1230

It came at last but prompter Death
Had occupied the House—
His pallid Furniture arranged
And his metallic Peace—

Oh faithful Frost that kept the Date
Had Love as punctual been
Delight had aggrandized the Gate
And blocked the coming in.

i was wrong when i said poetry is dead, i'm more right in saying that poetry is ****** - everyone's eager to lip-up and de-numb the english stiff upper-lip with rhymes; but poetry became overly technical, and the study of it became an abomination in terms of dissection, unnatural medicine: too technical, too rigid as to be conscious of techniques by way of defining what poetry is... hence most schoolchildren put off by it... too technical, too grammatically-akin-to-technique laden... but i ask you, have you ever paid an extra £10 to a ******* to perform oral *** on her? have you ever eaten this forbidden fruit, and later kissed her lips? have tasted the forbidden flower, oiled up prior with cream to ensure that even if she's not in the mood she's still working and can provide the synthetic ***** juices of arousal? have you? we'll have a chat when you do, after eating that forbidden fruit, and then becoming a thief by kissing her against those absurd codes of conduct of prostitution.

this is the only method i see fit
for filtering our scientific facts
and going at it alone:
mishearing lyrics of songs,
turning them into humble mumble,
like in the song *alive alone
by the chemical brothers from the
album exit planet dust...
'and she shines, she shoe-shines for me...'
then the stitches on the abdomen
and a Chelsea grin...
my grandfather worked in the steelworks,
happily retired after being a brigadier
on one of the production lines,
resory (springs) for trains and tanks
and steel pillars for the stade de france,
pretending to be death, but actually
filtering out what he wants to hear -
you know, after years of working
among sounds of clatter and clamour
hammering and molten iron sizzling -
older men have the benefit of the doubt
of others, seeing old age gracefully,
while old men have the benefit of denial;
and indeed true virtue isn't afraid
of critique... it's afraid of compliments...
the last to learn this are actors
who loath hecklers...
if i were an actor, i'd ask a heckler to come
on stage and act with me,
i'd become the sufler (prompter);
ever heard of the band (the) prompter's booth?
you know, in theatre, the guy in a shady
place unseen with a manuscript whispering
out lines to actors should they forget them...
thank god politicians have the autocue...
because imagine in the democratic model
how many people would have to fit
into the prompter's booth, and they'd hardly
whisper out lines for the grand act...
they'd be screaming like lunatics criticisms.

My poem may be yours indeed
In melody and tone,
If in its rhythm you can read
A music of your own;
If in its pale woof you can weave
Your lovelier design,
'Twill make my lyric, I believe,
More yours than mine.

I'm but a prompter at the best;
Crude cues are all I give.
In simple stanzas I suggest -
'Tis you who make them live.
My bit of rhyme is but a frame,
And if my lines you quote,
I think, although they bear my name,
'Tis you who wrote.

Yours is the beauty that you see
In any words I sing;
The magic and the melody
'Tis you, dear friend, who bring.
Yea, by the glory and the gleam,
The loveliness that lures
Your thought to starry heights of dream,
The poem's yours.

Jackie read from my grey iris prompter.
With dew covered eyes, she explained
the suffocating moss of her past life.

Jackie told me she was ***** at thirteen
by her brother.

"I didn't know you had a brother."

Jackie then said, "I have a half-brother."

Jackie told me she cut her wrists to feel alive.

"I thought you said you had never handled a knife."

Jackie then said, "I handled shaving razors."

Jackie told me her father was a drunk.

"I thought he was a minister."

Jackie then said "My father is a drunk minister".

Jackie told me she had an abortion.

"I thought you were abstaining."

Jackie then said, "I've had *** and those times didn't count".

Jackie told me she loved me.

"I thought you moved on."

