These 5 writings were part of a collection of spoken word pieces a live performance, Bridge, that I developed in 2004.
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BRIDGE OBJECTIVE
Through music, dance, spoken word, and biomimetic design, Bridge examines and scrutinizes the complexities and unique relationships of organisms, particularly mother and child, living in a contemporary urban ecosystem. Bridge challenges the spectator to analyze the delicate balance between two extremes: man-made natural selection (survival of the fittest in urban society) versus human compassion, love, and redemption.
Kitty Hawk (2004)
NOTE: Written as a bookend to a corresponding piece, Growing Up on Leeb Way
I
had my first flying lesson when I was six. Dressed in dark navy Oshkosh
over a striped blue t-shirt with a bit of orange thread around the
neckline. I was Orville Wright. And the nursery where I was supposed to
be napping had materialized into that magical word which I spent
pronouncing over and over inside my head – Kitty Hawk.
Kitty Hawk.
My
father had just installed a new ceiling fan above my bed the day
before. And I had spent a good portion of the night contemplating the
new shadows cast by the little train night-light beside my bed.
Experimented over and over with the pulls and the speeds. I was six.
This was Kitty Hawk, and sleep had yet to pervade my mind and extinguish
the flame of daydream that danced behind my eyes as I stared up into
the thin blades of the fan. The book Flying Machines
lay open on the toy bin where it had been set the night before. I could
see the black and white watercolor of Orville and Wilbur Wright and the
silver curve of a ribbed wing. Orville and Wilbur Wright. Their names
were mysterious. Or. Vil. Ooorviiille. Wright. Right. And Willl-burr. Flying gods. Flying machines.
And so
I jumped, because I was six. The fan was above my head. My fingers
latched onto one of the smooth blades. And as I took off in a dizzying
flight, my heart leapt, and all at once, my head was thrown back,
laughing that noiseless, breathless wonder of childhood discovery, legs
swinging, all knobby knee-ed, spinning all giddy like a helicopter.
The
bedroom walls whizzed past me in a dizzying blur of blue wallpaper,
white eyelet drapes, and Crayola colored finger paintings. Faster,
faster, until the blue and the white and the Crayola and the sun blended
into one wobbly glistening rainbow ribbon. Faster and faster still
until that delirious ribbon ceased to exist and the sunlit world of
Kitty Hawk began.
Neverland (2004)
Small child perched tidy-like on a pointed roof. Waiting for sweet Neverland. Nighttime wakes an urban make-believe: Belief will conjure Peter Pan. Square stars stacked neat in rising rows of high rises rise as high as Eye can see. Child’s thoughts escape like factory smoke, white steam ‘bove crooked, zig-zagged masonry.
Small child tucks in her feet against the cold. Second street lamp to the right, where lost boys ferry fairy dust, them roll dawgs of the night. Quick slick hands all nice and neat, ‘neath Rolex watches roll a smoke, ‘n smoke they light while below the constellation of the Bridge lonesome sirens sing they plight.
Small child close your eyes. Throw your head back, laugh at the paling sky. Your happy thoughts sprout wings and fly like pirate ships into the night; those happy shards of memories of Wendy-Bird’s first flight. Throw your head back, laugh before the child is gone. Neverland becomes a fleeting memory that lingers still between nighttime and the dawn.
Red White and Black (1998)
NOTE: I originally wrote this as a reflection on the murder of a student in the Homewood neighborhood of Pittsburgh, PA.
Another tragic casualty.
A death in black and white.
Some lost soul’s reality
A sensation over night.
One more priceless life to add,
To print in black and white.
A crime to stain the pages red
But only for one night.
A little boy from Homewood
A child of just thirteen
Was in caught in violent crossfire –
A very shocking scene.
Police report they found the man
Who slayed a widow’s son.
To Justice, they will bring him,
If the jury isn’t hung.
A death in black and white
And no one truly cared
A gruesome death in white and black
Propaganda used for scare
An exciting fighting kind of death
Which made the public care
But only for a second
For life moves on and on
Until we see another death
Until that too is gone
Moon Over Lake Michigan (2004)
A storm of worries
brews thick on the horizon
Satisfaction ebbs with the tide.
In and out Doubt flows
encroaching on the shores
of uncertainty.
Endless eddies of maybes
circle stagnant,
the pungent flotsam of Had Beens
pollute the mind’s quietude.
Oh silly worries, wash over the rocks,
wear them down, instead of me.
GROWING UP ON LEEB WAY (2004)
NOTE: Written for my mother who grew up in the Manchester neighborhood of Pittsburgh, PA. This was the other bookend to my narrative as a six year old. I initially wrote the title with a mispelling of Lieb Way, as I had only heard about this fantastical place through stories, never in print.
When I was six I lived on Leeb Way. And there was a WOODS behind us, a great big oogley woods that stretched…and stretched…way back . . . far back upon endless FOREVER. And I loved that Wood most snoodley. So when I was six the other kids built a POTHY fort. A FORT of POTHY in the Away-so-far Midd-a-liddle-Diddle of these WOODS. And it was THE POTHY. And it would be our secret. Our Necess – necissisity with whispered willow-pussy words and sol-em-neesoft shakes of hands and thumbs and of hums and dilly dally dilburies.
And it was Brian McPuther who found the POTHY. Who set his Stick against the bark and S T A R E D.
And stared, stared, stared. And S T A R E D into the great green
NOTHINGNESS. And smelled the warm of … SUNLIGHT as it passed like water
through the late-summer branches. And he said it smelled of POTHY.
And it would be HERE and on that SPOT that WE, WE of the Poth-o-lothily would build our Pothy Fort. But Brian DECREED. And DECREED that the Pothy Our Pothy, here, MUST be of a triang-a-hang-a-ler sort
And this I didn’t think to be quite as properly CHARMING. So I cried. “Stop crying, May,” Brian told me. “But it isn’t proper now. I want it square,” I cried And
cried myself damp under the great green NOTHINGNESS. “But we can’t,
see,” said he. “The trees don’t go that way.” “Then stick a tree there,”
cried I for I thought a tree could easily be. . . stuck. “But we can’t now,” he hawed and holliferumphed. “See here, May, we just can’t.” “Well then,” I sniffed and snoffed. “I suppose I don’t mind a…triangle.” And so we built a FORT A most triangaler FORT. Because the trees, you see, grew THREE and not FOUR-square nor FIVE there. And I was HAPPY. quite content was I. For now we had a Pothy Fort a fort for POTHY. And I lived in a house, a sweet little house on Leeb Way.
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