As a teenage boy I used to fall asleep at night
listening to the graveled voice of Ernie Harwell
fashion for me word-images of the exploits
by a band of superheroes called the Detroit Tigers.
In those semi-lucid moments before slumber,
I could see the shimmering outline of my destiny:
you see all American boys are meant to be Tigers.
So imagine my confusion, when I fractured
the right talus bone my Junior year of high school,
even putting on weight around the middle,
where no athlete worth his pin stripes would gain.
My karma had begun to take on mass.

I began to acquire knowledge, as the only perceived defense
against some parallel universe impinging upon reality.
Oh, I had everyone convinced, even my keenest teachers
believed I was destined to make my mark in scholarly pursuits.
But no one saw the crying ego of one meant to be a Tiger,
nor how that bottled up the emergence of the Man.
Never reconciled, the Man curled up in fetal dormancy.
Lifespan became synonymous with interstellar drift.
And every encountered star of knowlege was dwarfed,
having long ago collapsed of its own gravity.
Still the heavens of knowledge are auspicious,
so I looked outward, when all the answers lay concealed within.

Only as my life left the outskirts of occluded reality
did I then begin to inherit from my instinctual id,
begin to listen to disconsolate internal voices,
who had known me all along, perhaps better than myself.
The thing is ... the stage has long been set on middle-age,
what props lie about are encrusted with patina,
laden with a dust impossible to gauge or preempt,
made worse by the lack of cast, save one.
Neither Beckett, nor Pinter, could have absurded this.
So, when my acts strike you as quixotic,
when I cut with a penknife through propriety,
it's because I finally remember what it meant to be a Tiger.

in they bustle,
all gangle, jangle,
gossip and hangovers.

shoes off,
displaying,
a variety of socks.
paired, odd and holey

and then, we begin,
by greeting the sun
and follow thru,
to twistings,
of the tongue,
limber up,
both mind and body.
voice work too,
some improv games,
just enough to....
rattle the brain.

before beginning,
the "mash up project"
in which they pick
two scenes,
from
classic and well known works
and create a scene,
using them...

10 percent of
semester mark.
some interesting choices,

macbeth meets mother courage.
r&j;, on the streetcar of desire.

but my favourite so far,
metamorphosis at pinter's
birthday party.

oh! the young creative mind,
is such a glorious,
unbound thing....

One day our spines’ll tesselate under sage soft duvets as storms sweep across us and no one will cry;
not one noise shall slip from tongues
‘cos strength comes from keeping quiet
or carrying on.

You’re a now realised kindness that doesn’t know what breath is
or how the north circular works in festive rush hours home,
but I’ll kiss the answers upon your tender carbon tapered chest and hope the toner never runs low
(your dad would’ve handcrafted every thing he knew in semaphore if he’d have pulled through,
but you’ll learn in time, too, that time does not ruin fewer experiences than being).

I lean in. Whisper this (above) across your one body,
three eighths the size of a coffee table hardback book:
the result of patience pined for
that I mimed along to motherhood the best I could for nine months
and now, here, I lift the hood and work out what to do next       in this rush to settle down and sit,
sip until you snooze off into silence.
Here I carry you and do not notice the weight,
stare at the gape of you, my newly framed little one held in the palm of my hand,
squat full four pinter named after someone we knew.
You landed lunar surface side up,
smoothed new to the toes
and I wonder how I’ll meet you
I wonder how this goes.

You wake up on someone's front lawn, covered in dew. You brush off and drive to school. The teachers can't pin you down because you're always picking leaves out of your hair, but you're crying when they read Pinter. You're not good at explaining yourself, so you stop trying altogether.

A man for seasons
Vivaldi played this tune
Neil Armstrong looked down
As he walked along the moon
Noah was very clever
When he sailed around in his Ark
Spielberg scared us witless
When we saw his man eating shark
Roswell holds a lot of secrets
When aliens crashed under the sun
Cleese and all his pythons
Gave us laughter and tremendous fun
Pinter wrote dark little plays
About homecomings and a dumb waiter
Van Gogh put paint onto his canvas
I guess it's sad what happened later
The Beatles destroyed America
As they rode the musical jackpot
And finally one Adolf ******
Sadly remembered for be a crackpot

I have heard it comes
to those that wait,
well
I've waited and seen
reinstated
and been
disappointed.

There's a wind blowing in
I would say
and
it's already well on the way,
that
take, take, take,
can take that as read.

It interests me,
the duplicity
but
not that much
because
they're amateurs.

I give and know
that when you get
what you give
and what you give is
**** all,
you get what you give,

head in the sand
or head up your ****
it all reminds me of
a Brian Rix  
farce.

I'm heading to the 'Harold Pinter'
off Piccadilly,
where the performance
will be hopefully more
Professional.