Jackie then said, "I'm allowed a past and present."

commentary of a bunch of photographs uploaded showing the dilemma of the A's in paper size... exhibits a - f show a lesson, well, you remember that old depiction of the idiot of the class, standing on a stool at the front of the class with a heretic's coned hat? well, they revised the hat, now it's a once green eyeshade clerk's hat via interpretation of a cricket cap.

it's quiet easy, words fill never justify the images,
the dunce was just saying: you could make one
toothpick from a Sunday newspaper's double spread,
that's what got him canonised perched on a stool,
no one exacted how many anyway,
like they never teach your the chemical formula for
wood, if what has a H too two Ohs, then wood must
must have something in the strand of including
carbon, a cabaret of elements with carbon the prompter
poking his prickly head once in a while due to
acting tremors and cold sweats of sudden amnesia...
the point being, to further the first point about
the size of newspapers on Sundays and whether there's
such a thing as A0, or an architectural sized paper,
i guess architectural spreads are like breast sizes...
imagine looking at schematics of 30F through 32E
and onto 30D past 38DD... you never see the sagging
in these diagrams, because they're abstracts of
the two hangmen... you see, the bra... did anyone tell
Freud that Anti-Oedipus as proposed by the two French
philosophers mixing up Nietzsche and Marx with
Freud on the side anticipated this Anti? it's the bane
of my existence, English black humour mixed with
giggles at words like: bottom, ****, ****... i don't know
how you can get seriously randy afterwards...
it's atypical English humour, *** jokes... the notion
that Oedipus can't laugh at *** underpins the very
basis of the unconscious, i.e.: that something sinister
is lurking in the depths and reaches back into childhood
and it's subsequent destruction. the opposite of
the theory proposed by Freud (as evolved from the already
mentioned *Gilles Deleuze) is at the same time frightening,
because it almost presupposes Oedipus' father
in the version of Saturn, best exemplified by
Saturn devouring his Son painted by Francisco Goya...
and the basis of this eventuality due to the woman's
madonna-***** complex: mini-skirt ***** lollipop
but a saintly mother beneath... jooke.
**** it, i deviated from the topic of periscopes but more
importantly of the size of sensible paper, A0 being
the spread of a Sunday Times... architectural scores
must therefore begin with B5...after architecture come
advertisements probably beginning at around
B3 or B2... football stadiums are filled with these passive
sheets of material, and that's talking way down the
alphabet of categorising size... you know, when they
pull down those massive club insignias.
in the end all i can do with a A4 paper is cut a kippah
or make a momentary mask... but with the
sunday spread of newspaper... i can momentarily
turn into a newspaper ghoul, or if you prefer:
a newspaper ghost!

My glass is filled, my pipe is lit,
     My den is all a cosy glow;
And snug before the fire I sit,
     And wait to feel the old year go.
I dedicate to solemn thought
     Amid my too-unthinking days,
This sober moment, sadly fraught
     With much of blame, with little praise.

Old Year! upon the Stage of Time
     You stand to bow your last adieu;
A moment, and the prompter's chime
     Will ring the curtain down on you.
Your mien is sad, your step is slow;
     You falter as a Sage in pain;
Yet turn, Old Year, before you go,
     And face your audience again.

That sphinx-like face, remote, austere,
     Let us all read, whate'er the cost:
O Maiden! why that bitter tear?
     Is it for dear one you have lost?
Is it for fond illusion gone?
     For trusted lover proved untrue?
O sweet girl-face, so sad, so wan
     What hath the Old Year meant to you?

And you, O neighbour on my right
     So sleek, so prosperously clad!
What see you in that aged wight
     That makes your smile so gay and glad?
What opportunity unmissed?
     What golden gain, what pride of place?
What splendid hope?  O Optimist!
     What read you in that withered face?

And You, deep shrinking in the gloom,
     What find you in that filmy gaze?
What menace of a tragic doom?
     What dark, condemning yesterdays?
What urge to crime, what evil done?
     What cold, confronting shape of fear?
O haggard, haunted, hidden One
     What see you in the dying year?

And so from face to face I flit,
     The countless eyes that stare and stare;
Some are with approbation lit,
     And some are shadowed with despair.
Some show a smile and some a frown;
     Some joy and hope, some pain and woe:
Enough!  Oh, ring the curtain down!
     Old weary year! it's time to go.

