For Jonas and the Ether

For earth, wind, fire, water are the four elements. 

For once we banished the fifth we stopped 'knowing' in its tracks.

For ether is the errant essence exiled by science.

For the ethereal cosmic dust

For black matter and zodiac beasts

For the spinning spirits that enshroud this blue sphere.

For ether is the fifth and forgotten element. 

For prayers to your ancestors

For quanta, for relativity, for karma

For that thing that drives the elements is ether.

For your birthday go to some place quiet

For your soul, get away and think about this.

For your friends and family depend on this contemplation

For we live errant and incomplete

For time will past too quickly

For this brutal and short life.

For your birthday Jonas, I wish you the fifth

For our lives are filled with four.

These and Those Animals

/
Take offense to looters smashing storefronts and kicking car windows.
Compelling cinema on your hi-def flat screens.
The masked thug marauding through nightmares excuses your fear.

Drunken mob.
Biker gangs.
Lynch party.
Unwashed hordes.
Deviant Huns.
Mau Mau Mongrels.
Animals (according to my friend)

Shaka Zulus decapitating orphaned babies out of Darwinian mercy.
It's more primal to fear animal behavior than human designs.

/

The abstraction of evil lurks in the line items.
Bill riders, amended clause, and fine print.

The fine print is not evil.
It is just so small that you don't see the damaged planned. 
Etchings on the back of the eyelids extincting cultures in legalese
so clean that the abomination seems preordained.

No one has nightmares about the fine print.
Basic user agreement and the long scroll to the bottom.
Click the 'yes' box.

/

Animals haul TVs and computers out of gashed security gates.
Viruses carried in the microchip unleash more carnage than any riot.
We don't fear the TV maker, manufacture, or media mogul.

But if violence and bad dreams disqualified one from the human race,
then I know a few parliaments and parlors as gilded zoos.

NEW WORK! EXCITED TO HAVE THIS GO UP NEXT WEEK!

THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO F#GGOTS

Written By Aurin Squire

Directed by Aurin Squire and Zi Alikhan

Friday-Saturday, May 1-2 @ 8:00pm
Sunday, May 3 @ 6:00 pm

Tickets: $16 General | $10 Low-Income [Buy Tickets]

CAST: James Edward Becton, Israel Gutierrez, Joey Lozada, Nathaniel Ryan, Donnell E. Smith

“The Gospel According to F#ggots” is a multimedia queer translation of Biblical text through verse, video, and vogue. It’s a Church pageant play remixed and remastered into an epic journey that combines poetry, movement, and music.

If Jesus was a radical rabbi who walked around in a dress with 12 men…wait, that’s what he actually was but he has been whitewashed into by capitalism, patriarchy, and heterosexuals into a shaming, punishing, saint. He has become a sacrificial lamb of the cross. But that’s not what he preached about. If he were alive today, Jesus would probably vote for Nader, live off-the-grid, and ask people to love in whatever form i takes: homo, hetero, queer, transgender, transgressive, progressive. This is the story of the new Jesus, which reads more faithfully to how the old Jesus probably lived and thought back then, and why he was such a radical figure.

About the Artists

Aurin Squire (2014/15 Artist in Residence) is an award-winning multidisciplinary artist and activist. His plays and installation art has been seen at numerous venues throughout Western Europe, Canada, Great Britain, and across the United States. Squire is a 2-time winner of the Le Compte Nuoy Prize from Lincoln Center and is completing his two-year Lila Acheson Wallace Playwriting fellowship at The Juilliard School. He also has 2014-2015 fellowships at the National Black Theatre and the Dramatists Guild of America. As a journalist, his work has appeared in The New Republic, Talking Points Memo, Brooklyn Rail, The Chicago Tribune, Miami Herald, and ESPN. Squire has served as a writer/producer for several web projects around queer culture, voting rights, and activism. He has been a member of the Lincoln Center Lab and the Ars Nova Play Group.

Zi Alikhan (co-director) | Zi was raised in suburban Northern California by two Indian immigrants. After two years as a Sociology major at UC Berkeley, Zi transferred to NYU to pursue a BFA in Musical Theatre at the Tisch School of the Arts. It was at NYU that Zi first learned that theatre could be more than just tap dancing on a boat, that theatre could be a change agent and social tool. At NYU, Zi developed a love for documentary plays, queer theatre, new play development, and re-interpreting classic texts through contemporary social lenses.

