FROM THe DesK OF: Baruch Menache
TWITCHING HOUR
An Evening in Several Acts
Dramatis Personae
Jones – A pianist whose words wander in and out of clarity.
Delilah – Striking in presence; hears more than is spoken.
Noah – A man wrestling with the distance between intention and truth.
Samantha – Quick of thought, slow to forget.
Jamie – Sees life sideways; says less than he knows.
George – Friend, skeptic, keeper of unclaimed judgments.
The Gatekeeper – Neither kind nor cruel, simply unmoved.
Grandfather – A voice of past conviction.
Others – Those who pass through the night without settling.
On Language
Dialogue follows the rhythm of thought more than the structure of
conversation.
Words drift, accumulate, and collide.
They should be spoken as though they are only partly under the speaker's
control.
Silence is permitted to interrupt
Act: Bar
[1960, bar in the city, Jones speaking to his manager who is upset]
Jones
A scented evermore is language exalting expression;
Them boys will tell ya 'bout it after a drink that never stops.
[Looking away]
Fainted scent all over the place,
Sparkling to remember its name,
Played into hands of a citation.
[Girl was listening, who was enjoying the performance]
Delilah
Beckoned, cast for a disavowal friendship,
Cloaked imperious to a stand-up guy;
Girlish residue of motherly breast,
Sanctimonious divergence to a fatherless plateau.
Rested the impinged family that makes 'self known.
Manager
Fixed a stable choice
Told a friend in confidence,
Choice no more; friend no more.
[Manager leaves]
Delilah
Sand dunes and clothed faces
Wearing scent of the East.
Rested for a millennium,
Wind 'n dirt possessed by fragile destitute,
To no avail of rain and budding flowers.
[Man participates, has interest in the girl and uses the chance]
Jamie
Satisfying urges compensate memory,
Has the fish filleted on a traditional diet?
Fatherly comfort on a beckoned shore?
Sifting oblivion to find the abyss;
Such memories find forgetfulness in time
And irrevocable desertion to present and good.
[Friend of the man who has some envy]
George
Cover that naked part
Shown too soon,
Rather hidden for a reminder.
Memory 's a funny thing, ain't it?
Act: The Couple
[Raining, outside the bar, the couple walking]
Noah
Singing in the rain that was meant to pour,
Isn't gratefulness that overcomes tribulation?
Winds washed before having met its shore.
Samantha
Lying awake and knowing
Wherein it wasn't humility
Nor the kind word of a stranger.
But surely given up on covering
For a lie that stood more than allotted.
Noah
So you went down to the bowels of goodness—
Or you thought so to be
Until you noticed a mischief of mines catching a turn
But you couldn't turn back;
Could you now, could you now, could you now.
[Changing tone]
You must go forward
Knowing the path is forged wrong
But that it is your own
And it is comfortable, righteous and deliberate.
Act: The Gate
[Gatekeeper did not let them in]
Noah
The howling of the maestro at the assembly gate.
'Give back the greens,' a voice of another said.
Shall you take yellows when the world is painted orange?
None shall cover the red that glows in black,
Instead, let us in, naked as we are.
Gatekeeper
The outside is just as good.
Samantha
Outside is nothing other than where we don't belong;
Belong in the fence, destiny in the fence, home in the fence.
Noah
Gates brand me foreigner,
Open what is made to be opened,
Allow entrance to believe an exit
That we exchange locations,
For outside you look and inside I do.
Gatekeeper
Midst the night you try that luck,
Hasn't run out 'suppose you now,
Passion'd make way, whatever the cause.
If hell is 'round the fence-gate, shan't you give up?
Come in now, your kind is the late-comer,
Evening to its next of kin and children begotten.
Come right in!
[They enter]
Act: Couple at the Bar
[Man struggles with door]
Samantha
Troubled with the door
Ajared to an opening.
Favoring the simple folk
That slip through cracks
Behind fading glimmers
And second-hand hope.
Noah
Rather face the entranceway
Than be damned from earth,
All for an unearthly glance
And a run-outta-luck type of guy.
[Sitting, entering an even more melancholic state, sparse people, its late]
Noah
Trust the Saints and Rabbis
Buckled to worldly pressure,
'Get him to speak our language',
Ocean depths of weightful bounty
Telling pupils of sorrow in light
Shining at the least favorable;
The opposite tale is the better one.
Samantha
Deluded the senseless, smiled one's lot
Comprehending the wise table, smirked the lot.
Noah
Shiny does glimmer in light
Does wine try its match,
Loses in ascendancy,
Claims the jokester's thrill
And suit-man bolster.
Let us ascend then!
Act: The Dance
[Pianist collects himself, as a prelude to his next song]
Jones
Feeble, Yaw! Folken disturbed by spirit,
Spirit! Get the paper trail to admit the tree;
Water the rebellion within the sandlot.
