The salons of Venice
The Globe Theatre on its first opening
The birth of the 8 limbed girl
The moment a baby first laughed
When Madame Curie discovered radium
When Rilke met Lou Andreas-Salome
When Hendrix took the stage at Woodstock
When Sarah Vaughn stepped up to the mic
At the moment “Eureka” was first shouted
And every subsequent Eureka
But also the dark moments
Alone in corners
Feeling so far from human warmth
I wish I could be there too
To bear witness and to hug.
Author: erainbowd
Most constantly.
What is it like to have one focus?
To pursue, singlemindedly, one thing
One idea
To be only the wave of the ocean constantly battering the shore,
Without being also the shore
And the seashells
The sand
The missing flipper
The amoeba
The wind and the sky?
My brain is like a hummingbird
Flitting from flower to flower and
Sometimes hovering outside your window.
And fixed his eyes upon you?
It is our eyes that lead us
Even when they are closed.
If my eyes look left
My body will, if all’s in order,
Look left too.
And if we fix our eyes to something
We let it lead us
Like a sailboat on the lake
Following the wind everywhere it turns.
But if we watch something so closely
It feels as if we are the cat
With a mouse in its sights
Waiting to pounce.
Who is leading, the mouse
Dancing from here to there
Or the cat whose gaze
Follows it everywhere?
Nay, very pale.
Funny how the blood runs away
From the face sometimes.
Where does it go when we go wan with fear?
Where does it run when we see something horrifying?
Does it hide in dark corners trembling?
Pulling all the colors from our cheeks
Giving us the sense of what we might look like dead.
Pale or red?
When I got nervous
My chest would turn both pale and red
A sort of splotchy anger rose to the surface of my skin
Revealing all I had been attempting to hide. The blotches would often elicit a gasping concern
From the people around me –
The other auditioners or the speech contestants.
This is how I discovered the curiosity of my biology.
I looked down to what those competitors were pointing at
With their hands over their mouths
To see what they saw.
It was a while before I could answer
Without looking down
Before I could say “Oh, it’s fine. I just get splotchty when I get nervous.” This sort of physical transparency of my vulnerability, my emotional state
Laid bare for all to see
Sometimes made me feel cursed –
Especially in those moments
In which I was meant to be portraying beauty.
I took some pride in this part of my body
So to find it marred,
Disfigured by my emotions
Began a long battle between me and my emotions.
My betrayers , My gossipy tattle tale emotions
Leaking out wherever they could find a way
From the pale red of my chest
To the unstoppable tears in the face of someone’s cruelly
To the hunched shoulders of a girl protecting it all.
A countenance more in sorrow than in anger.
At the end of his life
The king walks the walls of his kingdom
Sadness pouring off him like fog.
He’s been murdered.
His life cut short by a man who
He likely loved and trusted.
He has a right to be angry
But as he walks over the parapets
He fills the space with a terrifying air of despair.
What, looked he frowningly?
Turned down lips that purse a bit
Eyes toward the feet
Or narrowed
Focused to burning point
Jaw thrusts forward, up
Grinding into the skull
Brow furrows.
The frowning can begin here in the face
And spread to the shoulders
Folding them down and in
Like andirons before a fireplace
Hinged tighter
Chasing the fire out
The spine rolls out in the middle
Away from the fire
The belly ripples
Even the toes can huddle together for warmth.
He wore his beaver up.
Ay me hearties, place yer beaver
Upon yer head
Wear it up or down
The really tough amongst you
Will wear ‘em live
Tail up, teeth hovered over yer head
Ready to bite anything that comes too close.
Wear your beaver down
Most people’ll leave you alone
Cause a down-tailed beaver fella
Keeps to himself
We can all respect a beaver-wearing rogue
Who doesn’t want to get involved with your shenanigans.
O, yes, my lord.
Ideas ideas ideas
Ideas that connect
One to another
One that catches fire
Which catches another on fire
A growing conflagration of making
It is the dreaming of creating
That makes everything sing.
Then saw you not his face?
Without my glasses on
I couldn’t be sure it was him.
It was his shape
His form
His gait
His hair
His clothes
His gestures
But his features
Were a blur
I couldn’t tell if he was smiling
Or frowning
Displeased
Or pleased.
There is so much in a face.
The Hamlet Project 