"footlights" poems
There is magic in live theatre
It can't be understood
For even watching a bad play
Is really something good
The footlights and the curtains
The sound of actors on the boards
Of orchestras and the sound effects
Of cheaply painted swords
The theatre is a special place
It excites me to no end
It's a long lost brother coming home
It's a warm and welcome friend
Sitting in a theatre
Waiting for the overture
Is an illness I suffer happily
And one for which I wish no cure
Good theatre is transporting
Takes you where the actor lives
You sense it in the speeches
That every actor gives
You get lost in what's going on
You feel hurt and you feel pain
And when you get another chance
You splurge and go again
Live theater is hypnotic
It's a world that stands alone
It's a place inside your being
You learn how love is shown
It's where you listen to great music
Played by artists never seen
Where you hear the actor's heartbeat
Unlike on the silver screen
Live theatre is true magic
I can't tell you how I feel
when I see a live performance
I know exactly what is real
The lights are slowly dimming
I hear them closing the lobby doors
Shhhhh....the orchestra is ready
Here comes the overture.....
Feb 21, 2013
Feb 21, 2013 at 11:33 PM UTC
THE HAGGARD woman with a hacking cough and a deathless love whispers of white
flowers ... in your poem you pour like a cup of coffee, Gabriel.
The slim girl whose voice was lost in the waves of flesh piled on her bones ... and
the woman who sold to many men and saw her ******* shrivel ... in two poems you
pour these like a cup of coffee, Francois.
The woman whose lips are a thread of scarlet, the woman whose feet take hold on
hell, the woman who turned to a memorial of salt looking at the lights of a
forgotten city ... in your affidavits, ancient Jews, you pour these like cups of
coffee.
The woman who took men as snakes take rabbits, a rag and a bone and a hank of
hair, she whose eyes called men to sea dreams and shark's teeth ... in a poem you
pour this like a cup of coffee, Kip.
Marching to the footlights in night robes with spots of blood, marching in white
sheets muffling the faces, marching with heads in the air they come back and
cough and cry and sneer:... in your poems, men, you pour these like cups of coffee.
2.6k
Father, you are the blueprint of my soul,
And though I sense our parting drawing near,
The crucible of death will make us whole.
The day or hour is not ours to control
Yet even strangers read your passing here.
Father, you are the blueprint of my soul.
In paradise's fields I see a knoll
Where, shucked of flesh, we sport without a care,
The crucible of death will make us whole.
As age and weight make diamond from the coal,
So I am fashioned from your smile and tear,
Father, you are the blueprint of my soul.
I will not dread the shedding of my role,
A promise waits beyond the footlights' glare,
The crucible of death will make us whole.
So, father, do not fear to pay the toll,
I am the sun, your shadow I revere.
Father, you are the blueprint of my soul.
The crucible of death will make us whole.
Feb 20, 2015
Feb 20, 2015 at 3:29 AM UTC
How is it that I am now so softly awakened,
My leaves shaken down with music?--
Darling, I love you.
It is not your mouth, for I have known mouths before,--
Though your mouth is more alive than roses,
Roses singing softly
To green leaves after rain.
It is not your eyes, for I have dived often in eyes,--
Though your eyes, even in the yellow glare of footlights,
Are windows into eternal dusk.
Nor is it the live white flashing of your feet,
Nor your gay hands, catching at motes in the spotlight;
Nor the abrupt thick music of your laughter,
When, against the hideous backdrop,
With all its crudities brilliantly lighted,
Suddenly you catch sight of your alarming shadow,
Whirling and contracting.
How is it, then, that I am so keenly aware,
So sensitive to the surges of the wind, or the light,
Heaving silently under blue seas of air?--
Darling, I love you, I am immersed in you.
It is not the unraveled night-time of your hair,--
Though I grow drunk when you press it upon my face:
And though when you gloss its length with a golden brush
I am strings that tremble under a bow.
It was that night I saw you dancing,
The whirl and impalpable float of your garment,
Your throat lifted, your face aglow
(Like waterlilies in moonlight were your knees).
It was that night I heard you singing
In the green-room after your dance was over,
Faint and uneven through the thickness of walls.
