O,O

(Bare stage, seven dancers, white circle, black floor)

(Half are men, half women, the other either)

(Half wear white, the others black—they are dressed for

suffering or leisure)

1:       I thought there was someone

2:                                                            it sounded like someone

1/2:    someone close and pressing

3:                                                         but I sense myself alone

4:       alone is an instinct

5:                                          gathered, compressing

6:       approximate weapon

7:       (as if to herself)            but I wasn’t thinking

1 (smiling):       I love this place

2 (starting):                                    I wasn’t there

3 (blinking):      How am I here?

4 (flinching):                            I’m only waiting

5 (leaping):       but we like it, it starts with excess, it has a name

6 (grimacing): wears black and its lips are reddened

7 (hunching): as if in pain

1:     we tried not to go there

2:     shadows pulled under

3:     could sing it away

4:     (darting eyes in both directions) but continues

5:     what she feels . . .

6:     what you are feeling . . .

7:     (drops to her knees) and keeps starting

All:  as though in a circle—orbit or hell—

1:     O my vocative

2:     o my polis

3:     o my om

4:     o ovoid, fecund and feral

5:     o oeil

6:     o my emoticon

7:     o oblate sum

(These two (pas de deux))

Their wills are plural

to rust, to sail

to nest and nautical

I didn’t intend it

but anyway did it

it could be part of your worst dream, if you thought

but that she divided

thought from heart

(Next three) (“Déesse in flames”)

I am stricken

graceless and this

torpor distinguishes

bad, it’s hurting

it makes no sense

this shapeless moving

a kind of dying

it aches to learn

incapacity, shame

wasted motion

corrupts space but O

is all, absorbs and eats

and is open and empty

perfected

but what am I

(Last two) (low brood)

Did you or didn’t you

ever occur

in such sumptuous spaces

empire founded in a scar

liberty, unqualified, entire

annunciation in an eye’s aspire

bounding, beyonding

exile a mute returning

unending room

1:     Oh no

2:     uh oh

3:     o woe

All: don’t go

4:     to flirt (she murmurs wryly) outside the circle

5:     to flout (he whispers wetly) the killing coil

All: to look to foot to sport to howl

to spool to wheel to shy to toil

6:     it is part of our climate

7:     in the radius of seasons

1:     Orion’s ozone

2:     or Orphic tone

3:     or zero-home

4:     an O, N.O.

5:     or ore, before

6:     shout-mouth, womb-bone

7:     around we go!

All:  to run in circumference, all edge, to know

(They bow)

(Still in a circle, they turn their backs to each other, pause, then exit running to separate points off-stage)

(Lights down)