The over prepared understudy

It is too late for some.

But you-

     You have arrived early

I see...barely.

Still,

you are here Now,

and glad as I may-be-

the lighting is too lime.

Notice:

when lit

Red

_On Air_

Please remain silent (until instructed)

to *LAUGH*

It will make sense

later. In sync now.

You will make others feel better

             staying so small.

Paranoia, now that was non-sense.

Don't take it wrong.

Happy to have you

closer in proximity.

It helps with reruns and rehearsals.

Can you clear me now? Touch me back. I will erase

you later.

Your steam box is stocked,

spliced lines strung taut to span

and other puppet conclusions pulled

off and on; all or nothing wound up.

See, these are decent occupations.

Twisted dearly elusive creatives

try to embrace your loneliness like this-

center stage. Affront and Solo.

The audience of actors shall applaud

                   with gusto.

It is the Last Act.

Your timing has never been better.

Painting by Everett Shinn (1903) in [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

In-syndication-Nation

The stream of unconsciousness is now paid by subscription,
binge zoning, apple watching vegetable-arians
we see and squat-what plot?
With over one hundred high definition channels
something new, something true, something not blue-light-
or that you've never seen or heard before,
the source says it All.

And another rerun-
that one you know so well you mouth the final words
better-off dead
in your head.

That poor real child of the child in the old episode
of that Forensics science show-
you know the one whose mother was murdered
brutally because of her baby,
Plays over and over,
like a bedtime story.
And the child knows the last lines
by heart
because the last name is the same.

What about that Robert Zimmerman,
commonly known as folks 'Bob Dylan'-
boy-back in the day-he played that rebels cause,
changed his own name to comply-
in a word
Why,
I heard
leading double lives can be prized as Nobel-
isn't that swell, a dissidents dream so it seems
easy to win and lose
(poetic expressions).

Again and again, we trend to be
episodic and neurotic, we act
on impulses
wanting and willing
to forget we know the end,
we can pretend this is a new one
We watch it again, bewildered still
by old made new,
again,
and again and again
in-continuity
of the remotest control.

Shock and Awe
(the sequel).




Photo taken by Cecil W. Stoughton, May 5, 1961 [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.
(Description: Watching flight of Astronaut Shepard on television. Left to right: Vice President Lyndon Johnson, Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., Admiral Arleigh Burke, President Kennedy, Mrs. Kennedy. White House, Office of the President's Secretary)

In the Out Door

Do not believe,
Just Be-Live, Do
Not exist
Just to exit.



















Image By Rosser1954 (Own work) [Public domain], taken 2/21/10 via Wikimedia Commons, Dalmore House front door. 

The predator on top of his prey

They became civilized
after many ages
and stages of refinement.
They wanted to live longer,
a race with no finish line.
They practiced,
they failed much, succeeded few.
They fought and resisted
they conceded and persisted.
They started
by removing death threats,
like hunger
and

exposure

They experimented
with potions and rhetoric.
They bottled magic
and peddled poisons,
to live
more
and they did.

They lived so long
they forgot their youth,
they jumped to the end,
decrepit at the start
with nothing to grow on.

They followed tradition,
it led them along.
Their bodies decay from security,
hearts get bored with emotion,
their mind aches,
blinded by the reflection.
They never should have lived
this long
this way-
which is why
they prey
on weakness
to make
go away
They
will
be done.
All men.




Image by Hans Holbein the Younger (1497/1498–1543) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Pre-recorded: The following is not a Live poem

It's not like it used to be...
We used to dream about making robots
do our menial work, not our magical works-
those things only humans can do:
like cry, create
and ideate
ways to make life easier on us
less of us needed
participation nonessential.
(human auto-pilots)
A sweet serenade
became a re-mix, betwixt by
the sound, dubbed for deaf ears.
A vocal scale made smooth
by the synthesizer, equalizer
(humanizer).
An actor feels no butterflies
when he appears on the inside
of the idiot box,
he's no cracker jack.
Legs are not broken on blue-ray
slipped discs, but no risks.
It's bare (bones) entertainment.
Pictures say many things, it's said
about what is no longer true
they cut a slice of time, etched
on mirrored paper.
Once around
the fire, stories were told
yarns knitted
and lore was learned.
This was way before the plague
of plagiarism, words were invented
and tailored to suit.
Reproduce en mass,
a photo, a note, striking a chord
a player piano
knows your tune
pre-recorded originality
plays on repeated loops
serenading us
out of our own mortality.

“Nothing has really happened until it has been recorded.”

-Virginia Woolf

Image By New York : Broadway Music Corp., publisher. [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons, sheet music cover. 

Emancipation of empathy

The father leaves
the delivery room
unable to wrap his grey brain
around her bloody pain.
The mother knows now
she is alone,
responsible for their survival.

The baby opossum,
smiling and listless,
lays still blinking away flies
from his glassy black eyes.
Rejected by his mother,
he dies alone
in the fresh cut grass.

A mother sits with her grown son,
worry lines her face connecting
the years between them.
Pain wrenches his body,
suffering they endure it side by side;
one will live,
one will die.

Salvation is a single passenger of deliverance
traveling through the tortuous view
arriving as a vicarious vacancy
forgetting and letting the suffering go,
anothers pain, one and the same.


Image By Correggio (Antonio Allegri) (Italy, Parma, circa 1489-1534) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.