Plays
"The Killer"
By Steve De France
A Downloadable Two-Act Comedic Satire.
Format: Microsoft Word
Size: 102 kb News Update: The Killer made its stage
debut at The Garage Theatre in Long Beach, CA on September 21, 2006.
Go here for review.
Poems
New Works
BEHIND THE LINES
He lies on his side, eyes open--- watching.
They don't focus---his gray eyes just watch you.
Hugging the legs of an L.A. bus bench, his arms
are tangled around the iron in an unnatural way.
Naked legs thrust out onto the sidewalk.
Most people walk around. A few step over.
The bench back above him is an advertisement
(maybe for him a bomb shelter). It has a picture
of a fat black man. He looks well fed.
Above him in red letters are the words:
ATTORNEY LARRY H. PARKER GOT ME TEN MILLION.
In small letters a disclaimer. It states each case is unique.
And as in life, there are no guarantees.
A bus hisses & thunders to a stop.
An Indian or Pakistan woman
is lowered off in a wheel chair.
Her chair can't roll over the man.
He blocks her sidewalk. She screams.
Brown & black faces gather to poke
& punch the guy. He groans.
A Los Angeles police car shows up. Two cops.
One white female, one black male.
Politically correct.
Suspicion swells---the
crowd stops chattering & scatters.
Half don't have identity papers. Others are inherently
afraid of any police.
The police guy's very short, the female's unusually
tall.
I imagine them as lovers.
The cops sit the guy up. He starts coughing.
Suddenly he pukes on the female officer's leg.
They stand him up against the wall
at Washington & Grand.
The traffic's tangling around them.
For a minute I thought they might shoot him.
Suddenly the man stands to attention and says:
"Is this Baghdad? Am I under arrest? What are the charges?
I am corporal Jones serial# 2YUSMC…"
The small cop says, "It's OK, soldier."
Almost gently---he touches his shoulder.
"There are no charges."
The female reads him his rights & with rubber
gloves
leads him toward the police unit.
They drive off without conviction.
They'll leave him somewhere behind the lines---
where no one cares too much,
maybe Chinatown.
RENDEZVOUS WITH A PART TIME GOD
Who is the gaunt stranger in the train station?
There---where he slides into the crowd.
Why does he stand perfectly still in the dark?
Why is it only you and I see him?
Only you and I hear his ragged breathing,
see his pock marked face,
smell his breath like dandelion wine.
See where his burning gaze
settles on a smiling salesman.
Where are the Gods to shield
the less significant people?
Where is the God of brothels,
gutters, and darkest corners of the city?
Don’t these people need God most?
Will these less significant beings be
assigned a non-union God?
An hourly part-time God?
A God without a corner celestial office.
A shabby ruffian kind of God ---one who
hangs out on park benches, in public urinals,
and sleeps in his clothes at bus stations?
Will this non-union scab of a God
foul up the last prayers of the dying,
or mar the last rites, so badly
that the bureaucrat Gods in heaven
will simply mark an "X " in the
box for "lost"
and
then throw his soul in the dead letter box?
from
American Landscape (2006)
BECAUSE I CAN'T WHISTLE
It was my mother's
dream
for me to play the violin.
The maestro came to the house
for $ 5.00 an hour lessons.
A slight balding Englishman
who had been gassed by the Germans
in the Allied assault on Normandy.
His left hand trembles still
tendons twisted from the nerve gas.
He sits in pained attitude
crippled fingers pointing out
full & half notes for me to murder.
I learn the strings
& some bowing
but nothing comes of it.
I saw away maliciously
making notes screech in pain
even mother agrees I have no talent.
I try piano.
it goes the way of the violin.
I can't whistle or carry a tune in song.
I am audience
material.
I listen to mother play
Beethoven, Chopin,
Liszt, & Rachmaninoff
on piano or guitar---when she has time
she paints & draws,
writes poetry & songs,
or reads tea leaves
an acts like a gypsy.
I start shining
shoes & fighting,
excellent at both---a disappointment for her.
When my nose is broken, she cries.
Before she died of
dementia
I remember her asking me
"Who are you?"
"I am your son."
She couldn't hear me anymore.
So, I began to fashion poems.
