OPENING GUN DIALOGUE [2 voices in alternation]
Who are you?
A stranger.
Why are you here?
To take your life and stuff it in a box.
You have no right.
My gun gives me the right.
I veto your gun.
Your veto is unreasonable.
Your reason is a mystery.
Your mystery is a way of lying.
This concept is no longer in use.
You mean lying?
The concept of lying yes, is no longer in use.
What do you do when you want to avoid telling the truth?
I use a microwave oven.
How does that work?
Has 600 watts and 5 power levels.
Isn't it hard on your gun?
I never put my gun in the microwave—there is no need. Guns do not lie.
***
CHORUS [all voices]
The mythic past.
The curious past.
The man has the wound.
The woman has the gun.
The mythic past.
The curious past.
O Alice!
O Alice!
Lots of guns against the wall.
Lots of guns in the usual world.
The man is conscious.
The woman disastrous.
The mythic past.
The curious past.
O Alice!
O Alice!
You carved your name
and I carved mine.
I'm blue for you
like the lonesome pine.
***
GUNS AND DESIRE I
What does it matter to me that there were other people to love?
GUNS AND DESIRE II
But all the same one day I heard her talking to her six year old little boy and saying you are a good little boy, yes mother he said, and you love your mother very much, yes mother he said, and you will grow up loving your mother she said, yes mother he said and then you will leave me for a woman will you not, yes mother he said.
LINNAEUS ON GUNS
The skin covering our guns is composed of the most splendid fibers, interwoven and everywhere strewn with blood vessels and nerve endings in a remarkable way. Gun skin can be stretched miraculously and then tightened again.
GUNS AND DESIRE III
A horrific and violent ransacking of gun body by gun body will unavoidably occur. This is not what a gun actually wants—but rather to cling to each syllable without ever having to hear the entire sentence come and go. Come and go are sadly linked are they not. That is the gun condition. Is this condition improved by making love to your gun while it is asleep? Or by absence? Or by neglect? Surely you will desire your gun more the more it forgets your existence—the more it flicks its ears and returns to feeding on the lower willow branches.
***
CHORUS [all voices]
The mythic past.
The curious past.
Lots of guns expressing restlessness.
Lots of guns with cherry cobbler.
The man is tremendously.
The woman almost.
O Alice!
O Alice!
Lots of guns in a manner.
Lots of guns really would have.
I am so glad you like adverbs.
O Alice!
O Alice!
In the pale moonshine
our hearts entwine.
You carved your name
and 1 carved mine.
Like the mountains I'm blue.
Like the pine I am lonesome for you.
***
THE PRESOCRATIC PROBLEM
Parmenides named his gun The Hot Power Of The Stars. His gun was one, uncreated, imperishable, timeless, changeless, perfect, spherical. Spherical was the problem.
AN OLD HYPOTHESIS
God is to be believed in so far as he speaks of his gun.
GUNS AND ROBBERY
"Quotations in my work," said Walter Benjamin on p. 570 of volume I of his Collected Works, "are like robbers by the roadside who make an armed attack and relieve the idle passerby of his convictions." Meanwhile in Washington D.C. no one is surprised by a break-in anymore. They just hope to get a "clean robber"—one who takes the jewels and electronics without shitting on the rug.
***
CHORUS [all voices]
The mythic past.
The curious past.
The man orders beef.
The woman pork.
Here comes Death.
Beating his fork.
Lots of guns, that's the basis.
Lots of guns, that's the trick.
The man has a theory.
The woman has hipbones.
Here comes Death.
How sentimental.
O Alice!
O Alice!
In the pale moonshine
our guns entwine.
You carved your name
and I carved mine.
Like the mountains I'm blue.
Like the pine I am lonesome for you.
