strobe lights on a distant stage……..

by doreen peri

Posted to Action Poetry on 2001-07-18 07:26:00

strobe lights on a distant stage when the laughter stops


we have a screen between us
tapping away private stories
opening up doors to bliss,
treasures lost and amiss,
agony, defeat, completeness
and there’s a strobe light flashing

and we can barely see each other
in between lines, and i’m collecting metaphors
from the mouths of real people who sweat
and bleed and cry and laugh and i’m
writing them down while they stare
at me wondering how i live in a box

but it’s the drama of it all that
keeps us all peeking through keyholes
into verses, sentences, responses,
paragraphs of defense,
outlines of argument,
disconnected threads of trust,
words strewn laden with promises,
hugs and hearts in an electronic nether —
zapping idioms, declaring terror, passion,
ardent lust, and there’s people on the other side
of heaven, paradise lost in a vaccuum

and, yes, i have witnessed self-proclaimed demigods
come out of hiding, dropping an a-bomb or two
on unexpecting faces, no meaning here,
revealing names in cryptic paralyzed phrases
melding stanzas and strophes,
but there’s a blind spot
on the internet highway, you know,
and it’s all conjecture because nobody
actually knows what any of this means,
and yet they tap and judge
and twist fables around
the inside of lives
and they can only see
fractions on a flash of a strobe

and i’m back and forth
between writing and
wondering who i am
and i’ve been disillusioned
for several eternities now
but today i have paradise screaming
from two ends of nowhere
or maybe it’s somewhere
and i don’t know
my name sometimes

and maybe we’re the blind leading the blind
and i’ve lost my glasses and i’m waiting for wings
to fly me away but i don’t know
where i’ll end up and
maybe all of this is just god’s little joke,
maybe he let’s us have fun for a while
gets us elated, teaches us the beauty of adoration
from a ghost audience, lets us meditate
on the timing and twists of poetry
and then puts obstacles in the way,
plays with our heads until we’re lying
on a platform being stared at

naked

and sometimes all the laughing stops –
yes, all the laughing stops

so here i am on stage
and someone’s watching me —
i think it’s the proctor but they’ve
taken away his script
and he can’t feed me lines
and it’s my turn to speak but i can’t hear him —
he’s blindfolded and has some kind of
mask around his lips and i know
he’s mouthing the lyric but
it doesn’t sound like paul simon
and it doesn’t sound like pink floyd
but i’m still on the dark side of jupiter
quickly approaching mercury
and there’s no notes,
no lines, nothing,
and the audience is waiting
silently staring, jaws dropped,
as if i might have something
valid to say about it all

and they’re reading between lines,
coming to conclusions
but the light’s flashing so brightly
in sequences, all they can see
are little glimpses
of my face, little traces
of my tears

and yet they think they
just might know the end of the story
or the middle or the beginning
but really they know nothing
because there is no plot
since how the hell can anybody
come to conclusions
when i’m falling up
through floodlights and
i’m all over the stage —
left right, center
and i’m trying to
find my mark on the floor
and i’m all over the place and
i hear myself say,
i don’t know where you stand

so i’m crying very hard now,
dimming the light,
lighting a candle because
edison never said i couldn’t be romantic
and add a shadow flicker on
a screen you can’t see through anyway,
while mozart and chopin
and the weeping of blues guitars
trip me away

no, there’s no director and i’m frozen
and my eyes are blinded by footlights
and i know if i move, i might trip and fall
so i just stand there looking for my glasses

and people are writing
funeral pieces,
coming back resurrected
and it’s a strobe light under
a vacant pulse
and i’m starting to fly
all over the page
but it’s all jumbled,
there’s too much of it
and i can’t get the lines
in order
to do an edit

no, it’s not opening night any more —
the show must go on,
the curtain’s up,
but it doesn’t mean
that’s me up there, now does it?

because unless you’ve crawled inside my eyes
and sat inside my skin and fed my children
and walked on my treadmill and eaten at my table
and recorded my conversations in your heart
slept with me on cold cotton sheets
with distant breezes blowing through,

you don’t even know me.


(c) doreen peri, 10/19/2000
all rights reserved