My pipe is out, my glass is dry;
     My fire is almost ashes too;
But once again, before you go,
     And I prepare to meet the New:
Old Year! a parting word that's true,
     For we've been comrades, you and I --
I thank God for each day of you;
     There! bless you now!  Old Year, good-bye!

long lost years
our master, Shakespeare
traveled to London for four days
no shillings or good garments in his bag

he stayed in lodge inns
penny a night
he had to gave up with a sigh

the smell of midden-heaped lanes
from the slum tenements
he had to bare for nights

he held both jobs
holding patron's horses
or prompter's attendant

and as destined to be a playwright,
his plays express aspects of life that transcend time
he wrote to be remarkable
and to put food on the table

illuminating human experience
a genius mind...

a playwright, poet and actor
that we will always admire.

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

for M. Perhaps,
this will be the
last.

I.
It’s funny. How words try to eschew
from my mind whenever the table
topic calls your name. How the prompter
tries to say your name but my fingers
refused to dance to its rhythm. This

II.
has to be the last of this joke. This poem
will not speak. Muted. Like how it

III.
is supposed to be. This line
on my right palm is nothing

but an illusion. Because often times they are
trying to connect to yours. This has to be

IV.
the last time I will think
about your cruel punch
lines; my drunken lines; and these
unsent letters I am trying to bury

underneath the midnight darkness
just because I am afraid of them
as evidences for the trial I am
setting upon myself. Because it was
always been a crime—

it *always has been.

V.
This has to be the last joke. And

I am done
being the laughing stock

for the crowd that is waiting
for us to falter

and leave me

hanging.

i said to her, prior -
i've just found a gem of a song...
alterslied by walther von der vogelweide,

how would it not remind me
of the time - the spring on the balcony -
the suffocating perfume of
the marrow yet to be or just born
in the calf -
         or the perfumery of mahogany
of cherry not yet a chair or
a table... in that: her blossom as if...
more tender than any japanese
porcelain or for that matter: geishas'
milky leather... warm: for still worn
cloaking the sinew, the **** and spew
of intestines...
            and the last signature in bone...
still walking... calling the moon
a... fickle dunked biscuit...

  she was blooming beneath me...
this cherry tree - and but one among
the rest of the plethora of scents...
      still that book i was reading:
Henryk Sienkiewicz - knights of the cross -
the teutonic knights -  Krzyżacy -
          and of course the screen-adaptation...
one by Aleksander Ford...
    
the veneer corpse riddle -
                haunting as glass
with its imitation of water
                  or see through
as a veil of Baghdad's exquisite harem
of an abiding: sheikh or imam -
            piercing eyes that know no
depth of sleep -
                   stolen light: as what i call
dreams -

but i was "thinking" along the lines
of...
             neoplatonism came from
Plotinus reading Plato - basics...
         Bertnard Russell can cover the rest...
but i was "thinking" of... a neo-cartesian model...
way before it might become ideological
and an 'ism...
                      how does the original begin?
dubito, ergo cogito, ergo sum...
   not much of doubt these days...
to doubt these days is to almost entertain
belief: or at least: the plethora of emotions
that hitchhike their way for the heart
to carry... it's not an outright negation...
doubt, that is...

           then again: doubt is a double-edged
sword... it cripples those that believe
as it does ******* those who disbelieve...
        
   but i can hardly want to begin from doubt...
i've heard it somewhere...
like a hindu or a buddhist mantra...
i remember...
i remember...
    i remember...
                 i did link memory to a sort of...
cameo cinema of my place in this world...

perhaps... if i begin with: dubito - i doubt...
i don't see how i can translate myself into
a concreteness of: cogito - i think -
therefore into: sum - i am...
        by now thought is a fickle aspect of
my summa summarum...
i'd very much like to begin with...
at least one aspect of time being invoked...
doubt... is timeless -
                        thought is timeless and spaceless...
existence: is both...

i'd begin my neo-cartesian route by
stating an alternative route...

