"All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances; And one man in his time plays many parts" -Shakespeare, As You Like It
Panic flocks to an actor's lip: my perch and cackle cauldron eyes grow to zeroes at the bed-end of this, the only stage & staging of my play.
The plot unknotted shows that money's short and friends are few, the body betraying itself busily: an absurd third act.
The audience talks over my lines, ignoring the tree tops exploding, the neighbors *******, the heavens & the hells standing empty.
Yet they hush when the curtain rises on mosquitos haunting a Brazilian cafe dotted in cochineal - Aperol spritzes scatter along a failing, darkling rail.
We can't pick our audience; neither can we deny that they can only do their best within their needs, nothing else or more,
& midnight confessions, truest & heart-rent soliloquies, are nothing now but furtive scrawls across a torn ticket, swept up when the house lights come on.