Tonight sitting
before a desk
I feel her watching my writing progress
not frowning---but smiling encouragement
as if amused that I stopped molesting
instruments & now confine my brawls
to words. I turn toward her shadow,
"Can you hear me now mama?"
BLACKBIRDS
A dappled brown
sparrow rests
on a kitchen towel. Neither young nor old
but of some indeterminate age.
Death would not be your first thought
but her breathing comes in short spurts of life,
her feathers ripple as if in a wind, yet the air is still.
She can neither sit nor stand but tilts dangerously
as if taking a curve in the road
or making a steep skyward sparrow-bank,
one that bends time and slides on wind currents
in some larger sky. I press the towel to prop her up.
For a moment she looks at me not
afraid
but with assessment.
Buttressed by the towel she can not
tilt to either side, so she falls backward
her head inclines sharply
wings extended high
eyes looking out from some
parallel sparrow universe
some place knowable only to birds.
Startled by a sudden
wind gust
blackbirds swirl in expanding circles
their shadows marking the edges
of hemlock trees. Through the sun
it begins to rain.
from Fear and Loathing at the
Typewriter (2006)
OVER THE RAINBOW
I'm looking out my window
at a huge black crow.
He's standing in the exact
center of the cement driveway,
pecking at a dried turd.
Shakes it around
to make sure its dead.
Tilts a glance at me,
breaks off a bite-sized piece,
tips his head back,
& it rolls
down his feathered
ebony throat.
Life would be so simple,
if we could all do the same.
My neighbor, a blue-haired crone,
rolls up in a new silver Lincoln.
Her matching silver-blue poodle
spurts from the car,
like toothpaste from a tube,
& in a neurotic attack of energy
lunges at the crow.
"Felix, No!"
The Crone snatches up her pooch,
& kicks the turd
into the sewer opening.
She trots into her house.
And the crow is left
skulking
in the rose bushes.
Even if you're willing
to eat shit
it may not be enough
for some people.
FEAR AND LOATHING AT THE TYPEWRITER
For Dr. Gonzo
I was just outside Barstow when the poem started
taking affect---I was traveling with my attorney
an evil dwarf who sometimes sits on my shoulder as
I write---he leans over and reads the last line.
"Give me more drugs," he screams----
"Look at that last line," I cry in ecstasy.
No, no I can't. . .
"Why?"
"The letters---look---the S's are turning to snakes."
I pulled the typewriter over to the side & stared at the letters.
I saw it clearly—the S's had ganged up on the T's.
"What should I do doctor?" My evil dwarf grabbed the
typewriter
turned it upside down & shook it. "Look now," he screamed.
"No, its no good," I cried, the S's are beginning to strangle
the L's.
My attorney & my doctor ripped open a sealed envelope
marked "EMERGENCIES"
He pushed a handful of yellow red & purple capsules into my
mouth.
"Swallow these before it is too late," he stuffed the rest
into his mouth.
We sit for hours, maybe days
I can't be sure.
Staring at the paper as it turns red.
The letters, however, mostly turned white except M's
& N's who gather in the upper corner & begin to glow.
My evil dwarf sweats profusely
searching for meanings in the letters.
He mumbles about priests & whores.
I scream into his ear:
"What do you think doctor?"
"The worst is over" he said, slipping
the barrel of the Browning Pistol into his mouth.
from Things to Read on Your Way
to Hell (2005)
YOUR LINES ARE TOO FAT
I'm at the mailboxes.
The IRS wants more money:
2400 dollars.
Rejections---
New Yorker & The Atlantic.
Both want poems
without so many words in them.
Thinner lines, not so fat.
The Big Blonde from the
back apartment stops & says:
"Did you hear 'bout Howe?"
I stare at her.
As a Hollywood philosopher
once said she looks like
she'd been there & back.
Could have been an ex -hooker,
a retired Mafia party girl,
or just what she is--a lonely old broad
with too much perfume & too many chins.
"Died," she said, "fell on the kitchen floor."
"Sorry," I say.
"Died alone," she whispers,
"I hope I don’t die alone."
By the time she reaches her door,
she's forgotten the dead man
& his death was now all about her.
