Small Venue version – Duet performance

How did it begin?

(shrug) How did it begin?

How did it begin!

(both shrug – to audience)

…

We are little human cells, living in your brain.

If you keep us very well, we will keep you sane.

Just how we manage that, we’ll try to explain.

Just relax and listen well,

From interruptions please refrain.

When we’re free from worry, from distress and fear,

We’re smart as a wizard, we see things real clear.

But when we’re hurting with anger and fear

And things that make us sad,

We cannot think of anything else

Because we feel so bad.

We just need time to shake or cry, or just to be mad.

If you listen fully with care,

We know that you’ll be glad.

You see, when we’re hurting with anger, fear or grief,

Or those embarrassing put downs that come with no relief,

It starts the adrenalin flowing,

Stealing dopamine and stuff like a thief.

All this chemistry that was in balance before,

now all in turmoil, now all astir.

And if we’re further overwhelmed

with threat, control, abandonment,

All that excess ‘drenalin and chemical discontent

Gets stuck, holds in the emotional pain.

To our brain the wrongs messages sent:

I must be bad, not worth time nor care,

nor for love, nor happiness meant.

We just need to be held by you or him or her,

To let flow fully the tears, the fears,

And the words of anger for sure.

When this allowed to happen

That excess adrenalin is drained.

Then back to balance we will return,

Our confident calmness regained.

What if I can’t find some one to listen to me?

Call on your frontal human brain

That’s as smart as smart can be, and ask:

What is I don’t like in my life, in reality?

And give yourself the words of worth,

“smart…precious”, so on, so forth,

unconditionally, persistently,

until you’re totally free!

ACT I

How did it begin, this habit of unhappiness

That grips us, that rips us?

This habit of beating ourselves up?

How did it begin, this habit of bringing forth

The jewels of nature, children,

Yet using them as garbage cans for our irritations,

Frustrations, compulsions, desperations

Boxing in the running start of their lives

With our barbed judgments and un-admitted jealousies,

Flattening their fun and ecstatic leaps

Of wondrous delight in their limbs and voices

At the mere discovery of the silkiness

Of the caterpillar’s coat as it waits upon its leaf

For its epiphany…?

Scene

CHILD: Look mom, touch it (offering a caterpillar)

MOM: Yuch! Get that disgusting thing outa here!

FATHER: Are you upsetting your mom again?

Stop dragging all that crap into the house!

Where the hell is my cigarette, I had a drink right

here!

End

How did it begin, this habit of forgetting

that each one of us started out as such a jewel.

Song

“What’s Not To Love”

(Verse)

what’s not to love in there, dear mother?

What’s not to stand and shout out loud?

What’s not to love in there, dear mother?

What’s not to stand and be proud?

A new life, a new life, dear mother,

A grand life, a life like no other

(Chorus – rap rhythm)

Close your eyes, visualize

The miracle you’re holding.

A microscopic dot of life, intelligence unfolding.

S chromosomal treasury, bursting with potential,

Ensuing subdivisions, a trillion times essential.

Spectacular organs form, budding limbs and features,

Finally the human brain, golden crown of all crearures.

Music, art, philosophies, sciences aborning,

All is worth the extra care,

And the vomit in the morning.

(Verse)

What’s not to love in there, dear father?

What’s not the joy to be found?

What’s not to love, your wife, now mother?

What’s not to wrap your arms around?

A new life, a grand life, dear father.

A new life, a wife like none other.

(Chorus – rap rhythm)

Here it comes, one more push,

A humanness completed.

Boy or girl, makes no diff,

Take care in how it’s treated.

Expectant of, joy and love, signals that will nourish,

Consistently given free, necessities to flourish.

Not born to be used, abused, to fit your expectations.

Spare the child your upsets wild,

Don’t mar this great creation.

Just delight and listen well,

Your fondest wish comes true.

Heaven knows, as the world goes,

It doesn’t need another you!

(Verse)

What’s not to love, father and mother?

A new life now begins to bloom.

A new chance to go so much further,

Gives lots of love, lots of room.

A new day, a new way to uncover,

This new life, this life like none other

May discover

Dear father, dear mother!

End

(Don baby bonnet)

Here I am, boy, this is great.

Gee, nine months, what a wait.

I mean, how long can you count your toes and thumbs.

Gee, look at all those big ones.

Hey, look at that old one over there,

no teeth, just like me.

Hey, is that pee on the front of his pants?

(look down at own crotch)

Don’t we ever get over this?

Is that mommy and daddy over there,

Still is a little hard to tell which is which.

