Written alongside the Moscow Airport. All the airports i know the name of get called by their full name, the ones i don’t get called the ‘city name’ airport. I should know the name of this one. Sheremetyevo, there is is. It was the name of the Wifi network no less. Alongside the cafe whose name I also cannot know at the moment. It’s written clearly but I can’t read the russian. Before describing it a bit i will just say that the ‘curved’ screen (it is a new type of TV that is hanging everywhere in this airport as an advertisement of itself) is playing a montage of fly over footage of New York. To the TV’s left are two excellently menacing banners of bright yellow with balck writing and an central insginia of what looks to be two chess knights crossing one another. The cafe is sleepy. Its staff is at least. The first woman behind the counter found my english unacceptable and passed me off directly to her colleague, who was polite, to the point. Coffee in hand and the sun still hasnt even risen. my computer clock reads 3:40, but the local time is 5:40. A man with a lime green wheely carry on has his head in his hand staring down at his phone at a table by the slope of windows that look out ont the tarmac. His table is a mountain of trash, his other must be in the bathroom. 2 yogurt cups, several glasses, napkins for days. The music is garbage. It sounds like something in the background of a commercial that may have played in Vermont for a hip combo nightclub lounge in montreal. A voice barely intones “would you be, would you be my baby.” Each table has a napkin holder and in a moment of real class the napkins are all hand folded and arrayed like a peacock. Behind the paper bird is an add for Angry Birds the app. New York has curved into a tropical valley. his other is back and they walk away. Track suits! matching husnand and wife track suits! and not simply ttrack suits, but track suits for the 21st century. Fun, ‘adult’, patterns go down the legs and cover the back of the jacket in this seasons take on the established classic that is the acrylic apex of casual style. Hers in pink. his in blue. They sit with a large group. A very strong looking man folds his arms and humphs congeniality at the rudeness of the hour. In brussels, E was telling me how profeshional russian lifters (were they ‘profeshinal’, ‘serious’ might be a more fitting descriptor) believed in shaking in bewteen sets of heavy lifts, deadlifts and the like. They simply keep shaking comfortably, shaking their arms, their butts, legs, whatever in between each time at the bar. I bet this man would shake well. he has a moustache short hair and a red polo shirt tucked into his jeans. His arms rest on his belly. The horizon is a yellow blinking light party. The bright lights insde make it hard to really see what is going n out there. several planes sit in darkness. Several strings of baggage carts are half tucked under the overhang of the terminal. It’s a couples trip. Track suits are one of three couples. they it in the middle of the group facing the window. New York is back. A beige empire state building. Florescent lights, a security camera, reflections in massive glass, the distance between a phone and the eyes, the excited flashing of yellow truck lights. anounced avertisements in the two languaes, all these things. Now what poem is that from? “All these things.” Is it, I think it is, from Sunday Morning. “All these things seem to be, all these things are in, all these things appear to be in some strange procession of the dead.” Something like that. I cheated, i wrote an email in the interm. I am tempted to write another. “thoughts concerning other love that isn’t happening here” that’s from another poem and (i think?) i even got it right from memory. Not sevens. Plays first.

Milky

A great wooden table, early morning. A buzzing sounds. It sounds again. It sounds as if someone is trying to fix the sound system. This continues for a few minutes. A sand bag drops from above and thuds on the table. Six actors enter holding wine glasses filled with an unidentified milky liquid. They lift their noses and take each other in from across the table. The buzzing is ‘fixed’ and a voice comes over the loudspeaker.

Voice: Consider the following: it’s early, tuesday, let’s say, and you find yourself around the table with 5 of your favorite friends. Things are going smoothly. They are old friends, the kind of people you can fart in front of and smile it off. Suddenly from out of the blue a sack drops on the table. It looks heavy, it gives off an old musk, it smells like barn, could it be from the barn you  saw down the road while you drove here? What’s in the sack, and who knows more than you do?

towards

the lights rise on falling snow slowly covering the stage. 7 actors emerge one by one and trudge towards a large mound extruding from the downstage left wing. they are dressed as mechanics and are holding tools. One by one they reach the mound. As the lights brighten we notice that the mound is in fact a dead whale. The actors begin to open it’s mouth with their tools. they prop it open with some scaffolding that they assemble, several go inside. A couple others set up laptops with many important looking cables attached. these cables are brought inside. One actor lights a cigarette and watches the work for a moment. The snow continues throughout.