THE KING IN YELLOW:

A JACOBEAN NOH PLAY

by MICHAEL HELSEM

("GRAYWYVERN")

The King In Yellow: A Jacobean Noh Play By Graywyvern

(or, Michael Helsem)

ACT I.

Scene 1.

A balcony with rail & painted landscape-sky scene beyond. All

characters are masked. Masks are cartoonish but enigmatic. And

asymmetrical. Costumes are elaborate & non-functional, but of no

distinct era or culture. Furnishings are minimal but strikingly

abstract. Characters speak line-endings cleanly, but only in a

declamatory fashion for longer monologues. Sometimes silence

intervenes (even within a speech), as the actor or director sees fit. The

whole manner is of weird contrivance, of Rube Goldberg; of an

experiment in danger of not coming off.

NAOTALBA:

Tailgated by the crimson

Moiety till my carport

Brings vast eclipse & a wall

Comprised of dead cicalas,

I am Naotalba 'tombed

In Naotalba.

(turning towards the door)

A whelk

Procured these vestments' purple.

CASSILDA (enters):

And what the miasmatic

Garboil's thick at double dusk?

NAOTALBA:

It is a trick of the sky.

CASSILDA:

Does the sky lie too?

NAOTALBA:

Badly.

CASSILDA:

Then school it, till our chaos

Tell there no more than the white

Visage of Naotalba.

NAOTALBA:

Have it your way, my Lady.

CASSILDA:

(in a changed tone):

Always just about to rain

But never does. One grows sick

Of stalking the asphodel.

(Back to the former:) I begin to remember.

Once there were other azures

Than chalice & gingerbread

Server. We feed the ebbing;

And like buzzards, let our greed

Unscrew us from an airspace.

NAOTALBA:

For you, perhaps some Tokay?

CASSILDA:

More, yes. (He pours.)

Is the Ball tonight?

NAOTALBA:

It is.

CASSILDA:

I have a yearning

Sudden-like, to attend as

Some contraption of Babbage,

An automaton, a pun

In gray alloy.

NAOTALBA:

(aside) No demon

Better simulates a jest.

(To her) We shall deface this coinage

With alacrity.

CASSILDA:

--Soon, soon;

But who brings rain to Tlaloc?

(Pauses.) The stillborn worlds appall me.

Who’s stealthily going mad

Feels more & more their rightness

And dwells on pre-smash Krypton

A gnostic geologist.

Go. (He leaves.) (Contemptuously:)

Enochian crossword

On a scrap of foolscap. Troll

At nowhere's crossing! (Tenderly:) Topaz

Your eyes, sweet, untenanted

By pain. One quick nocturnal

Interloper could leave you

A pocket of ebony.

Now I think about Alar

But all I feel is the dread

Of discovery. Sickly

By one black candle's saffron

A ukase Plutonian

I’ll issue. Invocation

Merely of what in this mine

Passes for a camera,

I want that bastard followed.

(Enter HASTUR.)

HASTUR:

My queen.

CASSILDA:

Your eyelids quiver

Like hummingbirds. What is it?

HASTUR:

It seems from the worked-out goaf

One last gemmate surprise springs.

CASSILDA:

With disaster we keep tryst?

HASTUR:

Nothing so grand. It seems, the

Peasants, as if by magic

Have all eloigned.

CASSILDA:

They never

Petitioned us for mercy.

Not once.

HASTUR:

All in the grammar

Of rulership. That jasmine

Fragrance becomes you.

CASSILDA:

So stones

Are become, aye, by yellow.

HASTUR:

Withhold that word, dear. A time

Will come to wield such a force

But not yet. (In a lower tone:)

O Cassilda,

Eyes imprisoned by language

Find umgang in their lit cone

The sanguine horizon called

Storm sunset. What morbidness!

Beaker of golden chartreuse

To dispel were ample glare.

(She leaves.) Such a vision I have seen

I'll not soon be rid of. Care's

Defunctive slivers blended,

The hands piled apart, dimness

And the ash of a frail prayer,

And we will be as they are

Under the red baobab.

A lace of flesh from us hangs

Already. Finish the poem

Though it squander the poet,

For all teloi-whorl is myrrh.

ACT 1.

Scene 2.