Thank gosh they call each other by their names

Prick and Bitch, when there’s nobody around.

Look at ‘em, congratulating each other.

Oh oh, they’re coming over

(Stuff bottle into one. Bounce the other up and down)

I’m not hungry,

I don’t like to be bounced!

(One vomits on the other, the other hits back, they fight)

SOUND: Slap!

Hey, why’d you hit me, shake me,

Scare me you might forsake me?

Aw, what the hell, what’s the use

(mime the bottle and the bouncing)

Is this what they call love, this abuse?

They don’t listen, even when you cry they don’t listen,

What’s the sense of expressing yourself?

(Suck. She gets the bottle, I laugh. I get the bottle)

Oh sure, now they’re smiling.

So that’s the game, put your real feelings on the shelf,

Push down your real needs to please them.

Shit! I thought I was the baby

We gotta take care of them, so they’ll take care of us!

Some care!

No!

I don’t want to grow up this way,

Hurt my own babies this way.

I’m innocent, remember it was your idea to make me.

You should take me for what I am,

Magnifique, unique.

Anyone with a grain of sense could see

I’m a prize, a gift,

Nifty in every way, with something special in me

To be, to do, to give to the world.

How dare you not pay attention,

Need I mention that I’m litto.

You need to think about what I need,

Though I can’t talk yet, I show you in a hundred ways.

I smile and point at what I like and want,

I frown at what I don’t.

I bounce up and down with joy, when I want!

I sweat and kick when I’m mad.

I feel everything very keen.

That’s how babies learn.

Do you job, or don’t make babies.

Who says you have to?

Don’t give yourself excuses

You’re tired, you’re hurt, you’re in a fit,

You’re trapped you’re troubled.

Shit!

That’s not my fault.

I’m not here to be used, abused, beat

A piece of meat to get your jollies off!

I don’t even know what all that means yet,

You don’t even know why you that, I bet.

I demand complete respect from now on,

Or one of us is gone!

I demand that you admit your own hurts

And do what you need to do to heal them,

Or I’ll cry so loud you’ll really feel them

Even if you don’t like me,

Even if I die.

I’d rather die trying to be me

Than to die a little bit every day

Pretending to be me.

So, that’s how we feel.

What d’you say, let’s heal this poo poo.

I can, I know you can, your heart is good,

(Pause)

we really could.

La la la, la la

(Remove bonnets. One keeps lala-ing and overlaps as the other speaks, and then fades out)

How did it begin this war between the sexes?

Complexes so absurd, irrational myopia

That mints homophobia as the coin of our exchanges,

Interactions, reactions,

Stuck in mutual accusations.

Scene

HIM: Bitch!

HER: Prick!

You make me sick.

Why can’t you love me for what I am?

HIM: Why can’t you let me screw you whenever I need?

And be out of mind when I do?

Don’t I take good care of you?

Don’t I get to feel good?

At first we did it all the time, you loved it.

Now, you stick of wood.

Don’t bitch at me if my eyes roam,

You’re goddamn lucky I come home at all.

HER: Why can’t you look at me, touch me, hold me?

Quietly enfold me,

Talk to me about what we think and feel?

At first we did that all the time, you loved it.

Now, what’s the deal?

Into bed, stare silently at the ceiling,

Blank misery in your eyes.

I’m scared of saying..that I’m feeling

Scared.

Don’t I take good care of you?

Timidly I touch your face, your chin…

You used to love my thighs,

Now you shove them open to shove it in.

Wham! Bam! Pull it out.

Not even the old ecstatic moans and shouts

“Oh god, oh god, I love you.”

Only echoes of it I strain to hear in my head.

I hate our bed.

HIM: Ah! Stop pushing for the top jobs, they belong to men.

We need our space to duke it out, let it out,

Tell our jokes, slap butts.

Your guts are too soft. Just right for making babies,

God, you ladies!

HER: God you men! Kill or be killed, you mean.

Convince yourselves you’re better

than everyone else, you mean.

Scared to show love, you mean.

You choke….so you joke,

You think love is sex,

So you can’t love others as brothers,

That old homophobic hex.

You think that if we don’t give you sex

We don’t love you, and you’re no good.

That’s the message in your heads.

You make a battleground of our beds.

We don’t want your space, but give us ours.

Let’s together move out of the cave,

This new century, the twenty first,

We thirst…

(Pause)

end

Mom, dad, boys, boss, king, God,

Why do you think I walk through the world

With my eyes cast down or staring straight ahead

Not daring to smile back at any smile aimed at me?

I love being appreciated for my beauty.

Men are beautiful, too.

