I’ll say.
I woke up with swelling that felt like a softball at the back of my throat this morning.
I fought my way to the surface of wakefulness
Only to find myself discouraged by the state of my art.
I dreamed I was in a play
For which I’d forgotten to read the 2nd half of the script,
In which I played a character named “Sharon.”
I waded my way through the performance
Script in hand
Lights too dim to read it.
But despite the misery and shame of all the mistakes –
What I remember most was that laugh that the audience rewarded me with
When I reached out to them.
In the midst of what was a standard Actor’s Nightmare.
I left with the peace of having been with an audience –
Having connected.
I woke up, though, and found that I have no rehearsal to go to,
No lines to go over
No performance about to put me before the audience
And I don’t know what process could ever have me there again.
I can’t say they didn’t warn me when I chose this path
Oh so many years ago. They very strenuously did.
But there was no choice then
As there is none now
Even though this path seems to lead in circles
I must keep putting one foot in front of the other
Because this circle is my circle
No matter how unwell it is.

They call weapons and shields and armor arms.
We had that arms race and it wasn’t
To see whose arm could reach the cookie faster.
It seems a mighty disservice to the arms
Of our bodies – to be in those arms
Is to be held, to be caressed, encircled,
A soft and steady comfort.
There is so much more to be done with arms
More dancing more waving
More reaching more tickling
More propping oneself up while reading.
Weapons have such singularity of purpose
Arms can hold everything
Even weapons.

Sometimes it’s hard to see.
Growing up
Moving away
Losing daily contact with it
But when the fog of all that lifts
When the veil of the past gets pulled aside
And the curtain rises
On who he really is –
I can see my father’s spirit
Within him.
It makes its way to the surface
In acts of kindness
In moments of wondering
In expressions of love and concern.
Seeing the spirit within the man
While he lives
While I can still hug the man
That houses the spirit
Reminds me that I should do just that
As often as I can
Because it’s a spirit to cherish.

The only time people say this anymore is in movies
Or when they’re joking
Or in long lists of goodbye words
Such as those mentioned
In cute children’s songs in musicals featuring goat herds.
Why did it fall out of favor?
When?
When did it drift further and further out to sea
Until it slipped
Over the horizon
Into the past?
Watching words ebb and flow
Is like that sometimes
They bob along on the waves of culture
And then one day
They just slip into the salt water
Their little heads
Never resurfacing more.

I don’t know, man.
Marcellus and Barnardo and such
Are always played as Plebes
Who’re just the security dudes
Looking out for the country along the walls
But it feels awfully much like
They have a relationship with Hamlet.
He keeps insisting that he loves them; They know where to find him most conveniently.
I’ve never seen it played this way
But I’m so intrigued by the notion
That these guys are Hamlet’s friends.
They disappear after the first bit
But they keep his secret presumably
When his other “Friends’ Rosencrantz and Guildenstern
Spill whatever beans they happen to stumble across.
Are Horatio, Marcellus and Barnardo all part of the same night watching fraternity?
I want to see the play
That follows Marcellus and Barnardo
After the fact.
What does the ghost do to them?
Gertrude can’t see it
But all these guys can.
Does the ghost continue to appear to them in subsequent scenes?
Does he instruct them away from the narrative of the play?
We could call it Marcellus and Barnardo are Disappeared.

Where’s my Lexicon?
I want to look up “platform.”
What exactly does he mean?
I picture a stage
At the top of the castle
A little spot for the wandering players
To do tragedies under the stars
Or for Yorick to work up a little stand-up set with his make-shift microphone
Back in the days, before check 1-2
Up among the ramparts
The one-man Punch and Judy show
May have made all the noble children laugh
As the wind whipped the skirt of his theatre
Around the puppeteer’s legs
The perfect setting for a ghost’s appearance
As every ghost needs a stage
And an audience.

Give it to me
Wrapped
Or unwrapped,
Smooth or jagged
With music or without
With sugar or with salt
You can set it on fire
Or set it afloat
Feathered
Or scaled
Spicy or
Mild.
And I will answer your love with love in whatever form I happen to receive it or perhaps even transmogrified.

I’ll give you some understanding alright
Oh yeah.
But the boundary is the tongue
We’ll keep the tongue out of it.
It is quite remarkable to have a tongue.
This muscle, powerful, agile, sensitive
Protected only by the shallow walls of teeth
And the soft curtain of lips. It’s a kind of gateway
From the outside of the body
To the inside.
To show off one’s tongue
Is a kind of revelation of the softness inside.
It strikes me suddenly that one of my special actorly skills
Is tongue acting – directors laugh at me
Because sometimes I am at my most successful (or, at least, my funniest) on stage
When I am using my tongue.
Is it funny because I’m showing you
Something intensely private
Something from the inside
Something vulnerable?
Or is it just that a tongue out in the air looks out of place
Looks funny.

Tenable is kind of an awesome word
That I never hear.
It’s so foreign to my eye and ear that I insistently read it as Venable
Because that was the name of my elementary school.
Presumably Venable was someone’s name and not some next of kin to Tenable –
But my connecting memories
Put Hamlet’s compatriots’ silence on a small city block and put Venable in it,
Concealing the sight of ghosts.
This then was the effect of sending the king’s ghost List, list, oh, listing
Down the halls of Venable School
Attempting to “Remember, remember” in a tiny kindergarten chair
And tossing the sand from the sand table
When he gets agitated.
He shakes his head at the tiny bathrooms
Unable to believe they’re as small as they are –
He remembered them so much bigger. The he goes to hide in the boiler room
So when some unsuspecting child
Says a bad word in the hall
He can swoop under his feet
And shake the floor with a reverberating “Swear!”

In a workshop
Someone pointed out the connection between eating and fare.
It’s really relevant to that line we were discussing at the time
(from this play, many scenes in the future)
but suddenly it makes me think about every farewell.
When we bid someone farewell,
Are we really suggesting that they eat well?
I don’t see why not.
If you’re eating well
You’re likely to be doing well
In other respects, really. . .
So to fare well
To eat well
Is to be well
Well into the future.