John the Bap

Nihil humanum mihi alienum puto - Térence

Caleb: Did mother put you up to this? I swear
Salome: You don't believe I did it for my sake?
Caleb: 					I don't, at all.
            You keep it over here...
Salome: A father’s gift should not be thrown away.
Caleb: Agrippa will have words with us
Salome: 					Who cares?
            Judaea is nothing. Salt and sand and sea.
            Too many catamites and eunuchs lounging 'bout,
            All baldachins with lapis lazuli.
Caleb: Well that’s your reason then, the eunuchs made you?
            The Tetrarch may have war because of you.
Salome:					With luck perhaps,
            But don’t get too excited.
            A payment for a service, nothing more.
Caleb: I wasn't there.
            They told me you were dancing.
Salome:					I was.
            Just for a moment when I thought
            Of salt as red as blood a spirit took me,
            And manifested in a fevered trance.
Caleb: And then?
Salome: Well things went on as you'd imagine.
            Dad promised me the world and so I asked.
Caleb: To silence the old madman
Salome: 					No I liked him.
            He cursed from out his cistern, screamed of hell.
            First I had them cut off his head,
            And to hold him alive and not dead,
            So they took him while falling asleep,
            So the screams and the fear would keep.
            See here: frozen traces of doubt—
            Though that’s not what it was about.
            He thought evil had come from a snake,
            Well I did it for my own damn sake.
            Such is life, if I seem to be good
            It’s because I decided I should.
            Think of it as a matter of will,
            Some can suffer with joy, I can kill.

Caleb: Yes, easy for you to be mad.
Salome: 					That's unfair.
            He was mad as well.
Caleb: He had something to prove and he did it well.
Salome: Did he now? He came here to die.
            Overjoyed at his own sacrifice.
Caleb: 					That still counts.
Salome: Well, in Rome maybe yes.
            But for him, vanity! Nothing less.

SONG BY SALOME AND HEAD

            When they cut off the Baptists head
            He rose and bowed and duly said;
            At last madame we’re introduced
            In my old age I’ve been seduced,
            I'm so delighted now we’ve met,
            Don’t call me john but Baphomet.

            You see I’ve lost my head for you,
            A joyous, unrepentant Jew,
            And now insist, alive or dead,
            That you and I tonight be wed.

            No need for caves or resurrection
            For I have died with an erection,
            And can, fear not my dear, preform
            A husband’s duty in good form.
            For Christ they say
            Is two
            And three,
            And you,
            And me,
            And my body
            Can have the most appalling fun
            To mark this age we’ve now begun.

[Exeunt with head, singing]

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