memoro, ergo cogito, ergo sum...
i remember, therefore i think, therefore i am...
doubt is a fickle creature...
a pretty creature... a peacock...
which... is hardly a phoenix...
     can any so-called editorial section journalists...
the opinion pieces journalists...
the dialectical-phobia-prone saturday journalists...
be called... journalists?
      
  are they really journalists?
to have... opinion columns in newspapers?
just asking...
i never thought they were...
   ideologue ditto-heads comes to mind...
how can: thinking translate itself into:
the pivot of out of every instance:
this insistent paraphrase...
      
       i never find myself shackled to thought...
esp. not by doubt...
           the labours of the liar to think...
when all has been thought...
but i am gladly thinking when shackled
to memory - when there's some narrative involved...
when there's the cameo cinema of memory
and i find myself: a good man...

i was once accused of "liking the sound
of my own voice"...
god forbid - but with regards to liking
my given names?
how doesn't this sound:
but it already does: Conrad von Heiligkreuz...
second name at baptism -
and i am... von heiligkreuz...
it's a region in Poland...
       there is a Świętokrzyskie Voivodeship...
i have a fetish for german...
and it's not like matthew isn't a loan
name to be given - origin in hebrew...
but at least i have a past -
to live under the guidance of the names
bestowed upon one...
in good company with ol' von Wallenrode...
C... K... does it matter?

i do like my given names...
hell... i'd like it even more if i was
Ezra rather than Matthew...
more so if i was a Nikita...
fluid non-binary names... don't you think?

because i am thinking of germany
from the medieval period -
             or at least: what became of barbarossa
drowning and being pickled...
and how... prussia and lithuania were
just gagging for a stab in the dark
for an already adrenaline fuelled junkies
of the passion of the cross...
or *****... i never know which the jester,
marquis the sade asked for...

foundation of knowledge: yes...
dubito, ergo cogito, ergo sum...
but i'm not here to know more than what's
already known - where does knowledge
lead these days? pub-quizes and trivia...
regurgitation of facts...
i want to find an alternative to knowledge...
a: transcendence of morality -
a leverage of my remains that cannot
be confined to a bone -
to a name - i'd wish for an escape
with and through an epitaph...

                     or - anon.
                       as some works are cited...
prompter of the theatre -
     in the prompter's box when the actors
would forget their lines...
ah... the critique of the proposition with
the presupposition of a "i"...
                  "it" is also a presupposition -
nothing can be a pronoun...
                                but i'm not here to make
a genesis of man via: dubium...
nor via reverentia...
     i'm not a child any more...
i've visisted the underworld and came back
with dreams -
and to the world i left and came back
to... yes... i have been here before...
    to begin with... memoriae... though...
that's enough to subsequently think,
to subsequently be...
   otherwise why would the powers that be...
make it a crusade in the realm
of pedagogy
to pour corrosive juices into our brains
with all that encyclopedic *******,
arithmetic when there are calculators,
to exhaust our very personal capacity to
remember?
travesty i yelp!

                   hell: i'll even yarl!
                save your memory...
it will give you more than doubt in what
has to become you -
   or whatever happens to thinking -
insert any number of blanks when a concrete
translation of thought into will was lost
to "thinking" / day-dreaming...

but at least: the cameo cinema of memory...
10 very focused memories...
enough... and these to be kept unchanged...
sharpened like flint...
polished like silver...
             bitten like metal...
                     worshipped like ink poured
into chiselled labyrinths of timber...
                            
                      to wake from having to inherit
the 20th century from others...
              my 20th century begins circa 1989...
but it also begins circa 1944...
and circa 1937...
                        circa 1982...
                                            circa 1998...
             circa 1994...
                           but it is never...
the history of a people that is...
             but my slot... memory: as personal
as thought... i have seen how memory can be
usurped... can be... the focus of saboteurs...
          i'm missing two nouns at present...

to remember something from aeons beyond...
i cannot doubt these two words i am thinking of...
but i don't remember them...
then again: is memory such a fickle bride
of thought?
            isn't doubt more fickle?
                    
