Try this 10.20

Vienna the Cardigan

You crush those civilians breathing in their impermanent homes
the west hand bloodier than the east one, the propaganda notion truth--
our hiccup is obsequious.
Later the heads shall bow slight in hypocrisy
of their crimes and present humanity.
Soon the red babies will scatter over stretched plains
here and about a stolen homeland.
After the militias do opt in another humanitarian Sarajevo
and the indifferent Americans will cry his unrepentant heart a bit.
Now the Bomb can drop our hampered love
and hug, with a last reveal, nearly like the mothers,
unlike death.

Try this 10.1 top

"Mundane agitprop." -I just made up this phrase while reading some Vladimir Lenin. The term just seemed a good fit.
        Year 2033: The true meaning of the now iconic political phrase 'mundane agitprop' has an entirely new meaning, running contrary to the original intended meaning. Now, mundane agitprop describes a specific and yet all too common occurrence here in these end times we call 2033: it's when an upperclass Danish person performs an unsolicited appendectomy on an unsuspecting cyborg vacuum cleaner. Labeled a serious federal crime in most of the remaining western police states and punishable by death in the third world country of America, Danes having become the latest minority to demonize in American popular culture. The crime only applies to upperclass Danes because then and as it is now only the wealthy have access to the medical schools in which such a procedure is learned. Also, there are only two classes, the super rich and the horribly poor - the end result of accelerated late capitalism. I could go on in that direction for quite some time but, I'll spare you. Instead, I'll leave you with the unfortunate knowledge that the poor do not have access to the legal rights that the super rich are entitled to, meaning the poor can be mundane agitprop-ed day in and day out without any punishment for the offending Dane. Social scientists are still studying why only wealthy Danes commit this crime, and have only so far come to an agreement that it has something to to do with skull size and shape; that is because racist colonial-era eugenics-informed pseudo-science has replaced the unpopular and unheeded practices of early 21st century science. I'll leave you with the ambiguousness that America's capital is now Chicago.

Chapter 11 warm-up

Setting: Two strangers on a bench in Central Park.
Characters: Eve, a dancer; sober and contemplative.
                   Richard, a dirtbag; boisterous and choleric.
Richard: (sits down, puts hands to his eyes) God damn it. Women. Am I right? (Sees he's seated
                next to a woman, only temporarily flustered. He puts his hands back to eyes.)
Richard: I was just pepper-sprayed is what happened. Totally unwarranted. I thought a
               nonverbal agreement had been met.
Eve: Clearly you were mistaken. (Continues looking down and away.)
Richard: Now just because a woman says she wants nothing to do with me, that I look like a quote
               date-rape specialist, that she would rather be subjected to hours of William Buckley's
               "Firing Line" program than be near me any longer, is that really an indication that she
                doesn't wish to mate with me. You have to admit, this women's lib shit is getting out
                of hand; political correctness gone mad, etc.
Eve: God. You really are a presumptuous little shit, aren't you. (Continues to look away.)
Richard: (Hands at his sides.) Listen, all I'm saying is that is eugenics all that bad? Shouldn't we be
               able to have this discussion like adults. Freedom of speech!
Eve: Personally, I'm past the point of debate when it comes to the views of neo-nazis. And the liberals
        who naively sympathize with your disingenuous and fraudulent calls for free speech is reductive
        and disregards the immediacy and urgency, the primacy really, of free protest coexisting
        alongside views like yours that clearly have violence as an end goal; it's bigotry that easily
        grows arms and fists and triggers. The violence of the oppressed and the violence of the
        oppressors aren't equal, and in fact aren't in the same sphere.
Richard: I'll be honest: I stopped listening. Your views are probably valid, if a bit undeveloped,
              incomplete. None of that matters. You're a social justice warrior, and for some my
              subset of mouth breathing colleagues have deemed that wanting to make the world a
              better place through collective struggle as a thing to look down upon and be belittled
              merely because no one wants to mate with us, and our silly nihilism is easier than
              engaging in reality. (He rubs his eyes again. Looks over at Eve as she continues to look
              away.)
Richard: Would you want to mate with me? I'm terribly out of shape and it would be a hideous
               display of the cruelty of heterosexuality.
Eve: (Gets up. Her shiny tap shoes are visible. She closes her eyes, delicate classical music
         starts playing. She begins to dance expertly but out of step with the music playing.)
         Misandry is excusable. Nay, sublime. And vital. (Still dancing.) It's not a cure but I'm not
         if a cure is foreseeable, outside of radicalization.
Curtain closes.

