I’m quitting the show
Ain’t my time to shine
Time to quicksand myself
Deep into my mind
No silence up in these fires
Can’t catch a break in these tides
Don’t know which way is up
But I know I’m going down
So mad at all these spectres
Don’t know if they’re mine
But they whisper me stories
And I can’t sleep at night
I’m afraid of that silence
But I need that constant buzz
So I just sit here ruminating
How nobody else hears these sounds
What is it we do
To ourselves late at night
As the coals simmer softly in the darkness?
The moon doesn’t exist for us,
There’s too much romance we’ve applied
To that ball of dust in the sky we’ve allied.
We’ve forgotten about the Romantics:
Wordsworth’s rainbows and Blake’s grain of sand.
But we have ourselves still –
We really do.
And we sit in the dark
In our own shadows
Within the shadow of something else.
That pain inside
We can’t quite understand.
All competing for a love we will never receive –
So it goes…
So we blend ourselves into the dark
Like the artist rubbing the charcoal on the page.
We ask questions we don’t understand
So any answer wouldn’t be noticed.
At the sight of a ray of light spilling through
A wooden blind
We see an opportunity to celebrate;
Celebrate not the light
But the unlit.
These tropes of light and dark!
Tiresias who saw all; Oedipus who did not.
Yet Oedipus saw, Tiresias did not.
So what is it then?
This grotesque Romanticism of smudging ourselves?
We’re splatters of one colour
On the same coloured canvas.
But we want to be noticed.
We still want to be seen.
I give my hand
You stare at it
Green eyes meet look away
Nobody is perfect
I know
But I’m here for you
Don’t you see?
You can’t
You’ve turned the
Other way.
I tried to carry
Your cross with you
But you’d rather
Let it fall
And break into
Splinters.
Maybe heroes aren’t real
After all.
Maybe the cross we carry
Will be the last weight
That weighs down our
Hopelessly lost purpled souls.
“All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others.”
– George Orwell, Animal Farm
I weep:
I weep because we see skin
before we see circumstance;
I weep because we’re weak,
and I weep because we think we’re strong.
I weep because it feels like
equality is an ideal;
I weep because Orwell was right.
I weep because we’ve forgotten how to laugh;
I weep because our index fingers grow
and our hearts shrink.
I weep because I don’t feel like I belong;
I weep because democracy
is not about the people;
I weep because politics
are about personalities,
and I weep because freedom
does not mean we’re free.
I weep because this is how I feel…
I never stood a chance:
I already counted myself
out.
I don’t belong here,
take him away with you
on a cloud of happy hedonism.
And I’ll watch on my back
as the cloud changes form
to the demons I see inside me.
I’m used to this feeling
of knives stabbing inside,
and I have fertile furrows
down my cheeks.
He’s yours after all,
I could never fit in the picture,
the camera was built for two –
and I’m a third.
I give in, I give up.
I bow out:
applaud and approve.
Stumble into a crowded haze:
searching and seeking fun times…
DRUGIE LUSTY SEXUALLY ALCOHOLIC EUPHORIALS
hedonistic t-shirts
snapback suppressions
skinny jeans suffocating
used needles
white mirrors
rolled up notes
broken bulbs:
ruined in these ruins…
But we want this.
Razor blades
rotten teeth
failed jobs
butchered hearts
& puffy scars.
Dozen pills popping
dawn to dusk sipping,
wars & weapons
shooting and stabbing at rules
to pass the time.
Do we even care?
I don’t care
don’t care about you.
Taught by my father
who was never there
to abandon and run,
evade and suppress.
This is the life I want, I preach!
Striving for Club 27
HELL YEAH!
We’re c-c-crazy!
Live fast die young,
I don’t wanna live.
Don’t even care!
No compassion here.
Pull the trigger on yourself,
brother bear.
The character enters and sets up a video camera which faces him. He pushes a button on the camera and says something to indicate it’s recording. There is a mirror on stage. The mirror reflects the audience back at themselves. The character addresses the audience directly.
