DIRK
I cannot write a good Iambic line
I wish that I were bowling at this time
I never thought I’d speak heroic verse
But certainly this whole thing could be worse
Poetry is much better than prose
Because it all falls neatly into rows
My lines sing of naked raw allure
In Iam-fucking-bic pentameter.

[Exeunt & Flourish]

THE PEDANT
This whole Unknown thing’s gotten out of hand
And Rettberg I would like to reprimand
William is not Shakespeare and not Gass
Nor Faulkner, Burroughs, Vollman, Buckley, Gad-
dis, Scott nor Frank nor me nor Dirk nor Kate
excuse me it is getting rather late

[Strike. Exeunt & Flourish]

[Enter the Bastard of Orléans]

[Exit the Bastard]

[Disembodied Voice Crackles over Loudspeaker]

FRANK
My name is Frank and I’m with the Unknown
Anthology. It’s good but it’s too long
And drug abuse is fun but it is wrong

[Spare & Flourish]

[Enter Dirk]

DIRK
I may be a messiah but I’m sane
And I am not the sort who would complain

SCOTT
I wish that I could bowl but I cannot
This bowling nonsense’s just a bunch of rot
I wish that I were Frank but I am me

[Gutterball & Flourish]

PINBOY
Yon lordies with their shoes of many colors,
Poets heft mighty black stones of ten, even
Fifteen pounds, and send them hurtling down lanes
Of thunder, sending my pins a-crashing about, they prance
Even at a spare, they don’t see me, they don’t care
About the artistry of a well set triangle, pah.
I piss on them, me with my aching back, I scurry
About the floor, my belly on a platform with
Wheels, I roll about in isolation,
To risk injury for their drunkeness, I labor so
That these poets might have their day in the alley,
With their buttoned-down short-sleeved shirts of lavender,
Lordly titles embroidered in emerald thread on their
Right breasts. Right lordy lords, poets and ladies,
They don’t see me. Yon poets will do as they may, I
Say, let the cat have his mewl, let the dog
Have his day.

DIRK
What ho? Lost we have our blank verse?

WILLIAM
What ho, indeedie, good sirs, what harbinger of
Doom twists through this recreation center which
Cannot hold, what great beast of darkness
Descends oer the lanes, impenetrable as
An oxymoron told by a fool to a chorus
Of idiots, all the sound and all the fury
Signifying bowling.

SCOTT
Yea, befall the black lights, which doth
Make my white socks eerily glow, and come too the
Pounding chords of Pink Floyd to which my youth early
Burned, in suburbs of America. Laser lights make
Patterns on waxed timber, white smoke from freeze
Dried ice, shadows of red, shadows of blue.

[Strike & Flourish]

CYNTHIA
Woo! Woo! Woo!
WILLIAM
Woe indeed, for now is the frame
Of our discontent

SCOTT
Woe my bullocks, she just got a strike.
She’s kicking your ass, Billy boy.

WILLIAM
Good sir, I beg thy pardon, as my name is
Not Bill or Billy or Will or Willy,
Hark, I plead, thou lumpen souse
Spare me the bitter fruits of thy wicked tongue,
Heed mine words, for they will tell of more than is known
In your so-called postmodern philosophy
Which is the detritus of our wretched age
Sage-like, I divine a time
In a splendid Ecotopia, where all
Are free to pick at the fruit of the abundant vines, where
Doctors will treat all where they fall, where
Grown women and men will gather with cocktails in rooms similar
To this one to read the works of feminist philosophers,
And I tell thee now, for Dirk has seen
The past as the present in the future, a mote in a god’s eye
In the next progression, after the mighty onslaught
This game will be banned,
For this is no sport for communitarians.

CYNTHIA
As a well-educated feminist scholar, and
As an attorney, I object to your
Insinuation, launched without contemplation of the
Masses of women who enjoy a good solid strike
More than they might enjoy your pipe-dream of
A world in which competition
No longer plays a roll.
Let me enjoy my turkey, thrice stricken, good
Sir, while I may.
Cisoux and Césaire are rolling with me,
You can hear them in the falling pins
Put down your notebook, say I, and learn
To guide your ball towards the arrows
Of outrageous fortune, which glow purple,
Beckoning strange joy under this neon light.

DIRK
Yea. Wouldst thou stop picking on my girlfriend,
William? Bowl, already.

WILLIAM
I’m not pick—I just meant that the politics
Of bowling are not what they might seem,
Snarling mad dogs rolling towards a destiny—
We cannot comprehend—
I have worded that poorly,
I apologize, milady, I—

SCOTT
Bowl, William, goddammit, bowl, quit your
Bellyaching and bowl. We can maybe
Squeeze in a third game if
You quit your yapping.

[Gutterball & Flourish]

[Disembodied Voice Crackles over Loudspeaker]


FRANK
Even in bowling, I am without coporeal form
As I would have it, and yet still dragged unto
This famous stage, where we are merely players
Biding our time, until the beer frame.
In spirit only, in words, I doth float
Misrepresented, ill destiny, besieged, I wander
Alone through the aether, up here, on the Golden
Gate Bridge, invisible to your eyes a-prying,
But not unsubstantiated.
You have heard tell of the rage of Caliban
But what of that of Marquardt?
Reluctant muse
Of the Unknown.

SCOTT
Frank! I tell you that dude’s Frank!!

DIRK
I thought I told you not
To eat
The brown acid, man.

WILLIAM
Creepy. I doth find it most creepy.