ah! subverters! well... saboteurs...
         and that second word?
it's a psychiatric term: of implanting false
memories... regression!
                 or something... but if psychiatry
is making an attack on the faculty of memory...
and pedadogy has already poured
carboxylic acid into our brains with education
that's... only for the purpose of ensuring
there are pedagogues...

                       yes... and the prospect of me becoming
a father, let alone a grandfather...
is for mickey mouse to become a ******* nun...
but you'll never know...

memory is under attack...
doubt... well you can doubt whatever the hell
you want: deny or believe whatever you want...
mind you...
if it "all" begins with:

    memoro, ergo cogito, ergo sum...
and psychiatry and the great psi (Ψ) of psychology...
what sort of: "critique of the proposition with
the presupposition of a 'i'" is there?
when you have the practice of regression /
false memory implants? and all that pedogogic juice
to boot?

better keep yourself to memory...
you never know: doubt can take care of itself...
it doesn't have to translate into thinking
into being...
but sure as **** and sherlock 'olmes to boot...
your memory needs defending...
to be sure... a + b + a + c + u + s = ?
                         well... sure... 1 + 1 = 2...
        to put to memory... how something sounds...
into writing... onomatopoeia...
well... it's not one of those: knock-knock...
who's there jokes...
                  ghosts don't knock on doors...
they slide their chains across the wood...
rhapsody in any ghoul's adventure of:
revision of the taste of morello cherries...
there will be no revision of the taste of morello cherries!
that sort of sour is one and only,
and it would better define someone's last
breath on this rock and couldron of constellations
come night... than...
                              an adieu with a kiss.

By: Cedric McClester

Is it safe
For us to assume,
That something happened
Inside that room?
Which has prompter her
To come out and say
How he forcefully
Tried to have his way

Is it safe
For us to assume,
That her detractors
Will attempt to resume,
Getting on
With the vote anyway,
Regardless of
What she has to say?

Is it safe
For us to assume
It will be swept
Away like a broom?
Will her allegations
Receive credence,
In light of the
Hearing’s impedance?

Is it safe
For us to assume,
He’ll count the votes
In the back room,
Before deciding
How to proceed?
In keeping with
His conservative creed















Cedric McClester, Copyright © 2018.  All rights reserved.

I prompt thee
To see
The television
Prompter,
Yelling at me
In caps lock,
Buy one  
Get one
Free,
But wait,
Call now,
Static intermission,
Interrupting
The human
Condition,
Prompt
DOS;
Black and white
Flicker,
Press ESC
To exit,
Life...
© okpoet

what is it, gaggles, giggles, hiccups, frivolities of nonsense, you can stream me all of them to perform the rightful description - point being, like any "ally" to an idea, i move up the chain of history, beyond pole, czech, russian... there's the pearl, the oyster to attach myself into the ethnicity counter-germanic, slav, with a missing e? well, słowianin (swovianin - sw'oh-via-nin, you alright on the consonant count, brat?!) słowo = word. i could be called mad, but then i write parallel to what i see, and what i write is what happens before my eyes, obviously mismatched to say the least, and never the perfected hindenburg perfection of "waiting for it"... but this isn't a back to the future prediction of lightning either.