(How shall I come to you through the dullness of walls,
Thrusting aside the hands of bitter opinion?)
It was that afternoon, early in June,
When, tired with a sleepless night, and my act performed,
Feeling as stale as streets,
We met under dropping boughs, and you smiled to me:
And we sat by a watery surface of clouds and sky.
I hear only the susurration of intimate leaves;
The stealthy gliding of branches upon slow air.
I see only the point of your chin in sunlight;
And the sinister blue of sunlight on your hair.
The sunlight settles downward upon us in silence.
Now we ****** up through grass blades and encounter,
Pushing white hands amid the green.
Your face flowers whitely among cold leaves.
Soil clings to you, bark falls from you,
You rouse and stretch upward, exhaling earth, inhaling sky,
I touch you, and we drift off together like moons.
Earth dips from under.
We are alone in an immensity of sunlight,
Specks in an infinite golden radiance,
Whirled and tossed upon silent cataracts and torrents.
Give me your hand darling! We float downward.
2.4k
POLAND, France, Judea ran in her veins,
Singing to Paris for bread, singing to Gotham in a fizz at the pop of a bottle's cork.
"Won't you come and play wiz me" she sang ... and "I just can't make my eyes behave."
"Higgeldy-Piggeldy," "Papa's Wife," "Follow Me" were plays.
Did she wash her feet in a tub of milk? Was a strand of pearls sneaked from her trunk? The newspapers asked.
Cigarettes, tulips, pacing horses, took her name.
Twenty years old ... thirty ... forty ...
Forty-five and the doctors fathom nothing, the doctors quarrel, the doctors use silver tubes feeding twenty-four quarts of blood into the veins, the respects of a prize-fighter, a cab driver.
And a little mouth moans: It is easy to die when they are dying so many grand deaths in France.
A voice, a shape, gone.
A baby bundle from Warsaw ... legs, torso, head ... on a hotel bed at The Savoy.
The white chiselings of flesh that flung themselves in somersaults, straddles, for packed houses:
A memory, a stage and footlights out, an electric sign on Broadway dark.
She belonged to somebody, nobody.
No one man owned her, no ten nor a thousand.
She belonged to many thousand men, lovers of the white chiseling of arms and shoulders, the ivory of a laugh, the bells of song.
Railroad brakemen taking trains across Nebraska prairies, lumbermen jaunting in pine and tamarack of the Northwest, stock ranchers in the middle west, mayors of southern cities
Say to their pals and wives now: I see by the papers Anna Held is dead.
2k
_As his feet moved even faster, and he twirled and whirled and cantered across the stage, it was as if he existed in an indeterminate space - blinded by the footlights, deafened by the orchestra, absorbed in his own rumbustious choreography. Beyond the pit, in the anonymous darkness, the audience rippled and flared appreciatively in response. So he danced on until, with a final rapturous gesture of his outstretched arms, he plunged to earth as dizzy as a snowflake. And waited.
The silence shifted. The soft rumble of engine noise played softly in the background, while the chain-link fence rattled in the squall which blew fresh off the harbour. He opened his eyes and watched the cars crawling across the overbridge above him; the empty basketball court littered with yesterday’s snack papers lay in shadow. In the middle distance, a familiar figure walked briskly towards him.
‘Matthew! Matthew! You come here this secon’ or I’ll whip your **** right off, already.’
‘Yes, Auntie.’
‘What you doin’ tryna waste good time?’
‘Nothin’, Auntie.’
‘Ain’t that the truth, boy.’
As he stooped to gather up his satchel, Matthew saw out of the corner of his eye the concertmaster lower his instrument, incline his head, and begin to tap his music stand with his bow. From the balconies the first of a thousand rose petals began to fall with the evening rain, the applause thundered while the lightning clapped, and there in the gods stood his mother waving and blowing kisses at him, as he followed his aunt down East Street towards home._
Sep 4, 2019
Sep 4, 2019 at 10:29 PM UTC
Why you got those boots on your feet
Are you the wandering jingle jangler
That heeled high feeling easy dreamer
Lending ears to become the audience
Marking antonyms like Julius Caesar
Trying to rise before the failures fall
Sublimely for the mad beauty of it all
In desperate dreams of the final curtain
Draping the fading drama in the folds
The weatherman never read the script
And left his quill on the top of the hill
When Romeo betrayed Juliet to the fool
Stealing his chance of everlasting fame
Casting shadows before his own naming
Everything in the lies of playing games.
