Submitted by Benjamin Gorman on February 25, 2012
Back to the boards tonight
to heft a character like a costume
like a winter coat
an armor
and a costume too
something he would wear
move about in spaces that are his
or where he went, anyway
according to someone else
neither of us knows
who pulls strings from afar and ago
gives us both purpose for a night
Submitted by Benjamin Gorman on February 23, 2012
At night you can look straight into deep space
stars so far and numerous they seem a stain
the dark uncharted enormity
by day, neatly hidden away
behind a lovely blue wall, or
sullen or boiling gray mask
it would be too much all the time
too much always to take in
implacable maw of eternity agape
we look at night, when we're tired
blood's tide ebbing, wonder outpacing fear
we sleep, let the dreamer out to play there
Submitted by Benjamin Gorman on February 22, 2012
Oldest scribe
yourself the pen
scratching lines into clay
ten times ten thousand years
before we made such marks of our own
We soon abandoned the old ways
grew tired of pushing the line
the endless line
but you knew
the truth of the line
comes from a pen
in the elemental grip
of time’s unfolding
You write raw history
told you by wind and water
direct, uninterpreted
“this is what happened”
Your secret truth beguiles us
we of monkey patience:
we see only evidence of impossibility
under tight-lipped sunlight
and do not believe.
Submitted by Benjamin Gorman on February 18, 2012
Well, somebody better do these dishes, I said to the sink
The faucet looked forlorn but said nothing,
maintained its hangdog attitude
They’re not going to do themselves, I said
hoping to be proven wrong and suddenly sanguine about telekinesis
The desiccated sponge cracked a hopeful smile
The dishes themselves looked away
tried to appear pathetic in their food-stained dishevelment
An echoing drip in the gullet of the sink
added the requisite touch of melancholy
I sighed
All right then, let’s help each other, I said
pushing up my sleeves
Submitted by Benjamin Gorman on February 17, 2012
Chatting backstage,
a castmate and I
compare our mothers’ ages,
both coming on 80.
Mine is 30 years older than me;
she recalls feeling embarrassed
to be the oldest mother on the maternity ward
Tonight I play a man a dozen years older than me;
last year this time,
I played a man 20 years younger.
When I get home after the show
I wipe off the lines, the shadowing,
rinse out the gray from my hair
Under the fake lines
I find real ones growing
fields furrowed by invisible plows
gray at the temples
that doesn’t rinse out
Age seems more fluid
but time is rushing now
a relentless pace
almost a roar in the ears
Tomorrow night
I’ll sample my future
once again,
draw on dark lines
over the ones
that don’t come off.
Pages