Try this 8.12

      Outside at a protest, with people spread all over in the background, in the foreground stand three people facing each other in the cold. One is a small woman, twenties, dark blonde hair wrapped in a bun, with large headphones on, wires connecting to her phone, carrying a large gray backpack on her back and a microphone boom held under her left arm; her face is unseen, her back to us. Directly across from her, five feet away, to her right, is a middle aged father-looking type, literally dressed exactly like my dad: loose fitting jeans, athletic shoes even though he's clearly not exercising, a lifeless, fashionless brown jacket zipped up to the neck, collar down and a beat up baseball hat and unneeded sunglasses; he is facing the girl. In between these two stands a man looking dazed (and confused) facing us, his face bloodied and gashed, his left eye swelling slightly; half a foot taller than either companion, he is wearing khaki cargo pants, a hooded sweatshirt, a stretched fanny pack drooping around his fat waist and an unkempt red t-shirt with, in white lettering, the very literal and reactionary phrase "Trump is my president." All along the insides of this third man's cargo pants are the large, dark, wet stains of what can only be construed as urine.
      Speculation is, in this case easy. I know the situation all too well. "Normies" and Trump supporters who've never attended a rally (other than a weekend klan meeting/safe space) or protest, come to these events with their usual male bravado yet unshaken, ready to cause trouble. This Trumper had such intentions of disturbing peaceful protesters. What he doesn't know is that the people attending this protest are not all snowflake resistance liberals who love Hillary. No, a lot of them are veteran anarchists who have been burning limos and punching nazis half their lives; they are anti-fascists and they will not hesitate to kick your ass. So this terribly confused Trump supporter hassles some liberal kids, pushes a few of them around, grabbing them by their hoods and backpacks, babbling about terrorists and George Soros probably and the anti-fascists, dressed in all black, their uniform, get word of this disturbance. They rush to these kid's defense and start wailing on this fanny pack-wearing dirtbag, I mean really laying in punches hard to this guy's face and to his stomach. He collapses and a dark wetness starts growing on the inside track of his pants. This grown man, outside of his Trump rally safe space, is peeing his pants he's so scared of getting knocked on by a few twenty-something radicals. Now surrounded by two media professionals, one girl, one man of a similar middle age, the Trumper is relaying his side of events, clearly lying and clearly trying to pretend he didn't piss himself like a pre-schooler. This is what happens when a closed-off mind, fed on a diet of bigotry and misogyny, conspiracy theories and the minds of other idiots who don't leave the basement, finally arrives at the real world for the first time. My advice: go back to the fake world you know, old man; trust me when I say, the new world has no place for your kind and the debates are now over.

Try this 9.9

    Humphrey had a house on the edge of the forest, a good mile out of the center of town. He lived alone, having moved here two years past with no baggage of any kind, no family, only enough money to hold on to the house and to set  up shop near the town square in a minuscule office. That office, as he had it stenciled on the square pane of translucent glass in the door, was known from then on as "The Bogart Detective Agency."
    Word spread that Humphrey was taciturnly sulky and aloof. He wore his slicked back hair with pomade and always had on a freshly laundered suit. Humphrey would spend his days in his office, around town and his nights out in that small house by the forest. He warranted no second glance aside from the peculiar fact that Humphrey had no secretary, no clients and for all we knew, solved no crimes. Believe me, someone would have said something to him, if only he weren't so damn intimidating. He'd stare at you with those dark, almost black eyes, silent as the grave until the pleasantries were exhausted and you rushed off just to get far away from that presence of his.
     Things continued in that banal routine as is common around here. This detective with no clients payed his bills and seemed well off financially. But five years down the road and not one client, no sign of any business whatsoever, and no personal companion or even acquaintance made people suspicious. Often people care most about money, and certainly other people's money is included in that financial vigilance. Everyone in town was desperate to know how this silent mystery stayed afloat, and what made him stay here with no one by his side, but shit, he was just too frightening a figure to approach.
        Nothing stays secret in a small town for long, unless you dispose of the body properly, and too many townspeople became suspicious before talk of investigating this apparent investigator hopped like fire from the lips of every bored to death resident in this small town by the forest. Our investigations though produced no satisfying results; this guy was clean, as straight and upright as a man could be, so we left him to live his life of quietly bizarre solitude, because that's what seems he wanted.
        Ten years passing in this town and little changes. Humphrey hadn't changed either. And we all kept our distance. Except one day, in the winter of '37, a tiny, fancy car drove through town and out to Humphrey's hideaway near the forest. Evidently it was a man, Humphrey's exact physical match, except this young man's slicked back hair was a vibrant red. Mrs. Flanning, Humphrey's closest neighbor, and the nosiest woman I've ever met, got it from these two men that the new man in town was named Ingrid, a strange name for a man, we all agreed. Before we all new it, these two friends actually moved in together. I suppose this friend needed a place to stay, but years pass and they still lived with one another. It was the sort of occurrence that doesn't happen in a town like this. There began to spread a frightening rumor that these two were dandies, faggots in fact. We were not as a town going to allow such a sacrilege, right near the forest and everything, and so the townsfolk, we decided to pay these two faggots a visit, to show that they aren't allowed to flout the rules of a god-fearing civil society.
      It was in the night, as these sort of things often are, that we made our way to that old house by the forest. We knocked the door practically clear off its hinges. They came to door underdressed and we pushed our way in, looking for anything to away their lifestyle. I've heard they own feminine trinkets of sorts lying about the house. We demanded what their situation was, whether they were together in the coital sense. We screamed it at them, up close, as they shivered in fright. Their response was the strangest and most honest I've ever heard. "Yes, we're lovers, man and wife in fact, if you must know, and as it happens, we're on our way out of here this very night," said Humphrey. The trees in the forest burst into a multicolored light and a sound blared through all our ears like an airplane engine, only smoother, and what should I call it, more metallic? We were stunned and the two strange men walked right past us through the front door and out into the forest aglow. It's been several years and there has been no sign of Humphrey or Ingrid anywhere near this town, and ever since, and I haven't the slightest idea why, I miss those two men in a way I can't begin to describe.