At least that’s why he sold himself again
For *** and drudgery’s rotting role play
Once for the money and twice to show
That charity begins when gambling ends
Throwing dice at the shaming of the true
Believers in the obviously innocent song
That sang itself to deaths other oblivion
Dwelling inside the flickering footlights
Burning soles who tread the dollar less way
To stage their very own beautiful demise
Before a paying and praying audience
There’s no business like the dying business
That’s the dumb an’ smart career move
As death consumes all; here and ever after
The three ring circus hits the super highway
To heavenly pay days in the after math
That stole the souls of the leading actors
Wasn’t that just the smart career move
To die happily on the wings of disaster
Farewell sweet prince an’ princesses
May flights of angels love your music.
Aug 6, 2018
Aug 6, 2018 at 3:04 PM UTC
Shall this sample punctate the front
Again written in invisible ink
To those with no eyes always on the hunt
For a word, or phrase, that brings the link
Footlights the night, blooms the rose 🌹
Artistic communication inspires a try
Sprinkles petaled paths everywhere it goes
Floramour intoxication within tiny ****** of why.
May 29, 2020
May 29, 2020 at 12:37 PM UTC
After the movie, when the lights come up,
He takes her powdered hand behind the wings;
She, all in yellow, like a buttercup,
Lifts her white face, yearns up to him, and clings;
And with a silent, gliding step they move
Over the footlights, in familiar glare,
Panther-like in the Tango whirl of love,
He fawning close on her with idiot stare.
Swiftly they cross the stage. O lyric ease!
The drunken music follows the sure feet,
The swaying elbows, intergliding knees,
Moving with slow precision on the beat.
She was a waitress in a restaurant,
He picked her up and taught her how to dance.
She feels his arms, lifts an appealing glance,
But knows he spent last evening with Zudora;
And knows that certain changes are before her.
The brilliant spotlight circles them around,
Flashing the spangles on her weighted dress.
He mimics wooing her, without a sound,
Flatters her with a smoothly smiled caress.
He fears that she will someday queer his act;
Feeling his anger. He will quit her soon.
He nods for faster music. He will contract
Another partner, under another moon.
Meanwhile, 'smooth stuff.' He lets his dry eyes flit
Over the yellow faces there below;
Maybe he'll cut down on his drinks a bit,
Not to annoy her, and spoil the show. . .
Zudora, waiting for her turn to come,
Watches them from the wings and fatly leers
At the girl's younger face, so white and dumb,
And the fixed, anguished eyes, ready for tears.
She lies beside him, with a false wedding-ring,
In a cheap room, with moonlight on the floor;
The moonlit curtains remind her much of spring,
Of a spring evening on the Coney shore.
And while he sleeps, knowing she ought to hate,
She still clings to the lover that she knew,-
The one that, with a pencil on a plate,
Drew a heart and wrote, 'I'd die for you.'
1.2k
After the movie, when the lights come up,
He takes her powdered hand behind the wings;
She, all in yellow, like a buttercup,
Lifts her white face, yearns up to him, and clings;
And with a silent, gliding step they move
Over the footlights, in familiar glare,
Panther-like in the Tango whirl of love,
He fawning close on her with idiot stare.
Swiftly they cross the stage. O lyric ease!
The drunken music follows the sure feet,
The swaying elbows, intergliding knees,
Moving with slow precision on the beat.
She was a waitress in a restaurant,
He picked her up and taught her how to dance.
She feels his arms, lifts an appealing glance,
But knows he spent last evening with Zudora;
And knows that certain changes are before her.
The brilliant spotlight circles them around,
Flashing the spangles on her weighted dress.
He mimics wooing her, without a sound,
Flatters her with a smoothly smiled caress.
He fears that she will someday queer his act;
Feeling his anger. He will quit her soon.
He nods for faster music. He will contract
Another partner, under another moon.