A rose, a sunset are beautiful,

But you don’t think about sticking your cock

In a rose or sunset.

Or that I’m a slut or bitch

For not giving you what you itch for,

Or there’s something dirty between my legs!

Or that I could be raped or beaten, or should

Because I don’t make you feel good.

I’m not your mother or father who didn’t give you

What you deserved, yourself, as a kid.

God damn it, stop blaming me for what they did.

Don’t you know

Mom, dad, sister, boys, men

The way you feel and think about me

Makes me feel about myself the same.

Makes me feel doubtful, bad,

Embarrassed, scared, sad,

Sometimes hating my own femaleness?

What do you think PMS is?

Not some mysterious female disorder

For chemical companies to make profits from.

There’s nothing more reminds me

That I’m female than when my period comes.

During and after it brings up all that stuff:

Fear, shame, doubt, pain,

That this hole is all I am!

And don’t you dare pretend that emotions aren’t physical.

Of course they are, you know it,

You’re just afraid to show it.

No mom, dad, in your scared silences

And mutual co-dependent stupidities,

You treat me like I’m a sweet, pink thing,

No matter how smart in school,

How good on the rink or court,

Equally skilled in any sport,

Or fit for the business race,

My real job, my real role, my real place

Only is to nurture, to parent and please.

What a “disgrace” it is not to give up my dreams,

But to breed and fulfill this “womanly mission”

To content myself to lick my pain

In silent loneliness

Until withered, used up and thrown away.

Oh yes, just as you say

“men get handsomer as they age” but women…?

And you wonder at the rage you find in me.

No mom, dad, lover, husband

I’m not a sow, a cow,

Cattle, chattel,

a fleshy pump for gonadal relief…

The 21^st century,

All the slaves, serfs, peasants rose up,

Still rising, fighting, dying to

claim their rightful place.

Guess what, it’s the woman’s turn,

Something you better face.

Don’t you get it?

We’re calling in all our credit.

Call us feminists, slander us any way you will.

You can’t turn back the clock,

Force us back onto that pile of crock.

My power to love,

What you call the woman thing

Is the power we’re all born with mom, dad

Heads of everything.

Don’t you remember Chairman of the Board

As a child your arms reaching out to be held

To hold the one holding you,

no matter who, so long as care was there

between the two.

What’s wrong with that, that way?

What’s wrong with taking that into the

Halls of power, the corporate towers,

The streets of daily commerce, the fields of play?

What’s wrong with that, that way?

No mom, dad, blue suit clad

Leaders of church and state,

I will not lead a life I hate,

To sacrifice my dreams, my contribution.

Damn your retribution.

I will not play coy and coo, bat my eyes and entice

Some strong man to take of me,

And too bad for me if he’s not too nice.

You guys, you and me,

What we were forced to learn was wrong.

I don’t really, “desperately” long to be fucked,

But I have to hold out for promises, a ring,

Everything that’s supposed to go with it,

Because I’m too weak to make it on my own.

What I want is to really love you

In partnership of friendship and respect.

One of you may be my mate.

It must come from that.

From some deep well of special sense

We will select one another

For intimate giving, commitment, creation

In natural goodness and substance.

And in this way love will last and last

Just as in our fantasies and fables

That paint our dreams for us to see.

I am a woman, a human being.

Come mom, dad, heads of everything,

Brothers, sisters,

Come, come…

Be a human with me.

How did it begin, this habit of struggle

Between fathers and sons, boys and boys, men and men?

Cut out that crying

Keep your feelings inside.

Get back out there and hit him back

Or you better hide from me, you’re no son of mine.

Get out there and shine boy, shine,

Never mind, you don’t have to hear I love you,

Everyone knows I do.

Just get out there and do better and better every time.

It’s a tough world, you gotta win, win, win!

Second? Means you’re nothing, take it on the chin.

Get out there till one of you drops,

Flops are no sons of mine.

(Teenager)

Do it, do it. Kiss her, screw the hag!

She wants it, can’t you see?

The more she fights and cries,

The more she wants you to prove you’re man.

Wham, bam! What a man!

Or you’re a sissy, a queer, a fag.

Next time we see his ugly face, he dies. Right!?

(Workers)

1: ‘Morning.

2: ‘Mornin’

1: Howzitgoin?

2: You know.

1: Yeah. Ole lady?

2: Yeah. Well, you know, bitch, bitch, bitch.

1: Yeah. Mine, the same…Joe?

2: Yeah?

1: You ever get the itch?

2: You kiddin’? Those two broads over in the office.

They give us the eye.