Cassilda's chambers. A canopied bed, Danish Moderne dressing table,

& an ornate armoire in greenish wood. Tapestries, sconces. Cassilda

holds an instrument, part lyre, part astrolabe, & sing-speaks the

following, to intermittent discords.

CASSILDA:

'Along the shore the cloud waves break,

The twin suns sink behind the lake,

The shadows lengthen

In Carcosa.

Strange is the night where black stars rise,

And strange moons circle through the skies,

But stranger still is

Lost Carcosa.

Songs that the Hyades shall sing,

Where flap the tatters of the King,

Must die unheard in

Dim Carcosa.

Song of my soul, my voice is dead,

Die though, unheard, as tears unshed

Shall dry and die in

Lost Carcosa.'

Beneath yon proud magenta fez

You think to live through this last hajj

As if moon’s silver

Cured Carcosa.

What do you want, Camilla?

CAMILLA:

To see a heart of marble.

CASSILDA:

Having found it?

CAMILLA:

Pachelbel

At times assuages.

CASSILDA:

We need,

All of us, some vengeful dream.

CAMILLA:

You dream only of the end.

CASSILDA:

I sleep not.

CAMILLA:

You are Baja

In sand, in stars, & in forms

Of razor-edged shapeliness.

If our annihilation

Does not ensue, it's Hastur

Keeps dowsing the catafalque.

CASSILDA:

But I would contain this plague.

CAMILLA:

And so you do.

CASSILDA:

Hyades,

Aldebaran, what matter

To the fond kamikaze

Whether his diving haiku

Find publication?

CAMILLA:

Cobweb

Me not with your metaphors.

I am in difficulty.

CASSILDA:

(Slowly) Alas, you’re in R'lyeh.

CAMILLA:

(Swiftly) Enceinte.

CASSILDA:

Tonight, a languid

Waltz shall encircle the ax

Of glass. Escape is not far.

CAMILLA:

Hastur knows.

CASSILDA:

Then opium

And oodles. What energy

Remains will do you no good.

CAMILLA:

I dreamed of a Yellow King

Who wore rags & bright feathers

And glided without the weight

His shape ought to have. Across

The drawbridge he came; a thorn

Sprouted in my heart, despair

And the sense of a closed vault.

CASSILDA:

How narrow's the sepulchre

For a lorn spirit swimming.

CAMILLA:

This thought is like the wild foehn

Through stone corridors, neon

At once em'rald & amber.

I feel faint.

CASSILDA:

Mountains of slag

'Twixt us & the truth, sister;

Nor that one bears a fishhook.

CAMILLA:

What are you saying?

CASSILDA:

Fragrance

Kills.

CAMILLA:

Then to Thale I'll turn

Who never turned me down.

CASSILDA:

Love

To join you, but a pallid

Abyss beckons. Invisible

Are the best phenomena.

It is said that when Sacla

Had done, he left one blue jay

Behind to express his terse

Disavowal of the work,

And I hark to like whisper.

CAMILLA:

A woman with a mission.

CASSILDA:

When you encounter him, say

This morning I spared a roach. (Exits.)

CAMILLA:

What can cause all that rustling

In a mind of emptiness?

I must set off some sulfur

To sweeten. As if expiry

Could come into this crystal

(Enter THALE.) Anyway.

THALE:

You called?

CAMILLA:

Zephyr

To my parched cheek, Thale, white

Possesses the azaleas

When you are near. Cassilda

Makes complots.

THALE:

By what dire signs?

CAMILLA:

So far, I am uncertain,

But that she grows neglectful

Of her aim, as if soon none

Will be left to--

THALE:

Aroma

Of her precedes.

(Sternly.) Be silent.

CASSILDA:

(Airily, & with a touch of irony)

Does anyone remember

Where they saw me leave my gloves?

THALE & CAMILLA:

No.

CASSILDA:

See you at the party.

(With extreme terror:)

Wait. That is not Thale. Look!

(She snatches at his face, but he pulls back in time.)

He wears a mask.

THALE:

As many

As there are masked hours.

CASSILDA:

(Angrily) Mine

The discovery!

(She gets it this time. All draw back.)

STRANGER:

(Formerly THALE) Let here

Begin our revels.

CAMILLA:

(Slowly) Pale sneer

On blankness, eyes empty black...

'You sir, should unmask.

