Robert Colpitts

Please relax as I share a short tale with you.

It turns out, after a couple months of experimentation, that I like to do the followings in the order presented:

1)  Wake up earlier than necessary so that the following can happen.
2)  Run in a circle through Fort Tryon park, around the Cloisters, and back home again.
3)  Arrive home and heat up a cup of water in the microwave.
4)  While that water is heating, stretch a bit.
5)  When the water is done heating, place tea in the water.
6)  While that tea brews, meditate for 10 minutes.

This morning, as I went about this process, I forgot to do number 4, and skipped directly to number 5.  That is, instead of stretching while the water was heating, I started to meditate.  This would have caused a problem:  I would have to put the bag of tea in to brew after meditation. 

Wait!  Before you judge me, please note that as soon as I realized that it seemed like a ‘problem,’ I said to myself, “Just takes things as they are; you can brew your tea after you meditate, and the world is not going to end.”  Doesn’t that seem like the right thing to say?  Within seconds, a flying insect crashed into the bookshelf that was to my immediate right.  I thought, “Is that a fly?  Is it some sort of flying roach?  What–?”

The fly promptly crashed into my ear.  I leapt up from my seat with a kind of yipping squeal.  “Ok,” I thought, “I’ll put the tea bag in now.”  I did, and as I returned to my cushion, I hoped the fly was gone.

Later, toward the end of my meditation, the thoughts about the fly appeared.  At that moment, I heard the fly buzzing around.  The timer went off a few seconds later.  I laughed.

I named that buzzing creature the “Buddah Fly.”

What is it? Where?
When how’s it?  Why?

There is, across the stare scream
Of seeing,
A window into
Not quite right
Not quite yet
Not quite this
Not quite that
That echoes
Around and around
So spinning like
It’s laughing.

That
Is my experience
And I shake it up
Right now
Due to laundry.

Always once instead of running down to there where there is near and watching the sky crow is nothing more than wondering; this is the experience that I share oh so sherry share.  One step.  Two step.  Three step–and like the comic habit, I fly through the crowds and land on their experience with a coo coo coo and sow the yep yep yep right out of them.

“Do you love the liver?  Them there livers?  The livers so they cleanse?  The lover liver?  The liver kisser?  The moon over kismaladoodle?  This, that, the other.  Take your fife drum, you monkey pipe, and dance dance dance the widgle pidgle woo!”

This I hear from my lover Tom-the-Dried-Up.  He takes me in his arms and catches my sadness in his teeth.  He chews it to moonshine mooshy mush.  I take another lover that looks just like him, and he does the same thing; I cannot tell the difference.

The daylight signals the end of the festivities.  Wonder now at the opera of love.  Wonder now where you beg from.  Wonder now if the touch you give is ever more than mortal.  You I he she it them me are human me it she them all. 

We are fomenting.  A synonym for death.  That, I wonder, is that?  Have we reached the heart?  When I am there, will I remember the start? 

The day is not complete without this type of textual fetish.  Take me as your lover; I write like this.

Forensics, the study of misalignment, brought Korandi to the phylactery that night.  She sniffed it, accompanied by the leaden Orbiter, the man she loved, the Hopi made night.  Korandi shaved her name upon discovering her fortune, and was never the same after raping her love, but always smiled when asked to smile, and introduced herself and her Orbiter always in one sentence.  There, shy, happy, cute, they pet pet pet each other.  Pet pet pet pet.  With mouths open.  With juices flowing.  They pet pet pet so cute, and made love, so nice, and made the night the sky, and taunted Hollah with the music from their lips.  But this day, no this night, no this moment, Korandi took her fortune home to save.  Bacon had more grease.  She knew nothing, saved nothing, meant nothing.

Orbiter, on the other hand, entered the word ‘dictionary’ into the online dictionary to see if the definition seemed right.  Next:  ‘online dictionary.’  Then:  ‘This online dictionary.’  Orbiter spent the rest of the night locked up in his vision blurred stare.  Korandi came to kiss him, but Orbiter slithered away.  They played a game of slap the privates, until Fortune began to ring, dawn came, and they made love again.  The words of wake up fell off the page into Korandi’s shoes, and she was out the door with a yellow goodbye.  Orbiter, not use to such treachery, followed her, kidnapping whoever he could along the way. 

