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flecktones-- more luv |
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At Urbana tonight I was informed that there was a talent scout from Def Poetry Jam, so it was suggested I pull out my tried-and-true pieces instead of winging it... and although Mr. Demers ended up bombing (something to do I think with my lack of faith in old pieces, the weird audience vibe and the fact that I was early in the night), here's the piece I was planning on doing, that I'd spent all afternoon working out..(but ave since grown to reconsider) The line breaks are pretty fucked up...here goes...
Dr. Proton and Mr. Brown
On the days diapers collect like dew on the radio telescope,
I am looking for Dr. Proton,
alias,
Mr. Brown.
he came in naked, screaming the
sad subliminal hexadecimal of life,
and left just as dramatically--
it's been a week now since I saw the magic eight ball roll
out of his dead hand like the snowglobe from Citizen Kane's--
it rolled down the stairs, out the door and settled
into the snow and piss of Detroit,
reading "Answer Hazy; Try Again".
On the days the street steam from the manholes
comes in ones and zeros, I am looking for Dr. Proton,
not really a doctor, but a man who took his whiskey with milk.
The whiskey warmed his insides while the
milk reminded him of mother-- all any woman
would do for him anyway, he would say, steaming his
tighty-whities over a teakettle to get that extra-fresh feeling.
If Sancho has ever needed a bandage for his master's wounds,
I would have presented him these,
the underroos of innocence and experience,
for it's Detroit, the crumbling motor city,
number 88 maple street, the one house
that looks the same as all the others, which means it's
crumbling, holding on, crumbling, a brick necropolis
with an iron corset, and it's here, somewhere near the toe
of the body-bag of winter that Mr. Brown has his house,
some would say, a laboratory, some would say, a needle
in a stack of needles.
I have set aside this day for Mr. Brown,
cleaning out his attic for the new tenants,
and I found that this dust is my mnemonic.
Ashes to ashes, in the dust of these inventions
lies the remains of one Xavier Brown, who the science-program
kids called Dr. Proton.
Inventory:
a commodore 64 rigged to run off of adrenaline.
a colorblind robot that's been trying to solve the rubic's cube
for four years, the hamster wheel that powered it and the hampsters,
still high on diet coke and reruns of All My Children.
an old Russian typewriter built to run off of power based
on the curvature of the Earth.
"perpetual motion is simple," I heard him say.
"you just gotta use the energy that's in no danger of dying--
the earth will always revolve around the sun.
clowns will always be scary.
converse will always be good shoes. "
Mr. Brown was like that. He believed
in the durability of chaos.
So it's here, in the attic, that the story begins.
Was it the best of times? Was it…the worst of times?
Fuck it. The times were mediocre-- it was the mediocrity of kings.
The plot read like the VCR game of Clue, only Mr. Brown played all the parts,
including in the end Mr. Boddy, his mantra Roses are red,
Violets are blue, I'm a schizophrenic and so am I.
the line between madness and genius
has always been thin, but that never stopped Mr. Brown
from tying his shoes with it.
In a dream once he saw the number pi bleeding helpless on the street,
a red pool of 14159265 … he made a needle with a one and a zero and
stitched it back up.
he said, mathematicians live in a city of scaffolding, my friend.
the fraggles are always eating it, and we're always building it up again.
It occurs to me that mathematicians
are the opposite of the back street boys--
they're not cute, they're pretty unpopular with girls,
and with their own brand of song they play beautiful music.
I heard him talk about the two equals one proof,
the Archimedes' spiral and the snail shell; cold fusion;
universal field theory, and his plot to assanate Mickey Mouse thinking
'at least he has something to believe in. Most of us don't even have that.'
Besides, a pasta-gun wielding professor and a frightened
actor in a Mickey suit makes me chuckle.
Mr. Brown, nanu-nanu in the most holy of holies,
for ours is the kingdom of chewed-up erasers and
masking take and too much Pepsi.
You are one mute voice in an ocean of ears,
flying high over the pale geometry,
flying high over the wiry plain on your magic
carpet-sample. May you lie in the lost repository of left socks.
May your heaven be playing the theme from Legend of Zelda 2,
tonight I see a star in the east,
above a farmhouse in La Mancha that has brought us here.
I see a candle burning over Captain Ahab's grave that will never go out,
and I know that if you saw the way
Doc would pray at his Nintendo, in the lotus position,
clutching his controller like he clutched his conspiracy theory
which was like he would've clutched a teddy-bear if Childhood ever was
for him more than a distant city, you would know.
because knowledge is power,
and power is pressure,
and pressure is paranoia,
and paranoia, that dirty, glorious
disease of the imagination,
is holy.
Friends, it's been a long and complicated equation,
and what I've learned is that the time for talk
is past! Now…is the time for geek rock and argyle socks!
MacGyver and ice cream marathons.
Let the number-haters hate all they want,
because there are only three kinds of mathematicians,
those who can count and those who can't.
It doesn't have to be all drills and headaches and press enter
and playing go and wall street journal like that guy in Pi--
I'm talkin' trash-diving for code at the phone company
and all-night stoned viewings of Donald in Mathmagic Land
with the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack so furious that when the sun
finally enters, all cereal-soggy and apologetic, it's all the bling-bling
we need, baby. Snood Addiction Terapy, drinking games like "find the algorithm",
bring it on! It'll be like the Geek Chic revolution!
Marcy, from Peanuts, I salute you!
Screech, it's all you buddy, that guy with the trench coat in Parker lewis, the girl from Weird Science,
Velma, the one with glasses from Scooby Doo, I salute you!
and Mr. Brown, bowing with the rhythm of a rabbi in his underwear,
he was praying, playing, hoping that in the end when he fell asleep,
his glasses around his chin and his drool around his glasses,
he would have hit the bonus round, the fifty-third level,
and flown so far into the prime numbers that his head burst
with the echo of the final countdown:
17, 13, 11, 7, 5, 3, 2, 1.
It's in this, the certainty of uncertainty that I'm looking for Dr. Proton.
And it's here, tonight, that the story begins,
and here, in me, that I find Mr. Brown.
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jubilant
bitchy
calm
sad
pleased
contemplative
tired
nerdy
cold