e-ver -
            i-ver;
  talk about a need for a grapheme...
             it's just: ha ha ha ha... funny...
     i remember this one time,
my ex-g.f. younger sister...
  the one that became my muse:
cushioning lips -
  almost ***** -
     you know: fat, plump to invite
cordiality -
                         you know the problem
with poles migrating?
  they don't congregate,
hammersmith is an exception of
an area highly concentrated by poles,
otherwise?
    a pole meets a pole in england:
what a surprise!
    i saw you buying polish beer...
  żywiec?
          a **** good beer...
                     mazo mazo mazowsze (sz = sh
cz = ch, yzwz) -
                  one hand knows:
the H catches the vowels - but it also
serves as the pivot for laughter -
  aH hA hA hA!
           batman? probably the only
"superhero" worth investigating,
   given that all the baddies are batman's
alterego...
              two-faced joking billionaire
who's enigmatic with a pet penguin to boot...
a "superhero" who's only "super power"
is a **** load of money...
and some grease in the cranium...
          really, the russians are behind all of this?!
i find that the germanic tribes of lore
can never find themselves agreed-upon
singularism of an origin -
the french will remain french,
the germans german,
       lost the spaniards -
the english were always a tad bit paddy
mongrelling themselves with celt...
                in an anglophone realm of
language -
    it's much easier to identify yourself
as a slav, than a pole, a czech, a slovak,
       a russian,
                             a bulgar,
      a roma,  
                          a croat,
                     a slovene,
     funny... it's almost desirable, to be able
to identify yourself in the most accessible
           and broadest spectrum of tattoo...
   in the end there's only western europe
   that's described as western at the limit of
berlin...
       never helsinki...
                     and my god, so much land after
berlin -
            tilting toward *anadyr...
                        the process of subsetting in
the anglophone world -
          if only welsh and gaelic was more pronounced
in this realm,
perhaps then the english could identify themselves
along a more germanic heritage,
embrace it, and not treat their affairs
down the simpleton route of a football skirmish.
i actually can't find any "english" in all
honesty - on these isles it's easier to
name a gael and a pict, a wael too,
  but an anglican?
                what are they, really,
  anglo-swabians, anglo-saxons,
   anglo-pomeranians?
     these days you're already talking about
                            anglo-slavs & afro-saxons!    
i'd still prefer a blackbeard sharpshooter
  (3:1 mixer of *** & pepsi) -
                    or a flaky monotonous-****
cosmopolitan;
  just saying, who am i to judge,
       i once tried laughing gas -
                  and didn't even laugh -
        as always, the sometimes apparent banality
of cogito per se came up with all the necessary gags;
because it shouldn't be, the prompter of
all "necessary "gags"?
     to consider the brain as devoid of thought genesis,
since man tends to think about the entirety of
his body-geography -
     nuisance, or nuance?
                       thinking is the unnecessary
action that resolves no necessary "action" -
         it's a free-falling limb -
                whenever a prompt to kick,
to throw, to spin,
                            to mix - never is there
an equivalent prompt to think...
             that said: to truly meditate is to harness
a slingshot's worth of straining -
to refrain from thought -
                     to allow the building up of strain -
prior to a release such as this...
                  and from what i found is that:
thinking revolves around a quasi-claustrophobia...
its boa constrictive presence suffocates -
   until it reveals what is its most naturally
ontological about it: pathos & irrationality;
obviously if scrutinised beyond this -
   a homing device for specified interests -
               thought in autism -
                                thought in specialisation;
but by a majority rule-of-thumb:
          a pathology and the most
                 irritable irritability - irrationality:
the random selection of non-coherent set of
"intertwined" set of facts.

