“I think women artists begins to pay attention to what people expect from them, as opposed to what they are searching for within themselves. It’s pretty deadly.” Euphonic 7 “The Artist”
The Foreword to Insomnia — Featuring Istanbul
Happy Holidays from Explode — The Writers’ Environment!
The SFX Menu Includes
The quintessential sound of the Pandemic thermometer
An environmental protest and chants of children
A Dune character shouting “Freedom”
Cartoon characters laughing at… Idealism
AI woman announcing traffic delays
Nouveau riche exodus on a Spaceship
AI woman announcing the time
The security breach and sound of an alarm
A Rush Hour in India
A Bazaar in Turkey
An ASMR cough
The paranormal voice of a robot
Tape Talk Fast Forward/Rewind
The motif of the Pandemic thermometer
The steam punk sound of doom
The Ditty bop sound signaling the end of the game.
Copyright © 2021, E Maria Shelton Speller. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
Happy Juneteenth!
Inside the [Dollhouse] with the Red Corvette
Music, SFX, AAC, ASMR, AI, Gamification and Storytelling on the Explode platform landing — Dreamscape — the one and only Interactive Meta Environment.
The SFX Menu Includes
The quintessential sound of the Pandemic thermometer
An environmental protest and chants of children
A Dune character shouting “Freedom”
Cartoon characters laughing at… Idealism
AI woman announcing traffic delays
Nouveau riche exodus on a Spaceship
AI woman announcing the time
The security breach and sound of an alarm
A Rush Hour in India
A Bazaar in Turkey
An ASMR cough
The paranormal voice of a robot
Tape Talk Fast Forward/Rewind
The motif of the Pandemic thermometer
The steam punk sound of doom
The Ditty bop sound signaling the end of the game.
Copyright © 2021, E Maria Shelton Speller. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten
or redistributed without permission.
The [Dollhouse] with the Red Corvette is a lateral, vertical, linear, horizontal, and spherical art installation. It is a poesy puzzle for verse and graffiti, with sublime imagery. It functions like a mnemonic, a telltale pastiche for found poesy in a digital world. Some of the pieces fit, and some are misfits -- that lead to other immersions... in this stained-glass heaven -- this society in the machine... Copyright © 2017-2021 E Maria Shelton Speller. All rights reserved.
A Valentine for Angela (for Angela Davis, George Jackson and The Black Panther Party)
When you see Angela
Give her… this Valentine
Tell her
No code of morals
Or pastoral sermons of redemption
in bastions of struggle
nor private language
Or puritanical divinity
from the tyrannical gatekeepers
of black consciousness
in Baptist Churches
Where the house of God
like the people are falling
and bibles are missing
countenances are broken
and carriages are bent
on Grandfathers
huddled like old horses
in Chapel basements
can keep her locks from draping
my thrilled skin
I felt the linguistics of freedom
without right-wing caveats
and the sophistical footnotes
of kept intellectuals
when Black Power waxed
the center of my tower
and the bottom of your well
farther than this cell
and closer than holding you
in my arms now
I found the status quo
on endless streets with names
and no names
we neglect or accommodate
In a sound dream
on spots
we smother
or straddle
we are a sexual coterie
I wanted to indict you for voluntary servitude
buying part and parcel of our own existence
like exploitation bought and exploitation sold
back to the exploitable…
With a shameless display
of unnecessary needs and haughty miens
napping, unconscious, and folded
Like Black parents
who cannot recognize their children
Hiding inside androgynous clothing
Reciting the lines of criminal poets
perverting language that appeals to them
Black Panthers in proletariat-drag
When Heidegger said
The dreadful has already happened!
Tell her…
Huey
is an effete dilettante
living life inside a penthouse
longing to be outside in the cracker box
raping after he was free
Down with the masses!
Up with the bourgeoisie!
Eldridge
came to the Party shouting
“I am a rapist!”
“I [am] a patriarch!”
Power was not concept
abstract or privilege for Eldridge
His last contribution
will be the design
of cock pants
And Bobby
is a politician
with idealistic intentions
running for the Mayor of Oakland
loyal to the Patriarchs
that bound and gagged him
in the courtroom
Elaine Brown
confused pussy with power
will deny
Huey beat her down
and ran her out of town
in her red Mercedes Benz…
Hide your guns from Jonathan
My brother is poised for Fatalism
Suicidal ideations are necessary considerations
when voluntary death is a blow against
excessive regulations
The gun…
is justification
for the enigma
of an absurd existence
when God is dead
like Nietzsche and Sartre said…
and heaven is empty
When you see Angela
Give her… this Valentine
Your status in the ballroom
on that intellectual runway
does not resemble
the place we found
Bring me back from Limbo…
Your breath is shallow
Your pulse is faint
The ring is dark
The tower is steep
The well is deep…
Are you coming too?
I am waiting
in this din
pacing the floor in my 9 x 4
in absolute solitude
wanting
you, you, you,
again…
Copyright 2004, 2015, 2021 E Maria Shelton Speller. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
January 6, 2021 — US Capitol on Lockdown — Destination Chinatown
The Brandy of the Gods… above and beyond barricaded streets.
Happy 2021!
Dreamscape’s Istanbul (In Medias Res)
Twenty Twenty-One
Fun Espresso
Egad, the Casbah in Santa Barbara
Part of the fun is the embrace of perfume
Cafe Angelica Emerald Crème
A sabbatical delay waiting to be served
A ceremonial promenade hunched over gazettes
Unwelcome raindrops splatter the canvassed toes of my shoes
Thus the au courant cartoons on my stringy denim knees
Inside at last, I’m saved and Mocha Berry satisfied
Like the face of the fretless little girl
Blowing candy off the floor in her mouth
Clicking up and down in shoes too big for her feet
Stealing glances at an intellectual jerk
Chocolate Cherry satisfied between deep banter
With a friend floating in Vanilla Colada
Part of the fun is real references to books
And book references to real well read attitudes
What’s the shiniest patented leather flats
On the girl with the silkiest blonde hair
Doing with the darkest man
In Dreadlocks and Birkenstocks?
No talk between them
Then they’re sharing the table
Those lined outside will share tables too
The Raspberry Almond can sit with me
Keeping the beat with an aggravated drum lead
His body twitched with jazzy guitar licks
He smiled between the plugs in his ears
And faces fade into a mirror in the back
Part of the fun is waking up here
In an essay on spice and circumstance
A sabbatical renewal once more
On a regional affirmation of decadence
This day of rest I worship Santa Barbara
And the celestial trip I straddle
To be able to dry my canvassed toes
With the heat of Golden Pecan
And the fervent chill of observation
In my sanctioned Casbah
In my sabbatical home
I hold my head up
My cup runneth over
Reading books and people vicariously
Egad, I am dry and satisfied
© 2002, 2020 E Maria Shelton Speller. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Explode Goes To Dreamscape
Dreamscape’s Corona Playlist
[Tess Diptych] Spontaneity
So Keen
THE DREAMSCAPE MEDIA KIT
EXPLODE – The Writers Environment is a platform for curated and commercial content in an immersive and interactive meta-environment… and DREAMSCAPE is the landing. It’s an immersive environment that functions like a wikihole — and a literary Pokémon.
When content on Dreamscape tells a story about a beautiful woman swimming in a pool – we want you to see her. We want you to stumble for points on a link you cannot see, fall down a rabbit hole and land in an environment with a beautiful woman swimming in a pool, on the inside of a glass house – in Hollywood Hills…
Like Seth Godin’s Purple Cow — DREAMSCAPE is remarkable because it has to be. Or, it’s just another brown cow — an ordinary website — with ordinary content. But Purple Cows need Purple Cows to be Purple Cows. Dreamscape facilitates purple content, purple website design and development, and purple product placement — for purple people.
DREAMSCAPE is space for visionaries — Poets, Writers, Coders, Programmers, Filmmakers, Thespians, Graphic Designers, Artists, Musicians, Directors, Cinematographers, Designers, Educators, Historians, Actors, Conceptual and Performance artists, Photographers, Influencers, Virtual Reality Developers and Designers. XR and AI.
It is a platform for curated content in an interactive meta-environment that facilitates content and other stories – using digital media and art that redefines how artists, their audience and visitors experience real and virtual content on several levels — where every paragraph, period, and ellipses is space for discovery.
Dreamscape is what William Gibson described in Neuromancer, “A graphic representation of data plugging your consciousness into a digital world, while watching the physical realm evaporate.”
Let’s realize an alternative reality where presentation is myth and “space” is an intrinsic, discrete, and symmetrical experience in the one and only interactive meta environment — Dreamscape.
WORLDWIDE AUDIENCE REACH >11M
FOLLOWERS ACROSS SOCIAL PLATFORMS >354K
GENDER F: 47% M: 51% Unspecified: 2%
DEMOGRAPHICS 18-24: 41% 25-34: 26% 35-44: 13% 45-54: 9% 55-64: 6% 65+ 5%
LOVE DIVINE VIDEO IMPRESSIONS >1M
AVERAGE TIME SPENT ON DREAMSCAPE 44.48 sec
Acknowledgement:
DREAMSCAPE will benefit humanity as an alternative to social malfeasance e.g., sexism, racism, classism, genderism, ageism, colonialism, colorism, persecution, oppression, violence and subjugation… It is space to dream unencumbered – immersed in dopamine and replete with points for discovery. It will also be a ton of fun that satisfies a generation that is increasingly becoming homebody consumers in a homebody economy. What we experience in RL, we can experience untethered in XR and AI.
© 2020 E Maria Shelton Speller
Music, SFX, ASMR, AI, AAC, Gamification and Storytelling on trenchpeople.com.
© 2021, E Maria Shelton Speller. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
The SFX Menu Includes
The quintessential sound of the Pandemic thermometer
An environmental protest and chants of children
A Dune character shouting “Freedom”
Cartoon characters laughing at… Idealism
AI woman announcing traffic delays
The nouveau riche exodus on a Spaceship
AI woman announcing the time
The security breach and sound of an alarm
A Rush Hour in India
A Bazaar in Turkey
An ASMR cough
The paranormal voice of a robot
Tape Talk Fast Forward/Rewind
The motif of the Pandemic thermometer
The steam punk sound of doom
The Ditty bop sound signaling the end of the game.
Copyright © 2021, E Maria Shelton Speller. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten
or redistributed without permission.
Yellow Tape [A Memoir]
Author’s Note: The following excerpt is from the book titled, Yellow Tape [A Memoir] coming in the summer of 2021.
Prologue
I don’t believe in coincidence. I believe in synchronicity.
We were meant to be – because we happened.
We took shelter in dark closets and screamed like tiny Sirens until our eyes were bloodshot and bulging, our ears ringing, our faces slick in tears and mucus, and our legs were covered in urine. Chaperones in an obliged competition for who could scream the loudest and longest interval — to stop MaMommy and MaDaddy from fighting again. We were toddlers.
When there was silence – except for the tinnitus in our ears, our eyes blinked for sound and with unclenched fists we dried our faces with the palms of our hands and the cuffs of our pajamas. Sometimes we looked to each other for muted answers – our eyes suspended like question marks.
I was two years older than my sister, and much taller. I reached for doorknobs above our heads — I slowly turned. We peeked through the crack of light in the door. If the crack was too narrow and my sister couldn’t see behind me, she would get down on her knees and look under the door for shadows. We had this routine, you see. If we heard our Mother moan, I would shut the door again — quietly. We squatted on the floor close to each other for comfort and embraced our knees like pillows against our chests and waited interminably. Twin hearts beating in sync.
I can’t remember when, or how, or who rescued us from the closets… we may have rescued ourselves, quickly scurrying on bare feet to the bedroom we shared. Success was silence, and when there was silence, we were safe. We never looked for our Mother. She didn’t want to be found.
The next morning, my cheerful Mother would fix our favorite breakfast. Pancakes and bacon and sometimes scrambled eggs. We loved sugar, so we smothered our breakfast in Aunt Jemima syrup. With care we looked for signs of injury to no avail. What were we crying about, after all? A tacit agreement that we were silly little girls worrying over nothing.
But we had so many questions. What happened? Why aren’t you sad? What can we do for you? Was it our fault? Did we do something wrong? Why was MaDaddy so mad? Did he hurt you? Do you love him? We always settled for, may we have more syrup, please?
I huddled over my breakfast once to hide the stain of a teardrop in my syrup. My Mother said, “Don’t cry.” as if crying was unnecessary, inappropriate, and a violation of her privacy. Strong girls don’t cry. So we colluded with our Mother and pretended the incidents never happened, and drowned our pancakes in syrup, swallowing quietly, staring straight ahead, wearing our happy faces, our lashes blinking in accord and swung our legs under the table. It was a quiet ritual and the feelings were always the same. My sister and I learned early to swallow our feelings like pancakes, smothered in syrup.
******
I know pain in a vacuum and how hollowness and emptiness can coexist, like a moon that blocks the sun. This morning was metallic like the quicksilver mercury a classmate shared on the playground in a secret show and tell. It was one uncontrollable morning that moved without impediment.
It was my sister’s 10th birthday. My mother was standing at the stove scrambling eggs in her night gown. Out all night, my Father burst into the kitchen. With five children at the breakfast table, he grabbed my Mother by the neck and at the same time pulled open the kitchen drawer grabbing the big knife without looking… as if it were placed there specifically for this one morning.
I bolted from the kitchen on the heels of my Father dragging my Mother out of the kitchen… but somehow, she broke free… running and begging, Honey please, please, I love you… she ran, but not far before he slashed her right buttock with the knife, and I saw white meat… White meat! I ran for help!
I left my Mother. I left my siblings trapped in high chairs, and screaming over bowls of Sugar Smacks… I felt my sister on my heels… we ran down the winding stairs, screaming… determined… pleading, the horror… the mortification! What is going on? What is happening? Call the police! Call the police! But my Aunt, my Father’s sister, called a sibling, a brother for guidance… Call the police! I screamed. I couldn’t stop him. What was I to do? My Mother never wanted to be found…
“Call the police!” I demanded over and over again. She didn’t. Instead she locked herself and her daughters in the bathroom… and my sister followed her there. They barricaded themselves… and I faced him squarely… Pugilists without gloves, without tape, without corners… “I hate you! I hate you! You killed my Mother! You killed my Mother! I hate you.” I screamed repeatedly.
He hit me. A Pugilist hit me in the head. My knees buckled. I didn’t fall. He hit me again. My knees buckled, but I didn’t fall. I would not fall. He reared back and hit me with a roundhouse punch a third time. Boom like Forman punched Frazier. My feet left the floor. I sailed across the room and landed behind a Settee… the back of the chair toppled over with me — and behind the chair I peed on the floor and it ran like mercury. I sat in it and looked up at my Father doe-eyed and mortified. With the back of the chair in my lap I thrashed like a deer hit by a car on the side of a road looking for grace. I don’t know why he came downstairs or who he was looking for. He found me. At 6’ 3’’ he loomed in the doorway like a dark ghost fading up the stairs with the footfalls of an athlete and the precision of his occupation: meat cutter.
I mustered the courage to follow him… Determined I climbed gingerly up the stairs that reminded me of every corner and crack in the doors of those closets my sister and I hid in when we were toddlers, but this time I was alone.
At the top of the stairs, I turned the corner, and my Father was in the mirror in the bathroom cocking a brown suede fedora on his head. He was wearing a brown silk walking suit and brown suede shoes. I didn’t know where my Mother was. I was awestruck. He was beautiful. Fate would have my Mother behind me watching me watching him. I wondered how he could be so cruel, so vain, so cold, so calm, so cool. He didn’t see me, or perhaps he did. I didn’t look for my Mother. She didn’t want to be found.
Quietly, I retreated back downstairs and waited for the Police. I left my Mother. I left my siblings. My sister and my Aunt were still locked in the bathroom, and my uncle had not arrived even though my Aunt called him for advice. Instead, he called the Police. The Police finally arrived, a paddy wagon behind them. A paddy wagon for my Mother! Not an ambulance.
At 12 years old I was indignant. I knew my Mother was not to be treated like a criminal and a paddy wagon was not appropriate for her! My Father should be in the paddy wagon! She was the victim, she needs a Doctor, she needs help, sympathy and proper care. How would they even secure the stretcher in the paddy wagon? They were in the house and up the stairs before I could finish my thoughts. My Mother was carried back down the stairs, and because she always wanted to protect her children, she asked the Police to cover her bloody head so her children could not see what would taint her maternal code of propriety, only her children understood.
My Father was escorted down the stairs like a hero… a god. He was a star. No handcuffs… It was as if the Boston Police knew and respected him, and were impressed with his walking suit, his fedora, and those brown suede shoes. The crowd cheered him! By this time, my Aunt and sister stood behind me. We peered through the curtains at the crowd that gathered to witness the death of my Mother and someone, a young woman pointed at me in the window and shouted, “Look! She looks like a monster!’ Quickly, we closed the curtains and retreated to our separate corners. My aunt gathered the bearing she hid in the bathroom, now on full display and my sister and I shared a gaze and we knew we would never share a closet again.