STRANGER:

Indeed?

CASSILDA:

Indeed it's time. We all have

Laid aside disguise but you.

STRANGER:

I wear no mask.

CAMILLA:

(Terrified, aside to CASSILDA.)

No mask? No

Mask!'

STRANGER:

This visage bright with clay

And cold, dark; a fallow field;

Is only Cabalatrab

Naked.

CASSILDA:

Nudity does jar

Out of context.

CAMILLA:

Where’s Thale?

STRANGER:

(Whispers) Away.

CASSILDA:

Now a new accent

Learning, I trow.

CAMILLA:

One candle

More will unsight us.

STRANGER:

My art

Is delusion's quietus.

CASSILDA:

A rock in my shoe. Statesman

Of my father's sort, Uoht would

Know what to make of this buzz.

(Solemnly.) May the great caladium

Of peace enfold you. (Stabs.) All grass

Is flesh.

STRANGER:

(Dying)

I came to tell--

CASSILDA:

Flesh

That wants trimming.

(Stabs him again.)

CAMILLA:

Aldones

Sent him, surely.

CASSILDA:

Your desire

And two cents sent him. Sickly

Our eclipse-light grows, bizarre

The conception of beauty.

CAMILLA:

Sister, hie us to the swarm.

ACT 1.

Scene 3.

The Ball. Half a dozen couples, but all the nonspeaking actors stand

frozen in appropriate poses. Some sort of irritating music--played

backwards?--comes & goes. Their "costumes" resemble modern

American clothes, only exaggerated.

HASTUR:

(Tangoing with Camilla)

Naotalba is absent.

CAMILLA:

He's always absent.

HASTUR:

His steel

Was found.

CAMILLA:

Prison moons attend

His skulking. Sir, have mercy.

HASTUR:

I fear this development.

Rooks, suddenly blasphemous,

Are at me night & day, they

Whisper: "From Aldebaran

Will seed a novel coral;

'Have you found the yellow sign?'"

(Whenever this is said, the lights flicker.)

CAMILLA:

When you have tried my lilies

You'll feel much less afflicted.

HASTUR:

What is that awful incense?

CAMILLA:

I don't smell anything.

HASTUR:

Rhyme

Unpaired with aught: I smell blood.

CAMILLA:

Is it like the waft of sex?

We have just had sex.

HASTUR:

More wine!

I must have more wine!

(He runs away.)

CAMILLA:

My silk

Seems to have a stain. Bother!

CASSILDA:

(Waltzing with Yhtill)

The Negaverse is our wills'

Deception?

YHTILL:

Metaphor. Time

Requires we spin our legend

Each of ourselves, crystalline

Webs without conjunction;

A moment's twinned filigree

Turns to smoke--

CASSILDA:

Or malachite?

YHTILL:

Why malachite?

HASTUR:

(Solus.)

The rim’s gold, bright & gemmate

With bubbles, ah, I never

Cease to savor. Amethyst

Dreams alone I crave. Muzzy

As my head is, revellers

Round me, Amontillado

Within me, still I must dream

Of that accursed gecko

Bearing wintry catharsis

They label the Pallid Mask.

Pandemic! O Aziel

Too encompassing's your womb

And too greedy. A silken

Slide of years, just long enough

To fadge a fair aloha

And then let the flames anele.

But now we verge on Hekla

And facepaint with orpiment!

(Weeps.)

CAMILLA:

(To herself)

Despair is a polltaker.

I had thought this solitude

Would have an end. Frankincense

Drifts away. Her gloves, I will

Cut them into small pieces,

Portraying accordingly

The universal slaughter.

YHTILL:

(To CASSILDA)

His lordship looks so pale, go

Interrogate soft the oaf.

CASSILDA:

So, Yhtill, the new creature

Has been here awhile. --Watteau

Surmised. Off to Maremma!

(Approaches HASTUR.)

HASTUR:

(Brokenly)

The victims of landmines prey

Upon my will.

CASSILDA:

Zeitlichkeit

Is too much? Crepuscular

And stuff. Try some espresso.

HASTUR:

I am a burning dumpster.

The old king prostituted

Daughters; Constantinople

Took them; I have done much worse.

CASSILDA:

We've forgiven the wodwo

For being a wodwo, woe

To the non-wodwos.