James Edward Becton, a graduate of Niagara University and product of Stella Adler, is beyond honored to breathe life into this fantastically artistic statement. James Edward is associated with The Classical Theatre of Harlem, the New York Theatre Workshop, LaMama, and The Workshop Theatre Company, just to name a few. He has worked with directors Austin Pendleton, Sue Lawless, George Ferencz,and Frank Licato. To see more of his work and experience, feel free to stop by his website: www.JamesEdwardBecton.com

Israel Gutierrez hails from San Antonio, TX via San Benito, TX in the Rio Grande Valley. He has been seen in shows like NY/Off Broadway: Caligula, Theatre Row; Aurin Squire’s To Whom It May Concern; Romeo and Juliet, Pulse Ensemble; Jackson Heights Trilogy, Theatre 167. Select Regional: Comedy of Errors / Hamlet, Virginia Shakes; Laughter on the 23rd Floor / The Imaginary Invalid / Kimberly Akimbo, The Schoolhouse Theatre; St. Louis Rep, New Court Theatre. TV/FILM: Elliot Loves (HBO, TLA Dist, dir Terracino); Macys Stars on Broadway (CBS, dir Ryan Stana, 2009 Emmy Award, Best Special Event); I was also on Dance Moms. Ensemble Master Class at The LAByrinth. BFA, Acting, Webster Conservatory. AEA/SAG/AFTRA

Joey Lozada hails from Connecticut. He attended the American Musical and Dramatic Academy. Recently Joey has been seen in: Pedro Pan (Truf, Roger), The Tempest (Hip to Hip, Trinculo), and Defacing Michael Jackson (Red Shirt, Obadiah). As always, thanks to my friends and family for their constant love and support.

Nathaniel Ryan | Life has been an amazing journey so far for me. Growing up in New York I never dreamt of being an Actor and Model. I remember I wanted to make video games or be a pro wrestler. The dreams of my childhood slowly faded away and I settled for running track and field in high school and college. My dream of going to the Olympics was denied with continuous arthritis in my knees. After working for several years in Corporate America in the financial industry I decided life behind a desk was not for me. I moved back to New York, into the house I grew up in, in 2011. Being back in New York has taught me a lot and I have talked about it in my monthly blog ‘Train 2 Broadway’. My goal.. to be the best actor that I can be.

Donnell E. Smith | Baltimore-born, Donnell E. Smith has come a long way, initially starting his creative pursuits as a Singer & Songwriter. Since transitioning to Actor, he always makes a point of immersing himself in projects that fulfill the thrill and challenge he seeks. He is IMMENSELY THRILLED to continue the journey of “The Gospel…” and humbly thanks his family, friends & mentors for their invaluable love & support, thus far. “This is for they who have ignited, nurtured, influenced and elevated the passion that burns from within, out. I share Ephesians 3:20.”

To learn more about Aurin Squire and The Gospel According to F#ggots visit artistservices.bax.org/aurin-squire.

Gypsy Dolls

These gypsy beggars drug their babies

better to carry them all day.

Lolling doll heads cradled to withered sunken chest

Needle stigmata on tiny hands

wet with vodka shots and whiskey sweats

of this parading nightmare

through subways cars,

down alleys noosed to scribbled signs

made by pushers and pimps.

Shackled to that promissory fix

in exchange for the beggars cup.

Milkless breast weeping black tar

on dirty scarves worn to cover

cigarette burns, track marks, razor scars.

Insertion points to punish and pleasure

women sold into bondage.

Interchangeable parts: the women and babies.

Paired up and pushed out to saunter

with kabuki masks of horror.

Strike pity in the hearts of pedestrians,

street vendors, cops, passengers.

Even the clouds shower them in tears

knowing man’s carnal machination

snare unwanted newborns and prostitutes

into a charity masquerade.

These babies want for no food now,

only the syringe soothes their noddings

and placid drools. Their uncrying eyes shut

to the blinding light of day.

they only see at night now,

only the moon is known to

their burning bodies.  