I had a concussion. No Doctor examined me. It wasn’t confirmed by the authorities. I bargained with God between crying jags until I fell asleep over and over again. My face, my eyes, and lips were swollen and lacerated. My family walked around me as if they would not see me — except to offer soup, and then I would remember why I grieved, why I lay in the same spot on the same couch and again I would cry myself to sleep. They left me there until my eyes were no longer swollen, no longer bloodshot, and my lips were no longer bruised. Traumatized. My eyes didn’t blink, and they left me on my own. That was perhaps the most generous thing they could do, sans calling the authorities to rescue the catatonic child, and putting the son and brother at risk. He was jailed without bond. I saw a snippet on page 10, or perhaps it was page 2, in a little box at the bottom of the page hidden in plain sight, “Colored Man Attacks Wife with Meat Cleaver.”
We gathered ourselves by degrees. I heard snippets of conversation. My Mother was alive… She lost so much blood she needed transfusions and they reached out to other jurisdictions as far as Florida. We had to go to the welfare office for assistance and were instructed by my Grandmother and Aunt to dress down to look poor and pathetic… We dressed in a manner that my Mother would never abide for her children. I overheard a constant refrain. My Mother “… must have done or said something.”
They said a man called my Mother on the only phone in our Victorian house – my Grandmother’s phone on the first floor. Another of my Father’s brothers, told my Father a man called my Mother and chided him to do something!
I was alone in an abyss of violence justified by hostility, doubt, and betrayal. I was convinced they didn’t like my Mother, or me for that matter. My breath was alien, angry, staccato. My Father slashed my Mother’s right buttock and left random slashes on her back. He broke her arm, he cut her skull… and finally, and this was a first — he scarred her face. A crescent moon on her cheek – the symbol for a new beginning.
Because of the institutionalization and practice of The Rule of Thumb, women in Massachusetts endured domestic violence. It was incumbent on women to press charges. The D.A. begged my Mother to file criminal charges against my Father. My Grandmother begged her not to file charges against her son. My Father begged her not to file and guaranteed he would never harm her again. My Mother did not file charges.
The yellow tape was removed from the door. We cleaned the blood and flesh off the floor and the walls, and discarded bowls of cereal abandoned and calcified in sour milk like the bark of a tree my Father fashioned into a lamp, and filled the space with children tethered and tripping over yellow tape that tangles as they grow taller.
My Mother came home wearing a shield of armor – a cast. White, clean, no graffiti. She was proud of that cast – a symbol of survival – of an accident. We were so happy! Our Mother was alive, and even more beautiful than before! I remember my Mother lying in the center of her bed surrounded by her children. One of my siblings ran his hands through her hair, and she scolded him, “Don’t do that.” The polar opposite of “Girls don’t cry.” Don’t make a girl cry. Don’t avail yourself to her body. Don’t break her skin.
My Father stopped by. They had an announcement. He was coming home. My sister and I were bewildered, and disappointed but always respectful; however, upon that announcement, I slowly rose from the floor and walked away without explanation or hesitation.
This time my sister followed me up the stairs to our bedroom in the attic. Not long after walking away from them my Mother did something she rarely did – she came upstairs to our bedroom. She sat on the edge of my bed and gingerly told me my Father said, he hit me because I was hysterical.
I am not a monster! I am not a monster… It’s more complicated than that.
Copyright © 2020 E Maria Shelton Speller
________________________________________________
Edited by Brahidaliz Martinez
_________________________________________________
We loved Anthony…
The Polyptych — Interactive Installation
The Polyptych Interactive Installation is a web-based literary and musical sensory narrative in an interactive meta environment. The project is an allusion to Alexander Calder’s Homage to Jerusalem, The Mattress Factory in Pittsburg, Marcel Duchamp’s Readymades, Jeffrey Shaw’s The Legible City, and Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s The Gates in Central Park. Moreover, The Polyptych bows to Christo Vladimirov Javacheff who passed away on Sunday, May 31, 2020 at his home in New York.
“Installation art is an artistic genre of three-dimensional works that are often site-specific and designed to transform the perception of a space. Generally, the term is applied to interior spaces, whereas exterior interventions are often called public art, land art or intervention art; however, the boundaries between these terms overlap. Installation art can be either temporary or permanent. Installation artworks have been constructed in exhibition spaces such as museums and galleries, as well as public and private spaces… The genre incorporates a broad range of everyday and natural materials, which are often chosen for their “evocative” qualities, as well as new media such as video, sound, performance, immersive virtual reality and the internet.” Wikipedia
The Polyptych consists of twelve closely interrelated and distinct themes and parts. It is a blending of the viewer’s imagination and artistic renderings — like Walt Disney’s Imagineering, where viewers are the illustrators, architects, engineers, lighting designers, Showrunners, directors and graphic designers — crystalizing conceptually and literally in your mind — where time is irrepressible like a pulse, a beat, and measure of uninterrupted space.
The Installation is a site specific environment using Russian Nesting Doll functionality to structure the linear concept between themes and parts while flirting with computer gamification; to encourage engagement and participation. It functions like a docent, a walk-through assistant, a tour guide or watchtower simply by clicking the stars (below the title) in the blue sky, for the next experience — on trenchpeople.com.
Viewers are encouraged to follow The Polyptych in the order it was conceived or walk-through the environment using the menu and dropdown arrow on Dreamscape to navigate the experience.
Spontaneous Ode to COVID-19
Nothing
Nothing
Nothing
No pork
No meat
No GMO
No pesticides
No chemicals
No vegetables
No leather
No feathers
No farmers
No pickers
No corn
No food
No work
No prosperity
No friends
No groceries
No sugar
No fashion
No affection
No morgues
No burials
No speculators
No beauty
No makeup
No vanity
No vacations
No restaurants
No music
No movies
No sports
No theaters
No plays
No crowds
No police
No museums
No cable
No concerts
No chaff
No trough
No travel
No cars
No bars
No trucks
No brick
No mortar
No hospitals
No nurses
No doctors
No assistants
No parks
No prisoners
No tickets
No economy
No gouging
No lipstick
No hookups
No intimacy
No strangers
No kisses
No hugs
No love
No metro
No nursing homes
No taxis
No buses
No ventilators
No PPE
No toilet paper
No democracy
No capitalism
No money
No jealousy
No flossing
No vaccine
No schools
No blessings
No immigrants
No refugees
No freedom
No children
No churches
No humans
No handshakes
No greed
No gluttony
No gyms
God
Copyright © 2020 E Maria Shelton Speller
Artist Statement… Unfettered Birds (WIP)
Introduction
My work explores the relationship between what is real, and what is unreal. With influences as diverse as Yukio Mishima’s Onnagata and 2001: A Space Odyssey. Where words are illusory and freedom is real, and brick and mortar is a wasteland — for mortal dreams and nightmares.
Where categories don’t matter, and you are god… the god of your dreams. My work is a journey – from the perspective of the young prince and princess in Hollywood, Dubai, the Great Caves, and Capote… Where freedom rings supreme and the fiction in your mind comes true — for real.
We launched Dreamscape in a glass cocoon — opaque me and transparent you. Content is buried there — over black people, white people, red people, yellow people, brown people, rich people, poor people, and melancholy. Inside pods power is fetish, and fashion is an avatar. My work explores the freedom to be who we are — dreaming unfettered in space — birds…
TRENCHPEOPLE.COM
Copyright 2020 E Maria Shelton Speller. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Love Divine — Winter Promotional Special
DREAMSCAPE — Promotional Special During the Holiday Season
Airport Announcement in Manila
Love Divine — Opens
Love Divine — Official Release Date
[LD] Love Divine — Premier Date Soon
[LD] Love Divine
Update #6 – Super News! Explode – The Writer’s Environment is a Winter 2019 Experiential Network (XN) Project Sponsor – for Northeastern University!
Explode is a platform for content buried on several levels encouraging the user to earn points for discovery. It’s a platform for curated and commercial content, using digital media — in an immersive and interactive meta-environment. Like Seth Godin’s Purple Cow — The Writers Environment is remarkable — because it has to be. Or, it’s just another brown cow — an ordinary website — with ordinary content. But Purple Cows need Purple Cows to be Purple Cows! Explode facilitates purple content, purple website design and development, and purple product placement — for purple people.
In the words of Sam Altman (Y Combinator): “Initially get the small group of people who really love the product vs. a lot of users that like it a little bit… We can build on a lot of love, but we cannot build on a little bit of love. Make something your users love. Start with something simple…”
Deliverable Vignette:
When content on Explode tells a story about a beautiful woman swimming in a pool – we want you to see her. We want you to stumble for points on a link you cannot see, fall down a rabbit hole — and land in an environment with a beautiful woman swimming in a pool, on the inside of a glass house — in Hollywood Hills…
©️ 2019 E Maria Shelton Speller. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
It is my pleasure to introduce the next level – the NU XN Winter Team 2019 for Explode – The Writers Environment:
|
Qili Ou Master of Professional Studies, Informatics • Northeastern University, Boston, MA |
|
Xiaoxing Chen Master of Professional Studies, Informatics • Northeastern University, Boston, MA |
|
Hongzhi An Master Informatics • Northeastern University, Boston MA |
|
Han Xiaoguang Master Informatics • Northeastern University, Boston MA |
|
Xiao Yang Master Informatics • Northeastern University, Boston MA |
Watch this Space!
[The Godforsaken]
Before the godforsaken
had time to swallow…
They knew who first
judged what out of dreams
came truly real*
and he was fastened to a rock
and they knew who
stirreth up the people and dippeth his hand**
in the dish with Judas
and he was nailed to a cross
And they read books within books
about wise and foolish virgins
and signs of the end
and love and judgment
and they heard God talk
through the mouths of men
who talked about him
his son and the holy ghost
When spectators provided the notion of reality
Christ and Prometheus
were objectified and subjectified allegory
spheres of hope and rebellion
courage and prudence
temperance and justice
and how they chose to read it
in the time before terror
depended on what level
they chose to see it
Before the godforsaken
had time to swallow…
They reused and refashioned the heads
of emperors in their own image
because they could
They reinforced power and authority
with legitimate political imagery
like the Egyptian Pharaoh Ramses
and General Holofernes
They respected the classical past
in fertile crescents of greed
and rejected classical design
in the center of ruins
They housed the rock in the dome
on which Muhammad ascended to heaven
and hung the Virgin Mary’s blue robe
in Chartres Cathedral
When denizens of form said
Nothing is new…
The godforsaken asked
Since when?
since the Lion Gate
since the Great Sphinx of Giza
since Doric and Ionic orders
since the Palette of King Narmer
since the Parthenon
since Stonehenge
Since when?
They stood in the light of starry nights
in the drum, coffers, and concrete cylinders
of uninterrupted space in the Pantheon
and made no apologies for ripping off
master tracks from the past
and heard the hip hop train
sampling every post-hit
with unripe music and blood
and mounted the heads of gods
on the manifest
like the catalog of procreation
in Genesis
They heard his Mother
three blocks away
on parallel streets
screaming redundantly
You won’t take my child!
You won’t take my child!
at the vigil where transvestites
whispered how many times
her child was stabbed in the neck
Lord have mercy!
Who are these motherfuckers?
on the bottom rung of the Ladder of Descent
trying to climb up
on the backs of allegories
floating in fleeting and airy hope
part of the story
part of the sin
Before the godforsaken
had time to swallow…
They knew
that love ends
as it begins again
on rocks and crosses
in books and dreams
and politics and imagery
under domes and temples
in music and song
and blood and death
in stories and sin
and in the hands
of God
The swallows are building.
Copyright 2018 E Maria Shelton Speller. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
*Aeschylus’ Prometheus Bound
** Matthew 26: V21,V22,V23,V25
For more purple content visit: https://www.trenchpeople.com/
[Untitled WIP — The Triptych Roman à clef]
Triptych: A set of three associated artistic, literary, or musical works intended to be appreciated together. Mash it up! Press play at the same time…
Directing the Master Scene in the Mirror
We’re standing behind you
The window is your mirror
We‘re filming your reflections
In the window
You can see
The teardrop on her cheek
The other tear — is in your hair
Reach up and wipe the tear
With your thumb
Roll the tear on your fingers
As if water — is on the wings
of a butterfly_
Now, your face is dry
You point and say something
Insignificant like
“See that gas station down there.”
Vignette for Love Divine.
Copyright © 2018 E Maria Shelton Speller
Last Thirty Days on Top (Untreated Pin Impressions)*
*Note: Prose Poem and Literary List (Prosody, Parataxis, Blank Verse, Free Verse, and Found Poetry) based on E Maria Shelton Speller Pinterest Analytics as of June 6, 2019 10:00 PM (EST), for 15 Muse Boards and 5K Pins.
LOVE DIVINE [LD]…
All You Want To Know…
Beautiful and vibrantly dyed locs_
[The [Dollhouse] with the Red Corvette]_
Kanye West’s Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy…
[Point Him Out]…
[Wait… there’s a surprise at the end]…
I’m not Shy…
Biggy!
A Windy Summer Day — Vogue Italia_
[Skylar — Look at that face… that stop…those eyes!]_
[Blue Chip Stalk]_
Five Weak Words…
Ten Iconic Fashion Photographers_
[An Allusion to CAROL Coming Soon to Explode…]
Paint_
Art_
[Champagne and Balloons in Gothic City]_
[I have a story to tell]_
Swan Queen_
[Marilyn Monroe and James Dean Smoking on a Balcony…]_
BeautifulBizzzzarre_
Portishead — Glory Box_
Elizabeth Taylor — Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award_
artemisdreaming_
A Queen’s Torque_
[Love Divine]_
[Andy’s gaze. Edie’s eyes.]_
The Queen of Bollywood…
This is Why I Like Art_
White Hot_
Idris Elba_
Purple! Beautiful!_
Diar in Sassoon_
Denim Corset_
Bartolini’s Nymph With the Scorpion_
[Int. — Boudoir — Late Afternoon]_
Anthony Thornberg_
[Pluck & Aplomb]_
Ruffles_
The Russian Tea Room_
Duchamp’s Nude Descending a Staircase_
Brooks Casamance_
[Legs in the air like you don’t care]_
Paul Robeson and Master Julian Bond_
Visualize your highest self…
Water Sculpture_
Look Like Barbie_
Michael Maczuga_
“The Name of the Rose”_
[Copyright] 2019 E Maria Shelton Speller
Happy New Year Poets — 2018!
Happy New Year Poets!
Let’s make it happen.
I hope you know, I couldn’t move forward — without thanking you for your super support, and lucid/receptive imaginations. I am so glad we are in this environment together!
Have a happy, prosperous, and blessed New Year
and thanks again from Explode — The Writers Environment!
Update #5 — Soft Launch! Explode — The Writer’s Environment — Spring 2017 Experiential Network (XN) Project Sponsor — for Northeastern University!
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Explode — The Writers Environment
Soft Launch!
Thank you Girl Band of STEMs. You rock!
“Life is lived forward, but can only be understood backward.” Kierkegaard Explode — is a platform for curated content in an interactive meta-environment. The Environment facilitates content and other stories using digital media to redefine how artists, their audience and visitors experience real and virtual content. Explode is not a ‘mule’ as one follower proffered, with too many components — in a dream too big to bring to fruition. Explode is a spacecraft – and this soft launch is focused on development, functionality, and adjustments before a wider release — that accommodates the Team’s good counsel and the Project Manager’s concerns: security, budget, data backup, thousands of lines of hard coding and tuning using three.js — the best candidate in a 3D environment; node.js for interactivity; an engine to loop data in response to commands; a requirement for different headsets to present the same effects in virtual space, labor demands — every part of the project divided into sub projects — interface, infrastructure, and content, and finally the project needs a whole project team (5-10 people) and technical professionals to build up the spacecraft in a hard launch for product development. This glib paraphrase, to the Girl Band of STEMs dismay — is necessary to protect what Explode want’s to be and how we get there – working backwards. See prototypes linked below for the conceptual articulation and submergence of the ceiling, walls, and floor of the arcades, the arch, atrium, footprint, and oculus designed for Explode – The Writers Environment!
Hard Launch Coming in 2018
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E Maria Shelton Speller Project Sponsor |
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Interface Designer
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Programmer
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Yingqian “Selina” Jiang Project Manager |
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Show original message
The [Dollhouse] with the Red Corvette
The [Dollhouse with the Red Corvette] is a lateral, vertical, linear, horizontal, and spherical art installation. It is a poesy puzzle for verse and graffiti, with sublime imagery. It functions like a mnemonic, a telltale pastiche for found poesy in a digital world. Some of the pieces fit, and some are misfits — that lead to other immersions… in this stained-glass heaven — this society in the machine…
[][][][][][][][][[][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][]
Copyright © 2017-2021 E Maria Shelton Speller. All rights reserved.
Woodstock! (WIP (x Bars)) [Reserved][Reserved] 3.0
Overture: Woodstock is an ensemble. There are two voices and the beat in this WIP… the Narrator’s voice, Hitchcock’s, and “That Yoni” by JuseBeats!
In a walk through Whole Foods like Hitchcock
In his magnum opus
about a world… full of extras
in architectonic loops and links, alliteration and reverie, force, ballast, fancy partitions, linear renderings, systems of reckoning and more — of her…
He wants
Beddo, Caprino, Dolce Sardo
Zufi, the Saperavi
He nods
I’m thinking
Disappointed… in us!
[There’s no other way to say it — I can’t dress it up]
Caught between a slumbering scream and Vertigo
Cruising isles and isles of sweet and sour
People who think they are special
People who know they are not
People who wish they were
He wants
Beddo, Caprino, Dolce Sardo
Zufi, the Saperavi
Whispers prologue
Guess what we did?
