Valentino’s Muse – Monologue (Dan)

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A monologue from the play by A.J. Ciccotelli

After finding a flyer for a poetry contest Dan Gardner, a would be poet from New York City, tries to reinvent himself as Ricardo Salome, a world class poet, and contemplates writing a poem for the contest.

DAN (nineteen)

The romantic poet waits… and waits… and waits. No happiness in his line of work. Ignorance is programmed bliss! Eons ago, his parents said they’d castrate him if he got more than a B in his art class,

scared that he’d become a painter and therefore a broke, homeless, drug addicted, homosexual, alcoholic, communist atheist, who would ask them for money perpetually, or far worse, the neighbors.

Then one day his hand picks up a pen and ka-boom! The first poem was birthed, followed by the next and then the next. A plethora of words all around this poet with bleeding hands like stigmata!

Then down on his knees he drops and cries to the heavens, “God, if you have inspired me to write with no other reason but to write, then could you give me a little talent to go along with my drive?”

God gave him far worse; he gave him writer’s block. So, this poet is named Ricardo Salome! He is me and I am he. Perhaps some people think poets only want the approval of others.

Perhaps people are right. F*** success! Oh, this poster of Greece? The representation of that long faded golden age… Where men were men and boys… frolicked naked under the sun and wrote poems to each other.

Sometimes I wonder if I’m like those Greek boys but I snap out of it because… once there was this boy named Farris and we used to… OH GOD SHUT UP DAN! I mean, Ricardo!

“Stuck in this man made prison of my own device, am I! Left to the demonic forces of man-made hysteria, My mind goes asunder.” Not too shabby but what does it mean? “Stuck in this…”

(Laughs at himself.) It means I’m f***ed. Perhaps life would be easier for this poet if he were born the garbage man or the paperboy.

His mind would try to make stoop rhyme with… “My sadness thrown onto the stoop Isn’t my life a constant droop?” No! No! No! No more.

The only way I will get out of this bed is if God is willing to give his ungifted something that will rhyme with…

with… That brown wooden sandal… “That brown wooden sandal Belongs to a boy named Daniel.”

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