1: Yeah. Sometimes, maybe, we give it a try. You know

just for a couple a beers, maybe someone to talk to.

2: Yeah, talk to (laugh, slap one another, too hard)

1: OK, cut it out. (pause) Feel like talking?

2: You kidding? (maybe he’d really like to)

1: Yeah, forget it…fags talk.

2: Yeah. Like women.

1: I’d like to kick the shit outa someone.

2: Illegals.

1: Russkis.

2: Bomb the shit outa the Koreans.

1: Iraq .

2: Iran .

1: Japan . They own everything. The Jews.

2: They own Japan .

1: The ole lady.

2: the ole lady.

1: Feel like talkin’?

2: (Suspicious) Nah!

1: Yeah…nah.

End

I was just like that little baby.

What happened to us?

Scene

HER: Stop that crying or I’ll give you something

To cry about.

HIM: Yell again and you get more than my strap, you brat.

HER: Honey, when you act like that, you make me

think there’s something wrong with you.

What more can we do? Look at all your toys.

Other girls and boys don’t have half.

HIM: You make me laugh. Everything you say is so stupid.

HER: A B plus? Well, that’s not an A, is it?

You think that’s OK?

Well, try harder next year, will you dear?

HIM: C’mere honey. Oh, you make daddy

Feel so good, so glad.

But you better not tell anyone.

Not even mommy, they’ll hurt me,

They’ll take me away,

And they’ll think you’re bad.

(Pause)

end

You, too?

Alright, alright, I get it.

I was just like that little baby.

What happened to us?

I’m a man, not a machine.

Not a thing to kill or be killed.

Not a tool to win for you

Or lose, to lose your love.

I’m a man, a human.

No dad, boss, president, king, God.

Whoever the hell you are,

I’m not this thing to be lived through

By you anymore.

God, I needed you to hug me when I was a kid.

No matter what I did,

Even when the things I did didn’t please you.

And with gentle patience teach me to do things better.

God, I needed you to tell me

If what I did was really bad

Or just simple different, and be glad

I was not the same as anyone, including you,

But true to being me.

And with your love and gleam of pride in your eye

To grow free and powerful, unafraid

To make things right,

Ruled by the rules of love, not by the rules

Of how things have always been.

Win, lose, win that, hate this,

Piss on anyone different, kill ‘em if needs be,

If they got what I want,

Or if it’s not profitable to let them live,

Or simply because you say they’re bad.

I won’t be had like that any more, dad,

Leader, boss, president, God.

I am a man,

Not a rock,

A stone with cock and balls

And all’s I can think of is to score,

And beat my way to the top of the heap,

Or be a bum.

What a glum way to live, what a lonely way,

And they only way to fellowship

Is through money or jokes that cut and maim

Any other who is not the same as us.

No, I will no longer despise those who have less

Or different colored skin

Or different shaped eyes

Or who pray to gods different from our own

Or to none alone.

Why should I fear for my own manhood

If I call brother or sister him or her

Who by nature or nurture, or by choice

Chooses for intimate love their self same sex?

The question is not complex, dad.

When my son looks to me to be confident,

Relaxed in my masculinity,

Able to hold and kiss my son in human love,

To listen warm and well to his concerns,

To share what I have learned

That has no hate or bias in it,

To show and share with him my own joy and tears,

And that the fear of feeling feelings fully

Is groundless, for such feeling

Leads to a cleansed and buoyant heart,

And greater clarity.

Feelings, dad, are not monsters,

But merely nature’s smoke detectors

Signaling what needs to be seen and solved,

Not to be held in as fuel

For bitterness and brutality,

And grinning out false pride in being cruel.

So long as I show my love

In equal partnership with his mother,

My friend and mate, what twisted fate

Or divergence from his own inherent nature

Will my son want or need to take?

Aren’t we all trying to find our way back to love?

Can’t we call on that that makes us all human

In the image of God, if you will,

To still the restless idiocies inside our hides.

To think, to heal,

To feel for one another as brothers and sisters,

To clasp hands the world round

And lift each other up?

What a cup…a cornucopia of profits that would be.

I’m a man, a human,

Dad, boss, president, king, God.

Come, come, be a human with me.

How did it begin, this strife between the classes?

KING: Come now, it’s the Divine plan.

Someone must rule, give onto Caesar.

The poor and the meek shall inherit the world

When they can, that’s up to the man in heaven,

Isn’t it? Meanwhile those who have it must rule things,

That’s the way of fools and kings.

End

How did it begin this killing thing

Between the races, religions, ethnic differences,

Neighbors, friends, even among self-same groups.