HASTUR:

You give

Yourself too much credit.

CASSILDA:

Me?

I ground the poison. His mad

Cries made a haunting music

Even now I'm not beyond

Savoring. Insomnia

Has its comforts.

HASTUR:

Unicorn

And virgin in one. Crimson

Spot on my delirium,

And contemptuous Tarot

Spread.

CASSILDA:

Buying a large bottle

Is a kind of commitment.

(Leaves.)

HASTUR:

Robed in funest mystery

A psychopathic peacock

Hour nears. We replace breath

With briny wisdom, tears

With the slime of the deep.

CASSILDA:

(At the edge of the stage.) Veldt

Like this gives us stones for bread

Unless we call on Hali. (Blackout.)

ACT II.Scene 1.

Cassilda’s chambers, but disordered, & the mirror shattered. Burns

on some of the furniture & tapestries. Rags on the floor, & torn up

books. Cassilda, nude in green body paint, with the corpse of

Naotalba, obviously & unseasonably putrescent.

CASSILDA:

That talk of insanity

Is a code for dissidence

Which strays too far, burrows too

Deep & near to the secret.

You, though, are in it. I'll find

A way for a breach. 'By the

(Sings) Dark of the moon I planted'

One hundred thousand bombs. Weight

Of Mount Yaanek upon you,

Rise! By the swift ebony

Of Aztec priests, by Eurus,

By the blood of the unborn!

You will hear me! By the sleep

Of Pharaohs, by the crone moon;

By the lost blues of Chartres!

You will answer me! Ostrich

Within your head stuck in death, yield

To a stronger pull! Basalt

Is weaker. Now you shall talk

Nor will I permit the mask

Of gibberish, enigma:

Have you found the Yellow Sign?

Say! Whisper voluptuous

One word. Productivity

Will be rewarded. What if

I fashioned anew that face

Of bruise & pallor? So cold

You fiercely remain, still free,

Still as taciturn. Music

You'd send me, Naotalba.

It’s so quiet where I am.

Where knowledge is. Not the dead

Know what I know. Though you care,

The best music dies at once.

(Croons.) 'A-woobie obba dobba,

Obba woobie dobba...' Ear

For miracles, have we? Buzz,

Red smear on the front bumper

Gawking! Naught else calls us food!

O pity, pity for us

All! The singularities

Have taught me jurisprudence,

Intricate weariness

With legs. I eat the tsimtsum

With chopsticks of electrum

And I shit on Fomalhaut.

Why don't you bless my question

Heart? A swaying emptiness

Is all, all. Wail accordingly

From the Pit of Noumenon!

By the slow-blooded Phyva,

I charge thee.

NAOTALBA:

--Unhook the World.

(CASSILDA grabs him & flings him out of the chair.)

CASSILDA:

At last!

NAOTALBA:

You cannot land it.

(She shakes him until his head comes off & rolls away.)

CASSILDA:

(In a different voice)

Black’s dominion isn’t Black.

ACT 2.

Scene 2.

Throne Room, dominated by a huge chair that half resembles an

electric chair.

HASTUR:

One lesson's lodged in this night:

'It is a terrible thing

To fall into the hands of'

A 'living god.' --Vorpal edge

Of wisdom rends our velvet

Throats to extinguish some drouth

We haven’t heard of. Jedburgh

Salvation.

YHTILL:

It's not madness

To guard 'gainst sciamachy.

HASTUR:

I'll have blackened coelacanth.

YHTILL:

To kill you an assassin

Has been dispatched.

HASTUR:

Normalcy.

YHTILL:

'Bunched kisses' 'crackle & drag'

In the Negaverse.

HASTUR:

Raps clack

Calcspar; I resonate to.

O 'hue-tempestuous' orb!

Crimethink by that saddest light,

Pink-gold sodium attack

Converts tragedy to Spam.

And each of us has a sign

Born under, our realm & game;

To else, nescient. The rag

We'll die for. Heimarmenê

Has subdivided spirit--

And no spook on this muskeg

Understands, ophidian,

The coils: each has their fond drug

And warped map of Xibalba.

This is mine. What's that murmur

Swaying the wisteria,

Bringing a foretaste of ice

To the one it want to nab?

My eyes bedim. Melody

Defunctive creeps to occult

My little bonfire of words--

'No dietetic sequel.'