Warm-up picture

Surrounding the isolated valley of Shangri-La are the Kunlun Mountains. Although Shangri-La itself has become quite well-known, its less famous neighbor to the west, within the vast mountain range is a utopia carved into the rock of the Kunlun Caves; this is the Kingdom of Pittsburgh. There is great unrest in Pittsburgh, for the income inequality willfully produced by a corrupt, profit-driven economic system has divided the city's inhabitants into two disparate class systems: the wealthy lotus-eaters of the light, and the cave diving proles of the darkness, or the disenfranchised. The dehumanized proles must wear wetsuits, for they spend all day working the lowest depths of the caves while the lotus-eaters lounge in the artificial light of the metropolitan city center. The proles are organizing a militia in order to overthrow the unstable aristocracy of lotus-eaters who have engorged themselves on their own opulence, their own greed. With their backs turned, some literally, the lotus-eaters will never see the proles approaching with their plans of a complex coordinated attack from all levels of the city at dawn. "What was that?" asked a female lotus-eater, looking into the outer reaches of the light. "Nothing," replied her partner, a male. "I say, it's probably those prole-servants, fetching us some more wine. We ran out not long ago. Since then the mood has dimmed considerably," spoke another male nearby. "I do hope they hurry then. My, how those proles lay about. We give them so much and they can't even keep the wine flowing," said the female, sending herself into a mild tizzy.

Try this 6.2

     With the armies of the enemy closing in, the two fighters, one named Pat, the other named Billy, are trapped in the top corner room of a painfully empty French brothel. Long have they sat here, Pat, an amputee, with his prosthetic arm in the hands of Billy; and Billy, a deaf mute, with his hearing aid in the hand of Pat. They have not spoken to one another since the incident last night that drove the entire brothel out of town headed underground to the bomb shelters.
      The enemy advances to the small section of Paris, where Pat and Billy await their fate. I certainly don't know what it is these men have done to provoke a foreign army with enough bombs to send the city into a charred apocalypse but, there was talk amongst the whores, before their evacuation, that Pat has known the enemie's general's wife in the carnal sense. Billy is none too pleased, for the ensuing capture that awaits them both, and the fact that coitus was already guaranteed to them the moment they touched down in Madame Derrida's famous den of pleasure.
      "Well, you can look at me all you want. I wasn't aware at the time that she was anyone's wife," Pat says, his hand resting along the cool glass of his brandy.
       Billy, infuriated, signs quickly, tossing Pat's arm on the floral print sheets of the large bed in the process. "Yes, of course she looked familiar, but what kind of general's wife is in a bar that late. And I don't think holding on to the prosthetic like that is a mature way of expressing your distaste," Pat replies, only half-imploring. More furious movements of arms and hands, fingers alight, as Billy replies in kind. "Now I'm glad you brought that up I really don't see the connection between her and the women here. I thought as men we could understand what's at stake when a woman like her is so openly sensual and wanting. Yes, we had this place planned at the end of the night but, she was an unforeseen obstacle that frankly had to be taken on; and for that I won't apologize. Anyway, you've used this all as some sort of hostage takeover of my arm. It's only fair that I confiscate your hearing apparatus." A hand alarmed. "Yes, aid, hearing aid."
     Pat stirs from the seat in the floor and paces to the window, the clouds of battle closing in. "You don't think they'll shoot us without some kind of trial, do you?" Billy signs dejectedly and quickly scoffs a there's-no-point gesture Pat's way. "Oh well you are just so theatrical. I'm able to take responsibility. I have, haven't I? It's that you think it's funny to take a man's arm because he got more than you did and didn't have to pay for half of it." Billy, as quick as a flash, punches Pat square in the face. "Now you're adding insult to injury...or injury to insult. I don't think that'll help matters. I'll give you back yours when you agree to give me back mine. It's only fair, and damn it, can you see the bigger picture here? By the way, do you think it'll be firing squad, or no?" Billy shrugs with disinterest.
      A voice outside bellows, "Gentlemen, we know you're cowering in fear like women in this establishment. We kindly demand that you make your way swiftly through the front lobby and out here where we can see you up close and personal."
     "Alright, lover. You ready for the end?" They exchange their stolen items. Pat puts his arm around Billy's shoulders, a tear visible on Billy's cheek. They walk toward the door. "Oh I know chap, I know...I should've have gone for the red-head at the end of the bar. She was certainly there alone, no less."