Inside out
Hollowed out
Whittled away
My organs shaking
My blood frozen
My heart like a hummingbird fleeing
Muscles clenched tight like my fists
My bones, dry like a wishbone on a plate
Eyes dilated
Breath stopped
Lungs full but still
Mouth open and slack
Its effects move through me quickly
Like electricity
Like a venom
Like love and terror
All at once
A lightning strike of feeling.
Author: erainbowd
Most like.
A sentence with two words
Is most like a thought.
Two words of weight.
The first thing one says
After seeing a ghost for the very first time.
That’s all you get.
When everything you believe has been shaken
You can’t manage a verb
You can’t manage a noun
It’s all essence now.
Mark it, Horatio.
Write THIS down, mothafucka!
Record it in your little book
Set it down, get it noted
This is the SHIT.
On the things to be remembered list,
This is at the top
Carv-able in stone this memory
The kind that will last –
You won’t want it lost.
Looks ‘a not like the King?
From “it” to “A”
We cannot Quite call it HIM yet
Not when it is so foreign
So ethereal
So unalive – yet aping a thing that once was alive
Looks ‘a
Looks uh
Not like the king
And yet the king
The likeness is stunning
But so stunning because
It is still NOT the thing it was
It is like it
Not it
We have nowhere to place this likeness
It
A
Speak to it, Horatio.
There are those who seem to be able to talk with anyone.
The prime minister, the garbage man, the clerk at the shop.
With every person, the picture of diplomacy and charm
Ease rolls from his tongue
And he receives words as he delivers them
At his birthday, he gives eloquent thank yous
Before extinguishing his candles
When accepting awards, his words are instantly quotable
We turn to him in moments like these
When we know our own words will be inadequate
We know he can find some.
Thou art a scholar.
You talkin’ to me, Marcellus?
You talkin’ to me?
Did you just “thou” me?
Who do you think I am?
Oh, oh, you’re “thou”ing Barnardo, are you?
He’s a scholar?
No, I am, I’m a scholar.
Didn’t they tell you I’m just back from Witttenberg?
Oh, what?
Sarcasm?
At this moment?
When we’ve got a ghost moving quite uncomfortably quickly in our direction?
Well yes I do think now is the time actually.
Do you just go round thou-ing all of your superiors?
Is this your standard practice?
Yeah, ghost, schmost
Oh. Ghost.
Ghost.
There’s a ghost here.
Wish I had a book right about now.
In the same figure like the King that’s dead.
Barnardo speaks like a foreigner
The way I spoke when in a foreign land.
“Please can you tell me the place where I can buy that thing for the rain that you put
Above your head?”
They said, “ombrella?”
“Ah, yes.” I said.
Barnardo doesn’t say
“Still, he looks like our dead king!”
or
“It’s our dead king walking – just like the last time we saw him!”
No – for Barnardo, this ghost is cloaked in the body of king
but importantly
not the current king
no no
in the body of the king that is no longer with us
except he is.
Here
He is the same as a man who was here before
But not – even in his likeness.
Look where it comes again.
Over there
There
Once more
A ghost.
See
See
Do you
See
There?
Repetition
Hasn’t diminished
The hair-raising-ness
Of this
Entrance.
Once more
A ghost.
Everytime
We forget,
Try to deny
What we have seen
And felt
But lo,
Look.
Once more
A ghost.
Look.
Peace, break thee off.
The branch of your story, growing like a limb,
Arrest it.
Snap the wood;
Cut off the sap flowing to the ends of it
Pushing out leaves.
This thing developing must break
In the face of what is about to happen.
Close the gateway of air and swallow that next thought
You will need every bit of yourself for what is to come.
Last night of all, When yond same star That’s westward from the pole Had made his course t’illume that part of heaven Where now it burns, Marcellus and myself, The bell then beating one –
Settle yourself in for a tale, my friends
I’ve spoken over thirty words and I haven’t even
BEGUN
To finish my sentence.
It was dark
It was just this time
(by the clock and the stars)
with just these people. . .
all circumstances were ripe
and I paint them with lush strokes. Sit you down.
When I guard the palace walls,
I write poems in my head
I have spent one hundred words on the shape of a stone
I have generated paragraphs on the point of my spear
Be careful when you ask me to tell you a story
I am going to tell it
I am going to spin it
Wind it around you
Like yarn on fingers
And a spinning wheel
I will wrap you up in it
Word by word
For my stories, you will need a comfortable chair
And a warm fire. You’re going to be here a while.
The Hamlet Project 