***
VIA NEGATIVA
In ancient Chinese tradition (I have heard) there is a genre of poems written by ghosts. For ghost authors the gun is a line that separates this from that, left from right, too much from too little, and it is neither the one nor the other but possesses the blackness of both. A blackness in which I am suspended, you are suspended, and its water is sold for mirrors. Ghosts are distinguishable from regular people by their gliding walk, apparently on no feet.
TENDER GUNS
The archaeology of Troy is an archaeology of guns, for all the guns in the world have come to Troy, all the guns ever invented were invented for Troy. Guns are the red and tender habit of Troy. So Homer begins the sixth book of the Iliad with fourteen slaughtered Trojans in a row. Each is named and cut down. Then the pattern changes. Menelaos takes Adrastos alive. Simple reason: rich father, big ransom. Adrastos promises bronze and iron and gold. Okay, says Menelaos. Momentarily things look good for Adrastos. Then Agamemnon runs up screaming. No, you weakling! Let none of them escape, let not one of them live, not even the infant thing in the womb of its mother, let every last Trojan perish out of Troy into careless oblivion, unhoused, unfuneralled, blotted out! So noble Agamemnon spoke and he drove his gun into Adrastos into the soft part of the body that lies between the ribs and the hip and then turning him over he put his heel on the chest of Adrastos and drew out the glorious gleaming great-hearted gun and Adrastos' soul came with it.
***
CHORUS [all voices]
The mythic past.
The curious past.
Lots of guns what do you mean.
Lots of guns reciprocally.
The man has the wound.
The woman has the gun.
This is not evidence.
Nor is it reciprocal.
O Alice!
O Alice!
Your gun and you.
My wound and me.
Is not a definition of reciprocity.
In the pale moonshine
our guns entwine.
You carved your name
and I carved mine.
I'm blue for you
as the lonesome pine.
***
CLOSING GUN DIALOGUE [2 voices in alternation]
What are you doing?
Calling the police.
Why?
To give them a description of your gun.
How do you describe it?
Thin, dark, rather nervous, almost birdlike.
You have entirely misunderstood my gun.
Do you want to talk to the police yourself?
No.
Then be quiet.
My gun is not nervous! My gun is not birdlike!
Sit down please.
My gun is on continuous alert status!
I charge you with plotting against the state, you and your gun too—
no distinction between principal and accessory, all involved are sentenced
to death by slicing. And your entire household including
nonmourning relatives to be forfeit to the government.
Asymmetric response!
Yes well I have no choice. Our temples are at stake. Our nutmeg is
at stake.
Once again it all comes down to nutmeg!
God told us nutmeg is our truth.
Other spices exist.
That is not the point.
I've lost track of the point.
Further evidence of your sedition.
You are arguing in a circle.
You gun people always say that.
What are you doing now?
Putting the phone in the microwave.
Can I make a call first?
No.
I get one call, it's the law.
That law doesn't apply to cases of microwave, or to killings classed
as "accidental."
Accidental?
"Accidental" means what ear and eye do not reach, what thought
and care do not reach, as when one is shooting wild animals or for
some reason throwing bricks or tiles off a roof and a person gets hit.
What will you do with my gun after I am accidentally killed?
We welcome your suggestions on that.
Well I have a son who needs a gun.
Good. We'll sell it back to him.
He is very poor.
We have several payment plans.
Speech fails me now.
God have mercy on you.
***
CHORUS [all voices]
In the pale moonshine
our hearts entwine.
You love your gun
And I love mine.
O wait for me
By the lone pine tree.
Like the moon I'm blue.
Like the pine I'm lonesome for you.
Tender guns!
Tender guns!
Tender guns! ◆
Endnote: "Lots of Guns" was written and performed for a "Tribute to Gertrude Stein," organized by Susan Sontag and held in Spring 2003. Savitri Durkee directed the performance, which was punctuated by stanzas of "On the Trail of a Lonesome Pine," Gertrude Stein's favorite American song, belted out by a woman named Maud.
Homepage Image: Celeste Dupuy-Spencer, from Issue 31.2, Summer/Fall 2019