When they are killed it’s by overdose,

wanting all day sleep and no profit impediments

the men shoot them full of heroin

until they stop thrashing about

and become that perfect little beggar doll.

Their seizures wake the women,

writhing in the tied-cloth shoulder cradles

Little fist-shaped hearts tear tissue,

rupturing tender muscles

into shocked contortions.

And out comes the bloodshits.

And out comes foaming fermented vomit

gurgling cries, lightning stabs their eyes

flung back eyelids reveal silver and purple iris

fluttering like falling leaves.

Some times the women carry the dead babies

for the rest of the day as props.

snaking through the Port Authority,

running down your back, poking out your eyes

carrying the swollen stones that used to have names

but will now be churned back into

the nameless pity that creeps like well water

into the eyes of Gods.

And here comes that gasping exhale,

when lungs empty the ethereal into wind.

Hunger

they are parched past participle

Dessicated dehydro jangling on

strings of half-chances.

shadow puppets animated

by southern sultan with caravans

of harems, wenches, and briefcases

bulging with aphrodisiac sacks.

get that drip drop opp,

hang on a hair of hope,

whisper in a dog whistle.

fishhook minnowing miracles

masquerading as Moby Dick.

when only trace remains,

chalk shadows as outlines

of sidewalk corpses splattered.

starving people fight over scraps.

and brothers scrap for loosies

and lost causes between pauses.

fed from crumbs swept off

master’s table and stomped down floorboards

dogs eat down here below the house

in this trench of tripe,

offal and hookworm bellies.  

hushpuppies tossed to night,

send the wolves away from servant slaves

cooking in the smoked hut behind the big house.

this is a hunger that eats itself.

intestine envelopments constricts

acid dissolve tongues and lets us drink

our own tastes and famine.

A Fading Orchestra

Slender sore throb of vibrato in delta marshes.
I tune the strings, plucking notes sharp and flat
high C electric at the bridge, dips my shoulder.
Baritone G flat grumbles in the red shell of my knee.

The orchestra plays out of tune.
The orchestra plays in the gap.

Each instrument adjusting rusted brown strings
termite infected sawdust in bass chest.

The orchestra musicians don't need a composer,
they don't even need to practice staccato timpani
accompanying piercing piccolo stabs.

Gershwin Rhapsody in Blue:
opens sour and sarcastic clarinet
curves akimbo, loosening the register.

The orchestra Traviatta and Figaro
in my splintered wood.

I become the sunken symphony chamber
clamoring the air with scored sheets falling to feet.

There is no orchestra playing, only notes now.
Each instrument a concave mirror
imploding into a coffin chrysalis.
Musicians smash their bows, crack dripping hands
slicing taut drum skin as it pours out dark vintage.

Echo notes. Mayhem crashes all around
and then the last fading ache
against the pitch black deaf. 

NYC Ghazal

*a ghazal is an Arabic form of poetry in un-rhyming couplets where every second line is themed after the preceding one*

U rarely c fruits in papers,
unspooling fertility monuments.

Every burnt offering a sinuating song
leminscate serpents swallow their tails.

Plague theorem lamentation
pivot, ratchet, hatchet blood cycles.

Even Apollo's brilliant shadow too much,
so Gods trouble themselves unless disguised.

Hidden in allusions, catacombs in us,
unconscious divination of a penitent.

Rumi-nation

I always thought you would come to me
       in the shape of a beautiful lover
I never dreamed you would steal my heart
       with no shape at all

I always pretended I needed arms to hold me
       and lips to kiss away my pain
yet I find fulfillment
      in the embrace of empty space

I always wished you would speak to me
     with words of tender sweetness
now I know you whisper silently
      of your undying love

I always knew I would find you
      although I foolishly looked with my eyes
you were here all along
      hiding just out of sight in my heart
-Rumi

Uppity

Uppity (a form experiment)

By Aurin Squire

Abuse.
I did
intrude.
Disturb,
disease,
refuse
to serve
the needs,
with please,
and use
my voice
endure
2 score
your core,
your soul
with sores
from poor
in war
of black
on crack
the ways
and means,
machines
grind blight
from bones
of plight.
and birds
of pray
nest in
the way
we greet
and meet
our kin
our friend
women
and men
but then
a-gain
the same
refrain
we sing
and feign
ourselves
ordained
to say
this plain:
'hey sistah
'hey mistah.

