.and very much so:
the royal albert hall... is not where you'd go
to watch ballet...
      unless you were going to watch...
an enlarged centipede pretend to stampede
on a treadmill...

high-brow my ***...
         because iron maiden's phantom
of the opera... did... does... predate...
andrew webber's stab...
                 hard rock 'ammer...
       as in... a paul di'anno bitchboy
                 scant-gimpwhore fan... etc.
the castrato operatics... later...
n'ah...               but that's oh so much
an origins story...
                    and hardly the evolution...

- that the phantom of the opera stands on
a skeleton of three songs...
revised...                morphing...

perhaps not, not that they are songs...
i'd have to sharpen my scalpel for
attempting the smithy deeds on words...

a skeleton of three themes...
       thus noted:

               "angel of music"
            "phantom of the opera"
    and... last but not least:
                     "masquerade"...

what a day... or what wasn't expected...
no one ever told me that:
a musical per se... differs so much from
a musical: for the stage...

by musical...
                 i'd be shaking to conjure up...
the screen musicals of a west side story...
etc. -

            and one can easily so tire of
this trap...

  and what of the internal jokes?
jokes at the expense of the opera...
              - poor fool, he makes me laugh
       - hannibal...
quite the jokes...
   having to draw the blood from
the mundane talk elevated to an operatic
context of song...

that a musical is... somehow...
when opera can be reduced to talk...
and can be thus reduced to:
the joker in a hand of poker...
   a whimsical little card...

the 25th anniversery of the phantom
at the royal opera house...
one can somehow forgive the electronic
attaches of the overture...
whether the electric guitar of the drum
machine...

   like one can forgive:
                 nirvana's unplugged...
at the end though...
   even andrew webber looks perplexed /
nervous... how did we get away with this?
i don't know:
the only style of genre that...
actually requires a stage and props...
and ample volume of space!
a theatre: since otherwise...
opera: pure technique...
                and prop minimalism...

and...

because can a musical: not require a stage?
does it indeed feed too many images
that need to be attired with quacks...
with feathers... with leather boots and chandeliers?!

now i'll toast! i'll toast to a new reason
to go down the alleys of ah bit tipsy:
itsy bitsy sniffing a bottle neck...
bloated from a champagne cork pop!

truly... if only the stage...
   that allowance to perform a performance
a need to perfect: always never:
the editor in charge...
   all those out-takes left to what life is
left behind the curtain...

     the musical of the movies of h'america...
whatever they might be...
to name but a few would be best...
           and if i didn't first see the phatom
on a television screen...
but in its natural environment:
with the volume of required air...
     i wouldn't have been able to choke
my tears...

and i have seen the theatre
and i have seen the opera
and the ballet...
                            i sometimes...
"sometimes": wearisome...
try to forget the maggot pit of phelgm,
sweat and ***** of a rock concert...
        of all the mediums...
         this jumbled up swedish table platter...
what a cocktail of a rollercoaster!

i could forever take off my garments
of jealousy: of which there's that pitiable
affair of a beard-envy...
                well...
                           well well...

how pristine: they even had a music-box!
in that crude relief of finding
"revisions" and alt. interpretations
of... perhaps it's only a matter of
two themes and that overture?

             and if it's song and dance...
       it's not a candy-smiles and tap-dancing buffet...
it's opera and ballet...
because... it's opera:
                 ha! empty these cupboards!
no one needs to attend an opera
like a foreign language movie:
with subtitles running on a FTSE100
reel above the stage...

                      the musical: is the reinvention
of the opera... a musical is an opera...
with mild added animation of theatre...
and there's a pinch of ballet!

          this will most certainly not translate
into me liking cats... or les misérables...
       this will do...
                   sing-along / sing-through?
and everyone is, suddenly... equipped with
a deciphering ear to translate the over-infuated
vowels of an operatic breath?!

- and very much so:
the royal albert hall... is not where you'd go
to watch ballet...
      unless you were going to watch...
an enlarged centipede pretend to stampede
on a treadmill...

- but if someone would tell you...
a musical... west side story? yes?
     i'm pretty sure it would be all about:
singin' in the rain... fair enough...
             but all for that popcorn entertainment...
and the tap-dancing...
and chewing-gum advert smiles...
and all that technicolour dabbling...
and all those heavily bothersome editing
processes... like... the plumbers
most associated with veins and arteries?
sorry: the romanians are picking the fruit
and veg for the next: x-factor star...
the next youtube vlogger breakthrough chart
topper...

blunt and ******* obvious...
      and how has english changed since Dickens?
i made a note of...
because i will not make notes
of what's already passed...
a direct etymological association with a loan,
word...
  not from dutch, german or french...