Meanwhile, 'smooth stuff.' He lets his dry eyes flit
Over the yellow faces there below;
Maybe he'll cut down on his drinks a bit,
Not to annoy her, and spoil the show. . .
Zudora, waiting for her turn to come,
Watches them from the wings and fatly leers
At the girl's younger face, so white and dumb,
And the fixed, anguished eyes, ready for tears.
She lies beside him, with a false wedding-ring,
In a cheap room, with moonlight on the floor;
The moonlit curtains remind her much of spring,
Of a spring evening on the Coney shore.
And while he sleeps, knowing she ought to hate,
She still clings to the lover that she knew,--
The one that, with a pencil on a plate,
Drew a heart and wrote, 'I'd die for you.'
999
Spinning in circles that have square corners
I'm the new Broadway sensation
The moon is wearing surprise pink gel
And the wind is rosining it's bow
The Marquee is lighted by roman candles
That change colors as you observe
My name is carved into pumpkins
Lit from inside by gold sparklers
The Phantom Toll Booth is housing Will Call
And the ushers are all wearing drag
The Animal Rights folks are picketing
The unkind treatment of frogs
The clearing of throats often hurts them
And we're all a long way from the pond
My costume is still at the cleaners
So I'm dressed as somebody else
The fourth wall is now made of plaster
And my double is lost in the wings
I look but I can't see the footlights
Through the fog machine's oily haze
The prompter's asleep in the Green Room
And the Concert Master is ******
The Conductor is wearing a trainman's hat
But the Midnight Special won't be stopping here
Like me, it's gone off the rails once again
And there's nobody home in the Roundhouse
The outside decided to come on back inside
But all the seats now are taken
I need to stop twirling - I'm dizzy
I overlooked taking a point
There's somebody up in the flies
I think I see sandbags beginning to swing
I can't hear the music; the air is too loud
And too many people are breathing
That isn't applause after all - it's thunder
And my key light has faded to three
My funniest line drew no laughter
And I've got to exit stage left
The curtain call was a barrel house polka
And no one presented me flowers
The stage door is painted an angry red
and it needs to be painted coal black
I'm back outside where I've always belonged
And no one is waiting to greet me
With autograph book and stub of a pen
Guess I might just as well walk on home
LJM
Jun 2, 2017
Jun 2, 2017 at 12:31 PM UTC
What do you expect from me?
Am I your entertaining clown?
Am I always supposed to clicked on
When your friends come around?
Am I here for your enjoyment?
Am I here to make you laugh?
Do you want me for my company?
Or am I just on your staff?
The light goes on, and I'm on stage
Regardless where we are
I'm the center of attention
I'm a bug trapped in your jar
When I'm quiet you ignore me
When I'm on, you're by my side
I am just another plaything
Being taken for a ride?
I'm funny when I need to be
But, that's by your request
I'm a puppet on your little stage
When I'm on, I'm at my best
I hide behind my greasepaint
Wearing masks through out the day
But, when the footlights shine
And I'm in front, that's when I come to play
Am I funny just to please you?
Or am I really pleasing me?
The doorbell rang, your friends are here
Another show for free.
May 21, 2012
May 21, 2012 at 6:44 PM UTC
industrial lights that glisten and gleam
Shine and shimmer, sparkle and preen
We're the footlights of her growing up.
The clang of the American swing; iron on iron
Formed the incidental music.
No aroma of roses or apple blossom
But industrial pong and fog scented the air.
No silken lingerie to kiss the skin
But grammar school knickers that left a green stain on the ***
In pantomime the slipper gifts
In this story brown lace ups rub
And ankle socks slip under the heel or grey 'pull ups' slip down.
In the wet night black iron railings and soot blackened brick shine
As does the peeling paint in somber tones of maroon or green.
Oil stained cobble stones glow iridescent in the entries and rain smears the light from lamp posts.
A gabardine Mac and a good hood and the night is hers, walking home from the swimming baths with sweets and a good friend.
No style, no shape, no ' je ne sais quoi' ( no French yet)
No self- consciousness, no cynicism, no act , no role;
Caught between childhood and puberty.
Daft and funny and giggly
Laughing till it hurts, with tears streaming.