(At this point, the 'act' felt incomplete. I paused over the last 2 lines, looking for an appropriate conclusion or summations. Then I started writing the words out in reverse order, swimming back up the waterfall. UPSTREAM...)

'hey mistah.
'hey sistah.
this plain:
to say
ordained
ourselves
we sing
refrain
the same
a-gain
but then
and men
women
our friend
our kin
and meet

we greet

the way

nest in

of pray

and birds

of plight
from bones
grind blight
machines
and means,
the ways
on crack
of black
in war
from poor
with sores
your soul
your core,
2 score
endure
my voice
and use
with please,
the needs,
to serve
refuse
disease,
disturb,
intrude.
I did
Abuse.

The Black Mismanagement Mafia

They are here, they are here. 

Have no fear. 

They come to take a check,

get a bump,

grab a mic, 

and make some lumps.

They are the black mismanagement mafia. 

The black mismanagement mafia!

Now mis-serving and swerving,

under-educating and coon-gesticulating

misleading and bull shit feeding you

your local outrage, 

your latest social media share, 

your scandal and "oh, no she didn't-s"

Just pay no attention to the tiny hands in your pocket, my sheeple. 

Doing deeds in darkness 

but it soon comes to light.

Doing dirty in alleys

but the streets will make it right, cuz

the black mafia vampires its next victim.

Down goes another black org.

Black-on-black corrupt,

Black on black back-biting

Black on red bankrupt.  

The black mismanagement mafia strikes again. 

You know the BMM: old-timers and has-beens

with trunks stuffed with 'way back when,' stories

and 'when I marched with Dr. King.' 

And they've been riding that same march ever since.

They got a thimble full of management skills

 and ferocity to defend.

No, not you or advancement.

They are protecting their turf,

lifting their hind legs

pissing in your eyes,

pissing on your head,

pissing in your ear,

leaking that tangy hot stuff on your tongue.

They are marking their territory. 

They serve as honorary board members

for corporations needing a muzzled black face at the table,

spend most of their leisure squatting on 'blackness.'

They'll run any org into the ground

jamming cronies in every nook and cranny. 

Then they grab their burglar sack and head out

begging to the community for a bailout.

BMM runs the August Wilson Center in Pittsburgh, 

many of the NAACP chapters in this country, 

the SCLC

CORE

and even some HBCUs. 

They accept kickbacks and airtime, 

but no responsibility for bringing down 

stanchions, columns, and legacies created to serve.

They got their crowbars in your pocket. 

They got their shopping bags out

Pay no attention to the tiny hands 

running up and down your thighs

between your woman's legs

in your child's mouth

picking out loose morsels

with no morals. 

Pay no attention to jheri curl perm 

shaking like a tree after April rain

shaking with laughter.

Pay no attention to the wetness.

behind your ears.

Join hands in the spirit of Umoja

Join hands for thee ancestors

Hop on the good foot. 

Ashe. Ache. Ashanti. Asti Spumante

And where's my gotdamn pimp cup?!?

Until one day you're walking down the street

minding your own piss and stickiness. 

and the mafia meets you, cuz!
They are here, they are here,
strap up your gear.

The black mismanagement mafia greets you, cuz!

And, cuz, they got a hostage:

bedraggled and demented. 

Toothless and hoarse-voiced. 

Stick 'em up or black history gets it

right between the eyes.

Stick 'em up cuz…

you'll never get it. 

Moving Water (by Rumi)

When  you do things from your soul, you feel a river

moving in you, a joy.

When actions come from another section, the feeling

disappears.  Don't let

others lead you.  They may be blind or, worse, vultures.

Reach for the rope

of God.  And what is that?  Putting aside self-will.

Because of willfulness

people sit in jail, the trapped bird's wings are tied,

fish sizzle in the skillet.

The anger of police is willfulness.  You've seen a magistrate

inflict visible punishment.  Now 

see the invisible.  If you could leave your selfishness, you

would see how you've

been torturing your soul.  We are born and live inside black water in a well.

How could we know what an open field of sunlight is? Don't

insist on going where

you think you want to go.  Ask the way to the spring.  Your

living pieces will form

a harmony.  There is a moving palace that floats in the air

with balconies and clear

water flowing through, infinity everywhere, yet contained

under a single tent.

