"stagefright" poems
With your legs quivering
Hands and arms shaking
Voice cracking
Look up to see the light
The only light
Focused on you
Only you
Look back down
To your audience
Staring
No, observing
Intensely
Right at you
And only you
And as you speak
One more word
Nothing else comes out
But a trace of
Grasping breath
The lights turn of
Or so you think
The people disappear
Or so you imagine
Losing yourself
Somewhere between the stage
Or your thoughts
Thoughts you could've said
Or performed
Either way taking over you
Leaving you in an unconscious state
Lost, confused, and frightened.
-djs
Jul 18, 2013
Jul 18, 2013 at 12:35 AM UTC
It is the brush
that still grows
and slowly dies
from the hazel
string of fire.
Like a violin,
it fills the entire room
with electrity
red-hot, oxygen
making it grow
stronger and stronger.
Until a burst of thunder
claps for an encore.
It must seem to not seem
like that ream
of paper, lying
on the carpet, blank
and waiting for a soul
to touch it with
his fingers
and poke it
with a pencil, and
then, again and
again.
Until he meets
himself in the middle,
and cries out
Halleluia!
It's over,
the flames
disappearing
behind the curtain.
Oct 13, 2009
Oct 13, 2009 at 12:17 PM UTC
As subtle as it may seem I frighten at the pause inflicted
when standing before a knowing crowd
to speak up and be heard.
My brain rummages in a waste paper basket of words
for meaning but finds nothing that will escape my throat
out into the open where eager eyes wait and watch
for the imminent collapse of discomfort
around me like a skirt dropping without an elastic band.
Yet my head bubbles with exotic words all inside the cranium
but no words escape from even leaking outlets.
I slink in fright at what I may say, some unkempt sentence
something funny or fumbling, never intended.
Yet I write such massive volumes of words unspoken
but tempered in some inner furnace and beaten into poetic shape
asking no one for any help, but writing unaided and unfettered.
I write because all the things I want to say have gone past spoken
experience and now desire to be recognised as written words.
When spoken before a mirror they come alive with different meanings
and wander into understanding without jabs and jarrs or prodding.
Many like me have said the same thing when discussed
and I wonder why that happens so uncomfortably.
Best to leave us alone and not bother to seek our words of wisdom
but our written words as reflections of an inner mirror!
© Marshall Gass. All rights reserved.
Apr 5, 2014
Apr 5, 2014 at 2:55 AM UTC
stagefright! the musical; alternative in terms of Munch's expression: ah! ah! soprano of the silent question exhibited by thinking - silence of everything in the extremes... stagefright - ah! ah indeed, stagefright the musical.
if i'm not being paid -
why would i lie?
the world is big enough
and there enough of us
out there for someone
to cite their life and
be immediately dismissed
as a liar, and everything that
person cites as real to
be treated as unreal -
these are the perks of doing
something without caring
about being paid,
i mean... you'd be really
deluded to have to lie and
not be paid for it: the whole
system of practising law would
crumble - i am, what you might
call a manfred von richthofen...
i'm in a truthful free fall
an icarus... because i care more
for posthumous fame in the
realm of mythology than in
the modern sense of constant
paparazzi intrusion
like being waved a passport
photograph in-front of your face
every time the camera zooms in
and blinks at you with a spasmodic
irritability of a flash;
i'm hoping to get a chair named after me,
a rocking & vibrating chair to
solve sudoku puzzles in.
Mar 7, 2016
Mar 7, 2016 at 3:44 PM UTC
A gauntlet, of sorts...
The proverbial frog in the *** I was.
The temperature of life went from heaven to hell,
and I boiled and drowned in the hate I thought was love.
Question one: who prepared the broth?
Answer: Me...
Stuck in the endless quackery of bottomless insanity.
Tasting the brutal shenanigans of deviant savagery.
I came upon the realization that *** was a tapestry,
that I've been weaving since I was in nappies and won't give up gladly,
but I obsess over the embroidery and the glistening femininity,
what I now know to be delusions of romance and calamity.
Question two: who proved to be unwilling to love in the end?
Answer: Me...
Last question you knave, you hopeless bumpkin.
You wayward host of tasteless pumpkins.
My tactless whims for stagefright dumplings.
Deflated effigies of, "Oh... sweet nothings."
Darling, you crazy, you an expert on bluffings,
Teetering on the cliff, with your pinstriped stuffing.
I carry my shorts on the inside, on the outside I'm long,
Word play is horse **** but if you understand me, you're wrong.
Question three: who sold their soul for entertainment in the end?
Answer: We...
May 3, 2020
May 3, 2020 at 1:23 PM UTC