A party of twenty
Three couples played before
winking and willing
shills playing in the round
Lovely trips on the Hill
in augmented VR
I’m thinking…
Baby boomers had their turn Woodstock!
Barefoot bell bottomed hippies
Denim sweeping the ground
[Reserved]*
Revolutionary hair — fists in the air
Dragging us back in the mud
Blunt antiquity
Move on Woodstock!
Take your shades, caps, change and loose articles
Bombs in black holes!
[Where did you go?]
We should be sunning in the Bahamas
chilling on hemp swings and
chairs swiveling in immersive environments
Higher than kite fights
A soaring for points experience
Get off the ride Woodstock!
You had your turn — at freedom
Exit signs are easy to find — look
The dragon is in the window
Freedom is accessible
Wonder is a trip
with walk through assistants
Dreams of power and prizes
Optional…
Fall out and Jack into
a walk through Whole Foods like Hitchcock
in his magnum opus
about a world… full of extra
architectonic loops and links, alliteration and reverie, force, ballast, fancy partitions, linear renderings, systems of reckoning — and more — of her… virtually surreal
He wants
Beddo, Caprino, Dolce Sardo
Zufi, the Saperavi
Whispers song
We don’t want to feel we’re high…
We just want to think we’re high
in Dubai
We don’t want to feel we’re high…
We just want to think we’re high
in Dubai
Copyright © 2016 E Maria Shelton Speller. All rights reserved.
*I’ve toyed with a conundrum, for too long. [Reserved][Reserved] functions like a digital art installation in Woodstock! (WIP (x Bars)). I could render [Reserved][Reserved] a mechanism – to catch That Yoni’s beat in perpetuity. I could close the brackets with bars that fills your loins with blood. I could leave redundant emptiness here — like tautology or romanticized art, or structural language — in this bifurcated space, like stars.
I could invite Poets to fill the empty bars for [Reserved][Reserved]
Woodstock! (WIP (x Bars)) [Reserved][Reserved]
Overture: Woodstock is an ensemble. There are two voices and the beat in this WIP… the Narrator’s voice, Hitchcock’s, and “That Yoni”. See Side Bar by JuseBeats!
In a walk through Whole Foods like Hitchcock
In his magnum opus
about a world… full of extras
in architectonic loops and links, alliteration and reverie, force, ballast, fancy partitions, linear renderings, systems of reckoning and more — of her…
He wants
Beddo, Caprino, Dolce Sardo
Zufi, the Saperavi
He nods
I’m thinking
Disappointed… in us!
[There’s no other way to say it — I can’t dress it up]
Caught between a slumbering scream and Vertigo
Cruising isles and isles of sweet and sour
People who think they are special
People who know they are not
People who wish they were
He wants
Beddo, Caprino, Dolce Sardo
Zufi, the Saperavi
Whispers prologue
Guess what we did?
A party of twenty
Three couples played before
winking and willing
shills playing in the round
Lovely trips on the Hill
in augmented VR
I’m thinking…
Baby boomers had their turn Woodstock!
Barefoot bell bottomed hippies
Denim sweeping the ground
“Interrupting — The Star-Spangled Banner like
That Doors dude dizzy on Dewey Decimal”
Copyright 2017 by Tang
Gawd made them like him
they never met — ticks time
Copyright © 2017 The Parthenon
The flag was a smoke screen over a grid
a chance to be — a white Supreme
Copyright © 2017 — Nudedcendg
They were diptychs, triptychs, and chapters…
The beginnings and endings… you can play too >>>
Copyright © 2017 E Maria Shelton Speller
Shut the fuck up
Sit the fuck down!
Copyright © 2017 by Donjoncity
Revolutionary hair — fists in the air
Dragging us back in the mud
Blunt antiquity
Move on Woodstock!
Take your shades, caps, change and loose articles
Bombs in black holes!
[Where did you go?]
We should be sunning in the Bahamas
chilling on hemp swings and
chairs swiveling in immersive environments
Higher than kite fights
A soaring for points experience
Get off the ride Woodstock!
You had your turn — at freedom
Exit signs are easy to find — look
The dragon is in the window
Freedom is accessible
Wonder is a trip
with walk through assistants
Dreams of power and prizes
Optional…
Fall out and Jack into
a walk through Whole Foods like Hitchcock
in his magnum opus
about a world… full of extra
architectonic loops and links, alliteration and reverie, force, ballast, fancy partitions, linear renderings, systems of reckoning — and more — of her… virtually surreal
He wants
Beddo, Caprino, Dolce Sardo
Zufi, the Saperavi
Whispers song
We don’t want to feel we’re high…
We just want to think we’re high
in Dubai
We don’t want to feel we’re high…
We just want to think we’re high
in Dubai
Copyright 2016 E Maria Shelton Speller
I’ve toyed with a conundrum, for too long. [Reserved][Reserved] functions like a digital art installation in Woodstock! (WIP (x Bars)). I could render [Reserved][Reserved] a mechanism – to catch That Yoni’s beat in perpetuity. I could close the brackets with bars that fills your loins with blood. I could leave redundant emptiness here — like tautology or romanticized art, or structural language — in this bifurcated space, like stars.
I could invite Poets to fill [Reserved][Reserved]…
“It is said that what is called “the spirit of an age” is something to which one cannot return. That this spirit gradually dissipates is due to the world’s coming to an end. For this reason, although one would like to change today’s world back to the spirit of one hundred years or more ago, it cannot be done. Thus it is important to make the best out of every generation.” ― Tsunetomo Yamamoto
and this…
“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.” Albert Einstein
[Reserved][Reserved] — An Invitation to Dine
Dear Poet, [Yes, you!]
I’ve toyed with a conundrum, for too long. [Reserved][Reserved] functions like a digital art installation in Woodstock! (WIP (x Bars)). I could render [Reserved][Reserved] a mechanism – to catch That Yoni’s beat in perpetuity. I could close the brackets with bars that fills your loins with blood. I could leave redundant emptiness here — like tautology or romanticized art, or structural language — in this bifurcated space, like stars.
I could invite Poets to fill [Reserved][Reserved] with dope poesy and select a date for submission. However, if we receive one hundred thousand and one couplings, we’d read them… but frankly, why not do, all of the above.
The empty brackets function like missing endings now — lacking only your bylines, pseudonyms, and ghosts — in translatable bars that work in Woodstock! (WIP (x Bars)).
Poets make this space immersive. Explode – The Writer’s Environment is an interactive environment — and this is the first foray for interactivity in this community — that links back to you!
Starting August 15, 2017 — let’s finish this poem with the best bars — curated for Woodstock! (WIP (x Bars)) here… Bon appétit.
Cordially,
The Chelsea Hotel, Manhattan
PS: No Spam — Balls in the air! An experience for us and them.
Copyright © 2017 E Maria Shelton Speller
Tagging Dystopia
McKay shouts and then nearly whispers to Ellison, ‘It takes more than creative androgyny to “embody” the opposite sex. The storytelling responsibility of all writers, whether female or male is to fill the void. When a woman creates a man, she must imagine the sensation of “owning” a penis. When a man creates a woman, he must imagine the sensation of “owning” a vagina. It is a void, not a vacuum. A vacuum would imply the all-consuming black hole — the feminization of sex. It is not trained comprehension or chromosomes — it takes pure imagination to get the story straight…
Copyright © 2017 E Maria Shelton Speller All rights reserved.
Update #4 — Super News! Explode — The Writer’s Environment is a Spring 2017 Experiential Network (XN) Project Sponsor — for Northeastern University!
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Explode — The Writers Environment Spring XN Project COMING SOON! |
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E Maria Shelton Speller Project Sponsor
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Interface Designer |
Programmer |
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Yingqian “Selina” Jiang Project Manager |
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Girl Band of STEMs
Girl Band of STEMs, is a lark, a careful ruse about a writer, who comments on her own stories. It is metafiction in a digital world. This, I would argue. The author writes a story about herself, writing a story about her Band, and the Band knows they’re in the story, about a story that interacts with you. She writes a story, where her audience is her muse – may demand she change the ending, in an installation we build in space — for dreams, on a loop…
The Band asked me to write tags for my work. Tags! But, opportunity or obstacle… the Muse is insatiable — until it works. Poets know that tick, when everything becomes art – in a second glance. Woodstock, was absolute freestyle in a digital world. I worked on it for weeks… and wrote it Live one Saturday afternoon – five hundred revisions at least. Poets know that tick. I changed commas to periods and back again – metaphors to imagery, slowed it down, sped it up. Reminisced. If you were there on that Saturday afternoon, Woodstock was a writer’s tick at work. I wrote the hook on the 7th Street Bridge in DC. Installed [Reserved][Reserved] when I lost my way. Found the beat, marked the spot, and then it looked like a digital art installation, in spite of the implications — for structural functionalism in space. But, my muse is pissed…
Tag: Yellow Tape [A Memoir]. “I don’t believe in coincidence. I believe in synchronicity…”
Tag: Woodstock. A Band for Immersive Content. A Woodstock Experience.
Tag: The Foreword to Insomnia’s Istanbul — The Voice of an Unreliable Narrator in Medias Res: Unlike the neighbors next door, who desperately moan for us all, in the back of a dolmus — sex is existentialism. It is earnest copulation, a period of decline in a carriage drawn by a wild-eyed spooked horse — and I hoped she felt the sharp turn, at the corner of the Soup Kitchen of Lady Nilufer, in her throat.
Tag: Love Divine: Tadao bathes Tess in a black granite tub. Then he slips behind her like an ice cream scoop. Blood spills like a waterfall in a Japanese dream over the side of the tub. Red water on the porcelain floor looks like a strawberry swirl.
Tag: Metafiction — [The Dollhouse] with the Red Corvette: [Vous êtes contrarié parce que je suis sorti du lit. Ce n’était pas ce que tu imaginais – dans le film dans ta tête. Je ne peux pas aller aux toilettes, quitter la pièce ou fumer une cigarette. smh]
Tag: Tagging Dystopia: [OdamnIwantedtheopportunitytocomefrommichelleO]
Tag: Aristotle Michelangelo and Louis Picasso’s Parallel Discussions: Come on baby. All you have to do is dream — from the end of a pen.
Tag: Luda’s Second Soliloquy — Miles Language II. [Metaphor].
Tag: [For The Purple One]
Tag: [The Life of Pie] He thought/Big Blue was a deeper trip/Absurd space looked/Absurd from here/He looked around the virtual/And mad shouted/Who read the pieces first?/Anyone?/How did it ring?/How did it feel?/How did it resonate?/She said, I started at the slices/Chaos, straight out the gate/When Big Blue was just/The sky.
Tag: Picasso The Bohemian (Les Demoiselles d’ Avignon) “…She told halcyon tales of life — uninterrupted by death and chthonian sex — like the brazen whore in the fore — riding the fugitive cube — with the wasp waist and black aft — Eucharistic grapes, and the curl of the rind — pointing to glorious thighs — and with eyes in the back of her head — she watched the spectator off center… watching — Picasso The Bohemian — who lived in Barcelona — standing behind the curtain — wearing a mask…”
Tag: Explode [Am I awake, or are you a dream?]
Tag: The Gaze (WIP) I know I needed to stay in and listen to music like Paz did and avoid humans — he said, “To read a poem is to hear it with our eyes; to hear it is to see it with our ears.” Instead, I left my home and this is what happened… Apparently, a new and poorly trained employee provided incorrect information over the phone. Consequently, I arrived unprepared, and had to return to my vehicle. Because, I had to return to my vehicle (in the rain) parked around the corner — I ultimately, received a ticket for expired meter! A ticket. What should have been a $26 transaction is now $76 in this crowded, greedy — unimaginative city!
Tag: Directing the Master Scene in the Mirror. It’s impossible to write poetry, without libido. Without libido, there’s no passion and without passion, there’s no pluck.
Black Marnie
Looked like [Mardou Fox]
through Kerouac’s eyes_
Remember… those puffy lips?
Yakuza found her in Tokyo
and lost her — in the Philippines….
[Wait… There’s a surprise at the end]_
They stole Alexa
She had all the poetry
Yakuza chased her through Tokyo
to the Phillipines
Alexa, was everything to him
Cream like the color of his skin
Ahh, the poetry
He lost everything
Fell in love with a haunting hunt
Baby, come back to me
Copyright © 2017, 2018 E Maria Shelton Speller All rights reserved.
Diptych — [Art] [Installation] — A Poet’s Tick
About a Prisoner of Love
About a Prisoner of Love (Props to Christopher Logue’s War Music: An Account of Homer’s Iliad)
Look at the smile on my face. I knew you were selfish. Abandoned, you left me on the side of the road. Gone. Put yourself in my place. Left, on the side of the road. Naked. I knew you would own me — broken and falling to pieces — in swirling storming faints. I would let you stand me on my head, spin me like a top, a dreidel — and catch me before I fell. Then, you said you would sleep with her because, “Why not? It’s not a competition — though you might win. Its not about… us.” That’s balls. CUT!
Copyright © 2017 by E Maria Shelton Speller. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Update #3 — Super News! Explode — The Writer’s Environment is a Spring 2017 Experiential Network (XN) Project Sponsor — for Northeastern University!
We have the solution, information architecture, documentation, literature, and wireframe design for Explode – The Writer’s Environment! Like Da Vinci’s sfumato – you can’t see it, but you know something’s back there!
The information architecture is flat, the wireframe is behind a VR scene/mechanism that looks non-logical for locating functions — but still has consistency for navigating users. Yingqian Jiang “Selina’s” design accommodates content – not just Explode’s content — any content.
To bring the project to fruition — Ms. Jiang and Northeastern University have agreed to a seamless hand-off of this milestone to the Northeastern University’s Experiential Network’s Spring Term 2017 — for ideally — two students:
- One Computer Science Student (PHP, HTML, CSS, and JavaScript)
- One Game Development Student (make videos interactive)
Selina designed an unprecedented prototype for content delivery. To share the documentation – and absolute vision at this juncture would be premature when we are striving for an immersive dynamic environment, with a game development engine, and a Storyboard to make the website rich and interactive on Go Live. This project is pushed back to the summer of 2017.
Thanks for hanging in here with us! Stand by for updates.
Escapades and Props (WIP)
Its Manhattan...
No.
Istanbul.
Istanbul’s Muse Board
June 2, 2017
Explode — The Writers Environment Experiential Network Project — has a girl band of STEMs! Stand by for updates.
May 19, 2017
You never appreciate home
As much as when you come home
Where God lives… with you
May 11, 2017
Haiku #13
Name baby something
Something easy to retrieve
Then share Me with friends
About a Prisoner of Love (Props to Christopher Logue’s War Music)
Look at the smile on my face. I knew you were selfish. Abandoned, you left me on the side of the road. Gone. Put yourself in my place. Left, on the side of the road. Naked. I knew you would own me — broken and falling to pieces — in halcyon swirls, dark storms, and faints. I would let you stand me on my head, spin me like a top, a dreidel — and catch me, before I fell. Then, you said you would sleep with her because, “Why not? It’s not a competition — though you might win. Its not about… us.” That’s balls. CUT!
April 9, 2017
Notes on Manhattan: This is not a Warhol ~ Basquiat Installation. I curated the Opening and a still – not the fucking gorgeous film. While it is lovely — I did not curate Manhattan. Not my composition — not my triptych. This space is for art — for the sake of art — unaltered. It’s Explode: The Writer’s Environment!
To curate content in this space, please contact me.
April 25, 2017
Thanks Halo Music!
Last night, a friend and I
took the Kimye Tour
in Cuba
I was a voyeur
A friend took him there and there and there
Unbeknown to him
I asked him if he knew where Kimye went
in Cuba
We roared and stumbled on together
Please please paint a picture…
Funny, you asked!
Copyright 2017 by E Maria Shelton Speller. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Update #2: Super News! Explode – The Writer’s Environment is a Summer, Fall and Winter Experiential Network (XN) Project Sponsor — for Northeastern University!
The XN project for Explode is conducting a poll to gather feedback on your experience and expectations for Explode – This Writer’s Environment. The poll should take no more than 4-5 minutes. Be assured all answers you provide will be kept in the strictest confidentiality.
With much gratitude and appreciation, please take this opportunity to participate in this XN project poll for Explode – This Writer’s Environment. Your voices are a critical component for the successful launch of the writer’s environment! Thanks!
The poll is located here:
Update #1: Super News! Explode – The Writer’s Environment is a Summer, Fall and Winter Experiential Network (XN) Project Sponsor — for Northeastern University!
It is my pleasure to introduce Yingqian “Selina” Jiang. Ms. Jiang is the NU XN Winter Term student for Explode – The Writer’s Environment! Selina, MS in Project Management with a concentration in Finance, and MS in Informatics – graduates this fall. Her academic projects include the Peking University Science and Engineering Building, the Movable Sidewalk for Logan Airport Terminal E, and the Casino in Mashpee. She is also a volunteer for the Japan Festival Boston Committee and the Mulan Non-profit Organization.
Ms. Jiang would like to conduct Voices of the Customer (VoC), or surveys if you will, to inform the project completion and launch of Explode – This Writer’s Environment in March 2017!