That, Orbiter thought, was a good idea.  But what the idea was had left his mind as soon as he recognized its quality.  Only the vague recollection that it was good.  Korandi loved him.  Of that he was semi-sure.  As sure as any man can be, which is not much at all.  Feckless kisses matching lovers’ hearts.

Needless to say, you understood not a word.  You must not know love.

Drip
Down
Drip
There
That
Life
That
Never
Once
Mattered
Never
Once
Shined
Never
Once
Had
IT
Go
Right

Perspective?

In this sad
Spare
Pointless
Empty
Life?

Perspective?

That
Is joy
Pointed
Awful
Tongue
Tied
Eye

Faith cuts my skin with a razor and with each swipe says, “Let the truth drop in.”  I, numb to the pain, still feel my heart straining to get the last ounce of my slimy blood onto the floor.  I want to take a shower, but I am burning.  The razor becomes my salvation.  Faith cuts deeper and harder with each swipe. 

“What say I, moron?  What say I, to you, you worm?  What say I now that you mock and abandon me, the only reasonable hope you have of redeeming your pathetic existence?  What say I with my leather, and my razor, and my hate, and my history?  What say I with that core of pain in my hand?  What say I now?”

I whisper, “You say, ‘The dream you met on a summer’s eve, so long gone, dances forever without you.  Forget her.’”

More and more I want to unleash my love for her, and yet what good comes from loving nothing?

“What say I, master?  What say I, doer?  What say I, writer?  What say I, thinker?  What magic spews forth now?  What mystery do I reveal?”  With all of her force, she trails the razor blade down and deep from the front of my throat to the joining of my intestines.  My innards spill onto the floor.  She dances on it, and it, like spaghetti, slips around.  I am skeleton dripping flesh cauterized through experience.

I whisper, “I already lack nothing.  What more does losing mean?  If never were there ever, I would go.  It is not.  I will not.  You are nothing.”

She does not disappear.  She sits on my guts as if she were floating on a cloud.

I whisper, “Have you no comfort to offer?”

She smiles, “Nice ribs. When you are dead, you won’t look so different.”

Sigh…
Sigh…
Yep…
Sigh…
And now the math I do…
Drips wearily with…
Juicy sighs…

If it weren’t for brave young men and young women
If it weren’t for their sacrifice and bravery
If it weren’t for their willingness and spirit
If it weren’t for their faith and love

If it weren’t for our abuse of them:
Of their youth
Of their poverty
Of their confusion
Of their courage
Of their hope

If we did not have all that
What do you think would disappear?

I’ll give you three guesses.

They all start with war.

In July and August of 2010, myself (Robert Colpitts), Amy Jones, and Lila Weingast created a workshop performance piece entitled “Requiem’s Bloom”  With me directing, and Jones and Weingast performing, this version of the piece was recorded on August 26th.

To learn more about Requiem’s Bloom, please see this link. If you’d like to learn more about supporting this project or the Theatre Research Ensemble, please go here.

Part One:

Part Two:

Thanks for checking it out!

For a sight
For a sound
For a sign
For a …
Seriously for a …

Ewe
Yuck
No way
Ouch
That life
That one
Happy
Now?

A long time for you to be grounded.
A long time for you to be fierce.
A long time for you to be assertive.
A long time for you to be you.

I have to move that long too.

This this this
That that that
I think I like work
Where did it go?

Here lies purpose.
Seriously, not dead,
But lying here
Waiting to see
If this works.

Should you, you shoulder pad lover,
Market delight with your hellos and how dos,
Then I will purchase of that fruit
With my smile, a pen, and a boot.

Eventually I will be the last man on Earth,
And I will be famous then.

This, I heard, upon a walk in meadow,
From a FISH.