Armies and gangs troop their colors

And blast their guns,

And the lucky ones, the shooters and standers-by

Remain alive to cry and die another day.

This is ours, this rock, this patch, this street.

Your feet don’t belong on this turf, this land

This stream

This dale,

This vale.

This mountain

These treasures don’t belong to you and your kind.

I bust your behind you don’t get your butt outa here.

Your God is putrid, not the one true God like ours.

No one alive is originally at fault for the fault

We call racism, sexism, ageism, classism,

That ism, this ism,

Any of the sadism of racist prejudice and hate.

Not originally at fault for the habit of planting

Such bitter seeds in the minds of children

To pass onto children of their own

Generation after generation.

But just so has the hatred grown

Scene

Southerner (S): I heard enough outa you.

What about them? Muckin’ up our streets

And communities with their crime and dope.

Can’t wait to get their hands on one of our boys,

Not to mention some of our misguided girls.

Why don’t you preach to them about hate.

Teacher (T): I admit there’s tons of anger

And the anger’s ugly.

I do not smugly claim angelic grace

For this or any other race,

But let’s not confuse racism with rage.

S: You can’t fool me with that crazy talk.

Open your eyes, take a walk around.

Why non-whites all over town

Where you never seed them before.

We open the door to good jobs, they want more.

Everything we got. Why should I have remorse?

Christ, already got to many of them on

the golf coarse.

Don’t blame me for workin’ hard,

Wantin’ to keep what I have earned.

More and more taxes so they can have

more babies and dope, an’ what do they do?

Their own neighborhoods they burn.

I can’t cope with it.

I don’t understand it, do you?

T: The ancient lies and manipulations

Have kept us all in the dark,

Severely uncomfortable with each other.

The key, indeed, is understanding.

As understanding waxes and relaxes us

You won’t have to pay more in taxes,

For the fact is, the easier we are

with one another, prosperity opens

to every one of us.

S: You can fuss all you want.

There’s no understanding between us.

There’ll always be racism, sexism and the rest.

So stop pesterin’ me.

What the hell can I do, anyway?

T: That’s the very heart of the matter.

Good folks like us letting others

Do what they think is best.

What can you do?

Think. Think about how others live.

And how you’d feel if you lived that way too.

The more we think, the faster hate sails away.

I never seen it fail.

S: It’ll hail ice in hell

Before I think about them.

I like the way things are.

I don’t know about them, they don’t know about me

And that’s about as far as want to go.

T: It’s no mystery

When we talk and listen and learn

about our ethnic histories,

our struggles, our glories,

no bacterium of hate can remain alive

in the cleansing wash of our human stories.

S: Now you’re really getting on my nerves.

I aint got time to listen.

I got all I can do

To help my son and daughter

get what they deserve.

T: When we stand vigorously for the other kid’s rights

As we might for our own daughters and sons

The good things in life come abundantly

To all our kids, every one.

S: That will never come to be.

Every man has to look out for his own.

T: The whole planet is our own. Our home.

S: You’re a dreamer. You go too far,

We’re all strangers.

How the hell is anything goin’ to change?

T: Look to yourself. Then to children.

Arrange to let them play

And laugh and learn what they will.

And they will for they love diversity and learning.

The consternation of hatred in our burning hearts,

In but one generation, will finally be stilled.

End

Song: Took a walk in the garden

Took a walk in the sun,

No end to the flowers, no sight where they begun.

Filled my lungs with their incense,

Filled my mind with love,

Filled my eyes with their glory

From below and from above.

My heart took flight in fancy.

Saw the world as it could be.

Saw the world as a garden upon a thriving sea.

Flowers in the garden, flowers side by side.

A multitude of colors

In peace they do abide.

Why the different colors?

Why the different hues?

Each seeking out survival with different things to do.

Underneath the soil,

Twining round and round,

Roots of the flowers,

Sharing treasures of the ground.

Take a walk in the garden,

Take a walk in the sun.

Love the human flowers,

Touch them one by one.

Humans are a garden

Reaching for the sun,

Splendid in their colors,

Splendid one by one.

End

How did it begin, this disease, this pain,

This reign of oppression?

How did it begin?

Journey back. Ancestral times, ancestral primates,

The great and lesser apes.

The old brain prevails.

The old brain, like the deer,

Like seals on the beach,

Like eagles soaring,

Like furry bears snoring in their caves,

Like cats stalking low to the terrain.

Like macaques and long limbed wooleys

Swarming in the trees,

Ranting and raving at intruders,

Testing boundaries.

The old brain still prevails.