The XN survey would gather feedback on your experience and expectations for Explode, and should take no more than 4-5 minutes. Be assured all answers you provide will be kept in the strictest confidentiality.
Your voices are a critical component for the successful launch of the writer’s environment. With much gratitude and appreciation, please take this opportunity to participate in the survey, and join me in welcoming Ms. Jiang to the writer’s environment!
Woodstock! (WIP (x Bars))
Overture: Woodstock is an ensemble. There are two voices and the beat in this WIP… the Narrator’s voice, Hitchcock’s, and “That Yoni”. See Side Bar by JuseBeats!
In a walk through Whole Foods like Hitchcock
In his magnum opus
about a world… full of extras
in architectonic loops and links, alliteration and reverie, force, ballast, fancy partitions, linear renderings, systems of reckoning and more — of her…
He wants
Beddo, Caprino, Dolce Sardo
Zufi, the Saperavi
He nods
I’m thinking
Disappointed… in us!
[There’s no other way to say it — I can’t dress it up]
Caught between a slumbering scream and Vertigo
Cruising isles and isles of sweet and sour
People who think they are special
People who know they are not
People who wish they were
He wants
Beddo, Caprino, Dolce Sardo
Zufi, the Saperavi
Whispers prologue
Guess what we did?
A party of twenty
Three couples played before
winking and willing
shills playing in the round
Lovely trips on the Hill
in augmented VR
I’m thinking…
Baby boomers had their turn Woodstock!
Barefoot bell bottomed hippies
Denim sweeping the ground
Revolutionary hair — fists in the air
Dragging us back in the mud
Blunt antiquity
Move on Woodstock!
Take your shades, caps, change and loose articles
Bombs in black holes!
[Where did you go?]
We should be sunning in the Bahamas
chilling on hemp swings and
chairs swiveling in immersive environments
Higher than kite fights
A soaring for points experience
Get off the ride Woodstock!
You had your turn — at freedom
Exit signs are easy to find — look
The dragon is in the window
Freedom is accessible
Wonder is a trip
with walk through assistants
Dreams of power and prizes
Optional…
Fall out and Jack into
a walk through Whole Foods like Hitchcock
in his magnum opus
about a world… full of extra
architectonic loops and links, alliteration and reverie, force, ballast, fancy partitions, linear renderings, systems of reckoning — and more — of her… virtually surreal
He wants
Beddo, Caprino, Dolce Sardo
Zufi, the Saperavi
Whispers song
We don’t want to feel we’re high…
We just want to think we’re high
in Dubai
We don’t want to feel we’re high…
We just want to think we’re high
in Dubai
Copyright 2016 E Maria Shelton Speller
“It is said that what is called “the spirit of an age” is something to which one cannot return. That this spirit gradually dissipates is due to the world’s coming to an end. For this reason, although one would like to change today’s world back to the spirit of one hundred years or more ago, it cannot be done. Thus it is important to make the best out of every generation.” ― Tsunetomo Yamamoto
and this
“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.” Albert Einstein
Cheers! I would also like to thank 40K poets at heart (like us) on FB et al, who like and love, and laugh, and mislike this WIP! Please pardon the broken link… We’re working on it. However, this glitch is an opportunity to say thank you for being in this Writer’s Environment with me. Happy Holidays and have a wonderful New Year!
The Life of Pie
Copyright ©2016 E Maria Shelton Speller. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Super News! Explode – The Writer’s Environment is a Summer and Fall Experiential Network (XN) Project Sponsor — for Northeastern University!
XN is a new initiative from Northeastern University (NU) that offers graduate and professional students and sponsoring organizations experiential opportunities to collaborate on short-term, real-world projects in the best co-op program in the country, and positions NU as the global leader in experiential learning! Organizations move forward on project-based work and connect with rising professional talent while students gain real work experience and valuable learning opportunities.
Students have a range of skill-sets including digital media and marketing, data analytics, corporate and nonprofit project management, regulatory strategy, communications management and the Creative Digital Solution for a VR/Game-Inspired Concept for Explode – The Writer’s Environment during the Summer, Fall and Winter Terms of 2016!
Details included the Project Description:
Explode – This Writer’s Environment is a Kick Starter Project 2.0. The first launch is what Rita Gunther McGrath calls, “failing by design”. The launch was admittedly, a treatment to direct investors to Explode, as well as a serious foray, to define content while using the Writers Environment as a springboard to other experiences. That unsuccessful project was a lost opportunity, but an intelligent fail. Explode — The Writer’s Environment is space for visionaries — Poets, Writers, Coders, Programmers, Filmmakers, Thespians, Graphic Designers, Artists, Musicians, Directors, Cinematographers, Designers, Educators, Historians, Actors, Conceptual and Performance artists, Photographers, and finally, Virtual Reality Developers and Designers. It is a platform for curated content, in an interactive meta-environment – that pulls and pushes information. The Environment facilitates content and other stories – using digital media for curated art to redefine how artists, their audience and visitors experience real and virtual content. The project details included problems to be solved, goals, and deliverables — scheduled for completion March 2017.
Please stand by. See updates! Thank you for your continued support! Let’s rock and roll!
WAR AND PEACE BURIED HERE
One Single Act of Love
I sold a rock opus to the best Black rock band on the planet. A band that lost its capacity to dream. Formulaic guarantees skewed their imagination for platinum discs. The male coward covered their lifework, literally. My story reminded them of what ‘rushing’ felt like, how complete, how deep blushing could be obvious. And they bought it, and produced it. And it was good — it was better than good. It was thought provoking and it was an African-American affirmation of our realities and our fantasies — no matter how unrealistic.
Suddenly, they were very significant and the world truly believed, that rock music is black music and black music is everything. Power is aesthetic. Aesthetics is politics and being black is philosophical and our philosophy is phenomenology and being black, is being real.
No Hip Hop could say as much as this rock opus did, ever — no matter how many stories they sampled. So, this black rock band were crowned kings and were exulted, and revered; incandescent icons, the envy of friends, the consumption of man, the image of immortality — like the stained-glass heaven you summon before you close. And they loved me. I was the wick in their candlestick and without me, there was no burning flame. I was the source of their energy. I, was the unstained virgin encamped.
Sooner than anyone imagined, there was nothing more important, than our collaboration. The media was our medium. They stopped referring to me as a writer, and started calling me, a Love Supreme…..
Copyright 2016 by E Maria Shelton Speller. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Aristotle Michelangelo and Louis Picasso’s Parallel Discussions
Aristotle Michelangelo and Louis Picasso’s
Parallel Discussions (In Medias Res) Overtaken by Events
Behind Pushkin’s Coffeehouse, Aristotle Michelangelo and Louis Picasso sat on the remnants of a barge, trading barbs in Ibiza… swinging high top leather sock hip hop sneakers, and creeper boots in blue green virtual water, with Rick Owens’ reflection in the pool, burning fat ones – away from the beautiful ones — in a Period Piece. The Darlings of today’s literati — visionaries during the Harlem Renaissance, play themselves in a satirical throwback in VR.
Louis Picasso: “In RL, it’s 6 P.M. You just got home from work or you work from home in your virtual office. You decide to spend the evening in space! You scan Balmain for your Avatar – dope fashion — with as much audacity as Hype Williams’ black lacquered Keisha in Belly — wearing Versace!
You decide to download your brand new Porsche designed by Porsche and Atari for Microsoft, on the Pacific Coast Highway — Malibu on the left, Pepperdine University on the right, you’re on your way to virtual LA in the fast lane — your thighs are burning. Other avatars and their cars share the PCH too — driving Vipers, Corvettes, the white BMW X6 and you are speeding at 100 MIPS, streaming Coltrane.
Aristotle Michelangelo interjects: “Then you decide to go to BET’s virtual Nuyorican Café in Gotham City for the Open Mike – Saul Williams and Jessica Care Moore are featured (as themselves) tonight. You hand the keys to the valet — pay at the door with your password, sit front row center no matter what time you arrive, sign up to read your poem — because you can start over from the beginning or resume. Gender! Lame. Race is unimaginative in Space. Ethnicity is a brand — at best. The Open Mike is over at 10 P.M. but there is still time to go to Bar Pitti. You walk in and Claude McKay is at the bar in a heated debate with Ralph Ellison about literary ownership — by Netflix.
McKay shouts and then nearly whispers to Ellison, ‘It takes more than creative androgyny to “embody” the opposite sex. The storytelling responsibility of all writers, whether female or male is to fill the void. When a woman creates a man, she must imagine the sensation of “owning” a penis. When a man creates a woman, he must imagine the sensation of “owning” a vagina. It is a void, not a vacuum. A vacuum would imply the all-consuming black hole — the feminization of sex. It is not trained comprehension or chromosomes — it takes pure imagination to get the story straight…’
Louis Picasso: “Then, at Midnight, you blow kisses and wuggles to your friends, and log off. You stand and stretch your back, and your bladder is bursting because you forgot about your biological realities. The television is off; it has been off for weeks. Why watch television when you can be your own audience? Randall Walser said it best, “The filmmaker says, ‘Look, I’ll show you.’ The space maker says, ‘Here, I’ll help you discover.’ We will be our own creators functioning like actors in high culture — tools of the taste public! We will create our own universes — our own planets. We can superimpose our images circa 6 BC – AD 30, and follow Jesus to the Promised Land, witness the crucifixion – and how we feel and what we think is utterly private and without commercials! Because, global messages with common appeal will forever change with today’s technology, the challenge is to make communication visual, images symbolic, and still sell product… I want to propose arcane ideas…”
Aristotle Michelangelo interjects: “I want to develop, manage, and direct vision. My goal is to be where imagination and business are indistinguishable, because imagination without business, and business without imagination is as incongruous as capitalism without consumers… I found a dope quote dog!”
“When, she was still in her teens, well before she met Caesar, Cleopatra already had slept with Antony… though Caesar was fifty-three and she but twenty-three or so she proved ready enough to bed her third Roman. It is said that Cleopatra was a woman of lively turn and enticing talents. She also had a keen sense of the political. That this Roman [Caesar] conqueror had the power to secure the Egyptian throne for her must have added to the attraction she felt for him…Caesar established her in a sumptuous villa across the Tiber, from which she held court, while political leaders, financiers, and men of letters, including the renowned Cicero, danced in attendance.” Michael Parenti
Louis Picasso: I’m reading the same book, and I have a better one!
“In a prologue to Caesar and Cleopatra [George Bernard Shaw] that is almost never performed, the god Ra tells the audience how Rome discovered that ‘the road to riches and greatness is through robbery of the poor and slaughter of the weak.’ In conformity with that dictum, the Romans ‘robbed their own poor until they became great masters of that art, and knew by what laws it could be made to appear seemly and honest.’ And after squeezing their own people dry, they stripped the poor throughout the many other lands they conquered.” Michael Parenti
Aristotle Michelangelo: Shrugged his shoulders unconsciously, “Chez Bricktop in Paris?”
Louis Picasso: Not now. I am having a violent reaction to prescription drugs! My body is like, ‘Don’t put that shit down here again!’ They gave me all this medication for Acute Caesarion whatever — and I took it! Of course, you don’t exhaust the shit. You’re not an idiot. But, what the fuck? Where the weed at?”
Aristotle Michelangelo: I think it would be dope to channel Kerouac’s apology for automatic writing.
“He likened writing to dreaming and fantasizing, as a substitute for life. So, he wrote The Subterraneans, in three days and nights of speed typing energized by Benzedrine — to imitate the rhythm of Bebop like free energy flow, and unrestrained association, to reveal the unconscious… because he wanted to flow from inside out in spontaneous prose!” Dystopia, Explode 2015 2.0
So, here goes… They called her Marnie — behind her back. I was torn. I played with variations of Marnie. Black Marnie. Brown Marnie, Tortilla Marnie. It’s the language of found art. Bansky, Kehinde, Jazz, Hip Hop… They teased each other. Hitchcock’s Margaret, Mary, Marnie, teases Mark, so she could get the combination, to his company safe, and steal the money. She was a Kleptomaniac, a compulsive thief. A killer. She disappears. On the run! He tracks her like an animal, and finds her at a Lodge, riding her horse to the stables. He orders her off the horse, tells her she’ll walk — he’ll ride. He interrogates her. She tells him a bullshit story she can’t keep straight. He calls it, manure! Tells her to start over from the beginning, and this time — tell the truth. Back at the Lodge – he tells her to freshen up, change her clothes so he might take her to the police – she thinks. She does not know… It’s Tippi Hedren in RL! The white woman of a black man’s dreams – when he dreams about white women. Blonde, pearly white teeth and skin — Barbie! Beckie! He tells her, they will return to ‘the house’ and announce they are engaged, would to be married within the week and then cruise around the world. Of course, she thinks he’s “Out of his mind!” He told her, it was either marriage or the police, old girl. Black Marnie. Who would play her?
They get married. Eventually he takes her virginity. She tries to commit suicide. I don’t think I want to go there… Suicide. Who should play Mark? [#nomoreslavestories.] Does he catch her?
Louis Picasso: I remember that story. He said, I caught a real animal this time. I had to train her… to trust me.*
Aristotle Michelangelo: Pussy Riot danced in the cathedral — goes to jail, and the artist nailed his scrotum to the Red Square. She’s a prisoner of love. That kind of love makes me uncomfortable, racked, and anguished like a pet must be around possessive people. The energy is ignitable like the choice between blowing up and letting go. I don’t want to belong to anyone. But, what do I know about love?
Louis Picasso: Black people don’t like black people. That’s why we’re in this — hole… barrel, bucket, duck it, fuck it… We know it’s true. Listen to the tonal center of this beat!
Aristotle Michelangelo: In sixty revolutions a minute, if it’s not organic, I can’t get with it. Hate is not organic. Hate is a social construct. I want to live the life I swam to the egg for… A social construct is like zoon pushed to the egg, by stronger swimmers behind it. It’s still goal niggaz. I want an organic experience on this gridiron. A certain freedom, mere man can’t give, conceive or contrive. I want freedom Divine. You want to be free — you have to fuggin’ work for it. Zufi?
Aristotle Michelangelo: You need money, software and rigs in the virtual world. Bombs are obsolete. Race and gender is a pastiche — game challenges for points.
Louis Picasso: Beauty and power is iconography and homely stamps are hiccups – and brick and mortar is a path to experience the destruction of daredevils and matadors — in coliseums of pestilence and poverty – empirically.
Aristotle Michelangelo: Why go there? When, life is a perfect dream in a virtual world.
Louis Picasso: IJS. Get on board with — evolution. Evolution is not physical space. It’s the diamond life in our heads on a loop. Its VR not the moon…
Aristotle Michelangelo: I love wearing the mask! You can’t see my countenance — in La La Land, my eyes may smile. My lip may curl up or down… I’m an introvert; an INTJ — is that Caprino?
Louis Picasso: Now that Juneteenth is a federal holiday, it will be impossible to ignore slavery in America… Why are some Black Americans worrying about slavery in America being taught in schools? The horse is out of the barn! Instead of embracing Juneteenth and all that it implies… Black Americans are WHINING and using the language of slaves, “they won’t, let us, allow us, give us and get…” Instead black Americans are still looking the other way when a black man drags a black woman by her hair [DC], and black people are murdered by black people in Chicago – for giggles. June 19, 2021 marks the day, that Black America must acknowledge that ‘we’ are no longer slaves and assume responsibility — that’s what freedom is.
Copyright 2016, 2018, 2020 E Maria Shelton Speller. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast rewritten or redistributed without permission.
*Alfred Hitchcock, Marnie
The Purple One
Prince Rogers Nelson
June 7, 1958 – April 21, 2016
The Purple One
I remember writing
Love Letters
For souls that bow out
Like bosses
You wrote that elevator ending
Pennies for your music
Paeans for the soul
of the Purple Dove
Copyright 2016 by E Maria Shelton Speller. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
The Wonderment
Why does black on black crime matter less than black lives matter?
Black on black crime is the consequence of a broken man
Black lives matter is the consequence of a broken system
Fix the broken system
fix the broken man >>>>
Copyright 2016 E Maria Shelton Speller. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Bernardo Bertolucci passed away today, November 26, 2018 — RIP
- The Sheltering Sky
- The Dreamers
- The Last Emperor
- The Conformist
Dada — Lost and Found — Triptych
Doing nothing
and falling
I would be nosey
like numbers on analytics
Floating lollipops and gummy bears
Copyright 2016 E Maria Shelton Speller. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
On the 48th year since the assassination of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. — the language for this mash-up, was for the revolutionary icon.
Kickstarter Project Launched for Explode ~ This Writer’s Environment
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/292481963/explode-project-99
Copyright 2016 by E Maria Shelton Speller. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
2015 in review
There are so many poets in here with us! I love it. Thank you!
WordPress.com prepared a 2015 Annual Report for Explode. Happy New Year. Peace 2016!
PS: A couple of broken pointers disappeared — at least 7800 likes for the Soliloquies… Guilty.
Here’s an excerpt:
The Louvre Museum has 8.5 million visitors per year. This blog was viewed about 86,000 times in 2015. If it were an exhibit at the Louvre Museum, it would take about 4 days for that many people to see it.
Happy Holidays Poets! Played Like a Diptych — A Triptych…
She gets played like a Diptych – in a Triptych…
Happy Holidays Poets!
by E Maria Shelton Speller
It happened at a Springboard Party… She barely glanced at me. Looked at my woman like… Her locs were in a ponytail — they have to be down her fucking back… when our friends shouted at the screen, “The Screening Room. The furthest found.”
