing wrong with it.You have a hole, it's a poultice.You have an eye, it's an image.My boy, it's your last resort.Will you marry it, marry it, marry it.  Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman

Production and Sound Design by Kevin SeamanFor Loveby Robert Creeleyfor BobbieYesterday I wanted tospeak of it, that sense above  the others to meimportant because allthat I know derivesfrom what it teaches me.  Today, what is it that  is finally so helpless,different, despairs of its own  statement, wants toturn away, endlesslyto turn away.If the moon did not ...no, if you did notI wouldn’t either, but  what would I notdo, what prevention, what  thing so quickly stopped.  That is love yesterday  or tomorrow, notnow. Can I eatwhat you give me. Ihave not earned it. Must  I think of everythingas earned. Now love also  becomes a reward soremote from me I haveonly made it with my mind.Here is tedium,despair, a painfulsense of isolation and  whimsical if pompousself-regard. But that image  is only of the mind’svague structure, vague to me  because it is my own.Love, what do I thinkto say. I cannot say it.What have you become to ask,  what have I made you into,companion, good company,  crossed legs with skirt, or  soft body underthe bones of the bed.Nothing says anything  but that which it wishes  would come true, fears  what else might happen insome other place, some  other time not this one.  A voice in my place, an  echo of that only in yours.Let me stumble intonot the confession but  the obsession I begin with  now. For youalso (also)some time beyond place, or  place beyond time, no  mind left tosay anything at all,that face gone, now.Into the company of love  it all returns.  Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman

Production and Sound Design by Kevin SeamanAll Night, All Nightby Delmore SchwartzRode in the train all night, in the sick light. A birdFlew parallel with a singular will. In daydream's moods andattitudesThe other passengers slumped, dozed, slept, read,Waiting, and waiting for place to be displacedOn the exact track of safety or the rack of accident. Looked out at the night, unable to distinguishLights in the towns of passage from the yellow lightsNumb on the ceiling. And the bird flew parallel and stillAs the train shot forth the straight line of its whistle,Forward on the taut tracks, piercing empty, familiar -- The bored center of this vision and condition looked andlookedDown through the slick pages of the magazine (seekingThe seen and the unseen) and his gaze fell down the wellOf the great darkness under the slick glitter,And he was only one among eight million riders andreaders. And all the while under his empty smile the shaking drumOf the long determined passage passed through himBy his body mimicked and echoed. And then the trainLike a suddenly storming rain, began to rush and thresh--The silent or passive night, pressing and impressingThe patients' foreheads with a tightening-like imageOf the rushing engine proceeded by a shaft of lightPiercing the dark, changing and transforming the silenceInto a violence of foam, sound, smoke and succession. A bored child went to get a cup of water,And crushed the cup because the water too wasBoring and merely boredom's struggle.The child, returning, looked over the shoulderOf a man reading until he annoyed the shoulder.A fat woman yawned and felt the liquid dropsDrip down the fleece of many dinners. And the bird flew parallel and parallel flewThe black pencil lines of telephone posts, crucified,At regular intervals, post after postOf thrice crossed, blue-belled, anonymous trees. And then the bird cried as if to all of us: 0 your life, your lonely lifeWhat have you ever done with it,And done with the great gift of consciousness?What will you ever do with your life before death'sknifeProvides the answer ultimate and appropriate? As I for my part felt in my heart as one who falls,Falls in a parachute, falls endlessly, and feel the vastDraft of the abyss sucking him down and down,An endlessly helplessly falling and appalled clown: This is the way that night passes by, thisIs the overnight endless trip to the famous unfathomableabyss.    Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman