Insertions, Song Cycle for Soprano, Baritone, and Amplified Ensemble

Music: Conrad Cummings

Lyrics: James Siena, Vikram Seth, Hanon Reznikov, and Michael Blumenthal

 
 
 
1. In the Department of Love
lyric by James Siena

In the Department of Love,
Her outcome is her child.

In the Department of Kitchens,
The Leaders have got Hostilities.

Avoid spending time in Kitchens.
Children touch Kitchens.
Leaders do not touch Veterans.

The child in the Kitchen
Is in need of a Leader.

The warm human Leader
Is in the Kitchen.
He is talking to a Veteran.
They discuss the Strategic Counterforce.
The Veteran Says:
you make me feel
Like I have to kill you now
The Leader brings up
the subject of the child
and they discuss and they discuss
the subject of the child
in the Strategically Interfaced Kitchen.
The child touches the Veteran.
They are Industrialized.
 
 
2. Song of a Long-Running Tragedy
lyric by Hanon Reznikov

I am a citizen of Thebes
an inextinguishable survivor
of fathomless battles
that beat the years’ time
to a flatfooted brazen arhythm

I am the last root
of an ancient house
whose branches spread dead
above the ground softly
bloodied by brothers

I remember as children
before the walls fell
and the city heaved
a sigh and sank to
a merciless resurrection

I hear the war-cries
that follow the odes
as predators their daily
bread or the first scream
the peace of the womb

I am a male bond between
grieving women condemned
to endure renewal and
the harvest of contempt
I am witness

To untold agonies of birth
and lethal life signs
that banish sleep and force
the waking dream over
the snout of reality

I am an actor in a drama
I do not hope to repeat
but repeat in the hope
of resolution I have no
other gods before me

I am chosen to partake
in forgotten rites
to rise and fall out
of all season I abandon
myself to all enemies

I make no plea no contingency
plan my habitat is
Thebes, where wisdom rounds
the corner in headlong
flight from age
 
 
3. Dumb, Dumb, Dumb, Dumb
lyric by Michael Blumenthal

DUMB, DUMB, DUMB, DUMB
has been the poet in matters amorous.
Now the silence grows clamorous
with its flotilla of shoulds,
and he walks in the woods, alone,
head down, unembraced
and, as the crass say, shit-faced
with shame, and overhung.
Every song he’s sung
has ended in regret.
The spring was wet, and now
the summer’s parched with heat,
the robins cry: repeat repeat
and he: change.
 
 
4. Soon
lyric by Vikram Seth

I shall die soon, I know.
This thing is in my blood.
It will not let me go.
It saps my cells for food.

It soaks my nights in sweat
And breaks my days in pain.
No hand or drug can treat
These limbs for love or gain.

Love was the strange first cause
That bred grief in its seed,
And gain knew its own laws–
To fix its place and breed.

He whom I love, thank God,
Won’t speak of hope or cure.
It would not do me good.
He sees that I am sure.

He knows what I have read
And will not bring me lies.
He sees that I am dead.
I read it in his eyes.

How am I to go on–
How will I bear this taste,
My throat cased in white spawn–
These hands that shake and waste?

Stay by my steel ward bed
And hold me where I lie.
Love me when I am dead
And do not let me die.
 
 
5. Midgetman
lyric by James Siena

Midgetman, Midgetman, what to do with Midgetman
well, I don’t know- maybe your penis is too large
I wish you all to burn and kill
I wish you all to burn and kill
and all the more you burn and kill
the better it will please me.

yes yes yes yes
You are so sexy, and you are so foxy
Increased performance
You are so sexy and you are so foxy
optimum lethality
You are so sexy and you are lethality
not so fast, slow and easy

the times we had babe, the times we had-
those were the times, those were the times
You and me against the world
Put on your killing face
let me see your war face

A dog howls at the moon
a new family of ammunition
a dog barks at a stranger
the flag flies stiffly in the breeze
the bomb of the people is the bomb for peace