       SA-LU-BRI-OUS
            (healthy...)

                   PER-EM-PTO-RILY...
         (not being permitted a denial)

that 19th century victorian english that...
just had to loan words directly from
latin... this much of reading Dickens remains
in me... after having just experienced
a blitzkrieg of a musical: proper...

there are still the same old nooks 'n' crannies
for me to find shadows and moths
in...

    because: i am most certainly the one
about to cite: they took away my circuses!
and m'ah bread!
there's no football! well... no football?
goodness me! what are, what are...
the alternatives?!

         opera you can... disregard...
theatre if... movies are your...
ahem... sartre's curiosity with the keyhole...
voyeurism: to exist is to be seen...
but only through a keyhole...
                     which movies aren't, of course!
the editor comes in...
even in the golden age of cinema...
the panoramic view... resembled a stage...
and in the old movies you could
time... the editor taking charge...
and how long it would take for
the actors to forget their lines...

            not that that matters... given...
there's no stage... but the red carpet
of postures and toothpaste adverts...
and paparazzi *** epilepsy from the strobe
glitter ball of the leeches congregating!
not even vultures make such a spectacle!
i saw the same...
then the concrete was layered with enough
frost at night...
the crevices would become impregnated
with diamonds of ice...
every twist of the head would
agitate these sparkles toward imitation
of a flash!

there's a "musical": in the advent of the h'american
sense... and there's: a musical...

- and if you happen to hear a subtle joke
by evelyn waugh in the meantime:
at the better for you...
              what is an encyclopedic "ogling"
within the confines of scrutiny:
that man may forever be attired...
and the genitals just dangling like
champagne flutes without any,
any sort of, scrutiny of...
not having to play the Oedipus!

               here's a fork... here's a donkey...
here's a spoon... here's the Schleswig-Holstein
and its siege of Westerplatte!
here!
   the Schleswig-Holstein tenor of
                           the opera: Westerplatte...
oh joy: a "my" in a "history"...
and none of it an affair that might...
disturb the peaceful lives
of those lived: under the splendour
of a charles II and a handel firework's music
to have to somehow: "put out"!

clearly: i'll be dying from the ******
of all the collective forces of the universe
and gambling and... oopsies...
i am here... and it's not that sort of grey...
pistons assured!
- had i the face of beauty...
beside starring as a tadpole of potential...
a voice with a stage to make outlet with...

- what could ever become of this...
jigsaw puzzling overdue do...
                         the narrative in the classical sense:
hardly what, and what not:
this vector and the in-between
from some mythical (a) toward a journalism,
and weekend opinion pieces...
and all that insomnia riddled "journalism"
of the current year of crux denoted with
a (b)...

               all true: from darwin and the "big bang"...
and of course... time shrinking...
in between... beside carbon dating...
and let us not hear of things speak
for themselves: but ourselves!
untrue! hercules!
untrue! prometheus!
untrue untrue untrue!
but darwin and the ape: nod! gentlemen!
we have proof!
myth or no myth: but a journalistic integrity!
that's enough proof! for today and tomorrow!
and... what's not the fiction that's already
memory?

and what is... this imagination that's...
not a single street witnessed of Paris
in the circa of the year that was... 2004...
or 2006 or 2007...
                      
for the art... and this detail of science that
once upon a time shocked...
now... only comes... burdensome...
a ballet on ice... a shaking of hands with
a shadow... something beside this:
base revision of culture and civilization:
this bogus lopsided quest for:
re-inventing... nothing more... than a zoo!

so little must have happened in the case
of english history...
this hannibal and the mountains...
but what curtain: the great wall of china:
built among the mountains...
ingenious: doubling-up?
  xerxes whipping the waves of the aegean...
the great wall of *****-chewing-wall'ah...
i dare become the new albino...
i dare... and i the next japanese porcelain
frailty...
               many thanks: for the <caugh caugh>...
hooray!

              oh my mother:
the cindarella of nations of europe...
         i seriously can't do much worse than
that cocktail and carboot sale of tchaikovsky's
1812 overture...
   it's an overture!
              
really? the phantom of the opera is because...
of the overture?
last time i heard... prokofiev's lieutenant kijé
(kij - stick... kije... sticks)...
romance... was all a rave! "rave"...
              a nibbling at a crescendo...
    but hardly: then again: a nomad chorus...
a reminiscence... a memory lost: yet foretold...