Look, a fire in the forest,

Tuck tail, run, run for your lives.

Look a predator, tuck tail,

Run, run for your lives.

Cornered? Fight, fight for lives.

One will win, one will lose, sometimes a draw.

No big deal.

Take a drink, graze, snooze.

The old brain still prevails.

Then one millennium, one century, one generation

One second, a split, a mutation.

Strictly ape no more.

Why balance on all four?

Rise on two to view the wide plain

Above the tall tips of quivering grass.

Homo Erectus. Africanus, bosie, Robustus.

Hail Lady Eve, mother of modern man.

Man?

Uh… human.

The old brain still there,

Still reigned by primordial fear.

But something new, something budding,

Pushing out the brow, the prow

Of the old brain organ.

A cortex outcropping, a cortex cerebral,

Thinking, abstracting, inventing.

Look, a fire in the forest. Tuck tail, run…

No, stay!

Watch, sense, extrapolate, think!

Smell, approach, touch…ouch!

Hot, burns…look, we can cook.

Tools, better, smarter, starter of great technologies.

Free to roam, explore

Every nook and cranny the world o’er

Unstuck from the single ground.

Revisions of the mutated line,

Shaped by clime and terrain.

In the north, wider open stretches of thinner light,

Blankets of ice-age snow, turns skin pale,

Letting in the stingy rays of the northern sun.

In the far flung East, eye flaps sprout

To guard against the harsh winds

Roaring off the steppes.

Natural adaptations to survive, to thrive.

Surface changes, and underneath

Everywhere the same new human creature,

The same in quality of nature.

Still… the old brain prevails

Rapidly turning newness into habits called cultures.

Inventing new rules to follow,

Lest the encultured habits fail.

Off with their heads!

Burn the bitches as witches!

Jails, more, jails, take heed.

The old brain remembers fearful need.

The hierarchy of privilege for lineage and genealogy.

Scene

Minister 1 (M1): Majesty, the slaves are getting lazier.

Minister 2 (M2): more rebellious.

King (K): Hellious, treasures, you give me a pain

In the groin.

Give them more coin, and bother me no more.

M1: But most sagacious, we’re running out of gold.

M2: The guards are really sore!

K: Very well, I’ll speak with the council.

Well councilors, those lechery treasure ministers

Say we’re running out of gold,

And the guards are demanding more, what say thee?

M1: Most high Befuddlest, a plan strikest me.

Thinkest me to spread out the fat.

M2: Yes! That’s it, devalue the gold.

Makest every ounce of it worth a hundred coin.

M1: yes. Call them rubles, scheckles, dollars, money!

M2; since there be only so much gold,

There can be only so much money to go around.

M1: since we hold the bulk of the gold

We’ll claim the bulk of the money.

K; What a honey of a plan. Clever, clever.

Thou art right.

The lion’s share I must hold,

That’s why I am divined

To keep the bulk of the gold,

To pay for all my land and lavish

Extravagances…

To pay all those below

Willing to play ball for the perks,

Not to mention the guards and goons,

My armies and cops, and all the jerks,

to conquer and punish and hand out fines,

To keep the masses in line, digging

In the fields and in the mines.

Not a perfect system, but it works!

End

And yet, and yet the new brain contains

Something more than cleverness, something new

Something more true to nature.

Even our animal cousins sense

Natural balance and justice.

The wolf kills not for sport nor territory,

Its story is clearly seen.

It kills only so many caribou for its food

For its pups to thrive.

Somehow knowing that to deplete the herd is absurd.

For the wolf, itself, will not survive.

Still the old brain strains to stay alive.

Scene

M1: Highness, highness, the serfs, the slaves

Won’t stay down.

They want to know why they should?

K: call them stupid, low class, filthy trash.

If they resist, lash it into them.

Now leave me to count my cash!

M2: But your Filthy Richiness,

The slaves upward mobility.

How stave off we intermarriage with our nobility?

K: Hmmmm. Inform the herd my Highness gives her word

On the latest standards of beauty and worth.

A tiny nose, eyes, skin, hair…fair.

K; For females a tiny waist. Large breasts,

For males, all that matters is status, wealth,

Armani suits with vests.

M1: Oh the best, the best.

M2: But your Sexiest, the rabble, sooner or later

Always seem to get wise,

Seeing through the dirty tricks and lies

With eyes not completely blind. What to do?

K: Stew not, Ministers. I know. What call you that

Little group of trouble makers?

M1: Quakers?

K: Not Quakers, Nostradomius.

Not for centuries will Quakers be the news.

M2: Jews, most high biasness?

