SHAGSPARE REDUCTUS (a feminist trope or a blasphemy of sorts..)

Yo stigmata / come and see what I found / straddled on a rock/ buried under a red white and blue rose-bush / mastering the breath of angels / Shagspare’s canon weaponized culture / on the living page / I have hewn my desiderata / in the beginning was the word / and the word was encrypted / symbol of the ages / to transform humanity / bring order out of its’ chaos / keep the demons of common-sense at bay / propose the riddle of the Sphinx / assert the mystery of the pyramid / conclude the end of times / the penis is mightier than the sword..

ACT ONE : WAITING FOR THE PLUMBER.

Willy Shagspare lived in a ramshackle flatness on the bend of Earlswater Street and Drobny Sidings. Whenever he tried to wash up in the one remaining sink, somebody else’s dirty bath-water retched up the sides of it, a nasty practice that he complained of, hoping for an eventual plumber to come. But nobody came for too long and by then it was too late.

Willy traveled his room in ever-widening circles, days passed on, reflections peering in from time to time, ladies hired from the streets to witness what fantasies remained. “What are you trying to say?” queried the tart with the sloping ears. “I’m trying to say I’m trying to say something. You’re as dull as the rest, so take your shekels and leave!” She didn’t stay.

For years he had never kissed his mother and now she was dead. Shagspare knelt on the carpet and tried to cry. The sink belched as it usually did. He didn’t blow his brains out or anybody else’s

ACT TWO : HIS PLOT FALLS APART.

He began to get depressed. The flatness oppressed him. When it rained everything looked drab. Such a darkness depressed him. Eyes to my eyes, shelter from the sun, no reason to be alarmed, back to the real world, nothing to do with the way he feels, hands on his ass afloat, a sudden preoccupation with neatness, a feeling of felt rest assured his face blinded in a cushion, blush on his lips, as cheeky as the day he was born, just a little one left to find his own way. “Ah, men!” he sighed, “Ah, men! Ah, men!” A thousand times already. Willy Shagspare was not the man he was.

He could no longer pin a situation down. He no longer tried. A finger in where it seemed to melt, a nose for non-occasions. Nor even the effort to admit it’s not an effort anymore because he’d given up trying. His plot fell apart. He knelt on her ass and tried to cry. The sink farted, structures collapsed with all the inspiration of poetry. “It’s no use trying to tell me, I’m not with you, I don’t understand what you’re getting at, why don’t you put your head under the faucet!” Somebody might take a bath. She didn’t stay.

ACT THREE : IOU.

Another day in the ramshackle flatness, waiting for justice to be done or witnessed undone. Repetition is the consolation of the fanatic. Shagspare ejaculated with an ugly inflection. Relief isn’t everything. “I see what you mean” says the gingerhead buttoning her bodice, the sytem’s broken down.” Neither the breadth nor the contractual reference to repeat even a romance. “I’m having a bath later, would you care to join me? The water’s hot. I’ll show you why I’m called Willy in vicious circles..” She didn’t stay.

He cries as the door shuts quietly to himself. There’s must be a limit to intellectual concern, just as there must be a limit to the number of asses you can account for before you grow old..? Who’s growing old? Neither dramatic nor casual nor learned, a feast of asexual sexual impulses, like lightning in a blue sky. Art says nothing that doesn’t count.

Bath-water that doesn’t stink when you wash in it. “I’m not staying here to listen to you philosophizing, it’s not even philosophy, just an excuse to say what you’re thinking!” Who’s to say what thinking is. It may be a pleasure but it’s all you’re getting! She didn’t stay.

Shagspare switched off for the night and reviewed the shadows left by the silence, the secrets. Washed his teeth before retiring. Age is the most honorable state, knee-deep in silent secrets. He writes the lady an IOU, seven guineas and thirty-five shekels, the thirty-five shekels is for not asking awkward questions, “be sure and spend it wisely!” The lady nods and grins, pleased with the bonus, then disappears instantly. Think on, think on, he repeats, as if thinking is the action of thought.

And the dawn spreading over Drobny Sidings, Shagspare curls with his nose in the pillow, a simple prayer for all who follow, as the new sun mellow shines the hairs of his ass, like Denmark in the Spring, I am that I am, to be or not to be, what dreams may come…

THE END.