A Musing Before The Last Drama Lesson

Harold look at me Harold see me Harold turn your head Harold I am here come back Harold he thought. But Harold kept looking right ahead at the worn blue wallpaper. Harold come back Harold bring it back to me I can’t do it anymore I lost it and Will has been dead for centuries and Samuel is dead and Augusto is dead and Bertolt is dead and Peter has gone bonkers with dementia years ago and you are dead but come back to me bring it back to me Harold he thought. Still Harold’s stern, piercing gaze remained away from his face. The wide, ancient-looking nose still sat with the same prominence on his face, the remaining hair still had the same semi-aristocratic silvery glow and the chin still was severe, even more so in old age, all was there; but Harold wouldn’t look at him anymore. Look at me Harold Harold see me and he started weeping, punching the little wooden desk over and over again.

  It used to work. He used to be able to feel them, wear them on, take them off, change them, make them better, get to know them, understand them. The characters. He could wait for Godot as Estragon, his prostate aching, he could question that son-of-a-bitch called Stanley as Investigator Goldberg; and he could turn the entire city of Rome against that treacherous Brutus as Marcus Antonius. He could scheme, he could kill, he could die, he could be overcome with joy, he could swear revenge—he could act, goddammit. The stage was his last homely home back then. He wasn’t giving a single shit that William Shakespeare and Bertolt Brecht were nothing more than a skeleton back then. It wasn’t his concern when Samuel Beckett and Augusto Boal died. He did like Harold Pinter more than most other playwrights, that much was true; but no, no melodramatic sorrow when he died. He went on stage, performed, bowed to the melodious applause, oh the applause, returned home, drunk his late night glass of wine read a few pages of the latest New York Times Bestseller page-turner and slept a good night’s sleep. Just the same. But that was the last night he could act.

  How can one become unable to act, he asked himself for the billionth time, and yet the only answer in his mind was Just like this the words don’t come to you anymore you cannot become someone else you are stuck in this prison cell but then you are not trying to get out No I am trying I am trying so hard I am trying to get it back be able to feel again and be Ah yes all you do is look at the picture on the wall and wait for Harold Pinter to look back at you and worship a stupid pantheon of playwrights Alright then, help me, you but no, there was no help.

Adam, Thank You.

Adam, thank you.
for you did fall
below and through
and blessed us all!
No, it was not
the fault of Eve:
she was too hot
not to believe.
Thanks to your tool
other hot girls
can make us drool
with smells and curves
behind more than
fig leaves—cheers man!

Adam, Fuck You.

Adam, fuck you.
why did you fall
below and through
and cursed us all?
No, it was not
the fault of Eve
though she was hot
we all believe
Thanks to you, fool
other hot girls
make us men drool
with smells and curves
behind more than
fig leaves, oh damn.

The Word

I will whisper it all to your ears
with my mouth, and to the curves of your breasts and thighs
with my hands, or with my mouth if you like
all the secrets, all the words of the spell
all the words of the Lord, all the words
you’ll ever need, all the words
that matter, all the words
in the entire universe:
Your name
and mine—
you just have to remain under my hands
you just have to remain under my mouth
you just have to be listening
you just have to keep your shirt unbuttoned.

**



I also call this "the Three Minute Poem". Simple reason: I was given the lines "You just have to be listening/you just have to keep your shirt unbuttoned." in my Advanced Writing class and was asked to write a poem, in no longer than three minutes, making the two lines above either the first two or the last two lines. Here's the result.

And just as a sidenote, I always love to read some feedback on the poems posted here. So if you're feeling particularly kind, you can use the Comments tool at the bottom of each post. If you can't be bothered, that's also fine, your sparing the time and energy to come here and read my lines is also a wonderful generosity.

Sometimes You Drink Cold Wet Tea

You drink cold wet tea
from a porcelain china teapot
that is convincing enough a fake
you are able to bow in makeshift shame
before the friends who gave it to you
and exclaimed immediately afterwards
with severity and fervour that shook your teeth
you are not at all worth their act of kindness.

You drink cold wet tea
from a porcelain china teapot
that is convincing enough a fake
with its dragons and phoenixes intertwined
you let the good friends who gave it to you
back into the world beyond your sight
you let them be stolen, you give them away
you bless them as they go onto their pilgrimages
and become relics for men, you smile at them
pride dripping from your mouth as they become
fishers of men -and of women every now and then-
you allow them unsatisfactory kisses in little cafés
and movie theatres, you solemnly nod as they
gently give head to those that they come to see
just a bit stockier, just a bit less resolute, just a tiny bit
less fashionable and smart than the One
in drunken hazes, you pray
as they convince themselves, as they get wet,
as they get bitter. You let them out into the world
and let them be, as you ponder what sort of love
or arrogance makes you give such a convincing
fake porcelain china teapot
to one you deemed unworthy
with such absolute clarity.