K: Jews! Yes! Are they not the ones professing

To one god?

Casting doubt upon our own set

Of divine justifiers and excusers.

M1: Loosers, your schemiest, the very same.

K: well, in my name, here’s the plan.

To protect our royal asses from the wised up masses

Roust the Jews off their lands and farms.

Herd them into the dankiest, pooriest

Part of town.

M2: The ghetto?

K: you betto!

M1: But, your Manipulatingiest, that’s where we

Keep all our Rednecks.

K: Better still, gives them someone lower than they

To lay their hate upon, which upon them we lay.

M2; Of coursiest.

K: Uplift a few of the Jews, make them rich

On condition they be our tax collectors and keepers

Of the gold.

The rich Jews and all their brethren

Shall serve as our ringers.

M1: When the rabble rise in unrest?

K; To the Jews we shall point our fingers.

Now to finish my list of defamations.

To keep the people in doubt of their goodness

And rights, to accept their miserable plight,

And low class stations.

Hear my brain washing decrees,

Then hie thee, Ministers, to put thy evils to work

With lash and deprivations, of all kinds,

To install these pathologies into the very soul

Of the people, their psyches, their minds.

Children shall be worthless slugs

Beholden to pay with drudgery and work their elders for their very existence.

M1: And to pleasure every demented elder whim,

Or bash in their mugs.

K: People of color and manners contrary to our own

Shall be known as the spawn of him

Whom we call the evil one.

M2: Subject to bend on bended knee to repent

Their sinful nature with life long toil

And relinquishment of all their treasure,

And await their reward in heaven.

K: As for the aged, yuch!

The very word wracks my spine.

Under pain of death, be they treated as lepers

In mind and body.

Confined to retirement warehouses,

To hide their wrinkled vestiges.

M1: And offend only one another with

Their rancid breaths.

K: Be they father or mother

No more right to property

Nor gold let them hold.

What further use to our treasury

Be their weak and tired limbs?

Step aside I say for younger, stronger

Backs to serve our pleasure.

M2: And let fear for their futures be their abuse.

K: For the female herd, but another word:

Be they but breeders for men,

Or if barren be, to bend their backs in the field

Or upon their backs in harlotry,

If beauty be their worth.

These are my decrees, Ministers,

And mind you, inflict them well.

Imprint them first in the minds of children

To pass on to their children,

And children of their children, adfinitum

Then will they be, forever, so compelled.

This, extremely do, Ministers, or sooner

Than wished all our heads will roll

Our souls to roast in hell.

End

Song

“The city Boy”

The poor trudged midst rats and reds,

Humiliated in their heads by the dole.

The middle classes ever speeding

From their fear and guilt ever bleeding

From their growing distant soul.

The mighty few and rich, they hid

Behind stone wall and iron grid,

Protected by their minions dressed in blue,

Who brained washed to enforce the law

Stick it in the craw of all but the mighty few.

Yet the poor and middle classes,

And the rich with their fat assets

Underneath the skin are all the same.

There’s a spark forever firing,

Fighting to stay igniting inside each human brain

It’s the spark that’s always knowing

That what’s right must keep on growing

And what’s wrong must finally see an end

For that spark I’ll keep reaching,

Singing, loving, preaching,

Til each human is every human’s friend.

And our hearts know a better place that this

Just has to be.

Where the grass is natural green

And the air nitrous poison free,

And our souls long a better place to live

Where humans care, and women are simply even

With every William, Thomas and Steven,

Where money aint the honey,

And put downs are never funny,

Where the old are just older,

And love is everyone’s equally to share.

End

The old brain losing ground, the new brain more sound

More than mere cleverness.

The seeds of wolf’s natural sense

Of balance and justice takes root

Pushing through the dark regions into light.

Aha! Awareness.

Conscience.

Moral intelligence.

Spirit, some call it.

A higher self,

Call it what you will.

The thrilling sense of right abhors killing,

Abusive using for any sake at all.

What of food?

For now, good. OK, as some might say.

Moral Intelligence, the higher will

And need to heed respect for equality.

The bedrock of human happiness.

Moral Intelligence taking over

The iters and functions of the old brain,

Converting fear into courage,

Into love, respect, creativity

Beyond our wildest imagination.

How did it begin?

It began …in old brain non-survival fear,

Elegantly fit for old brain animals,

And soon… but for historic annuls.

At last we know, intelligence without love

Is not intelligence, but fear gripped cleverness,

Keeping us in the primordial slime.

Time and time again it shows this truth:

Love may start from the rush of hormones

That heats our hungers and unmet needs,

Destined to wither and die

If love hangs on that alone.

