Sunday, January 21, 2018

The Theater in the Middle of Nowhere

This piece is in honor of those forgotten and whose stories have never been told.
The bones scattered in the fields of oppression.
The vessels of many different faces, cultures and ethnic backgrounds, on their voyage to live a dream.
It's graphic but will motivate you to understand the pain of the past and present.
Views as displayed on stages in theaters all over the world, depicting the woes and realities of life.
I hope this piece will open your eyes and give you some sense to try and live a better life.
If this piece offends anyone, then forgive me, as I forgive you.
In the midst of my typing the clock is stuck on 8:08pm.
The workers on the assembly-line try to stay focused, realizing that they are living the dream.
My typewriter on the kitchen table is leaking old black ink so I use the computer instead.
A piece from a falling building hits me in the head.
I fall to the floor, dizzy, I see two twin buildings in the distance.
I'm a poet, who has lost his marbles.
I wake up at a theater in the middle of nowhere:
A school history teacher stands on stage with whips and chains.
He is the MC, a prostitute and a preacher are playing the lead roles.
A woman who aborted seven babies in her lifetime is on the piano with her throat cut.
The show begins when the MC leaves the stage with his chains rattling.
He trips and falls over the proscenium arch into the orchestra pit.
The people in the orchestra pit pay no attention and continue to play, knowing they have to appeal to the many different types of people in the audience.
The show must go on.
It has never been like this: Catholics, Muslims, Jews, Christians, Pentecostals, Atheist, Scientologist, and Baptist; all sitting together to watch a show.
The projector turns on with a ship sailing for over 400 years trading human-beings with women and babies falling overboard, on a huge silver screen.
A man with a white hood on, stands up screaming in the audience, I'm assuming the worst.
When two flags fly on the screen, he starts throwing tomatoes.
The show is not his cup of tea.
It's evident that the director is sick.
He has a swastika on his shirt, sitting in the front row.
A woman with numbers embedded on the skin of her wrist screams.
Someone then shoots the director in the head, not knowing that the symbol is ancient, meaning: "good fortune" or "well-being."
Oh no, I should have read the disclaimer.
I'm a burden to society, forgive me.
When people look at me they often think about someone hanging from a cross or dangling from a noose.
They repent. The hair on my arm stands up. I'm filled with water and electrical molecules.
The Scientologist then cheers.
It's evident that I've lost it. My sailor buddies are all drunk and hungover. I don't drink so I have to drive them home.
One lost his arm heaving around and the other got blew up by terrorist and no one wants to be bothered with him.
My other shipmate, Stanly, lost his legs, I found him in the hallway crying by the phone because his wife left him so I invited him to the show also. We're used to this stuff. That's probably why we're still watching.
I would be lying to you if I told you that this life was fair.
I would be lying to you if I told you that I had good credit and could get a low interest loan.
The truth often haunts me too.  
I confess, I built this theater with a payday loan, I built the stage, me and some illegal immigrants.
I built it in the middle of nowhere because I wanted to see who would show up to the show.
In a land where everyone dies trying to get to with no fear of testing those in power.
Maybe they just don't know.
Oh boy, skeletons at the wall.
God told me to write this.
Forgive me I'm schizo, let me get back on track.  
Why do good people have to suffer?These thoughts flow through my mind as I continue to watch.
In all of the chaos, some people have walked out of the theater.
I have to keep watching so I don't forget those who suffered on route to this point.
Just think, some people waited in line for hours to see this show and a rapist paid $1,000 to sit in the front row and everyone shook his hand.
When you're pleasuring your brains out with your neighbors wife, what's scary is the fact that you think you'll never get caught.
A woman dressed in black sneaks up and stabs the rapist in the heart.
He falls to the floor slowly.
The theater is dark and no one notices the carnage but me.
This show at the theater in the middle of nowhere was not PG.
This show at the theater in the middle of nowhere was not rated R.
The show really happened.
The blood was real.
At the end of the show, there was a standing ovation.
The people drove out to the theater in the middle of nowhere to see scenes from the past and reflect on ways to create a better future.
They walked over bodies on the way out.
If you made it to this point, then thank you for watching.
At the end of the show, a kid with autism lit himself on fire as the priest threw holy water on him to put out the flames.
At that point, roses filled the stage.
The kid with autism, in all of his burnt clothes, bowed as curtain call proceeded. When everyone followed his lead, he put up the peace sign, if only those who left would have stayed til the end. 
The Theater in the Middle of Nowhere.   

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