(Enter CASSILDA.)

CASSILDA:

Black milk for Peacock Angel.

HASTUR:

Thy maquillage looks ghastly.

CASSILDA:

I filled the cracks with star grout,

My pupils with hematite.

How do you like the façade?

HASTUR:

I witness the same old jade,

A stone most porismatic

In the palm.

CASSILDA:

Divinity

Does not suit you. Stick to war.

HASTUR:

You used to paint with henna

Those pale, lovely hands; now gore

Luauesque. Each finds their path

In the absinthe, Cassilda.

CASSILDA:

We're not on the same planet.

HASTUR:

'Have you found the Yellow Sign?'

CASSILDA:

Alas, I have too much flesh

And not enough knife.

HASTUR:

Queen Mab

Complains of her cobweb cage.

CASSILDA:

I'll leave you a talisman,

And when the last arabesque

Unfurls, you may find me.

HASTUR:

Salt

Is like Abracadabra

To a snail.

CASSILDA:

Goodbye, grotto.

I'll see you on Sirius.

(They begin to slash each other with switchblades. The scene

continues in pantomime for some time. The blood is bright & non-

naturalistic but the actors may realistically feign injury.)

ACT 2.

Scene 3.

Throne Room, subtly transformed.

CAMILLA:

All the wives in Carcosa

Have red hair, they say.

YHTILL:

Triage

Is useless in the matrix;

The rolling cursor curses

And having cursed, moves on. Shall

We?

CAMILLA:

Black & white's the zebra

Alone among innocents,

Yet he too yields burgundy.

But were you always Thale?

YHTILL:

Inconstantly, to my shame.

CAMILLA:

It is a bulwark of gneiss

Keeps me in stir, paradise

Kevork'd.

YHTILL:

Typhonian age,

All the time we ever had

Together. First, enskyment;

Then funest copulation.

Life is high parabolas

Or nothing.

CAMILLA:

The tongueless mouths

Of Naxyr vend a proverb

Unknown here, but very apt:

"I garble Babel, Bragi."

YHTILL:

Dizzyingly velvetish

Is this new invocation.

What will you raise with it?

CAMILLA:

Ra,

Who'll come whatever you do.

YHTILL:

That’s so Last-Year's-Sunglasses.

CAMILLA:

Or transsubstantiation

In gardens of amethyst.

YHTILL:

A mask unmasks illusion

As fundamental, ocean

We founder in sans land.

CAMILLA:

My

Old Heliogabalan

Tastes recur. Tell me the truth.

What did you give Cassilda?

YHTILL:

A lesser plague.

CAMILLA:

Than language?

YHTILL:

Heliophobic motives

Afflict us all.

CAMILLA:

To this quartz

Is ebon.

YHTILL:

Oolongphaeic

Ever our meaninglessness

Whether we give up one eye

For knowledge or both. Image

Of my desire, be its cairn

And I'll for your sake abort

Flight, rescue, even worry...

CAMILLA:

So potent is poetry.

YHTILL:

Hastur with his brainworm moans

All night of the Hyades

And Aldebaran, his cave

To a lost template coded.

CAMILLA:

But what of the child?

YHTILL:

Monstrous,

Conceived by gloryglimmer

From Yog-Sothoth himself, if

The thing even have a face

I swear to love it.

CAMILLA:

Surely,

Double, like Tiresias,

Our flowery fate must stare

T'wards some dazzle.

YHTILL:

Azrael

Is said to cruise at new moons.

CAMILLA:

My despair wears cartilage

And circles.

YHTILL:

Empearl this wine

With believing. Strange hejira,

Yet necessary. Malaise

Will become the law; holy

Its stigmata. They will lock

Themselves within. Level field:

All's quicksand. In the night church

Pulumchva feign cicala

Song; fleshless hands will anele.

CAMILLA:

And we who’re coals from the goaf,

The diamond's diamond;

For nilpertains daylight our bassoon

Indigo demon.

YHTILL:

Let world-destruction be our meaning;

Slow poison, our air.

CAMILLA:

Our new capital will be Dallas.

YHTILL:

Anaglyphic oafs

To shuffle its pavements till the end

CAMILLA:

--Since turquoise is dead:

(Together:)

Since the Nephilim have turned kiwis.

FINIS.