Copyright 2015, 2016 by E Maria Shelton Speller. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
ONE ACT PLAY — SPRINGBOARD’S CURTIN* CALL
CAST RETURNS TO THE STAGE — DANCE CLOSE
If you can, imagine Seven Whole Days on repeat… and you were raised in the city of Boston — where Playhouse in the Park is the only alternative to hot house parties, in Orchard Park or Ruggles Street — and dancing room is a premium for a chilly Bostonian, with a New England attitude.
When four seasons and rapid transit affords you the opportunity to go anywhere at any time, wearing everything a Bostonian can — properly — weather be damned… then you know how much space love demands. In an apartment when body heat is canned and cool, you learn to slow dance in the place you pick with just the space between grace and pressure. Boston, is the only city in America that knows how to have sex on legs. If you think it’s a mere grind — you can’t dance in a vacuum. The only thing a man can do, if he’s not a Bostonian, is let the lady lead when she is a Bostonian, and hope — its a long song.
Copyright 2004, and 2015 by E Maria Shelton Speller (Explode: Epic Poetry ~ Excerpt from (Behind Pushkin’s Coffee House)), and the One Act Play — Springboard! All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
*This is not a curtain.
Luda’s Second Soliloquy — Miles Language II
If I could write language
that speaks and points….
At trumpets
when the moon is tone
and the sun is sfumato
See… the chiaroscuro Supreme
[dream in hue]
magenta, chrome, cherry-white
[mixed with blue fugue]
Put-the-night to sleep!
See Sisyphus scorn
at amber headlights
in Paris dew
Skin seeking skin
and birds seeking
[the flutter of feathers]
ink… that runs like blood
on paper… that does not bleed
Contrapposto poets
succumbing to peaches
Dogs… suspended
like meat in Seoul
[In the dawn]
She comes home
the moon is a beat
the sun is trill…
Dada responds
to Surrealism
Hip Hop responds
to R&B
[The trumpet responds]
to me
bebop bebop bebop bebop blam!
Fa Falala…
Copyright 2004, 2015 by E Maria Shelton Speller. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Inspired by Miles Davis’ Bitches Brew and Zurich Dadaist Hugo Ball who according to Arnason’s thesis on Ball’s conventional language “had no more place in poetry than the outworn human image in painting, Ball produced a chant of more or less melodic syllables without meaning: ‘zimzim urallala zimzim zanzibar zimlalla zam.’ “
ONE ACT PLAY — SPRINGBOARD!
FLASH DRAMA
Genre: Comedy
9 actors
Duration: 10 mins
CAST OF CHARACTERS
Cece – Art Curator, Poet
Tess – Communicator
Lena – Data Scientist
Wife – Analyst
Wife — Homemaker
Said – Data Scientist
Etan – Consultant
Luda – Data Scientist and aspiring Poet
Kent – Data Scientist
ACT 1 — Installation Art (Sit next to me)
The scene takes place in a private home theater under a Proscenium arch. Stage right is a door to the dining area. Stage left is a door to the great room. Upstage is a grand screen.
It is Tess and Said’s turn to host the Football Sunday dinner party for three married couples – their closest friends. Tess’ single BFF, CeCe with the gratuitous beauty, on everyone’s dream team (and it is rude to stare) is visiting from the city – and having so much more to offer, as usual she is flying too close to the sun and upsetting the social balance.
CECE: I have a story to tell! I promise you — you’re going to love it! You simply must experience it. The absolute audacity of the writer is stunning. She’s THAT motherfucker. (Giggle) That bitch. Tricky — Romanticist. Epic like the Iliad…
(RESTLESS MOVEMENT)
ALL
We’re watching the game… in a minute.
CECE: But, wait…
CONVERSATIONS HAPPENING IN THE ROUND END DOWNSTAGE
UPSTAGE
SAID: Of course you have data. Do you know how to use it? Give me data. I’ll give you algorithms… synced with the principles of Six Sigma. It’s over.
TESS: I said, If you don’t knock on my door, someone else will.
STAGE LEFT
ETAN: Evidently, you’re attracted to me, and I applaud you for knowing who you want. I’m flattered. But, I don’t sway that way.
WIFE: What did he say?
ETAN: “It doesn’t matter.”
WIFE: Oh! O-kay… (LOOKS AWAY STAGE RIGHT WITH A GAFFAW) He’s funny.
ETAN: Define funny.
WIFE: Funny is funny.
ETAN: What’s funny to you, may not be funny to me.
WIFE: Are we going to go back and forth on what is funny? I want to talk about something else. I want to talk about Project #99 (GAFFAW) Again. You pushed me… But, it was good. It’s true. Where was I? I’m crazy! Yeah. No doubt… (LOOKS AWAY) But, I love you.
TWO BEATS
WIFE: I’m kickstarting my project this week. (THROWS HEAD BACK DEFIANTLY)
(BEFORE WHISPERING IN HER EAR)
ETAN: “Sex packets …”
WIFE: (SUDDENLY) You said, I would be your wife, not your slave.
DOWNSTAGE LENA WHISPERS TO LUDA AND THE AUDIENCE
LENA: So, what if it’s all true? Does that give you the right to kick my ass and keep it moving? You’re a mutation. It does not sound like we’re the lazy ones. We will survive. You will not… and if that’s true why would I compete with you, when you are doing all the work? You cannot survive without us. We’re going with. Wouldn’t you?
LUDA: Human DNA enlarges mouse brains.
(LENA LOOKS AWAY STAGE LEFT WITH A THROATY LAUGH)
(LUDA TURNS TO THE AUDIENCE WITH A SOLILOQUY
STAGE RIGHT
HOMEMAKER: Look babe, it’s tulle and mesh — and if I bend over just right…
KENT: I am not going to kiss your ass (Chuckles)
HOMEMAKER: Why not? You’ve been kissing it.
KENT: Don’t try to goad me into an argument to justify your own.
HOMEMAKER: I’m just saying… if it’s in our heads, it’s pure fantasy. Don’t float what you imagine out here in the void, like what you think is really real. If it’s not real… like your hands on me — it’s fiction. You cannot possibly know what I think, how I feel, how I will respond to your bullshit… or even how you will respond to mine. I thought? When was the last time you imagined a confrontation? Of course, it never happens like the movies in our heads. Not even close! But, to be content to covet the same dreams, is so… unimaginative. Is that the best we can do? To be part of a crowd? Look at me. (VOGUES) I am the fastest swimmer in a sea of zoon!
KENT: (Chuckles) Who the fuck are you reading lately?
HOMEMAKER: (Playfully) We have to spend more time together! I do have a wonderful quote… “I have a lesson for you. Do you want it?”
KENT: “I have a lesson for you. Do you want it?” Who said that?
HOMEMAKER: My mother… in so many words.
KENT: He called me Money.
(HE BEGINS LIKE A STORY SHE’S HEARD BEFORE)
KENT: (CONTINUES) He said, I want a boy who gets what he came for. A boy who knows he’s the strongest swimmer in a sea of zoon. It’s true, a boy could have been pushed by stronger swimmers behind him. Like Mad Max. I want a boy who would survive the hood. A boy that knows changing direction is nothing. The trick is to breathe again. That’s the boy I want. Do you think you could be that boy? I would sit up straight, tip my head, and say, Yes Sir. I’m that boy.
HOMEMAKER: Every time you tell that story I’d forget to mention, it feels like he’s looming over you. What were you sitting on?
KENT: My potty chair… I thought you knew?
HOMEMAKER: Oh no. He didn’t! (GIGGLES) Your father is bananas.
KENT AND HOMEMAKER LAUGH TOGETHER
KENT: Jules Winfield reciting Ezekiel.
HOMEMAKER: That’s why you’re so ambitious. I love that about you, Honey. Look at us! We’re a Stupid Power Couple.
KENT: (CHUCKLES) The first time we met, I wondered… how does THAT work? (LAUGHS)
(HOMEMAKER FIGHTS A SMILE)
KENT: You said, “I’m not looking for a husband.”
(BOTH LAUGH ON KEY)
HOMEMAKER: You want to play with me? Are you sure? Are you sure? Are you sure?
STAGE LEFT
(HUDDLING WITH HIS SILENT WIFE)
ETAN: Conscious decisions are all that I can respect. Don’t cling to insanity, or criminal passion, or peer pressure, or social expectations. Don’t talk to me about losing control — momentarily. Or, the poverty and violence of pain heaped upon more pain because you’re black. This is not a gang-rape. This is not Dionysia all over again, where women and children are sacrificed, and blood is beer. If I change my language, the outcome will still be the same… (STOP)
(THREE BEATS)
ETAN: Jack Kerouac… likened writing to dreaming and fantasizing, as a substitute for life. So, he wrote The Subterraneans, in three days and nights of speed typing energized by Benzedrine — to imitate the rhythm of Bebop like free energy flow and unrestrained association to reveal the unconscious… because he wanted to flow from inside out in spontaneous prose! Am I going to read that trippy book again, with absolutely no punctuation period, when I can imagine my very own Mardou Fox?
STARING OPENLY AT ETAN, LUDA STOPS LISTENING AND LOOKING UP TO THE HEAVENS, STROKES HIS BEARD, AND TURNS TO THE AUDIENCE WITH A SECOND SOLILOQUY.
LUDA TURNS AWAY FROM HIS AUDIENCE AND LOOKS STAGE RIGHT AT KENT
A PHONE HELD IN KENT’S HAND ILLUMINATES HIS FACE. KENT SPEAKS LOUD [AS IF] SIGNALING THE END
KENT: A black man is charged with burning black Churches in St. Louis Missouri…
KENT LOOKS UP FROM THE SCREEN. HIS FACE IS STILL. EYES UNFOCUSED. HE MOVES HIS LIPS.
KENT: Unbelieveable.
HOMEMAKER: I’m gonna’ need to pinch him.
KENT AND THE HOMEMAKER THROW THEIR HEADS BACK IN HEARTY LAUGHTER. THE HOMEMAKER SUDDENLY STOPS AND LOOKS AT KENT. WHISPERS.
HOMEMAKER: Wake up, blue pill.
THE HOMEMAKER LOOKS AT THE AUDIENCE — IN A MONOLOGUE — LOUDER THAN KENT.
HOMEMAKER: It’s the Age of STEM. With VRs for your fancies, imagining aggressions you never lose. Where are we going? Who are we doing? How shall we dress for the joie de vivre? I want to meet the best Black Rock Band on the planet and their Muse; to be the woman in the Dolmus, the Driver, Simon… I want to hear Luda deliver his soliloquies in a courtyard enclosed by trees, with stapled bark once covered with flyers — for missing pets, and outworn, archaic, and unimaginative campaigns and trade for sale or giveaway. I want to be where someone says, I have a story to tell, and those who’ve heard the story reply, we’re watching the game in a minute… I know how the story ends.
(WITH A MONA LISA SMILE)
HOMEMAKER: (TAGGING) I am sorry, but, honestly, the 21st Century is so… contrived. (STOPS SHORT OF LAUGHTER) Let’s move along.
CENTER STAGE
CECE: We have plenty of time! Indulge me. I’m going to read it.
(MORE RESTLESS MOVEMENT)
CECE: Come on! It’s my birthday! Okay, it’s not my birthday….Listen! This is a quote from Interview magazine. I think it’s poetic. “I use pot for depression, and I am depressed often. When I am high, I am very creative, and because my word is work in progress, I have no regrets. Self actualization is anticlimactic… I am the hopeless writer. I spent most of my life being angry that I, didn’t have an audience that would pay for my work. Girls, gotta’ make a living. It’s amazing what turns people on. It’s not at all what I imagined. I spent too much time trying to create a persona, when I am one. I suppose it’s okay to spend your life chasing a dream. You have to have one or two to live for.” She’s extra… Did I mention Ovid?
If you don’t like it (PAUSE) I’ll blow every cock in the room.
HUSBANDS
Whoa! What? Fuck? Really?
WIVES
Shut up! Girl! Bitch! Are you crazy?
Luda’s Soliloquy — Miles Language I
If I could write a poem
with the language
of sound
strings, keys… lisps
Cylinders spheres cones… lines
Miles tripping
Turning turning in melody
Blowing brass trees
whispering through trim lips
white horses, white horses
Standing over Princes
Cries cries
Cry like a woman
whirling in
an eddy of tongue…
Words wedded together
Like brothers
Kidnapping daughters*
A mind fuck
A dark defining gaze…
Words you see in 4D
You smell reed
fingers tremble
skin riffs
Words with the sigh of a Diva
Mad Mad like
Zeus on a bad rape
When you look up from the page
You will not see me
Molesting you with crazed
language…
Copyright 2004, 2015 E Maria Shelton Speller
* Peter Paul Rubens’ The Rape of the Daughters of Leucippus
Inspired by Miles Davis’ embouchure
Bars and Verses for the South Side (Inspired by Kendrick Lamar’s The Blacker the Berry)
You are here
In front of the Mona Lisa
Provoking six million gags a year
Dismissing she’s da Vinci in drag
You are here
So valuable she can’t be insured
Sfumato eyes and slanted smile
Dangle like sneakers…. on a pole
I can hear you thinking
You are here
You are here
You are here
You are here
Bored with near misses and boors
And the fealty of Jim Crow fifty years ago
Riding a labyrinth carousel in the wilderness
You are here… before the fiery furnace
Freedom not long actually happened
While you were sleeping unaccountable
Transfixed on transitions a half-century ago
Don’t pretend you know what’s going on
We are here beyond the status quo
Beyond owning cable movies until 2024
Beyond the fear of dread before joy
Where do we go from here?
I know, they know, he knows, she knows
Like assumptions on the street is folly
Free your children what can you do for them?
Who are we?
Where conceptions… are constructions
Subject to… demystifications
Like symbols are… adroit for points
Take your children… Over there!
Over there
Away from you
Away from me
Away from them
Away from he
Away from she
Who are we?
Freedom!
You are here
Over there
Away from you
Away from me
Away from them
Away from he
Away from she
Who are we?
Free them!
There are non-profit-tax-exempt boarding schools
For girls and boys who would die on the fourth of July
Because snitches get stitches and fathers disappear
It was an easy sale – – – –
Wooed scholars thinkers and Morehouse men
With paeans and promises for the liberal emergence of altruism
With curriculums and schools of thought designed by them
It was an easier sale – – – –
Bernanke, Chomsky, Aslan, Witten
Micheaux, Baldwin, Davis, Marsalis
Thompson, Sir Timothy, Nash – – – –
Gates, Plato, Picasso, and Sowell
Over there where students create Kickstarter projects
Before the class trip to Paris, France in the fall
Parents watch their children dance under the balustrade
On the sunken floor after the Science Fair on Saturday morn
Where conceptions… are constructions
Subject to… demystifications
Like symbols are… adroit for points
Take your children… Over there!
Over there
Away from you
Away from me
Away from them
Away from he
Away from she
Who are we?
Freedom!
You are here
Over there
Away from you
Away from me
Away from them
Away from he
Away from she
Who are we?
Free them!
Cunning like military brats have to be
Wearing class A red cardigans and purity rings
Watching Venus north of the crescent moon in the dome
Reengineering the next generation
I called myself a Ghost writer
I never claimed to be one
But Talking heads and Rhodes Scholars
Join the flute girls at the grog bowl serving sharp edges and chum
This life is a bizarro disinvestment
But, before you head home by GPS
Where the last honest man is on video
Here’s a bar and verse… for the road
Our Father who art in heaven – – – –
Hallowed be your name
Thy kingdom come
Thy will be done
On earth
As it is in heaven – – – –
Where God given gifts are never squandered
You are here in the foyer with problem and solution
Where common sense is not enough
Where who and what is forever kitschy
Affirmation is a function of negation and vice versa*
Social constructs are under siege and should be
Where talking heads shut the fuck up!
Free them!
You’re welcome to stay for Church
Or join Yogi… Temple
Copyright ©2015 by E Maria Shelton Speller. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
*Octavio Paz
Transition… (Dedicated to the Survivors of the Charleston Massacre)
In the body of Christ
Du Bois looked at Martin,
“Martin, what do you think?”
Martin looked down
tried to suppress a certain cry
reaching, he wiped a tear
from Du’s eye.
Transcript: Obama Delivers Eulogy for Clementa Pinckney — By Steven Dennis
Copyright 2004, 2015 by E Maria Shelton Speller, Explode. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Cowboys and Indians and Torture Stories (WIP)
We watched a lot of television
when we were children
Barbie and Ken went to the Theater
to see Porgy and Bess
I am reminded that we liked
“Torture Stories”
The medieval thumbscrew
Spartacus and the rack
Cowboys and Indians!
We rooted for the Indians
They were savages
and were portrayed so
When the Indians tortured the Cowboys
We liked it! Remember?
Then there were “Slave Stories”
Black people looked nothing like us
Slaves were bad people
They deserved to be whipped
When Slaves ran from their masters
for the Underground Railroad*
We screamed on ivory soaped knees
“Catch that nigga!”