This gets better, as with time in the bygone.
Instinctual mess made of starvation for love,
Bundled warmth forebodes a ruled child,
Heating the victim's camp with attention.
[He plays the song]
Will you come
After my hair goes long
Will ya' delight my seat
After a night goes terror
Will you try me twice
Forgive now in pastime.
Rummaging town hall,
Fading blacks, scary greens
Flipped the story just this one time
Swift as promised my dear mind,
Swinging the dirty glass 'gainst the wall
Hesitant for a full panic show.
Will you, will you—
Will you come back to me?
[After the song]
[To the couple, who was being frolic]
Jones
Frequent Tillery grindstones
An iron mold remedies the crush.
Was love conditioned by circumstance?
They tell you: man between worlds.
Others, of the dare-ruling-man
Betwixt a child and fatherly descent.
Samantha
Tell them to be fixtures
For magic has been pronounced.
The names of immortal men
Who fell to see her skin,
Ashamed of the elderly look
That had been so promised.
Jones
Go on soldier of eighteen,
Adjoining youth, missing in the know,
Makes for the bold.
Trying a passion'd heart,
While giving up on immortality;
Elders and a pact with mortality,
Remiss to the four-step rhythm.
Wiseness comes with a daring price,
Youth-less to be one of many;
Tales forgotten in the drum-drum.
[Hits the piano key]
Noah
Chanced a candle in the wind storm,
Sighted lightning from windowpanes,
Sheltered of camp fire to its warmth.
Felt relief of a generation
Awaiting a learning season.
Younglings adore the mature mold,
Safe haven seem grandeur of beards.
Fastidious merits a chosen obsession;
Love knows no bounds,
Save what defiles her grace.
Delilah
Since the day was born
And nighttime etched memory,
Loss was a forward way
Lest to forget a birthing past.
Jamie
Cloverfield has teething eyes,
Bulging ears, an immortal smirk.
Principal disfavors the repulsion of kind.
[Jones fiddled with the keys, hummed a tune]
Jones
To the slippery grace,
Wishing for more — for more
Noah
Shipped on an ocean liner
Defying the bird in sky.
Takes risks by water
Free from human hand
Where rebels find merit;
Stranger to the captain,
Water equal in part.
Wave equal to the squall—
Salt in portion, despair never-lasting;
The melancholic brain unstudied.
Jamie
Dropped a penny down the chute,
Waiting for the drop in the meanwhile,
Laundry festering in overshadowing bins.
Spoken a friendly face disturbed incoming disgrace.
Satiation has its sanitation of purged senses
Leading right away from the delirious.
Jones
In the dump, faced down, chilled to a soda glaze.
Haven't seen ya lately, all faced in that garbage heap!
You look different, a face from the scraps.
Don't tell my American doll I betrayed her gloss.
Frequent a time of clicks edging ever faster,
Known soldier of reserves;
Whirlwinds' champion a savior's heart,
Looked upon Rose to give an extra kiss;
Turnaround, bare-chested and naked.
They came back. Didn't they? Simply grand of premonitions.
Prophesize the end just never the middle
Philosophize the beginning just never the end
Love the middle rather never the beginning.
Delilah
Felicity of mind's escapade,
They tell a-right—right from the inside;
You were rather looking from the outside.
Finally they came out, ought with some repose;
Never having met where right meant something.
Instead, the eagle and its wingspan carry,
Irrespective, weightless of your production.
Jones
What's wrong with the shadow?
Is it so deafening to be contrast of light?
To offer comparison-view of the ensemble?
Better than a perked audience
Than the actor who is but a remedy.
Only with its shadow
Do we taste life,
Never has one gone below
To return with its story.
Awful to the network behind a connection?
To the web behind a spider?
To darkness that brings forth day?
To a Duke impressing the king?
To a Princess humanizing father?
Noah
The mirrored contrast, what else can reflect light?
Last place begins the second race; first, to home.
The top never arrives, save for the strider.
To touch falls at arms length, kiss at a breath.
Long game stretched into submission; game or not.
Short dost leave without players and dice,
Industry offers perfection of a sure direction,
The wise barred a union, prefabricated with no amends.
Samantha
Give me the suit-man,
Give me man or his smile
Don't give me man suited with a smile.
Delilah
Like a daughter overdrawing the well
Planting gardens in the footpath to father,
Or a dock, four seasons toiled,
Raising flag to her maiden voyage;
Captains coattails in the horizon.
Jones
Underserved to be pained by me,
Underscored thy expensive love.
Delilah mustn't deliver the news
Foreboding a large settlement,
Territories renewed of that family bond.
Saturday, the renowned capacity,
Mindful endeavors that do not lay;
The backs of never-endings;
Statured frailness of an exchange.