Making up stories and fascinated by 'what ifs?
Loving friends unreservedly and having no idea that 'now' would soon be 'then'.
A time when innocence and intellect met and each enjoyed the other,
A moment of balance
When two sturdy legs in brown lace ups stand slightly apart
And a scrubbed chubby face looks you in the eye
And dares you
To see the world from that standpoint.
Aug 2, 2016
Aug 2, 2016 at 4:06 PM UTC
It is as it is,
and was ere,
again I’m paired to
restroom pantile,
resilient sickness
can redefine docile
to nothing northerly,
o'er the day is
only forgery
to an nightly
mainstay,
this white flag
has been waving
to porcelain for
oft fortnights
shining footlights
on an innocent reflection,
allay this suffocation,
let me breathe again,
foremost is always
surviving tomorrow,
though I'm a swain to
the ***** of today.
May 4, 2016
May 4, 2016 at 2:24 AM UTC
It was called "The Right Of Spring"
I was scared, excited, elated
Taking my place on the stage above the footlights,
I shook, like an earthquake of the soul
I'd danced this piece several times before, but never in front of such a number of eyes
The other dancers seemed fine
We'd practiced for 8 months for this particular show
We were to perform twice daily, for 3 days
Hard, excruciating work
But such is the dance
I began to sweat profusely, I felt the blood draining from my face
And right at the second turn,
I hit the floor with a thud.
Becoming human
Feb 22, 2017
Feb 22, 2017 at 10:54 AM UTC
Bungalow bunkie,
Doth thou awaken or sleep to thy dust you accumulate?
Captious are one's these slothful ciggarrete nights!!!
Electrolight,
Come near that I may feel warmth,
As a child in early birth I seek forane high class milk,
Footlights on stilts do the the actors take high position!!
Not seeking the inefficient,
But the tower of Babel gone lost!!!!
Injurious kirtles are kinless,
Thy best friend is now friend less,
Due to thine own kindness!!!!
Lamb-kin darling,
Canst thou lance these burns to cuts?
For what's missing in the soot?
Lamenting chalice...
A king and a queens palace I'll die to live in,
For a smile and a grin cannot be weighed!!!
Hay/fever will take the fidelity of what's polite!!!
Damoclean of wintergreen,
Do you flatter by ones self?
Or doth thou Get help from dandering blotters!!!!
Intimate plotters of murderer's and lost hopes fun!!!
Chatoyant skin doeth I wish to feel once,
Where thy stage is real_,
No stunts!!!!!
Just reality of cavern lathered seducing!!!!
May 19, 2015
May 19, 2015 at 6:29 PM UTC
MUCH ADO ABOUT SOMETHING
My Prospero, I admit
is, yea, badly drawn
& keeps falling off
his lollipop stick.
My Caliban, on the other hand
well drawn and forsooth...sticks to...his stick.
I wiggle each
character’s characteristic
and they come alive
speak the lines, I pray you,
trippingly upon my tongue
“Come to me with a thought!”
I command my paper people.
“Your thoughts I cleave to!”
they flash into my consciousness.
“Ariel, my Ariel...”
fine-tooled from foil
that comes from fabled Consulate
& Woodbine packets.
“Ah, my trusty sprite...”
dangles from a purple thread that
is borrowed from
me **** sewing basket.
All is well
in this my make-shift
Shakespeare theatre
made from Kellogg’s
Cornflakes packets.
See the great **** crow
under the proscenium!
Weetabix boxexs
construct the wings.
Rows of Nite lights
serve as footlights.
And, so...let the Masque begin!
I hum bits of Adeste
Fideles....then sing
as Prospero & Ariel
do their thing.
“Solua domus dagus!”
my voice rings out
but see how
dangerous a nine year old knee
can be
to paper theatre.
The floodlights being knocked over
the stage flames in amazement.
My patchwork Globe
of Cornflake and Weetabix boxes
burns to the ground
only Ariel survives
in an all too blackened shrunken
crumpled piece of foil.
I exit
( pursued by a clip on the ear )
the profession of producer of
the plays thereof the only begetter of
this ensuing story
lost, alas my lack, to me!
