natural disposition of the poet

Scene 3
NATURAL DISPOSITION OF THE POET

(GRACE types frantically. LEOPOLD reads the BOOK OF THE DEAD.)

(NIRVANA enters and flops down on the couch.)

NIRVANA:

What are doing Grace?

GRACE:

I’m writing.

NIRVANA:

Oh, a new book, how exciting. What’s it about?

GRACE:

Nothing. I’m not writing a new book.

NIRVANA:

Just remember Grace, a good story has tension and plenty of drama. Make us care about the characters. (She becomes dramatic) Remember she was kind before she was crazy. Mental illness destroys her rational. In a bid to stop the voices she kills everyone around her. The children –

GRACE:

What a crock of shit. It’s all lies!

NIRVANA:

Well, we won’t get into the children. That’s another story. But, incredibly, on her deathbed, raving out of her mind, Poet Grace cuts a lucrative book deal.

LEOPOLD:

Oh finally. Good Grace.

GRACE:

I don’t have a book deal!

NIRVANA:

Of course you don’t. Leopold, you must remember poet Grace.

GRACE:

Stop talking about me. I hate that. I’m right here.

LEOPOLD:

Oh yes, I remember Poet Grace. Didn’t she gain notoriety a few years back?

NIRVANA:

Yes. She was arrested crossing into America with a box of books intended for distribution. Now, what was it called again?

GRACE:

Free Weed, Bad Seed.

LEOPOLD:

Poetry?

NIRVANA:

Ha. Poetry. A book filled with I smoke pot and gardening poems. No wonder it never sold.

GRACE:

That’s a lie. It was more than just gardening poems.

NIRVANA:

Oh right. There was suicidal maniac section.

GRACE:

It wasn’t like that.

NIRVANA:

Well, what was it like then?

GRACE:

I put my heart into those poems.

LEOPOLD:

Well, they are pretty depressing to read. They just go on and on. Why can’t you write poems about happy things?

GRACE:

Because –

NIRVANA:

It is the natural disposition of the poet to plan her own death. And everyone elses. To mull it out, roll it around in her head, on her tongue, off the tip of her finger tips. The poet confesses dark thoughts run through her head in the dark hours, right before dawn when she wakes for the 3rd time at night.

(END SCENE)