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Monologues for Men
(free for students & auditions)
"The Prophet Preaches"
From the play "The Prophet Freeman"
By G. L. Horton
copyright © 2000
Geralyn Horton
J Freeman Connors, an ordinary Midwestern farm hand before he
was sent from Above (a UFO?) to save the righteous remant of rural
America, preaches to his Chosen People.
THE PROPHET FREEMAN
Brothers and sisters, I know you must be asking yourselves,
and wishing you had the nerve to ask me, what's that funny looking
fella doing up there? What makes him think he can preach?
Well, I don't blame you. I can't exactly make out how it
happened, myself. Certain things have been made known to
me, about how all the olden days and these latter days fit together,
and I got to try to make these things known unto you..
Y' see, my friends, in the garden, ---- that is, before the
Sons of Cain got a tiny bit smart and decided to cut themselves
out from the other animals---- there was no problem. Adam
picked a little fruit, stole some eggs, maybe got a rabbit
if it wasn't fast enough. Hundred thousand years or so,
Adam's son figured out that if he piled up a bunch of nuts,
there'd be days he wouldn't have to go out and chase rabbits.
Now for a squirrel with nuts, this's not a dangerous discovery.
But Satanic man! Before you can say Sodom and Babylonia,
he's piling it on, piling it up. Under the influence of
usury, Cain's boy has got his fences and his chattel, and he's
looking at his neighbor with covetousness, wanting to add him
and his to the pile.
(The PROPHET arranges objects on the lectern for a show &
tell illustration of his points)
Now the universal design so far had been for synergy.
Input-output: a stable system. But that's not enough. The
sons of Cain want it organized so's it's all output, and Man won't
have to give back. Not even his used up old dead carcass.
He saves, he hoards. Now once he's learned to save, he figures
he can BE saved: live safe and live forever! From Pharaoh on down,
everybody's got to scratch just to keep from being turned
into the next fella's commodity. Grab onto that water, that energy!
Sweat. Slaves. Gunpowder. Oil. Nuclear. And the condensed kind,
the false coin of Caesar/Mammon that the bankers call money:
(PROPHET takes a handful of $100.00 bills out of his pocket,
displays it to the congregation's astonishment, crumples and
squeezes it until it vanishes)
The usurers squeezed that life-energy into paper money, and
that's how they put the squeeze on you. Bankers and politicians,
taxes and interest, brokers and hucksters, always with their hands
out for more. Drain the life-blood right out of the farmer,
the carpenter, the honest businessman. Get their hooks into oil
and gas, too: all a poor man's got left is the labor of his hands,
cause the bloodsuckers tap off all that God-given energy!
For awhile the bloodsuckers fool you, hire liars like our State
Rep. Busick, there: try to look like they're on your side. Make
you pretty speeches about how you're the backbone, you're the
breadbasket. But when you're in trouble, what do they do?
Sell you fertilizer, sell you pesticides. On credit. You get a
big crop: three times the size the crop your grandpop had!
Six times. But all along the soil's wearing out, and
the pollution's getting stronger. Where you gonna sell that big
crop, anyways? The sons of Cain own em all-- dealers, government--.
What can you get for it?
(the $100.00 bills reappear. FREEMAN tears them into little
pieces and throws them into the air to illustrate his point)
Don't worry, my friends-- that was a trick. Nothing of value
there: just blank paper. I mean "bank" paper. Worse'n toilet
paper. Contracts not worth the printing on them! See,
a real contract, a covenant like God made with Abraham, is a promise
to give value. On both sides. Your bankers, your tyrant
oligarchical government-- never intend to keep that promise.
If you could see through their tricks, when you got that
so-called loan you'd tear it up and throw it away. Like
I did. It's all a plan to get your land. And when they get it
all, what do you think'll be the price of bread then? By
the time the government's done, there won't be a real farm left!
Be one big farm-factory. Maybe two. Republican and
Democrat.
They got experts on the payroll, tell you it's nobody's fault.
Economic forces. But economics isn't a force of nature, like gravity.
It's a force of Man, like a gun. Somebody loads it. Somebody
aims it. Somebody like you? Well, so far the law will let
you protect yourself--- put up one hell of a fight.
You see, friends, we were put here to prove ourselves fit. Fit
to survive, fit to inherit the earth and all its abundance, fit
for the galaxies in all their glory. We failed before the time
of the flood, when we went whoring after false gods. We failed
in the Old Countries, when we bowed our heads to tyrants.
But the Power that watches never gave up on us. We were shown
the way out, shown how to sail to this promised land, land of
the second chance. Land of the free. Home of the brave.
Last best hope of mankind. Once America is purified, once we show
that we can live together as family, in liberty and law, then
the sky's the limit, and we're home free! Children, we're free.
Free cause we got a home beyond the stars!
THE PROPHET FREEMAN
Well, little lady, if you want to talk to me, don't call me
"mister". Never could think of myself as a mister. To me,
"Mister" is a man in a suit, probably works for a bank or the
government. Or one of them Officers and Gentlemen they call themselves.
Now, I never much cared for my Christian name, which is why I
shortened it to "J", and "Conners" ain't any great shakes as a
name, either, even without the "Mr." in front of it. My enemies
call me all sorts of names, but my friends call me Freeman
If they want to be formal, it's Prophet Freeman, kind of like
a title. But that only applies if you go along with it. And I
don't expect you to go along with it, least not at first. Won't
make sense to you. But don't you worry about that, little lady.
