Each night the old gypsy
Gets a little tipsy.
He falls asleep and dreams
Of all that more than seems.
Beside him lays his oud,
Vibrating strings and wood,
His bottle of red wine —
Essence of the Divine.
He tightly grips his cane
To bash away the rain,
Or bat the falling star,
Erasing its bright scar.
A lion, maybe real,
Could make of him a meal.
Some of us never get past our stage fright.
I forget my lines, stand stiff and dumb,
Unable even to exit, stage right.
My ears roar with white noise, my tongue goes numb.
The sight of clustered eyes — the audience
With its expectations, its curt demands,
Its taut, arms-crossed, unforgiving silence —
Fills my head with endless ampersands.
Each remembered line is followed by “&.”
& then? & then? & like an hourglass,
I become empty of yet-to-fall sand —
& then come the billows of laughing gas,
Off stage, the director’s disgusted look,
A finger across his throat, then the hook.
Possible chairs. Impossible chair.
Thought prints like graphite on white stone,
No less real than drawing on air.
(One is the only one unknown.)
The rocker can’t stop and will fall.
Not every three-legged stool stands.
The bentwood arm chair has no front.
The best words, written with an awl,
Are those that no-one understands,
Like this, an impossible stunt.
Don’t tell me these chairs are not real.
You might as well say pairs won’t peel,
That a compass can square the wheel,
Or that what is dead is ideal.