Running like those colored people
in the Civil Rights Movement
Before my mother told me rather plainly
You are Colored too
Copyright 2015 by E Maria Shelton Speller. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
* “The entrance to the Underground Railroad remains unknown. After leaving our tunnel, slaves would try to make their way as far north as possible. There are no records as to who went through the tunnel or how many.” First African BC Savannah, Georgia
Lust for TIDAL — The Sweet Sixteen
Someone has to go with Ego
To the story about the story inside the poem
On ground eroding under sweet feet
Where dreams so real are accessible
and parodies will do
Epic stories tied to epic tracks
One point perspectives
and narcissistic points of view
Aural stories linked to sublime beats:
The gift between Agamemnon and Achilles
The Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals
between Socrates and Kant
An opus for Free Angela and all Political Prisoners
Her quiet laughter at the end
Why should Kim go alone to France?
Fie for Shame! Blood hath been shed…*
Make room for Superego!
Believing the fiction they think
They know
It’s true
Someone has to go with Id
Those streaming millennial Randites!
kissing clicks on tours
happy blowing up Karaoke machines again
Dénouement: This whimsical WIP is for the sixteen owners of Tidal High Fidelity Music Streaming! Turn it up!
Copyright 2015 by E Maria Shelton Speller. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
*The Tragedy of Macbeth, William Shakespeare
The Gaze (Work in Progress)
Gazing at the gaze…
Marcel Duchamp’s Nude Descending a Staircase…
Françoise Nielly Les Diaboliques…
Sergio Davanzo’s Pittore ~ Sonnet 18…
Arne Quinze The Sequence Brussels…
Marco Perego’s Talk Is Cheap...
Kehinde Wiley Officer of the Hussars…
Kal Gajoum Piccadilly Traffic…
Frank Lloyd Wright’s Falling Water House…
Domingo Zapata’s 11 Minutes Exhibit…
Picasso’s Les-Demoiselles d’Avignon…
Kent Bellows Gluttony Self-Portrait…
Gentileschi Bourgeois O’Keefe…
What was she thinking?
To see her muse
To be her muse
It is not enough to gaze at the gaze
How did he feel?
What did she say?
I cannot simply be a spectator in a cheap seat
or, a participant on a glancing spree
I imagine her backing away
Viola! A masterpiece!
A glass of wine
A bottle of wine
A toast
Apollo 13*
It’s over
Finite!
Some ritual
Dirty paint
A bath
A bird in the fist
A shout
A sandwich
Sex on Fragonard’s swing
with fiddles and strings,
and Citizen Cope,
Sublimated and subliminal guilt
Sin and complicated insanity
Dismissal
Let yourself out!
I have a canvas to make,
a gaze to paint
Red red red.
Copyright 2014 by E Maria Shelton Speller. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Brianna Perry’s Marilyn Monroe
The Orange Line II
On the Orange Line
some carried
boom boxes like briefcases
babies like groceries
and stout little bottles
like bibles
protected inside brown bags
from thumping
It’s about what people do
and what people say
On the Orange Line
On the Orange Line
I can see Michelangelo’s innerness
like the monk
the anonymous critic
who said, “The David”
is a homoerotic composition
a platonic love for the male body
that approaches erotic dimensions
On the Orange Line
with so little movement
on this human-scape
Clean and safe
inside the rubber doors
deliberately close to the gallows
David wanted out of his dirty world
When he described the disorder
Giovanni built cathedrals on his back
and rose windows with his hands for him
On the Orange Line
On the Orange Line
My father looked at me
like Noah looked at Ham
when Ham looked at Noah
as if he did something
ungodly and unplatonic
to him
In love so completely ruptured
Ham tried to stay
the flow of blood
with women too beautiful
for proverbs
Their eyes were
divining rods
for sex and dreaming
On the Orange Line
On the Orange Line
They beat him down on the threshing floor
he was too beautiful for words
They gave him something to cry about
and like the Egyptians
they sodomized him in turn
For the sake of the Orange Line
they made him their little boy
For the sake of the Orange Line
On the Orange Line
The housenegro in church on Sunday
said nothing about who would
be bought and
who would be sold
on the auction block tomorrow
and no one asked, and no one told…
What do you do when your enemy
goes to the same church you go to?
On the Orange Line
without room for rapture
or space for rape
I rested my stop on
my fingers
and the mad boy
the made boy
came on
Political obscenities abound!
The Million Women March
will reproduce
the matriarchal society
and transform it into what ~
new and improved Black Madonnas?
The Million Women March
legitimizes
the Million Man March
without the benefit of prudence
When the Million Man March
goes down in history
as an epic tragedy
you have facilitated
the perpetuation
of the sacrificial black woman
You risk the future
of born and unborn children
for generations to come
Duplicating unwise
and circumscribed politics
The fat lady is singing again
But this is not a corner stoop
in Harlem
and she is far too milky
to anticipate the social
and political implications
of a Million Women March
You cannot answer my questions
without trying to suckle me!
This is what I am afraid of…
Keep your blouse on!
Your ample bosom
is an integral
part of the problem
~ not the solution!
Do the black man a favor
take his body down
beat your heart
weep and wash his feet
wrap him in fine linen
and cover him with spices
Maybe if you mourn him
you can resurrect him
He might make an appearance again
Not only did the Black Madonna
leave him on the cross
she won’t take him down
Take him off the cross now!
Everyone else has
Maybe you like the view
from the ground
We are beyond Brown and Newton
we’re on fallacious arguments now
Where are you going
other than the ground
On the Orange Line?
On the Orange Line
I saw dog paws
tattooed on her thigh
and red daisies
on her boots
My prism came from
within
and landed on my skin
In random chimera conceits
I think
of blue nights and black mornings
The full moon in the white Winter sky
with pink Cirrus lips
demons and febrile mouths
Rimbaud, and blackbirds in epic simile
Squirrels that wait for green lights
Keisha!
and white girls
on billboards
on black streets
And the mad boy sang
“Ooh day Ooh day….
You got me humpin’…”
On the Orange Line
The station point
where esoteric beginnings
are setups
for sublime endings
Copyright 2004 by E Maria Shelton Speller, Explode. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
The Orange Line is inspired by The Last Poets’ On The Subway…
Queen!
Flagrancy
Draped over flesh folding,
Overlapping, lapping, titties like water
Coursing over plantations
landing on designer gods
She’s the Queen of make believe
dross, lace, and fancies
the strumpet of style and envy
supply and demand
framing references
of fragmentation and icons
the whore of big business
luxury and privilege
Capital Supreme
She gives it to you every time
the same kiss same trade
whispering buy me
while you sit splayed still
eating her conditions
wanting more between
feasts
An electric whore transfixed on fiction
screaming paeans of promises
in fleeting imagery faster than you can think
Candle eyes revealing
nothing and something equally
commercial bitch
coca cola coochie
The queen of white hot dreams and fantasies
Dreaming the business of culture
for recycled cyclical people
in suspended disbelief
Chronos’ eating children again
consuming – regurgitating
the piss Ellison smelled in the hallway
the blood he saw at the top of the stairs
of the worn unfresh and rotted
postmodern prostitute
circumscribing your will to dream
someone you
White voodoo yahoo
looping tricks for
fifteen pimps
Coliseum dreamers
in concert muffle
the scream
Hegemony is a bore!
Capitalism is a whore!
Patriarchy is a sham!
Subjugation is complete!
You can’t dream for me…
Children of the light!
dreaming in strophe
what she dreams
what she thinks
what she wants you to need
what she wants you to buy
when to laugh
cry
what to eat and how often
who to love
hate
how to suffer
on her terms
Dreamers of the light!
dancing for the gods
in collective nothingness
tweaked to think vapid
celebrated center-folds
of flagrancy at your expense
dare to dream
alone in dark energy
Turn off the lights
of the Queen of white hot fantasies
in unsuspended disbelief
Let’s make believe!
The Sirens’ in the room
and you applaud
on your knees
Give props to the Queen
of postmodern dreams
of white white-white hot trips
on Lilly fields designed
for you to dance
for the gods
pimping their dreams of her… and them
on wide screen… for you
~dance
Kill your TV!
Copyright 2004, 2015 by E Maria Shelton Speller. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
My Condolences
Dear Jon,
I am so sorry to hear about Victor. I’m lousy at expressing condolence.
I am anticipating a phone call about one of my brothers or sisters – essentially a family member that I have grown to dislike or they dislike me – no matter how close we were when we were children. A call about a family member who began and ended references about me with, “What is she doing now?” I perplex them with all my projects and shenanigans. A family member who could not possibly appreciate the personality of an INTJ – confusing alone with loneliness.
At the end of the day, it is not about me. When we go home — family puts us to rest. Not your BFFs, your hundreds and thousands of FB friends who like everything you like, your brothers and sisters from another mother and father, your innumerable half-sisters, half-brothers and cousins who were not there when you were growing up – but somehow you were twins, random shopkeepers at spas who talk to your baby in mandarin — your baby hangs on every word and seems to understand, not the concierges, your neighbors, coworkers, managers, bishops or priests. Your family puts you in the ground.
Your family makes sure you are wearing your favorite shoes, that you are wearing a whole and not a half-slip – even though you have never owned a whole slip. Why? Because it’s regulation, it’s mandated by the State! Your family makes sure you are wearing your shade of lipstick, and the wig on your head is straight, the part is in the right place and despite the protestations of the mortician, the bangs are swept wistfully in the right direction. Your friends give you brand new bibles to take to the pearly gates. Your family settles your estate — if you have one — cleans your home, takes possession of or finds a good will or thrift store for your belongings.
Oh, your friends will offer their condolences, show up for the funeral, sign the guest book, send a sympathy basket, donate to a charity, ask if there is anything they can do, say pretty thoughtful things about you, go to the repast – and that will be the end of it. The last time you see them. Your BFFs are not going to your gravesite to leave flowers on milestones and Christmas. No.
That is what family is for. The family you perhaps did not respect, did not value, and could not abide because you were not equally yoked. Yes, I am waiting on that phone call, that text – so I can put that family member to rest, take my turn at the podium and say, “I anticipated a phone call about one of my brothers or sisters, because apparently this is what family is for…”
I am glad the call was not about you! I would not have been able to write this letter with a steady hand. Perhaps you might share it with your family. It was oddly salubrious. RIP Donnie “S”.
All the Best,
D
Copyright 2014 E Maria Shelton Speller. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
The Godforsaken
Before the godforsaken
had time to swallow…
they knew who first
judged what out of dreams
came truly real*
and he was fastened to a rock
and they knew who
stirreth up the people and dippeth his hand**
in the dish with Judas
and he was nailed to a cross
And they read books within books
about wise and foolish virgins
and signs of the end
and love and judgment
and they heard God talk
through the mouths of men
who talked about him
his son and the holy ghost
When spectators provided the notion of reality
Christ and Prometheus
were objectified and subjectified allegory
spheres of hope and rebellion
courage and prudence
temperance and justice
and how they chose to read it
in the time before terror
depended on what level
they chose to see it
Pity
incredible people and prophets
who function as vehicle
for literal, moral,
and anagogical levels of meaning
Before the godforsaken
had time to swallow…
they reused and refashioned the heads
of emperors in their own image
because they could
they reinforced power and authority
with legitimate political imagery
like the Egyptian Pharaoh Ramses
and General Holofernes
They respected the classical past
in fertile crescents of greed
and they rejected classical design
in the center of ruins
They housed the rock in the dome
on which Muhammad ascended to heaven
and hung the Virgin Mary’s blue robe
in Chartres Cathedral
and it didn’t burn
and they appropriated columns
and Corinthian capitals
and called it the holy triumph
of Islam
When denizens of form said
Nothing is new…
The godforsaken asked,
Since when?
since the Lion Gate
since the Great Sphinx of Gizeh
since Doric and Ionic orders
since the Palette of King Narmer
since the Parthenon
since Stonehenge
Since when?
They stood in the light of starry nights
in the drum, coffers, and concrete cylinders
of uninterrupted space in the Pantheon
and made no apologies for ripping off
master tracks from the past
and heard the hip hop train
sampling every post-hit
with unripe music and blood
and mounted the heads of gods
on the manifest
like the catalog of procreation
in Genesis
They heard his Mother
three blocks away
on parallel streets
screaming redundantly
You won’t take my child!
You won’t take my child!
at the vigil where transvestites
whispered about how many times
her child was stabbed in the neck…
Lord have mercy!
Who are these motherfuckers?
on the bottom rung of the Ladder of Descent
trying to climb up
on the backs of allegories
floating in fleeting and airy hope
part of the story
part of the sin
Before the godforsaken
had time to swallow…
He knew
that love ends
as it begins again
on rocks and crosses
in books and dreams
and politics and imagery
under domes and temples
in music and song
and blood and death
in stories and sin
and in the hands
of God
~ the Swallows are building.
Copyright 2004, 2013 E Maria Shelton Speller. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
*Aeschylus’ Prometheus Bound
** Matthew 26: V21,V22,V23,V25
The Foreword to Insomnia
Like all writers, I rewrite, combine, borrow, loot, recreate, change my own work, and play with metafictional devices and the relationship between what is real and what is imagined. I combined “TP’s Muse Board” with “The Foreword to Insomnia.” Perhaps it will be a triptych, or perhaps three panels of an octaptych, a short story, novella, or perhaps a novel. It’s a WIP.
The Foreword to Insomnia
“All our crimes are the crimes of a phantom: God.” Octavio Paz
I
Is the girl necessary? Can you abandon her? Yes and no. She’s the curtain-lifter and the scout! Always. I cannot forget her. I was there, talking to myself, as if I were someone else. Like now.
She’s as necessary as the galoshes on her feet, paused in a puddle, with her binary reflection obscured by polka-dots, vector and speckled umbrellas billowing from ordinary windows like parachutes, or the multi-colored aureoles in the virtual vertigo — of an art installation.
She is as necessary as umbrellas on a rainy afternoon under golden arches and digital displays of saucer eyed anime faces in Tokyo during rush-hours, or the dark city around the corner with a hole in the ground — over rainy subway stairs she lost a galosh on.
II
When she was nine, and her sister seven, they shared a bedroom in the attic of an old Victorian house, in New England. They loved that pink triangular room, and the imaginary line that equally divided that sanctum, and it was not lost on them, that they were far removed from their extended paternal family, parents and the Irish triplets who shared a room of their own — downstairs.
It was not just the physical detachment, but on the heels of “making believe,” they began to transport each other to fictional realities at bedtime that began with a question, followed by an answer and finally a bidding, “What are you doing?” “I’m thinking.” “What are you thinking about?”
Her stories would often begin with something truly extraordinary. Diana Ross had ten kids in 1964! She was twenty years old and married to Jorge — the Ebony Fashion Fair model who was the most beautiful man she had ever seen, and one of Diana’s children was her fourth grade classmate — a Puerto Rican named, Sorah Sanchez. He told his classmates to call him Willie. He was so cute!
Theirs was the perfect family! Jorge wore gray suede shoes and cardigans advertised in Jet and Ebony magazines, and the children wore clothing from Alden and Spiegel catalogs! Images were accessible and appropriated. The stories epic and uninterrupted — unless clarification was necessary, like “What time do the kids have to go to bed?”
She loved The Supremes! In the Sixties, Diana Ross was a delicate and beautiful remix, of freedom from ugly restraint. She could scan a page for “Diana Ross” and find her like code. Ditty Bop! She could imitate her voice, her tone, inflection, her vibrato, choreography and her mannerisms!
In the Summer of 1965, she sang A cappella, “Where Did Our Love Go,” “Stop in the Name of Love,” and “Come See About Me,” on a makeshift stage in her back yard, and became an accidental star with a teenaged fan base; but, she just wanted to be left alone to adore Diana Ross — the beautiful one! Those oral narratives in the dark — were contiguous, on a continuum, interconnected — in medias res.
III
At seventeen she hadn’t seen her Father in four or five years. Her mother and six children took the last bus to a safe haven twelve hundred miles from Boston. But, when father walked into her home, the house her mother managed to “negotiate” by “befriending” the most unattractive man she had ever seen… and barely past the threshold, he said, “I know, I know, I know, and I know.”
It was the most honest response she’d ever heard. It made sense. No apologies. No explanations. What else could he say? Last year, she wondered why she and her sister screamed their hearts out of their mouths, eyes, and ears crouched in a closet — as if screaming would make a difference — as if screams would stop unmeasured and random assaults on her Mother in a Commonwealth where the Rule of Thumb allowed husbands to beat their wives as long as the stick was no thicker than his thumb!
In that house, little girls might not stop screams with their own. Who could scream the loudest? Who could silence the noise? Eventually, she realized the house was on Rockledge Street before pre-K, so they were one and three, or two and four years old, perhaps. In a one mile radius, the same thing happened on Cedar and Alpine Streets. On Hartford Street, her Father cut her Mother up with a meat cleaver.
She can still summon the smell of Sugar Smacks decayed and stinking in bowls of spoiled milk abandoned on the kitchen table like so much blood and flesh on the floors, doors, the papered walls, and ceiling where on her Sister’s 9th birthday, “the accident” happened.
The blood of donors rushed from other jurisdictions, the white sheet that hid her mother’s head from her children, the paddy wagon where her mother was slung like a criminal, the crowd outside the window oohing and awing, jeering, and cheering her Father, who changed into a brown silk leisure suit, brown suede shoes, cocked a fedora on his head and walked tall, proud, and un-cuffed to the Police car. The footnote in the Boston Globe, “Negro Man Attacks Wife with Meat Cleaver.” The rise and fall of orphan’s tears, swollen eyes, praying hands and bargains with God in zombie disbelief.