I am sorry to hear of Howe's
death.
He was one of the few people in the building
Who did not write poetry.
My hands are shaking as I open my door.
Out my 4th story window
encroaching rooftops rub against a rainy sky,
like ragged tombstones in air.
Is every building mad as
mine?
Every street so tired & old?
Every apartment dwellers' hopes
as lean from pain & mortality?
So what if my lines are too fatttttttttt!
If you're dead like Howe
thin words don't matter at all.
And death if you are going to stay
sit down
we might as well have tea.
THE CIGARETTE
I smell it--white, tightly
rolled and
hot. In fact, its smoke's curling up my
nose, churning up my stomach. This
cigarette's passing forth carcinogens
like the Vatican chimney on the
selection of a new Pope.
I gag on my oatmeal, lower my
spoon,
scan the vacant masticating faces. There
she is. Blue hair. Simian forehead.
Black penciled eyebrows caught in
eternal surprise. Fat nose, and a pink
slit of a mouth locked on a cigarette.
This crone has a spoon in one
hand,
cigarette in the other. And between
massive drags, she sucks at the spoon,
dribbling pea soup down her receding
chin.
As the smoke-cloud overhead
expands
above the bowed, bleating, and chewing
heads, I nonchalantly reach across her
table and drive her face into the soup
bowl. Nobody seems concerned.
She squirms and fights with surprising
strength; until at last giving up, she
emits a final belch, which trails away
to a mournful gurgle, as she pensively
expires into her soup.
I grind the cigarette butt
out in her
wet blue hair. I begin to smile.
I'm breathing much easier now.
And as I pay my tab, I begin
whistling
The love theme from Carmen.
from
Voices At The Waystation (2003)
DO IT YOURSELF BUKOWSKI MULTIPLE
CHOICE POEM
(Nominated for the Pushcart Prize 2003)
i am sitting on
a. the crapper
b. a bottle of muscatel
c. my dead white ass
d. other
when the landlady barges into my room looking to
a. get laid
b. have a drink
c. collect the rent
d. other
she is wearing a dirty slip and i can see her
a. unshaved bush
b. vericose veins
c. raging cellulite
d. other
she bends over and grabs
a. my rock hard shaft
b. my limp dick
c. my petrified pecker
d. other
i give it to her on the
a. crapper
b. roach infested carpet
c. wine soaked couch
d. other
i slam it to her like
a. a pneumatic jack hammer
b. a dog in heat
c. a cop clubbing a negro in harlem
d. other
she wails like a
a. factory whistle
b. tijuana whore
c. cop car on the way to doughnut store
d. other
when it is over she
a. throws my ass out
b. smiles and says she'll be back later
c. drinks my muscatel while sitting on crapper
d. other
i stare out bloodshot eyes at the mean streets of L.A. and think about
a. what a pecker driver i am
b. the nu# 8 horse running at hollywood park
c. writing a poem about mozart and my dick
d. other
ISLAND BOY
The heavy smell of burning gas lies like
hemlock-fog over Leeward Bay Marina.
On the other side of a train trestle,
a Richfield Oil Refinery glows
surreal and electric in the twilight.
Fire erupts from a tall smoke stack.
Fine carbon dust settles along the dock.
Your breathing is ragged in the adamantine
air.
At the horizon, the skyline has a burnt look to it.
Gulls drift slowly and settle on barnacled pilings.
Rigging on sailboats creak as hulls
lazily rub against moorings.
You turn your head
as sound drifts across the oily water--a hammer--
a winch turns--voices, scarcely human,
echo and bounce along
the iron hulls of the super freighters.
Wilmington, California.
Steinbeck would be comfortable here.
A ragged crane stands on one spidery leg
and stares suspiciously at Styrofoam cups and plates
swirling down from the L.A. river.
The man next to you is about 45 or so.
His teeth are filed till they come to tiny points.
He calls himself Island Boy.
He's down to his last cigarette
last joint, last drink,
last pill, last woman,
and his final chance to beat the odds.
He's building a boat from spare parts.
Plans to go back to the islands.
As you cast-off your line,
Island Boy waves solemnly,
while your boat shudders into the tide
sliding
into the darkened waters.
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