Isn't that right, Delilah?
Delilah
To be sure.
Jones
Your minute wasn't spent
In the sacrifice of youth.
Hadn't resilience to spiral with us,
To make way to the bond of family
And the scarcity of dignity?
[Samantha chuckles]
Just a minute! I will be right with you!
After that mainstay of semblance,
To a land forefathers do not know,
Whence retracted, revised and revisited,
Though shambled minds of youth-loads,
Daring State members into the mines.
I will get to the task, for tasking is me.
Haven't you the moment to offer grace?
Of the frailty of you and me,
With a backdrop of that bond?
Spinning the world you perform'd,
On this platform of regularity and punctuality,
To give allowance for another guy—
The entrance-way a'ready fulfilled.
A bond, you say, Delilah!
I say yoke of youth;
A promised state of reminders.
Haven't the warlord lost nostalgia
In the objective of lost margins?
To the trekker of seas, to foreboding novelty?
Haven't the will to remember, lest to forget.
Never a promise of more, or less—
In the balance surely not.
He goes by the sword, by the fight, the endeavor,
To drink the rest of time.
Delilah, you mustn't know revision,
We may find a path to youth;
Do not act upon it, do not despair
As sole warrior without a quest.
Stay—
As we exchange remnants of dignity.
A moment will come,
Your quest will be made
Neither from stone or welted concrete,
Nor wood and ironclads.
The composition of love
For your past and my future.
It will shine the heavens
In return for a favor.
Alas, you will get your quest,
Not as solitary warrior,
Headstrong that makes wars
Where likened find shame.
Disgraced for infantile makeup,
Where no mind need conjuring
Nor heart for enduring.
For now, my dear Delilah,
Revise and retract but do not retreat.
Act: Samantha's Charge
Jones
[Turning to Samantha]
Samantha of Sam's charge
Saul's heeded dread
Known not another deed.
Do a mind satiated
Who has an owner
Housing to a child's eye
Crafted to a glow where—
Chambers give brevity.
Down by the dock
Flags brittle in autumn rain,
Sorrow crept the sheet frame
Worldly affairs gone astray.
With three choices, two too many
On this frightful night
Disguised in white of oblivion.
Samantha
Try me for a friend
As I make you out to be
More than your liking.
Come be my lover,
To teach me how to love—
Serving the world its next desert.
Awfully rebounded in remembrance,
Trailblazing a moonlight shine.
Near-shoes that do no walking
Alongside minds mirroring the horizon.
Trouble my winter
With a recipe of comfort,
Welling in the darkness;
It's the thought that counts.
Selling grace by the pound
Charmed the unease phasing,
Tested to the overture,
Skipped the curtain reveal
Unending the spiraled demise.
Jones
Gone awry,
Piped through clemency,
Disrupted by fate,
Charged through gates
In lovers' chase.
How senseless
Was your word,
Armed with happiness
And joy's jitterbug;
Volcanic ash, simmering.
Samantha
The sensation won't give way
Arching a plethora of rock.
Terrain unraveled,
Crossing the warn'd path,
Inching—pressing feet,
Delirious, provoked and disrupted.
The tussle of flower buds,
Making for rain that will only hurt
And dew that will evaporate.
Tranquility not known today,
Stubborn as the next;
Nature's downtrodden.
Weak in spirit gave way to direction,
An interval of change, better or worse—
For the better.
Retrace is not for this race,
Calculation for a bygone past,
Enumerating the embellishment;
A sponging memory-base of daily renewal.
Seasons tether daytime abode,
Nature at a gridlock in time.
Found in err, lost in prayer;
Heeding to the misery.
Storing a sound memory
If happiness was not an expense
It'll be there all the same.
Color is flesh, change is sacrifice.
[Jones reluctantly chuckles, strums the keys in self consciousness]
Act: Better Times
[Two years prior]
[Their wedding day of the couple, two years prior, sitting at the table together]
Noah's Best Man
Welcome rivals of late!
In late bearings that never hold,
The wedded glare of veil unfolds.
The truest path has scarcely dined,
The ridden road had footage tracked.
Thy nest makers of birded fowl
Whom sit on treetops teeing sunrise,
Scarcely referencing nighttime quietude;
Morning in the palace is beggars to twilight.
Grandfather
Six sensed a tradition,
Don't believe the shallow footing,
Gate unlocked to eat retribution.
Arise from the redemptive pathway,
Staled its course with a tattoo too many;
A conversation too long, a memory too forgotten;
Halted a generation and the long life wrinkle.
When pages turn unsynchronized
Metered by a two-point stop.
Cornering a bewildered child
Unseemly to innocent eyes.
Two friends—promises upon pavement
Of serving trials to time
As the river dims their thoughts.