You drink cold wet tea
from a porcelain china teapot that’s way too hot to hold
but still convincing enough a fake
that while the friends who gave it to you are doing their own thing
you are made sure Beijing cannot be the
polluted colourless shithole your friends claim it to be
and you know there’d be misty little rivers that sang
tea songs in your name, there’d be
rice paddles for you to work, terrace after terrace
and old Kung Fu masters who would greet you
with wrinkled foreheads and funny accents only if
you weren’t deemed unworthy and reforged into
a djinn forced to live within the teapot—

“Oh well,” is all you say
some get to see China,
and some don’t, some fall in love
with idols, some with pricks, sometimes people get drunk
sometimes they’re so desperate they don’t even
need to get drunk, sometimes
Beijing is just a shithole, sometimes Kung Fu masters
have been dead for centuries, sometimes
kisses in little cafés are remembered, sometimes not,
sometimes it’s simply time you moved on, and every once in a while
the china you’re unworthy of is just a masterful fake;
but mostly
a scapegoat is needed
by strangers and friends alike,
and “Oh well,” is all you say
you know with absolute clarity that
you were a natural born.

Sacheen Littlefeather, You Are So Good

Sacheen Littlefeather,
you are so good refusing the Oscar for Marlon Brando,
your perfect braids
you Apache vest with its beads
facing the ground, your Apache vest
with its invisible bloodstains
Sacheen Littlefeather you are so good
with your large mournful eyes, your
large mournful voice, Sacheen, in your eyes
I can see Chief Spotted Elk lying dead
amidst the winter, wearing Western clothing
which did not save him, Sacheen, how will the Earth Mother reclaim him
when the terrified Wounded Knee snow resting, no, dying on Her
embraces him so tight and cold?
Sacheen, I hear Chief Sitting Bull
converting to Catholicism in your voice
I can hear a funeral service for the Great Spirit
I can hear no hills and plains
to graze our horses, to build our tents, to track game
in your voice, Sacheen, our hearts are lost,
Sacheen, our stars are dead, our witch doctors,
their tongues ripped off, the tongue of our culture
ripped off, all lost
except for you, Sacheen Littlefeather
you are so good refusing the Oscar for Marlon Brando
who could not don the Apache vest
himself.

Sacheen Littlefeather,
you are so good posing for Playboy
your braids still perfect
your flawless naked Apache breasts
facing the ground, your naked breasts, sunlit,
lying close to the ground littered with golden daisies
all turning and writhing in the wind,
reaching out to suck on your Apache breasts
Sacheen Littlefeather, you are so good
with your walnut little feathers between your thighs
feathers that could give us all wings
that could ressurect Spotted Elk and Sitting Bull and the Great Spirit
that could be the first blessed grass
on new hills and plains we'd find
Sacheen Littlefeather, within your feathers between your thighs
we could graze our horses, build our tents, track game
but Sacheen Littlefeather,
I appreciate your sacrifice
Sacheen Littlefeather, who I wish could remain youthful forever,
you with your eyes and your voice too small in two thousand twelve,
your breasts and thighs way too large,
I appreciate the sacrifice you made, Sacheen Littlefeather,
you are so good undressing for Playboy
which could never take off the Apache vest
itself.

A Poem Is A Sweatshop

I retreat to the sweatshop
that is the poem:
First I form an expression
a face of the wife and the children waiting back home
a face of sweat and filth and coal dust and missing teeth
so that what’s inside, the sound of the chains that do not break
will remain unheard by the foreman
will remain unknown to the world
beyond the torques and the steam and the assembly line
-which is uninterested anyways- to which I deny
being a slave, to which I declare this:
All that you consume ferociously, all your gadgets and toys,
all are my sweat within the poem
and they will all return to that primeval form when
I’m thirsty and I deem it time, be prepared.

I live in the sweatshop
that is the poem:
It all roars, the air itself rolls and creaks
It all moves, it all turns, churns oozes bursts
(Day shift at the sweatshop an onslaught,
Night shift at the sweatshop an onslaught, too;)
An orchestrated betrayal from within, the world betrays you:
it has stolen from you what is within
and what is even deeper within
it has stolen from you what is within
the Earth Mother’s womb for you, and it feasts
on everything that has ever been yours so that you will
live within the poem
die within the poem.

I die in the sweatshop
that is the poem.
They undress me in a capitalist sternness
for the poem needs the clothes back,
they rub the grease off my body with a cheap sponge
and a disinterest cheaper still
both of which stain more than they clean
and they throw me outside on the industrial waste piles
piles upon piles all burning within:
Fools, they never checked my pulse once they employed me
it stops only now, after being thrown off
there was so much more they could still drain from my veins within the sweatshop
that is the poem. But not anymore.

I’ve never felt
more dead.

And then I depart the sweatshop
that is the poem
in nothing but my own skin wrapped tight around the bones
and when the sickly skin rots and the bones go to the rabid dogs who die and rot soon, too,
what a fool the poem is:
for every single letter of it I laboured over
it gives another piece of me back to Mother Earth,
that lascivious bitch, she’ll make me all sorts of things:
plane trees, strawberries, mountains, a cold stream, China, a herd of elephants

I enter the sweatshop that is the poem
a blear-eyed slave claimed to be a worker
I exit the sweatshop that is the poem
the world itself.