Alan Botsford – Ⅰ
a mamaist (bare) stage
Surrounded by screens but
coolheaded, clearheaded, hardheaded, levelheaded…
The truth is, everyone has secrets
shaping their history, even as they tell it.
Time now to board the time machine
to take you to the bottom line
where grave responsibilities (duty to help
those in need?) await your arrival…
In the meantime, open this door
to understanding more the rough past
looked back on (no end in sight?) and see
how by a shaping imagination is this room (to grow in?)
calling no one’s bluff but your own—
the room moonlighting as the house
with only one mirror seducing lover-like views
made to reorder the company you’re in,
and that keep you on the spot both outside
and inside yet hungry for neither.
For by this house we see and dream
each new room to life to mark the City
as a principle of art, hospitable to the big day
every day—even when or if there’s no one
to make it happen. Here every window
references a view you thought you’d disowned,
opening the gamut of hints and clues (& cues)
that nook the crannies you cannot see
with action you cannot (yet) imagine—the cranium’s
amphitheater-style steps leading to a stage
where, like everyone else, you’re a part
of the scenery, and where, with the intimacy
of the converted, you assume your latest role—
it’s true, it’s larger than life, it gives shape
to your desires—and, donning the disguise you will need
for the next act, like a woman fully manned (gasp!), you
grasp the overall picture when dealing
only with immediate tasks at hand. Watch
as the age queues without qualm to be front row
center, and as the music starts, the lights go up, the curtain parts,
and there…
like a bud in spring…
is your life—the one not knowing anymore how
things should go but offering a shadow–
a giveaway, a whisper—to illuminate what cannot
be recalled without being relived—better late
than never!—for that first time before calamity struck,
before your fall into translation found
you terrified by the blood
on the tracks that followed
you all the way across daybreak
to here.
It took some time
before the words It’s me. It’s me! mixed
your feelings into a reverie others could overhear,
while you and your heartbeat come clean
to insist, Who are you?
It’s then you realize you’re running toward
what’s running away from you into the next
self, a mission both plausible and inspiring to
those who would sign on, their suspended disbelief
tacit admission to the fact this act’s one we’re all in on, out
of necessity—whether lit or unlit by
ceiling fixtures hung like gleaming stars.
And the come-hither look of a non-believer holding
the atom like a crystal ball is all we’ll ever see
of the future, as extension of us, before
the final curtain comes down in that house the world over,
a sob story cribbed from the cosmos, that
entered bloodied, kicking and screaming, but left bone-dry
and good as new.
Surrounded by screens but
coolheaded, clearheaded, hardheaded, levelheaded…
The truth is, everyone has secrets
shaping their history, even as they tell it.
Time now to board the time machine
to take you to the bottom line
where grave responsibilities (duty to help
those in need?) await your arrival…
In the meantime, open this door
to understanding more the rough past
looked back on (no end in sight?) and see
how by a shaping imagination is this room (to grow in?)
calling no one’s bluff but your own—
the room moonlighting as the house
with only one mirror seducing lover-like views
made to reorder the company you’re in,
and that keep you on the spot both outside
and inside yet hungry for neither.
For by this house we see and dream
each new room to life to mark the City
as a principle of art, hospitable to the big day
every day—even when or if there’s no one
to make it happen. Here every window
references a view you thought you’d disowned,
opening the gamut of hints and clues (& cues)
that nook the crannies you cannot see
with action you cannot (yet) imagine—the cranium’s
amphitheater-style steps leading to a stage
where, like everyone else, you’re a part
of the scenery, and where, with the intimacy
of the converted, you assume your latest role—
it’s true, it’s larger than life, it gives shape
to your desires—and, donning the disguise you will need
for the next act, like a woman fully manned (gasp!), you
grasp the overall picture when dealing
only with immediate tasks at hand. Watch
as the age queues without qualm to be front row
center, and as the music starts, the lights go up, the curtain parts,
and there…
like a bud in spring…
is your life—the one not knowing anymore how
things should go but offering a shadow–
a giveaway, a whisper—to illuminate what cannot
be recalled without being relived—better late
than never!—for that first time before calamity struck,
before your fall into translation found
you terrified by the blood
on the tracks that followed
you all the way across daybreak
to here.
It took some time
before the words It’s me. It’s me! mixed
your feelings into a reverie others could overhear,
while you and your heartbeat come clean
to insist, Who are you?
It’s then you realize you’re running toward
what’s running away from you into the next
self, a mission both plausible and inspiring to
those who would sign on, their suspended disbelief
tacit admission to the fact this act’s one we’re all in on, out
of necessity—whether lit or unlit by
ceiling fixtures hung like gleaming stars.
And the come-hither look of a non-believer holding
the atom like a crystal ball is all we’ll ever see
of the future, as extension of us, before
the final curtain comes down in that house the world over,
a sob story cribbed from the cosmos, that
entered bloodied, kicking and screaming, but left bone-dry
and good as new.
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