But, I don’t feel sorry for that little girl. Tall and proud. She could have been a psycho killer — and I would be her muse, a tiny detail, a paper doll from an Alden’s catalog — paused in a puddle for the amusement of children.
IV
I am the one who cannot sleep. Aside from occasional drifts from the pollen consumption of moths, to the dignity of a ski-lift nose…
Copyright 2004, 2013 E Maria Shelton Speller. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
The Foreword to Insomnia’s Istanbul (The Voice of an Unreliable Narrator, in Medias Res)
Now and then, I am restless . . .
When I dropped them off at the restaurant, Simon asked me to join them for lunch. I parked the dolmus near the Sirkeci Railway. Potential fares watched me curiously. I felt compelled to announce it was time for lunch.
‘Ogle yemegi.’ I said to them. And not sesame-sprinkled bread either, I said to myself!
I couldn’t walk fast enough to get away from the stink of smelted metal, and I find the putrid aroma of leather nauseating. What you smell on Galata Bridge depends on where you stand. Looking over at the fishermen bobbing on the Horn, supporting the floating bridge, and still managing to grill a pan-full of mackerel, I almost walked over and bought a snack from my brethren.
When I arrived, Simon and the woman were drinking Tuborg Bira. I don’t know what inspired her, but she was wearing the hood of her caftan. My friend, Ishmir, served us. He handed me the menu, but he was a very good Maître d. Ishmir stood directly across from her and suggested we start with hors d ‘oeuvres.
They ordered Red Caviar in Mayonnaise. I ordered Stuffed Vine Leaves. Of course, when Ishmir suggested fish, she ordered Roe. I ordered Anchovy. But Simon ordered Roast Lamb with Onions, Yuk! Ishmir smiled a lot, but he was a cad: a supreme waiter and a notorious rogue.
For vegetables, she ordered Spinach Tomato. Simon ordered Squash Potatoes, and I ordered Cabbage. They wanted Strawberries for fruit, and I ordered Figs. For dessert, she ordered Yogurt and Egg Pudding. Simon, a Lady’s Navel — a donut soaked in honey — and me, Rice Pudding.
Then we had vodka. She tipped the glass as if it was empty, like her vanity. Simon told Ishmir to give it some color. So Ishmir put a peach on the rim. Suddenly, everything was right. She rested her elbow on the table, her chin in the palm of her hand. Cradling the vodka in her other palm, she started at the bottom of her wish list.
“I want to go to Topkapi Palace.”
Simon smiled the way a jinni would when his wish comes true. “What do you expect to find there?”
“The shadow of God, I don’t know. I just want to go.” She dropped her eyes, and then raised them again.
Simon said, “You want to see the shadow of God? Perhaps we should go to the Sancta Sophia instead. But of course we can go to the Imperial Harem in Topkapi, and feel the shadows of black, emasculated men who controlled the Harem — eunuchs who resembled modern-day pimps without penises. Or the captured, bought, or sold foreign — and often Christian — concubines whose body hair was removed, and then pomaded with henna to prevent perspiration, after it was massaged and scrubbed by slave women too old to be favored, because the Sultan put his handkerchief on the concubine’s shoulder which she brought to his bed at midnight.”
He leaned in to whisper, “A world of bored lesbians or platonic affairs with castrated page-boys. And afterwards, we could dive the Bosphorus,” he pointed east toward Asia, “in search of those weighted sacks that Sultan Ibrahim had two hundred and eighty concubines sewn into. They’ll be upright and easy to find at the bottom of the channel.”
“You know. . .” She lowered the hand that held her chin onto the table, and dug her nails into the palm of her hand. She sipped her vodka before she continued with, “A goalkeeper can catch ‘and’ throw the ball.”
Simon didn’t return her volley. He reached into his pocket for cigarettes.
“Meaning?” He offered her one, but her eyes faded and she shook her head, balancing the rim of the glass on her tongue. She sipped her vodka again. When she spoke, her blue eyes were flambé.
“You can relate the melodrama of emasculated slave drivers, expose the gauze of white bondage in a pleasure dome. You can casually lean into homophobia, and then sink into regret. You can hear voices from the bottom of the channel, and you can suggest that we dive like dreadful Arabs. But you don’t mention that in this center of civilization, in this threshold of bliss, the arched eyebrows of ravaging old men who think it is right and necessary to punish one man for his impudence with the lives of a thousand boys and a thousand girls, a thousand mothers and a thousand fathers.”
When she said “a thousand” her eyes closed, and her lips barely moved. I could hear her heart weep. She leaned across the table into prose.
“Muslims never mention a time when neglected and lascivious Turkish women stole around looking for new loves, shrouded in these habiliments now celebrated as some sort of Islamic affirmation.”
She snatched the hood from her head. With a kiss curl on her cheek she continued, “Whores, whose husbands dreamed about the Imperial Harem, and could never recognize their disguised wives in that garden of paradise.”
I pursed my cigarette between my lips, looked down the bridge toward the Galata Tower, and thought, “Please! Fuck her in the ass!”
Simon’s bottom lip collapsed between his teeth, and when he released it to speak, a white impression remained. His head moved like the pugilist you shadow box, the prized peacock that halts to seduce you. “Is my nose bleeding, goalkeeper?”
Her hands moved across the table towards him. She took one of his hands in hers tenderly. She spread his fingers, used her own to stroke the back of his hand with hers, turned his palm over and held it up as though light would pass through it like alabaster. She talked into it, as if her words would penetrate like sound.
She said, “I saw a man in Seoul, on a gray day. My girlfriend and I had just hailed a taxi. He was with business associates, I guess, I don’t know. They carried armored briefcases, and he was wearing a plush black topcoat. A town car pulled in front of his party when his eyes, the color of the day, watched me, watching him. It was a magnetic moment, with magnetic potential, but I felt my body moving like Niagara toward the opened door of the taxi, and fall inside reluctantly. I left a phantom standing.”
Simon’s bottom lip grew accustomed to his teeth again. He tilted his head far enough to see his reflection in her eyes, and then her hands disappeared between his. White horses straddled the hull, and Ishmir smiled at me, when a glass of tea shifted on his tray.
I followed them through the Imperial Gate, even though I’d been there before. They were easy to trail. After we paid half price for nylons from a street vendor, Simon bought some French vanilla because she liked the decanter. It resembled a flask. But French vanilla didn’t mix with the miasma of death that surrounded the palace: the dark tiny cells, marbled rooms, and iron barred windows belonging to black eunuchs, and the eerie, evil battle-axes and scimitars of the conquered. Or, the surrealism of giant emeralds on the crown of the Topkapi Dagger, like a roman candle carried through the Gate of Felicity by Madonna.
Despite all of that, and the barbaric flower patterns on the walls, and so much gold and diamonds they resembled copper and glass, I smelled French vanilla in this stained-glass heaven, and heard tocks in a room full of clocks like waterfalls. But what I wanted most of all, was to see Simon’s cock between her thighs.
Beneath the delicate balconies were three hundred tiny rooms, and four hundred years of a ravaged Harem bridged by staircases, little courtyards, and pavilions. At the end of the cul-de-sac, I saw the lustrous eyes of the gazelle. While my thoughts shifted from ugly destruction to whet wildflowers in this horribly airy place, she looked satisfied. Then the lights went out!
All you could hear was the hushed noise of silence. The familiar yelps of babies paused for the unfamiliar, but the proverbial blackout would arouse the dead before they wiped sleep from their eyes and magnified the click of her heels rising from clay. I saw her leap into his arms in lackluster headlights, and her bosom brushed his face infrared in taillights.
Toward my voice of gentle direction, a friendly gauge to the door I opened, in a dark stagger they fell to obscurity like me. But I prefer to be forgotten and left to eavesdrop on transitory affairs.
They were two people, interacting on each other. One to conquer like the Arab in the desert; the other to submit, like the Turkish nomad. Unfortunately, it was black in the back of the dolmus like the city, and I was only privy to the promise of pleasure, the sound of pain, the smell of conduction, and the rhythm of breathing.
Unlike the neighbors next door, who desperately moan for us all, in the back of a dolmus sex is existentialism. It is earnest copulation, a period of decline in a carriage drawn by a wild-eyed spooked horse, and I hoped she felt the sharp turn at the corner of the Soup Kitchen of Lady Nilufer in her throat.
We skipped the Sancta Sophia and the Blue Mosque. We circled Istanbul University. When I crossed the Galata Bridge and so many pilgrims dancing in the dark, the electric power line that lay victim to steel-belted radials in the middle of the street swung carefully without resistance, to expose the nightclub in the Galata Tower!
I watched Simon and the woman from a bar stool dance the Fandango. A Jew with a batch of dark curly hair in rings around his head was dented at the crown by a yarmulke. He ordered double shots of Absolut Vodka with the regularity of a dehydrated Arab, and shook his head in time to Ruben Blades’ “El Padre Antonio.”
Over the lullaby of the synthesizer, the Tower buzzed with a chorus of “Muchas gracias” from the last Spanish-speaking Jewish community. When that same synthesizer switched to hot salsa and the Jews were oddballs again, the woman’s body arched, the small of her back was in the palms of Simon’s hands. Her hair hung like strings of yellow ribbon suspended from a merry-go-round. Fixed at the center, she rode the stallion.
Then I felt an annoying finger poke me on the shoulder blade. Of course, when I turned, the offender moved to the other side. I hate that! It was Ishmir. Immediately, he excused himself and sardonically asked, “Affedersiniz, Ingilizee bilen bir kimse merede?”
I swiveled on the stool, and he turned to see what I saw. My fare, without trying, drawing attention like the dominant table in a crowded restaurant. Without turning away, Ishmir searched for his stool. With his hand on the seat, he slowly sat down.
“Guzel . . .” He called her beautiful before his mouth closed and his eyes narrowed. I ordered two shots of viski. I was above lust in a crowd. Instead, I encouraged the love Simon consumed and Ishmir conserved — like any valid voyeur.
In this motley assembly of American infidels, young Turks, Jews, and effendis, Ishmir clearly wanted her. He had no shame. I watched Ishmir once stand in the center of the howling, his erection discovered and affectionately held up for ridicule, Ishmir dropped his pants and revealed a deep-rooted trunk. With his back bowed by his fists, he struck a perfect anatomical pose, a picture of pride among men.
Now, Ishmir watched her through narrowed, schizophrenic eyes, with his nose pressed against the windowpane, a man who has nothing, and no one adored her, like the man Luther Vandross and Martha Wash sang about, and my fare danced. Kirk Whalum’s sax charmed the snake. Ishmir wanted to be the one.
Suddenly, he swerved around and watched them in the mirror behind the bar. Ishmir swigged the viski and then asked in a melodic yet unromantic tone, “Did he nail her?”
“In the back of the dolmus.”
“How?”
“With an overhand knot around her neck-“
“You always lie!” Ishmir cut me off. “I’m not interested in your vivid imagination! What did he do, how did he do it?”
“I’m telling you what I know! If you don’t believe me, ask him!”
“What of her wrists?”
“A surgeon’s knot.”
“Bullshit! That’s too much kinetic energy. She would have to be willing!”
“She was.”
“I don’t believe you! I don’t believe you…” Ishmir shook his head and looked into his empty glass on the bar. I gestured to the bartender for refills. We were silent. Ishmir was disappointed. He swigged the viski again, and slammed the empty glass on the bar.
“Why?” he asked.
“Why what?”
“Why was she willing?”
I watched him. Ishmir was a desperate, impatient predator who didn’t know how to take down his prey.
“Isn’t it obvious?”
“Nothing’s obvious,” he snapped back. “Did she cry out loud?”
“Yes . . . in ecstasy.”
Ishmir swallowed loudly. He motioned for another refill, and looked in the mirror again. Simon and the French Vanilla were sitting at a table for two. Simon’s arm was draped across the back of her chair. She used his thigh to rest her arm, her hand between his knees, her head on his shoulder. He fed her the olive he fished from her drink, and sucked the salt from her lips. Ishmir swigged the viski again.
He set his glass on the bar. With the same hand, he scratched the back of his neck, looked at me, and said, “She’s a whore.“
…. They were loaded. Simon’s arm draped over her shoulders drew her close. They strolled to the bar. She was his center of gravity, until he slung his arms around mine and Ishmir’s necks. He left her like a shallow boat floating behind him. Simon proclaimed in English that he would buy more to drink if we answered a riddle.
“What motivates a woman more than love or pride, country or power, glory or God?” I shifted my eyes from Simon’s to meet Ishmir’s. It was a trick question. I thought of the Sphinx for our reward. Then, in an aria of proper English, Ishmir and I replied, “Man, of course.”
We laughed in perfect harmony. I looked over my shoulder. The truth was never more obvious than the pure expression of vulnerability and betrayal in her eyes; because, I thought, I had betrayed her confidence. I snooped. I peeked. Yes, I stuck my dick in her pie and felt a pang of regret.
We laughed in perfect harmony. The truth was never more obvious than the pure expression of vulnerability and betrayal in her eyes; because, I thought, I had betrayed her confidence. I snooped. I peeked. Yes, I stuck my dick in her pie and felt a pang of regret.
She resembled an Alsatian bitch with that uneven stride, and when we got to the dolmus, she literally crawled inside on all fours. Ishmir saw the fresh pears before Simon closed the door.
I watched Simon curiously. Surely, he wasn’t finished with her yet! He wouldn’t send her home in a taxi . . . !
“We forgot her caftan.” He lit a cigarette, cupping the flame from the breeze, as he walked away.
“I’ll do it!” I thumbed myself repeatedly in the chest. I was afraid to be left alone with her.
Ishmir nudged me and showed me his empty hands, and before I could fill them with my fists, he opened the door and filled them with her ass. Two fresh pears in his hands. He bit one gently, his tongue between his teeth, his arms embraced her and his face disappeared.
She thought he was Simon. She moaned when Ishmir’s hands slipped down and touched the core of her sex. I knew he’d gone too far when I was erect. I reached for the scruff of his neck and missed when he fell inside and covered her on the seat. He started . . . humping her, like lesbians hump virgin lesbians. It was fucking coitus!
They were slender bodies of revolution. Then she screamed the way a little girl screams at the sight of an earthworm. When Ishmir backed off, a wet spot clung to his leg. She bolted out of the dolmus like a mandrill and leapt on him. She was in a violent rage! The skin of his face tore under her nails. She was like the sticky pulp of Oedipus hurled in Jocasta’s face.
She slapped him hard, and harder again before Ishmir grabbed her by the neck with one hand, and parried with the other. That didn’t work! He started choking her and pushed her back inside the dolmus. They smelled like leather. I needed to throw up. Then I realized we were in the leather district of the bridge!
Out of nowhere, while I stood there praying for fresh air and Simon’s return, she stabbed Ishmir repeatedly in the head with the heel of her shoe! He fell on top of her in a convulsive fit. Blood pulsed with every spasm, and zigzagged in a darker red all over my velvet roof and all over her yellow hair-dripping red. I threw up on the curb.
Simon finally returned, and shoved Ishmir to the floor while she kept screaming, “He, he, he . . .” and pointing at Ishmir’s bloody head. She was hysterical! Instead of shaking or slapping her, Simon hid her face in the crook of his neck.
“Shh, shh!” he said anxiously, until she simply trembled violently in his arms, her cries inverted.
“What happened?” he whispered between clenched teeth. I hesitated, trying desperately to separate saliva from acid.
“Talk to me, and speak English!”
I pointed at Ishmir’s head, “He violated her . . .” I choked.
“You watched him violate her?”
My hands wouldn’t speak, “I . . .I . . .I . . .” Simon lunged and punched me fast and hard in the face. I stumbled, my arms slamming on top of the dolmus. I braced myself against a fall on the curb I hurled on. I thought he broke my bloody nose.
“You stupid fuck!” He’s your friend, how could you let this happen?” He pointed his angry finger.
I raised the palms of my hands to fend off his accusations, shaking my head in denial.
…..I pointed at Ishmir. “He forgot that she’s an American!” Then I turned and pointed at her, “And she forgot that she’s in a foreign country!”
…..I tell you all this because I can’t tell anyone else. You see, I helped them excavate an Ottoman gravestone. We tied Ishmir supine around it in square nylon knots and threw him in the Golden Horn. What is life in Istanbul anyway? A world of felicity. Ishmir is in the other.
I see the French Vanilla on the cover of magazines. She has an odd, fixed look in her eyes. The kind of look every man sees when a woman is between his legs on her knees; because, indeed, nothing propels a woman like man, not God, not country, not pride.
“Please excuse me. Ogle yemegi.”
The mackerel has never tasted better. There must be something in the water.
Copyright © 2004-2021 E Maria Shelton Speller All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Thanks to David Halbertam’s, The Amateurs for the literary buoyancy of the narrative.
Trench People (TP) Muse Board
When I was nine, and my sister seven, we shared a bedroom in the attic of a Victorian house, in New England. We loved that pink triangular room, and the imaginary line that equally divided her side and mine, and it was not lost on us, that we were far removed from our extended paternal family, our parents, and the Irish triplets who shared a room of their own — downstairs.