[He speaks louder, other listen from other tables, including the bridesmaids]
The depth of consolation,
A truth never to bear,
Young innocence is ever-threatened
To tear something or another
From something or another's arm.
Beheld a moment of void,
The craving of the young
Lest to be born and unwind,
To find fear in the return.
Sadness is a way of progress.
The elders warned
Not to depart the cave,
Or plow the earth and drink its mead.
They told us the inescapable,
Shan't be the four-legged forms,
To eat with fork 'n knife.
They told us of depression,
The haunting of the mind.
[Upset at the dramatic tone, maid of honor chimes in]
Maid of Honor
Mixed berry cocktail,
Tailored garment inches too long,
Comfort deprived of a single step;
Wanting to circle a square,
Wanting to profess without losing privacy;
These are the things that make wonder without.
[Bride chimes in, giggles]
Bride
Fresh lilacs offer color coded perfection.
[Enters a drunken cousin]
Noah
Stuttered to a table grace,
Passed knife to a forkful,
Smiled in passing, bewildered of talk,
Chair scratches wood panels,
Moaning host of delivery sleep.
Drunken Cousin
See you more in this light,
Mirror startled reflection,
Pay-per-view on dry banks,
Mist to an arid day, rain upon cold flesh.
Noah
Tested iron, etched into an I-beam,
Crisscrossing for structural intact;
Bolted and jolted.
Drunken Cousin
Satirizing the plaintiff stance,
A crisp chuckle molded the frame
Changeling gives spice to perspective.
Venoms cruel downpour is rain two inches over.
'The mess', says the delinquent in the hall,
Caught the early phase of the meeting.
Grandfather
[Forced a speech]
The family of the future,
A memory of one's past.
Wholeness for differentiation,
Differentiation for wholeness.
Settlement for exposure
And exposure for settlement.
To do upon a lifetime,
Give grandeur that reciprocates,
Good-will after it represents,
Kindness where it doesn't.
A travel of regard,
The domicile of substance.
A crowd in dispersal,
Solitude for easy affection.
[The rest chuckle in admiration, the cousin sits down and relaxes]
Act: Dawn
[Back at the bar, first light, houselights dim]
Noah
When daffodils make rain
Clouds hushed by a little girl's finger
Commanding legions of iron men
At waves of devotional heaps.
Jones
Pretty her up spiced for a new shadow;
Milky-way to find a good harvest.
Mother to stay mother,
Father mobile with sunlight;
Both pleasured to uncertainty
Of wombs and coattails,
Of style and grace.
George
If he'd tear, mother gave no notice
The way car's oil for vacation day.
Gloss and heels do no second glance
Closeness beholds atomic secrets,
Secreted from memory and a basier shine.
Jones
Shamshackled weirded the feather hat
Scribes keep pen to paper and hand.
The feather, wilted from tears and joy,
'Tis scribe who knows the winter season
When hats feel burdened of head gear.
[Noah gets up to leave, dreary eyes]
Noah
Alas' away that agony
Of sin and the other one,
Dare say its name.
Given silence to delusions,
Fenced by racketeering.
Chief smiling at the chance,
Told twice, a third for thou;
Shouldered a patterned charisma.
Sun dripped melancholy
Dared to shelter the horizon.
Color me famous
For my rein is free.
Chocolate dowry
And faithless chance.
[Looking upon his wife]
The brush of shoulder gave little grace
Or when he desperately gave chance
At midnight's feast to demons' presence
Or the moment she gave repose
To sweetness etched in her breast.
Most dearest was she, even if a memory.
Jones
Go now, pave an honest path
Sister years don in plenty.
[Noah and Samantha leave]
[Turning to Delilah]
Lady goodness sit beside me.
Set aside greatness and mediocrity,
Wanting you primed and prepped
For good spice and evil rice.
I come from heaven and hell,
Don't know the other,
Or the bridge between them.
I was raised to be wasteful of bridges,
Arching their way to other arches.
[Delilah, George and friend leaves]
[To himself]
Intermingled to pray for strength
Amidst a morning cry
And soft wind against their face.
Wanderin' selfless fortunes,
To make de' mark of man,
Find favor in aristocratic folk,
In baptism of a Victorian Church,
That'll post without a battle cry,
Or verse of stable meaning,
Reining the world without an empire.
[Going outside, looking at the people]
Dearest, off you go in Monday's light,
Piercing corners, bodegas first bite,
Sifting in the a.m., delivery in the p.m.,
Doorways, circular to singular,
Daring folk and meager folk,
Stationed people and mobile persons;
Four hours to the gates unlocked;
Tap to run no more dry.
Baruch Menache writes at the intersection of narrative, philosophy, and lyric expression. His work spans poetry, essays, and theatrical pieces that examine the interior life and its many thresholds. He lives in New York with his wife and children.