It’s the mornings you wake up and the heaviness of your eyes are nothing compared to the heaviness in your chest. It’s the moments throughout the day you’re surrounded by all that love and adore you and you are still drowning in the loneliness. It’s the nights you lie awake wired with a megaphone prompter set to the highest volume in your skull repeating all of those thoughts you swore you’d never say aloud. It’s the seconds, the minutes, the hours, days, weeks, months that you feel as if you feel nothing in attempt to feel everything and you’re trying so hard to get to the surface of land while you’re drowning in the middle of the ocean, too heavy to swim. You see where you want to be and as you move every joint in your body, you’re going nowhere but down. Down. Down. Down to the bottom of your heart, down to the bottom of your stomach, to the bottom of your toes. The fuzzy feeling of a television on the fritz the black and white static going in and out, the blurry vision of nothing while all is in front of you and yet you are still sinking, drowning like the fish that can’t swim, you’re still watching that grayscaled fuzz and listening to the muffled up noises on the television that you can’t clearly make out while the remote is in your hands. That’s the worst part about it. That’s the ugly truth of it all. That our struggle, while it entails pain and chaos, we have the controls to change them. Our stories are complex. Maybe we can’t change the characters or the rising actions. It may be possible that the ****** is our of our control. We can’t do anything about how we got in the middle of the ocean, or how we turned the broken channel on, But within the falling action of it all, we can get ahold of it. We can grasp at it, tug on it, and we can morph it into our life jacket. We can build it into our own remote controler, we can change the perception of it all. The plot twists, the cliffhangers, those are what we can encompass and embrace, what we ourselves control and can incorporate to change the story. It is set in our mind’s eye how we perceive and annotate a story or poem just as it is set in our mind’s eye how we perceive and annotate our own story. Because in the end of it all, it comes down to what we are doing about it. Are we the ones putting rocks in our clothes so rather than our floating, we proceed to the very depths of suffocation? Are we the ones that pressed the volume button on the remote in order for the static to grow higher and higher to the point of deafness? As you reflect on your story, are you reading your metaphors right, are you interpreting the imagery and creative visualizations in a way that shows beauty within the ugly, are you appreciating the art of similes and detail that you were able to create throughout whatever your story entails? Or are you so engulfed in your ineptitude to look at the whole picture as just that, with no interpretation of it all? You only read your monologues rather than the dialogues within. You sparknoting your life. Have you ever taken an exam after sparknoting a book and it’s only when you have the lines of the paper in front of you that you realize that you know nothing? That’s what you’re doing when you only dwell on the obvious of your life. You’re not searching within to fill the plot holes and answering questions that are worth answering. Take advantage of syntax. The descriptions of the water, how cold it may feel emotionally and physically or why you can’t seem to turn the channel of your television when it’s only placing you in a realm of distress. You see what everyone sees, you know what everyone knows without ever understanding. It’s the words in between that tell a reader what to feel and why you feel that way. You’re cheating yourself out of individuality and the acceptance of a resolution worthy of acceptance. So as you write the rest of your story, write it in a way that will make you content with the ending. Give yourself an ending that you are satisfied with, that makes it easy to close the book and start on to the new one- because remember, you are not the only one reading it. Be proud of your story. Give your character the lifejacket. Give yourself the life jacket.

I hear the clanking of the gears and ropes
As the curtain starts its slow descent.
I’m rushing to get all my speeches in-
I thought the final scene would go on longer.

But I somehow forgot my lines, the prompter was asleep,
And I tripped across the brace cleats on my entrance
The apron edge is way too close.  I feel lightheaded.
I can see my understudy waiting in the wings.

I thought that I could play my role with some elan
For the entire duration of the local run
But seven shows with matinees to total nine
Have strained my voice and dulled my ears

So I can’t hit the high notes any more.
I know the lyrics and the tunes-
I play them in my sleep instead of waking up
But nonetheless I miss my cues and every note is flat.

The audience is unaware.  They haven’t read the book.
They cannot know the words left out, the blocking gone awry,
My struggle as I patch it up and try to hide
Behind my past reviews - when everything I did was right.

Tassels shimmy on the bottom of the velvet drape
As it slips down behind  me - out in front when I should be in back.
If only I could juggle - no one would suspect
That this will be my final curtain call and I have got it wrong.

Wandering at home:

a play without direction –


without a prompter.

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                              Memorial Day: This ****** Field

                   That we may wander o’er this ****** field
                   To book our dead, and then to bury them

                                     -Henry V, IV.vii.75-76

Some say this day began
                    As a memorial to the Confederate dead
Some say this day began
                    As a memorial to the Union dead
We only know that now it is a memorial for those
Who died for causes far beyond themselves

The glory of our soldiers is in the orphans they fed
The huts they helped repair, the ponchos they gave
To the shivering cold, reassurance to the terrified
Poor comforts to the bombed-out and the dying

The glory of our soldiers
Is not in some strident Man of Destiny
Bellowing fancy words from a prompter screen
But in hungry men who gave their C-rats away

Before they died in some ****** ****** ditch

In their honor, then

Let us quietly work in causes beyond ourselves
And risk being made into sacraments