and if... the anonymous provider...
of the full extent of the carmina burana...
      what if?
        i play... this cliche... this... my most
democratic oath: for the bettering of the voice
that could allow the congregation of
the many! my democratic oath: my quasi:
civic duty... me joining the club of the most
sober bottom's-up! pick'ld-week!

                 such are the affairs... hardly a worthiness
of a frenchman of pander...
or of being so blessed by an island...
when being neighbour of europe...
and easily bound to be found because:
france never too interest in the robot antics
of the scandinavians or what
was ever to be assured by iceland!

thus came the crude: skeleton waiting
to be refined... a peter schteele interlude of:
fancying a giant to a tumble...
i will not satisfy myself with a biography
outside of the realm of immediacy...
how do people write a biography without
the peacock of whim and of what's readily
available? a biography with a past...
automated: futurism... n'est ce pas?

         - i escape for the transcendental relief in
beauty... my own lack...
therefore better neglected: rather than denied...
it's my own that Belzeebub should
****** with maggots and acne synonyms onto
my face...

          i escape for beauty... not... sorry...
pardon my fwench: a ******* conversation
of the paupering sociopathic sort of
a job trotter sordid kin'!
                  if only crocodiles could cry...
they'd be warm-blooded...
and i would be year after year
an oscar nominee for a toast
of best actor at the oscars!

          pity... pity and the subsequent
dumbdrum!
                no! i do not want to guillotine this
affair with the autobiographic as long
as i am drinking and not any champagne
in sight... or... schnapps...
              
i best be off... this is enough frivolity
of the heart for a day's worth!

Step 1: Be as anxiety ridden as possible.
Get a bladder infection because you are too scared to ask the teacher to use the restroom.
Fail your Algebra class because you fear that if you tell her you are confused, she will laugh at you.
Everyone will laugh at you.
Wear dresses and frilly skirts because you are scared to come out as transgender.
Your mind will mock you with thoughts along the lines of,
“ You dont deserve to be a boy.”
Just go along with it.
Let the words bounce in your head like children in a bouncy house.
Do not reach for the ibuprofen bottle.
You see your mind will need to be as messy as your heart.
Therefor your heart will have to crumble into an avalanche.
DO NOT PICK UP THE PIECES.
You will need to be addicted to starbucks and body modifications.
Do not get anything less than a Venti because if you do not get your daily dose of caffeine you will go into withdrawls.
You need to modify your body because it is the only thing you can control.

Step 2: Make your hair as colorful and bright as possible because then maybe your mom will understand the fact that you are gay.
Maybe if you turn your head into a walking pride flag you will not have to see the look of disappointment coat her face when you step out of the closet.
I know what youre thinking because I have been told this before.
“But honey, the closet is made for clothes.”
Yeah youre **** right but the closet is also the only place you can hide your chest binder and boxers,
They will sit right next to your pushup bras.

Step 3: Feel everything.
Feel every single thing as deeply as you can because if you do not,
Then how will you get a messy heart?
And to have a messy mind your heart must match like the couple shirts he bought you on your one year anniversery.
Do not love him.
He will break your heart two years in and cram the words
“I simply dont want you” down your throat
And you may not cry.
You may not show him you are hurting because then he will know you care.
Then he will know you are wrapped around his finger as tightly as you can.

Step 4: Do not fall in love.
Even if it is simply with the brush strokes on a canvas.
Do not fall in love with anyone before you fall in love with yourself because for the past two years, toxic waste has filled your veins.
Do you know how much it hurt to bleach him out of your mind?
You have to scrub his fingerprints off of your body.
You will become raw.
It is okay to be raw,
You just have to learn to heal yourself.
No more coating the burn wounds with promises of forever.
No more temporary treatments.
For the sake of your sanity,
You must fall in love with yourself,
Before you can learn to not love him.

I loved. I did but never said. Words were petty, I said. She never knew.
This is obvious, but not technically contact. This is the plea.

This is for you. Sold out for a good reputation, like all the others, I am condemned to guiltful struggle. There is no magic here, so no redemption.

Can you taste the skism? Can you sense the hurt? My heart is bleeding into the sink, onto the metal, onto my fault.

I was waiting to tell you. To tell you I love you, with my entire existential. It was for you. For your laugh, for your affection, for your smile. If a day went by wherein I didn't make you laugh, it was a bad day, a bad, bad day. You are my success, the investment in hope.

I was waiting to tell you on our one year anniversery. I do believe in love. I've seen it now. I've touched it with the tips of my fingernails and sailed across it until the little hairs stood up for more.

This isn't a guilt trip. At least, not for you. Let's keep the poem short and our gaze long. But, too late. I loved you. I never told you. You told me.

Words can be broken. So can hearts.

[enter insomnia]