Dinner at Midnight

He asked me if I’d love before

so stirring stew beneath my nose,

I pondered wandered through

evicted rooms and ghosts of smoke.

Thinking...fanatic certainty at one time.

Perhaps several. Twice? Once?

Or maybe just infatuated

with lust, or a crush, flings and flirts

fumbling baubles, dangling buttons

kisses that lose luster

over measured stanzas they muster.

The curry brew wretched,

an odious blur to my sense

as the spoon kept turning

looking for answers at the ocean's floor.

And in the silver ashes,

a few vague candidates appear,
faded from an inferno
Who I could have, would have...

had the timing, reason and season

been in alignment with my horoscope

with my work schedule

with my location or vocation and

other...others, I looked at his inquiry.

with sad and tired eyes. 

Here we sit at this vector in time

sharing food. Laughing, smiling, entangled hands

underneath the tablecloth

along with melancholia and

history’s fumbling fingers

dancing on my knee. 

Have I ever loved really meant

do I love you now?

...

No. Not in the least. 

And you do not love me,

which is what makes dinner

so nice and frivolous,

which is what makes my stew

so cold and noxious.

which is what makes my heart

so still.

which is what makes this affair

like a bookmark: holding a place

in between the pages.

Have I ever loved meant

did I love you then?

I’d be lying if I said yes.

With sorrowful eyes I glanced

across the table and squeezed

his hand. 

Have I ever loved meant

would I love again?

…

I am...

turning the stew again and again.

raising up a rolling red mist

as the spoon turns again and again,

fanning the vermillion clouds

veiling my smirking lips,

turning a dark night into a scarlet noon

I nod slowly as I stare at a horizon

turning again and again, again and again,

again and again.

Summer Sonnet: A Volcano Sings

Languishing in missing stanza design

unfolds the lost garden of Kahuna

wildflowers poutty lips benign

a lovely green melodic lacuna.

In the arbor filled with fragrant beaks

effusing tributary night colognes

mixing with hungry flames of burning teak

as lust-trampled willows wither and moan.

The magic mountain's awakened red screams

unfurl crimson dawn across ebony sky

fiery Niagaras bury lost dreams

of Eden occults soon blighted to die.

On flowers entombed in verdant hollows

Pythian temples of tomorrow grow.

- By Aurin Squire

Summer Sonnet 44: Las Vegas

'I am that I am," the voice roared above
to wandering prophets in the wastelands.
And from bleached skies, aluminum doves
defecating peace on to feral sands.

"We have civilized this ancient beast
with air-conditioners and chandeliers.
No longer will we care for the least
freed from unearthly superstitious fears."

Apache blood used to baptize the rock,
now concrete carpets and asphalt unfurl.
Profitable accountants raze the clock
summoning rapine fire that end worlds.

Bottled water and silicon mutes sense
we bury wild prophets in our opulence.

- By Aurin Squire

Summer Sonnet 43: Hospice Care

I want to rip the tubes out of his skin
and pound his chest. Life! Life! Life! You will rise
from soaked mattress, invoking hearts of men
turn diagnosis to laughable lies.

Instead I pat his biblical white hair,
long lustre locks from his bed-bound nest.
He yawns like a cat enjoying pet care
that has removed a moment of loneliness.

I fetch him a glucose control meal shake,
adjust bed so he can sit up to drink.
His stomach convulsions tremor and quake
from atrophied muscles starting to blink.

 At first sip, he'll let out thirsty-quenching moan
as his skin resumes a more human tone.

- By Aurin Squire

Summer Sonnet 42: Talking To You (Lao Tzu)

Lao Tzu says great talent ripens late in life,
some times past the living and into death.
Then what am I to make of loving this strife,
pre-occupied with pain of all that's left?

If love is talent, may it blossom late
so my days aren't spent in woeful regret.
But if flowers are past due of wait
then they decorate a funeral set.

If I plant the seeds continually
steady harvest ripens in all seasons.
This impatient farmer eyes some times sees
only rocky soil without reason.

May passion be instantly frivolous
and hope love's genius endures past my lust.

- By Aurin Squire