Love may start from quieter satisfactions

Found in growing mutualities.

However love takes seed,

At last we know real love has no greed,

Love is morality

And every being, here, to uplift the world.

For the children of our flesh and dreams

To obtain the fullness of their lives and gifts

With ever growing health and strength.

To whatever length, who else

Can take charge of such a world but you and me.

That’s where we’re heading,

In better care of children,

In elders no longer always playing mutely old,

Un-acclaimed in cold and lonely rooms.

In Arabs and Jews struggling to rejuvenate

Peace in the Middle East .

In Blacks and whites turning the nightmare night

Of apartheid into days of hope and harmony.

All this and so much more.

Our pilgrimage to higher ground, unstoppable.

That’s where we’re heading.

Revolution?

Perhaps.

Evolution?

Certainly. And by individual decision

Soaring swiftly ahead,

To shed old brain fear and hate.

Moral Intelligence…

Here we come.

We can’t wait!

Epilogue

(The parents)

Hey, wait a minute, wait a minute.

What about us parents?

Don’t we get a voice in this so called ‘Our Lives”?

Maybe it’s like everything else.

Left to last, or left out totally.

Parents, yeah, the most forgettable

Bunch of saps in the nation.

Why not, all we do is raise the next generation.

Important work, don’t you think?

Damn right. Where would you bosses and billionaires be?

If we didn’t pump out more bodies

To work your computers and factories?

To buy your cars and candles, canned goods, and clothes,

Cameras, credit cards and medicine,

Sugar drops and drops for your nose.

A million more things besides just those.

And if we’re lucky, us parents,

We might get a little unpaid leave

To give birth to the kid

(some of us aint so glad we did)

Let me tell you what we get

For the sweat and work it takes to raise

New batches for your profits and use,

No thanks…no praise

(Except for election days)

No breaks…

But plenty of blame and abuse

When something goes wrong,

And it always does, for Chris’ sakes.

There ought to be a National Parent Day,

Yeah, a paid holiday, what do you say?

Yeah, something always goes wrong.

Hell, I try to do the best for my kids,

It’s hard to talk to them, you know?

I never know what to say, you know,

All I can think of is what mom or dad did

When I got into trouble.

How ashamed he was he’d say,

And regret the day I was born.

And mom, torn between him and me, looking sad

Then blaming me for upsetting dad.

Sometimes I wish they had,

You know, pushed me am inch further.

Maybe I would have said

What I was always feeling.

‘you only wait till I do something bad,

then you talk to me.

You should have talked to me when I was good.

I would have good all the time,

I swear I would, if I thought you cared,

Like you were glad I was really there.”

Nobody understood, not even at school.

Why didn’t they see I always so quiet,

The teachers, you know.

Who knows more about kids than teachers?

At least they should.

What do they teach them teachers.

Someone should have, could have seen.

Maybe talk to me,

Asked me how things were, I’d have told her,

Teach me to open up and talk.

Hell, maybe even walk home with me and see

How it was the same with my folks,

Help them to talk,

And talk about things with me.

Things would have been so much better between

My own kids and me.

Someone should have taken an interest,

And don’t tell me it’s none of their business.

It’s all of our business, how’s anything going to change?

Strange what we call values.

Take my buddy Brian.

He was OK with me and my pals,

Always trying to do his best.

But always pushing around the littler kids,

Beating them up.

He’s in jail now, you know.

At school they just called him a fool,

Punished him, sent home notes to his folks.

Hah! What a joke!

Everyone knew his mom and dad fought all the time

Half the time ending up beating Brian up.

Someone should have gone in there,

Helped that family out, you know,

Teaching, counseling, things like that.

Go to bat for them, you know.

Instead of waiting for Brian to grow

Then killing someone in a bar,

Someone littler, you know.

I guess what we’re trying to say

Is parents are doing the best they can

On what we get from our own moms and dads.

It’s not their fault neither,

No-one gave a damn about them either.

Someone better start caring,

Sharing with kids the things they should know,

How to deal with their own problems and feelings

Instead of wiping them on their own kids,

When they start having kids of their own.

And, yeah, help us parents, you know,

We hate it when we hurt our kids,

We really do, it’s true,

You can laugh all you want.

It haunts us when our kids get into trouble,

And we don’t know what to do.

How to be there for our kids.

You know.

Not a clue.

Not a clue.

Oh gosh, I guess we really shot our mouth off.

Finally. About time.

Sorry we took so much of your time.

Thanks for listening.

Yeah…really.

The End