Only two types of people are noticed in this world. Only the best and the worst of humanity are recorded. Mandelas and Hitlers; Mother Tereasas and Bin Ladens; Gods and monsters. Never people like me. Too ordinary, too normal. People like me are merely the darkness of the night sky allowing for the best and the worst to shine brightly.
I’m nothing special… I have enough friends to not be an outcast… But I feel so alone. Sitting at a party with my friends hearing everyone talking about their lives, I just feel distant. Like I’m on the outside looking in. That’s exactly it. Standing in the cold rainstorm of my own rage looking into a huge glass window at everyone warm and happy inside.
My friends don’t know I’m hurting inside. It’s always been easy for me to pretend. I’ve been pretending my whole life. Pretended I was okay with being told I was adopted… Pretended I was okay with my brother’s death at cancer’s hands… Pretended I was okay when I read this letter from my biological mother… (Reading from a letter he removes from his pocket.) “You’re not mine, you never were. I didn’t ask to be raped, I didn’t want you. I don’t want to make contact with you ever.”
I don’t think I could ever describe how deeply that hurts me… That I’m the by-product of crime… A forced mistake. My father, a criminal probably not even aware that I exist, that he has a child. (Pause). I’m a nobody (looking in mirror) an ugly nobody fuckup with no sense of belonging. (Pause).
(Addressing the camera more directly now). Now I want you to understand that I’m thankful to you both for trying to make me feel like I belong when I’m clearly a mistake. But neither of you can change the truth. You might have raised me, but I’m not yours. I’m nothing. A human who was forced into this world by a man’s need to dominate.
He takes the mirror and places it on the floor roughly. He proceeds to take his foot and ram it into the mirror in order to break it. He picks up a piece of broken mirror.
This is all I am. A shattered reflection of this fucked up world. And I’m tired of reflecting a world that doesn’t care… I don’t want to be here when the future arrives… (Looking directly at the camera.) Mom… Dad… I’m not sorry for this, I’m sorry for being the cracked reflection of this world.
He takes the shard of mirror and uses it to end his life.
Look to the moon
on clear nights;
know I’m looking too.
Smile through any pain,
knowing it’s the same moon!
Our eyes meet on its unexplored surface,
like two souls meet in life.
Laugh through the loneliness
and I’ll laugh through mine.
And we’ll both howl at the same moon,
dancing because it’ll be fine.
Broken pieces joined by moonbeams
of longing.
We know it will be okay,
because even in darkness
Light shines like Hope.
He stares out of the misty window
into the fogged, greying world
illuminated and sliced open
by one warm Moonbeam of Hope.
Cruising down this Highway Avenue of Life –
the nostalgic Music filling the voids left behind
by the chemical wars fought inside –
he is at ease.
His blue eyes stretch beyond infinities of Sky…
His glossy gaze meets the Moon’s Rays
of Hope in this bumper-to-bumper world:
a Constellation of nine Stars smile brightly
through the darkness of space
as they frame the Moon’s Secretive Smile.
It is here –
in the Honeymoon of his Thoughts –
that he finds the Mysteries of the Moon’s Beauty
tucked away neatly in a Pocket of Sky.
His Thoughts are held together by his five star Mind,
found dancing in the Moonlight of Inspiration,
as his body is showered in his tears
with a ceiling of glittering Stars staring down.
His sadness is blown away with the withered words of hurt
he releases from his Mind,
like a thunder-cloud that releases its darkness
to create Newness.
Four-cornered gods of reflection dictating their insecurities
are reduced to simple stardust in the Moon’s Fire
which ignites his Mind
making real, through word, the Daydreams of his Love.
He has one less problem of heartache tonight
as he lays his pain to rest in his marshmallow lined thoughts
in the creative cloud-mansion of his Future.
Walk out; walk in,
into my restless life:
a lie
a waiting
a lie…
Waiting for you; lying about me.
Let you in;
let me out.
I want to shout!
Hold me close;
hold me far.
I might not die tonight.
Be with me –
complete me.
It’s cold out here
where love don’t shine.
Give me a reason,
stay for a while.
Give me your shirt –
let me inhale your fumes.
It feels so right!
This can’t be wrong.
Mr Individualist 