It was not just the physical detachment, but on the heels of “making believe,” we began to transport each other to fictional realities at bedtime that began with a question, followed by an answer and finally a bidding, “What are you doing?” “I’m thinking.” “What are you thinking about?”
My stories would often begin with something truly extraordinary. Diana Ross had ten kids in 1964! She was twenty years old and married to Jorge — the Ebony Fashion Fair model who was the most beautiful man I had ever seen, and one of her children was my fourth grade classmate — a Puerto Rican named, Willie Sanchez. He told us to call him Willie. He was so cute!
Theirs was the perfect family! Jorge wore gray suede shoes and cardigans advertised in Jet and Ebony magazines, and the children wore clothing from the Alden and Spiegel Catalogs! Images were accessible and appropriated. The stories epic and uninterrupted — unless clarification was necessary, like “What time do the kids have to go to bed?”
I loved The Supremes! In the Sixties, Diana Ross was a delicate and beautiful remix of freedom from ugly restraint. I could scan a page for her name and find her like code! Ditty Bop. I could imitate her voice, her tone, inflection, her vibrato, choreography and her mannerisms!
In the Summer of 1965, I sang A cappella, “Where Did Our Love Go,” “Stop in the Name of Love,” and “Come See About Me,” on a makeshift stage in our back yard, and became an accidental star with a teenage fan base… but, I just wanted to be left alone to adore her.
Those oral narratives in the dark — were contiguous, on a continuum, interconnected, in medias res. When I think about — Trench People, I wonder what are Angela, Lisa and Nimrod’s musings and who are their muses? What would they like? What makes them click? TP’s Muse board is visible/linked below. It’s a living, breathing, WIP. It’s the pink room in the attic all over again! I wonder how my sister is doing? I wonder what she’s thinking…
http://pinterest.com/sheltonspeller/tps-muse-board/
Copyright © 2012, 2013 by Elaine Maria Shelton Speller
Trench People — Once Upon a Time There Were… Master Scene 2
The intent of this installment is to juxtapose art, content, audio, imagery, prose and poetry in an original screenplay, Trench People (TP). Explode is a product of the antagonist’s art in TP. TP is the framework for a virtual walk-through art installation like Christo and Jean Claude’s Wrapped Walk Ways or The Umbrellas — a mind-scape if you will.
Data for how many thoughts we have per minute and the speed of thought has not been measured and analyzed, so WYSIWYG — Wordpress is space for ideations.
TP follows the established rules of the industry, and in this space a JUMP CUT may signal a deviation, a temporary change of direction, an aside, a self indulgence, that hopefully holds your attention until the next FADE TO, CUT TO, DISSOLVE TO, or SMASH CUT TO — the antagonist’s art and the protagonist’s idealism. When I started reading at the Lizard Lounge in Cambridge Massachusetts, I read master scenes as prose and epic poetry. TP was well received and even requested!
What concerns me is decorum. I hope my audience is not averse to poetry in medias res… Once upon a time there were… Trench People!
TRENCH PEOPLE
(Original Screenplay — a Period piece)
by
E. MARIA SHELTON SPELLER
Copyright ©1996, 2015. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
WGA Registration 2005
I. The Erastes and Erominos (White letters on black background)
CLOSE – ON ANGELA AND JUNE
They laugh out loud. Angela throws her head back in FULL-THROATED LAUGHTER and June BANGS the table in approval with her fist.
JUNE
(out loud)
That was brilliant!
ROSALIND
That was careless! Talk
about artistic irresponsibility!
ANGELA
Oh, come on, Ros!
ROSALIND
A warning would have been APPROPRIATE,
instead of SURPRISE — mayhem,
and blaming the white man, again.
ANGELA
It’s not HER fault Preachers,
Politicians, and the gatekeepers
of black consciousness jumped
to conclusions.
ROSALIND
What’s with this about-face?
ANGELA
I never said I thought it was
wrong, Ros… YOU did!
CLOSE – ON ROSALIND
who RAISES both brows at Angela and WAVES the subject away.
CLOSE – ON JUNE AND LISA
June leans closer to the BABY-DYKES, specifically Lisa.
JUNE
(shouts)
One Hundred Nooses was crazy
art! Was it a political pun
against the pathos of black
art, or a brazen political
statement…?
CLOSE – ON LISA
who OVERHEARD Rosalind’s opinion and although she is talking to June, she LOOKS at Angela. She LEANS across the table as far as she can and talks in a curt monotone like Lisa Bonet.
LISA
(shouting)
I will not offer an explanation,
which is to say, an apology
for my art. Not to be understood
or over-stood… Everything IS Political.
Sex is politics. The day we swam to
the egg or were propelled, by stronger
swimmers behind us, was politics!
Art without politics is passion
without pluck. Sterile like
Impressionism! An allusion of
The Great Gatsby. Who… who
dreams in pastels?
(beat)
Maybe one percent of
the population?
(quickly)
The only way to have dreamed
about, A Sunday Afternoon on
was to have been there. Those
were elitist dreams. The
poor and vulnerable don’t dream
about wearing iced-cream pants!
They dream about, Starry Night,
The Scream.
(beat)
One Hundred Nooses is a
commentary on truth and
reconciliation. It’s
an unnecessary postmortem
for a committee that has
not happened.
CLOSE – ON GODDESSES AND BABY-DYKES
The GODDESSES are SILENT. Mardou breaks into a chilly smile.
CLOSE – ON MARDOU
looking at Lisa.
MARDOU
(loud)
It’s not who is going to let me,
it’s who is going to stop me.
I thought we plugged the
Fountainhead!
Let’s channel…
(whispers)
The Subterraneans, tonight.
BACK TO SCENE
Lisa’s eyes WIDEN and she feigns IRRITATION. Soon everyone CHUCKLES. People sitting around them look in their direction, as if acknowledging that theirs is the dominant table in the room. Then Mardou watches Lisa REV up again.
CLOSE – ON LISA
LISA
It’s Bukowski’s Coffeehouse tonight.
Except, you’re beautiful,
(beat)
and you’re beautiful… and you’re
beautiful… and we know Bukowski
only trusted the company of
desperate people, with broken minds,
broken ways, and broken teeth.
CLOSE – ON GODDESSES AND BABY-DYKES
They AHA in unison.
MARDOU
(sarcastically)
Fuck levity, then!
LISA
Mardou, you want
something, superficial!
CLOSE – ON MARDOU
looks long at Lisa.
MARDOU
Why? Why are you so…
(frowning)
dissatisfied?
CLOSE – ON ANGELA
PULLS the edge of her glass to HER tongue. In SLOW MOTION, it lands softly.
CLOSE – ON TONGUE
The tip of her tongue behind the rim of the glass.
CLOSE – ON GODDESSES AND BABY-DYKES
Angela is the only MOVEMENT at the table.
CLOSE – ON LISA
who LOOKS at Mardou.
LISA
What is satisfied?
Is that like wanting to
be the black girl of Jack
Kerouac’s dreams? And
precisely when — when he
woke up and was repulsed by
her puffy sleeping lips the
morning after?
CLOSE – ON ROSALIND
feigning boredom. She looks at the crazy crowd. Then turns back to what she considered baby-talk.
CLOSE – ON TONI
looking at her friends.
TONI
(sighing)
Levity!
CLOSE – ON TONI
moving her hands as if describing a spiral staircase.
TONI
(continuing)
I don’t want to be the
only one laughing tonight.
CLOSE – ON LISA AND MARDOU
They BURST out laughing.
CLOSE – ON THE GODDESSES
They look at each other.
CLOSE – ON JIMMY – SAME TIME
an imposing man, like Ving Rhames’ Marsellus Wallace in Pulp Fiction, owns Pushkin’s Coffeehouse. He spots Lisa, wearing a long black skirt over those long narrow flats with toes that turn up almost like elf shoes that she often wears, and a cropped black motorcycle jacket with white raised lines and letters of cycle iconography. He looks SURPRISED because she seldom wears color. Jimmy gets an ERECTION when he LOOKS at Lisa. He reaches down to ADJUST the SWELLING under his fly. He waits a minute and then makes his way through the crazy crowd in Lisa’s direction. He SIDLES beside Lisa — LEANING on the edge of the table with the palms of his hands.
JIMMY
El (Lisa)… How you
doin’, Baby?
LISA
(smiles)
What’s up, Jimmy?
JIMMY
I know you’re flowing
tonight, right?!
CLOSE – ON LISA
who looks up at Jimmy, and says nothing.
JIMMY
Don’t look at me like
that! You read here,
at Pushkin’s first.
I know you’re gonna
read!
LISA
All the coffeehouse and cafe
owners say the same thing.
Everybody gave me a break,
but nobody wants to pay me…
You want me to read for free!
Then you get an attitude when
I won’t. Pay me! Show your
appreciation. I’m a working
artist. A proletariat!
JIMMY
OK, OK. How much you
chagrin’?
LISA
(frustrated)
Jimmy, you know how much
I charge… I’m sick of
having to give the same
speech every time I want
a cup of coffee.
JIMMY
In Fifteen?
LISA
Let’s do it now!
CLOSE – ON LISA (MOVING)
rising from the table focused on space. Her entourage ceases to exist. SLOWLY PAN the CRAZY CROWD.
JIMMY (O.S.)
Ladies and Gentlemen, Pushkin
is proud to present, our very
own, El Cherry… Snap!
LISA’S P.O.V. – CROWD
Lisa and her P.O.V. is filmed in black and white. People step aside at the last minute, greeting her on her way through, while snapping their fingers.
LONG – ON LISA
On stage, you cannot HEAR her FOOTSTEPS. The toes of her shoes SWISH the air. At the microphone she STANDS straight almost in a NAPOLEONIC pose. The room is QUIET. She launches into “One Single Act of Love.”
LISA
(curt, ferocious monotone)
I sold a rock opus to the best
Black rock band on the planet.
A band that lost its capacity
to dream. Formulaic guarantees
skewed their imagination for plati-
num discs. The male coward covered
their lifework, literally.
My story reminded them of what
‘rushing’ felt like, how complete,
how deep blushing could be obvious.
And they bought it, and produced it.
And it was good — it was better
than good. It was thought provoking
and it was an African-American affir-
mation of our realities and our
fantasies no matter how unrealistic.
Suddenly, they were very significant
and the world truly believed that
rock music is black music and black
music is everything. Power is
aesthetic. Aesthetics is politics
and being black is philosophical
and our philosophy is phenomenology
and being black, is being real…
The uninitiated FIDGET, while obvious followers recite some of the passages like Allen Ginsberg’s audience did when he recited, Howl in the Sixties. Lisa does not raise her voice.
RESUME – ON LISA
shoving her hands deep in shallow pockets.
LISA
(less ferocity)
No Hip Hop could say as much as
this rock opus did, ever–no matter
how many stories they sampled.
So, this black rock band were
crowned kings and were exulted,
and revered, incandescent icons,
the envy of friends, the
consumption of man, the image
of immortality like the stained-
glass heaven you summon before
you close… And they loved me…
I was the wick in their candle-
stick and without me there was
no burning flame. I was the
source of their energy. I was
the unstained virgin encamped…
CLOSE – ON LISA
leaning closer to the microphone.
LISA
(continuing)
When we huddled over a page it was
a psychological bristling, a patho-
logical fear, a sexual entreaty.
I wanted them, and they wanted
me. So when opportunity knocked,
I told them so. Sooner than anyone
imagined, there was nothing more
important, than our collaboration.
The media was our medium. They
stopped referring to me as a writer,
and started calling me a Love Supreme.
Annie Leibovitz wanted to take our
pictures–together. But, there was
something unnatural about the photo
session. Instinct was lacking.
There was a tame and conspicuous
outsider on camp. After taking
off too many shades, we asked
Annie to come back tomorrow and
blamed our ubiquitous danger on
some tribal angst about picture
taking and soul stealing…
When she was gone, I suggested
that they fuck me…
CLOSE – ON ANGELA’S EYES
Her eyelashes flutter.
MATCHCUT TO:
Angela’s lips, opening slowly.
RESUME – ON LISA
who at this moment, personifies the rebirth of COOL.
LISA
(continuing)
Not unlike the man in the movie
and the dancing whore… My
honest response to the love
between us left them exposed.
So exposed, their breath rushed
past their lips in staccato
proportions. Although they all
did, the one that really cared
about me began to pace the room.
His eyes watched how his feet
travailed. Another, would have taken me
right then and there had we been
alone–he would have used his
shoestrings and tied my thumbs
behind me if that were all he
had. But he was not the only
one I wanted, so he waited
anxiously. Another, had the
strange and curious stare of an
intellectual trying to figure me
out. And the other, simply smiled
at me from some private place, now
public, and I knew he would hurt me…
deliberately. The intellectual asked
me if I really thought it would make
a difference, and I couldn’t help
watching him as if he were some…
clear liquid. How could it not
make a difference? The pacer turned
and admitted he cared and said he
could not and would not participate;
furthermore, he did not think it
should happen. The anxious one
stood and started barking at him.
If I moved in any direction, it
would be provocation for premature
ejaculation and the anxious one,
while still barking would be the
first to straddle me…
LISA P.O.V. – CRAZY CROWD
A man in the audience barks. Another howls. Women smile to themselves.
CLOSE – ON GODDESSES AND BABY DYKES
SMILING. ENAMORED, Angela FALLS in love.
RESUME – ON LISA
She raises her voice.
LISA
(continuing)
If I raised my hand or my voice,
they would think I might change
my mind. Trapped, I sat there
watching this frenzy I’d started.
The air grew hot but I did manage
to express, “All or no one.” They
turned to look at the one who cared.
He looked at me, and I decided
that he would be the one that
would hurt me… deliberately.
And because he cared, because
he was the one holding back,
he would have to be the first.
He would have to get his reser-
vations out of the way so that
they could proceed. “It’s on you
man.” Said the intellectual and
then I decided the intellectual
would be the last one. Was I
afraid? I was practically trem-
bling on that single futon. My
laptop at the head of the bed
would have to be moved–gingerly.
The point was, I slept with my
work, I ate with my work and now
I’d fuck my work–but we would
never tell Annie the latter.
“What the fuck is the matter with
you?” The one who cared blasted
at me. Oh, I thought, he would
fuck me angrily–he would punish
me this way…
CLOSE – ON ANGELA
closing her eyes.
DISSOLVE TO:
CLOSE – ON LISA
whose nostrils FLARE slightly.
LISA
(continuing)
All I had to say was something
stupid like, ‘What the fuck is
the matter with you?’ Then,
giving him an excuse to fuck
me to death like June Jordan’s
“…unidentified victim of her
own neglect…” gang-raped on
a Brooklyn rooftop and thrown
to her death, screaming but
‘inaudible’.”
LONG – ON LISA
RAISING her voice for what is clearly her favorite passage.
LISA
(continuing)
Conscious decisions are all that
I can respect. Don’t cling to
insanity, or criminal passion,
or peer pressure, or social
expectations. Don’t talk to me
about losing control–momentarily.
Or, the poverty and violence of
pain heaped upon more pain
because you’re black. This is not
a gang-rape. This is not dionysia
all over again, where women
and children are sacrificed, and
blood is beer. If I change my
language, the outcome will still
be the same. And, if I am woman
enough to resist surrender, are
you man enough to know the
difference, between love
and violence–without conditions…
INT. BAR – JIMMY – SAME TIME
He dispatches a NEAT Remy Martin to her table.
LISA (O.S.) (continuing)
“You want her don’t you?” Somebody
said. Then he asked me a private
question, not at all furtively,
“Why?” I dropped my eyes and then
I looked askance at the one who
cared and said, “My fascination
with poetic themes is like–a
serenade already in progress…
isn’t this poetry, in effect?”
LONG – ON LISA
PAN the Crazy Crowd — spellbound.
LISA
(continuing)
He kneeled at the foot of the bed
and that was their cue, but I was
not ready and he knew it–but what
the hell! The love between us
was trapped between power and lust.
His hand covered my neck like a
bridge over a dam I could not escape.
The intellectual secured my wrists
exactly the way I described in my
dreams. I whispered to the one
who cared… that while I waxed
my dream before it faded–
I knew he would halt before he
turned the page. Like the man
in my dreams, he was too big for
me, but he did not hurt me delib-
erately. Under violent power
strokes, I broke under him in a
cadence I could not count in a race
out of water. A rhapsody played in
fusion. The anxious one ejaculated
too soon, and the one that smiled
from some private place took me
to the basement in some tenement
and hurt me deliberately, pushing
in unyielding directions. So, I
screamed finally and the one who
cared pulled him off me and he
came all over my thighs. That is
what he wanted, to be restrained
by somebody, anybody because he
was an animal after-all. The
intellectual rocked me gently
to peace, licked the tears from
my ears and my face. When it
was over, the one who cared untied
my arms that felt like ribbons
draped over my shoulders. He was
the only heat for my cold tremble,
my soul stirring complete. In one
single act of love we were bound
together and in unison they
screamed to the stained virgin…
you’re mine! It was…SURREAL.
LISA’S P.O.V. – AUDIENCE
The crazy CROWD and her entourage give her a MUCH LOVE.
WIDE – ON LISA (MOVING)
PIVOTS like a feline to leave the stage. APPLAUSE lasts until she is well seated. She reaches for the drink Jimmy sent to the table. Mardou and Toni HUDDLE with LISA.