Ol' J. Freeman's got all the time in the world! You understand,
I don't give interviews. I don't offer comments. I'm willing to
talk to you, on the say-so of these good people, cause they claim
that you're honest. Then if you listen to me, really listen,
give what I say honest consideration, you won't be writing any
story. The more you write, the more you get wrong. That's the
nature of it. Knowledge goes from soul to soul, but words--!
You a Christian woman? You believe that your Redeemer liveth?
That though worms destroy this body, yet in your flesh you shall
see God? That's what Christian means. Isn't it? Yeah. Well, the
priests and reverends are big on Faith. They want you to go ahead
and swallow their mumbo-jumbo, put your money in the plate, put
your money in the mail, turn off your God-given common sense.
But the twelve apostles, the original Christ-followers, they didn't
need faith. Cause they saw with their own eyes what the Son of
Man was and what he could do. Now, you've probably heard
people say I work miracles. Or more, say I claim to work
miracles. Pay them no mind. I don't "claim".
That's words. Words are cheap. Woodrow, here, tells me
you made a trip to the library, checking up on me. (chuckles)
Oh, I'm an easy target. Old, ugly, poor. Dirt behind
my ears and under my fingernails. Only went to school to sixth
grade. But hell, Jesus was a carpenter. Give the scribes
and Pharisees fits, that did! You say you'll write the truth
about me, and the truth can only do good If only it
were that easy! I'd like to say, just spread the news! That's
gospel, sweetheart: even bad news is good news! But as an experiment--
(takes some index cards out of his pocket) All right. We're
coming up onto the millennium. These are crisis times. Signs
are all around, if you know your prophecy. John, and Daniel---
All of them! The divine is always trying to get through
to pig headed men! Course, it's not entirely sinfulness.
There's the language barrier. What language does the divine speak?
None of em. Speaks to me as was spoke of old, in symbols
and flashes of light. And then I have to turn around
and translate : (points to card) for myself, you see,
as well as those potato heads out there in Disneyland.
Revelations. This mind that's inside me, it's no more like
the human mind that J. Freeman Conners was born with than a computer
is. But the divine -- all they got to work with here
is the mind and body of old J. Freeman Conners: which is
no great shakes-- you can ask anybody who went to school with
him. Or knew him in the days when he was worse'n the
lowest bum in the gutter, wrecked and wretched in body and soul!
But if the divine wants to snatch such a brand from the burning
-- Then, in the circumstance that's given unto me,
I do the best I can. Like the Prophets of old. Which is
a hell of a lot better than the damn politicians and Pharisees
can do with all their high I Q! It comes through me, the
power and the glory, --distorted by this envelope I wear, of course.
But worse if it goes into writing. Or television! That's
the very worst! Those tablets of Sinai, they were a terrible
mistake, but nothing to what happens when they're read out over
the Christian Cable! Jesus, Socrates, the Buddha, they never wrote
down a thing. Wouldn't let anybody draw their picture, make a
graven image. The Post, the Times, the Network news, they aren't
knowledge. They're corporate instruments of mind control.
It all fits in, everything that happens, one damn thing after
another. Follow the sports to the funnies through the ads to the
stocks and the real text: m-o-n-e-y. Only section
of the paper that gets bigger. What's the human use of a newspaper?
To hold in front of you while you're sitting on the trolly car,
so's you won't have to look at a naked soul! Train
your puppy. Wrap your garbage. Screen between a man and wife at
breakfast.. So-called objective reporters--they know not what
they do. You understand what I'm saying? When we try to
warn you where that that path is leading? The beginning of wisdom.
When you're not sure of what you used to think you had all figured
out. Next thing, you may find you've had a revelation.
But don't pin it down. Don't turn it into lying words. The
letter killeth, the spirit giveth life. How can you possibly
describe the Upper World, when it is not a place, has no name
and no dimension. But hear me, not words but beyond that:
see me, not my physical body but the soul what looks out of my
eyes-- maybe you'll catch a glimpse of it.
As I was saying, Marilee: the essence of communication
is soul to soul. Words, and sometimes thoughts, they just get
in our way.
THE PROPHET FREEMAN
Who else remembers? In our blood we know that we are true sons
of the earth, brothers to the animals. You see, the Upper Ones
may be far above us, but we're not like bacteria, not like bugs
to them.The ancient Egyptians, when they got a message from
the Upper Beings, pictured that as come from a beast. Or a beast
head, on a human body. Sure! That's how we are to each other,
mixed but not corrupted, and the famer is the one kind of man
today who remembers.
You tell the financier who runs agribusiness that the cow is
sacred, like unto the divine, he thinks you're loony. A
cow's just a machine for turning grass into milk. Not even
grass anymore. Silage. Wood pulp. The ground up brains and
guts of other cows, and pigs, and sheep, putrid with the disease
of forced cannibalism Only a man who remembers can fight them.
The farmer's a man of peace, until he is pushed off the land and
cut off from both beast and God. Then it's the time of battle,
and all the angels are ranged at his side. The meek can't just
lay down and expect to inherit the earth. Not any more. Not at
this time of crisis. For the sake of all creation,
we got to study war! Study it better than God's enemies.
Because we are on the watchtower. The whole universe is
waitting for us to pass over, pass out of our greed and our selfishness,
and into the Better Kingdom, the milk and honey land of green
pastures. There the good shepherd will feed his flock, and all
the sons of men rejoice exceedingly.
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