But wait, is this a football I see
before me?
Then play on Dinger Dwyer!
And ****** be him who first cries hold!
We cry ******** and let slip
the dogs we are!
May 15, 2017
May 15, 2017 at 1:48 PM UTC
Where are all the great patrons
Throw me a hook you fishers of men
That I might be caught and eaten
by the audience beyond the footlights
That my blood be spilled on pages
and canvas in prescribed portion
Afford me the flame of arrogance
to believe that my own hand
in the fire of creation touches wonder
and maybe God himself
Sep 8, 2020
Sep 8, 2020 at 1:19 PM UTC
I like the woodshed,
a smell of wet putty
and dead paint,
but
they wheel me out
occasionally
for a function
and it blows the cobwebs off me
although I no longer care.
Once I was the cream of the crop
and now,
just yesterdays fare.
It seems the seams have come away,
afraid now that I'm frayed,
the dog end of material upon
which the footlights strayed.
just like Bentham at UCL
on show I go again
and
although not in a cabinet
it feels to me the same.
I remember
something sometimes
and
then the clock chimes to remind me
there's not much point in doing so
and
back on show I go
life goes on.
Oct 18, 2016
Oct 18, 2016 at 1:11 AM UTC
There's the pen, the page, an audience, the stage
a play to play for all today.
I am few and far between the footlights and the scene
is changing constantly.
It'll be severance pay one day,
one day we'll all be *******
the pieces will still fit
but we'll all come unglued.
Love the grease and like the paint
you ain't got much to lose
you might bomb
but they must light the fuse.
Oct 3, 2016
Oct 3, 2016 at 1:50 PM UTC
Why you got those boots on your feet
Are you the wandering jingle jangler
That heeled high feeling easy dreamer
Lending ears to become the audience
Marking antonyms like Julius Caesar
Trying to rise before the failures fall
Sublimely for the mad beauty of it all
In desperate dreams of the final curtain
Draping the fading drama in the folds
The weatherman never read the script
And left his quill on the top of the hill
When Romeo betrayed Juliet to the fool
Stealing his chance of everlasting fame
Casting shadows before his own naming
Everything in the lies of playing games
At least that’s why he sold himself again
For *** and drudgery’s rotting role play
Once for the money and twice to show
That charity begins when gambling ends
Throwing dice at the shaming of the true
Believers in the obviously innocent song
That sang itself to deaths other oblivion
Dwelling inside the flickering footlights
Burning soles who tread the dollar-less way
To stage their very own beautiful demise
Before a paying and praying audience
There’s no business like the dying business
As death consumes all; here and ever after
The three-ring circus hits the super highway
To heavenly pay days in the after math
That stole the souls of the leading actors
Wasn’t that just the smart career move
To die happily on the wings of disaster
Farewell sweet prince an’ princesses
May flights of angels love your music.
Sep 8, 2018
Sep 8, 2018 at 1:25 PM UTC
Steamy faces masked by a silver curtain,
The show about to begin.
Feb 18, 2021
Feb 18, 2021 at 5:48 PM UTC
It seems as though I live my life
Downstage right and closest to the footlights.
I need the warmth of those glowing bulbs
To thaw a sometimes frozen heart.
I’ve learned my lines and know the scenes
But the blocking still confuses me
And I’m not sure which way I turn
To delver my soliloquy.
I know this drama has four acts
But this is intermission
And I’m waiting for the lights to dim
And call the audience back inside
To watch until the final curtain.
ljm
Apr 21, 2025
Apr 21, 2025 at 12:35 AM UTC
11/20/24
ACTRESS
My life is a show
that I’m putting on
for
the audience of all those around me.
I strut and preen
and
I prance on life’s stage,
but
the script that I learned’s
not the show that I’m In
and
I’m always stage left
when I should be stage right.
I drop all my cues,
Can’t
remember my lines,
and
almost tripped over the footlights.
What
am I doing on this giant
stage.
Do the words I say
Have any meaning.
Do my
dance steps convey any feelings
to the
audience
made up of those who know better
and oblige me this turn in the
spotlight
ljm
Nov 28, 2024
Nov 28, 2024 at 1:47 PM UTC