Nothing like the use of “unhand me”
To signal classical style.
You need only say, “Unhand me, you brute” to conjure up
An olde worlde full of Renaissance men
Galloping on their horses and seizing hold of ladies
In bosomy white blouses busting out of corsets.
It’s robust, “unhanding.”
Were I to say it now, I could not do it unironically
But it’s a shame
Given what a succinct and forceful way it is to say
“Get your stinkin’ hands off me, jerk!”
Hamlet
Still am I called.
Sometimes it feels like someone is striking a gong
Over and over again.
Just when I think the sound has died away
When I can’t hear it anymore
When I think I’m free of it
The sound gest louder again as it’s struck with the felt covered mallet.
When it’s first struck, the gong is impossible to ignore and it reminds me
That the sound has never stopped
The call has only gotten weaker –
So weak one can forget about it for the moment
But still ringing
When it is struck anew.
My fate cries out And makes each petty artere in this body As hardy as the Nemean’s Lion’s nerve.
Fate sits in a drawer in the closet.
It’s crowded in there. Fate is tangled up with an old phone chord,
7 dead batteries, a small flashlight, an assortment of keys that no one
knows the locks for. It shares space with a baseball card,
a smattering of paper clips and a doorknob.
Dust and lint jockey for room in there.
Fate is waiting. It’s listening. It knows it is not up to much
In this moment – but at just the right prompt, when the moment arrives
It will burst forth and take over.
Fate will seize its moment, surge ahead –
There will be no stopping it.
Hold off your hands.
There’s something so much more precise about this command –
More precise than “get your hands off me” even, because
If you HOLD your hands off,
You will not quickly seize me again.
I picture Marcellus and Horatio
With hands held inches away from Hamlet, almost frozen there
As if time has stopped and they are compelled to remain there,
Waiting to grab him
But held with hands off.
You shall not go, my lord.
Marcellus risks the transgression of boundaries.
One doesn’t usally issue commands to a prince
But Marcellus risks it. Horatio does too, but Marcellus pushes it farther.
I’m really keen on this Marcellus as Hamlet’s closer friend at the top of the show idea.
There is some parallel story that could fall into place; Marcellus gets his own play
Like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Every bit I read adds up to this new point of vew.
Then, of course, there is the Marcellus Quarto, famous for having a really fleshed out
bit of text for Marcellus and a little bit spottier printings for the rest of the cast.
Maybe in that quarto, the guy playing Marcellus inserted himself a little bit more prominently in the text.
But Marcellus disappears.
What is the title of his play?
Marcellus knows where they can find him most conveniently
Marcellus will not let him go.
I’ll follow thee.
He’s said he will follow it a few times.
Here, suddenly, he speaks to it
And with familiar speech, too.
Is he using the familiar “thee” because the ghost is his father or because he’s a ghost?
Horatio uses thou with the ghost as well.
Perhaps ghosts just automatically get the familiar speech
Despite their unfamiliarity.
Me, I feel like I might want to get more polite with a supernatural creature.
I might want to use some deference
Some formal speech
Elevate its status
Just to be safe.
Especially if that creature were a king –
Dead or not, he’s still wearing a crown,
Or at least metaphorically,
In this case the ghost would appear
To be wearing a helmet
One with a beaver
That he wears up, revealing his ghostly face.
Go on.
That’s all there is to do sometimes.
Just
Go on
And on.
I’m chomping at the bit in my mouth
Longing to go in another direction.
Not that any of those paths
Are necessarily any better
But this one is leading me
It’s got me bridled and saddled
With a heavy cart at my back.
No matter how much I resist
I will still have to go on.
But I chew and chew on this bit
Waiting for the signal
That I can run free in a new direction.
It waves me still.
It has broken my heart
Again and again,
Sometimes reccurringly in the same place
Rebreaking a broken line
Tearing open a recently stitched up wound
Cracking a newly healed bone –
But it has also found new places to break
Corners previously untouched can be shattered
Edges torn
And still there are bits of it unbroken.
Even so, even with my heart stitched together
With twine and briars
Stapled, like a paper crown,
Taped, duct taped and ace bandaged,
When it waves
When something moves me anew
When it calls out to me,
I cannot ignore it.
I’ll follow it.
It may tempt me toward the flood –
I think it does, quite often.
It may bring me to edge of a cliff
It may break bones
It may cut me open
It may empty my purse
Rip it from my arm, slash it open,
Scatter its contents on the ground
Then take everything of value.
It may fray my hems
Split my seams
Tear holes in the fabric.
It may replace sweetness with bitterness
Enthusiam with gritted teeth
Hope with cynicism.
The dangers are many
The rewards unlikely.
It may wear out my shoes
As I trail along behind
But I have to –
I will.
I’ll follow it.
It waves me forth again.
There are forms and ideas I think I have done with –
The art stuffed into a drawer, locked in the back of the closet, under a pile of clothes,
In a can in the garage, stuffed behind the bookshelf
And I’m there, too, hiding, or resting
Or simply trying to pretend I am small
And insignificant.
But Art finds its way out first and with its dusty arm, beckons for me to follow it.
Unfolding my legs
Shaking out my wings
Clearing the dust from my nostrils, I
Bow my head and drive forward.
The Hamlet Project 