two OTHER poems

Over the course of our rehearsal process, ensemble member Tabetha Peavey was inspired by our conversation to write two poems. One of them has worked its way into the script. Here they are in their entirety...

"Culture" by Tabetha Peavey

I came home that night and took a shower.
Not just any shower, but a hote one, just for that warm feeling.
I felt the weather melting off me, and the icicles in my lungs began to boil.
The water came over my head, splashing against
every bit of me, and I just stood there
regaining the feeling in each and every limb.
I noticed now that my fingers had begun pruning --
I thought about the wind outside, the wind that
was cross-examining the foundation of the very house I was in.
I thought about the hail I saw in everyone's breath,
and the homeless on nights like this.
How they froze outside, forming these
petrified forests of crystallized historical figurines.
I shut the water off, as my toes had wrinkled, too.
I felt guilty and I
wrapped a thick cotton towel around myself,
and as I stepped outside the steamy bathroom and into
my carpeted hallway,
I shivered -- back to
my room.


"O.L.D." by Tabetha Peavey

The old man in the sea had once said
ever so coy as he was --
he was historical actually.
Well,
he told us that he knew all about us.
a group of young gusts whipping through the centuries
and that antonyms were the key.
His hands told an entirely different story
despite his mouths unambiguity..
He fingered the air twirling it in around his wrists
and while he spoke of us he said
well, that our wings were just arms and
they became useless in lift off.
Our ears heard him tell us of us,
and what thought he had lent to our jobs
but as his feet rocked his back concaved around the mystics
teaching fundamentals with wooden blocks
each painted with primary colors, as learning became modern art.
Elementary, his skin cried out, was a new school of thought.
I had read somewhere that our
intestines were a metaphor within our own bodies--
It wasn’t Kafka’s labyrinth but man his parables sure could rock.
I read Camus just for his name,
and I scratched him off my list of things to do
when I learned that truth was a god.
Did you know that?
See, the old man rocked and rocked and as he told us of us
I wished I was a philistine.
It’s almost ridiculous, me writing this,
but for the most part your close reading skills could improve.
You didn’t catch how the Dust Bowl had collected under his nails,
and all that we had thought gone with erosion reappeared with in him
As he told us of young us, and I saw age flash across his face
chanting why Truth? why?
No answer -- and his body decayed there,
rocking, speaking, tell two stories at once
and what he said to us, about us,
well he said
‘Man , if you can change those water particles
you’d alter those clouds. They’re not so far off now.’