What might it be like to refract one’s self, like a prism?
To break the light and reflect it
So as to be in one place
Then
So quickly,
The other.
Certainly I have felt split into pieces,
Not quite whole,
Not quite a self –
Just bits and bits.
But to be everywhere –
That’s the advantage of ghostliness.
Horatio
Do, if it will not stand.
Try and place the egg on its end.
Balance the curve of a shell.
Right a weighted weathered mannequin
Who leans ever to her side.
You can’t make it stay by wishing
You have to hover
Hold it in place
Build some struts or metal structure
To help it rest where it belongs.
You may need to dance a balancing dance
Meeting it from one side
Then the next.
In action on all sides to keep it still.
Stop it, Marcellus!
Somebody
Please
Put a stop to this
Don’t let that potential walk away
Don’t let that spirit out
We don’t know if it will ever return
I’ve tried everything I know how to do
I’ve chased down avenues I didn’t even know were there
I reached out
Into the unknown to speak to something
I didn’t even believe in but then
Had to.
But I’m depleted
My options all shut down
It’s down to you now.
Stop it.
Stay and speak.
This is funny.
I’m writing an angry blog entry on another page
About how, in all my jobs,
No one really asks me what I think.
I realize that all it would take
To make me feel included
Are these simple words.
What if one of the organizations I work for
Evaluated themselves and said to me,
“Stay and Speak?”
I can’t speak uninvited.
My position is tenuous;
There is no guarantee that there will be work;
This season
Or next.
I am at the mercy of the people who dole out the gigs.
So I just grumble over drinks with my fellow migrant workers.
I have ideas about how the apple gets picked.
I have suggestions for increasing our efficiency
But they will curl themselves up into nothing
Because no one will say “Stay and speak.”
Mostly I go to the orchards and stay silent.
That is the preferred mode
The safe mode
The way that will keep me on the good side.
It keeps me from spilling out critique.
It keeps me nodding and smiling.
I will go.
And say nothing.
Or if thou hast uphoarded in thy life Extorted treasure in the womb of earth, For which, they say, you spirits oft walk in death, Speak of it.
Extraordinarily we have leapt from
The fate of the country
To buried treasure.
We have gone from prognostication
To Pirate’s Booty.
A ghost will walk through to pass on grace
To predict the future or
To deliver his fortune to the lucky sot
Who happens to stumble across it.
If I were a ghost and people kept asking me
Where I buried my treasure, I might stalk off, too.
Especially if you hint that
I extorted it from someone.
Don’t call me a pirate, man.
I was a flippin’ King!
But then, of course, we discover later
How much camaraderie there may be
between pirates and royals.
Hamlet the Younger finds the first group to really help him
In maurading pirates.
They’re not so far apart from one another
I suppose.
Our leaders
Our pirates
Hey, wait, where are you going?
If thou art privy to thy country’s fate, Which happily foreknowing may avoid, O, speak!
If a ghost descended and said
“O my America. Watch out, watch out!
There is a great recession ahead!
Heed this warning. Buy not subprime mortgages!
Invest not in Lehman Brothers or Bear Sterns; They are not
Long for this world, soon to join me in the afterlife.
Heed your debt, America! Check your greed!
Keep your eyes on those banks and also on those car companies.”
Is there a chance in hell
Anyone would have believed him?
The ghosts with premonitions of the future
Must have wrung their hands and prepared
To watch as we sank ourselves
Deep into the mire of our Imperial making.
Or else they rejoiced.
If Horatio had begged for knowledge
Would any ghost have thought to give it?
Foreknowledge is useless unless
We believe in foreknowledge.
Even if a person could see into the future
Could report on the fate that awaits us,
We’d first have to believe him.
Every future caster is a Cassandra
And every single one of them knows it.
If there be any good thing to be done That may to thee do ease and grace to me, Speak to me.
Can you unlock the cabinet
Where you keep your troubles
And show me the way to ease them?
Will you let me remove what rolls out
Of those drawers and dust or caress
Or whatever will make it better?
Tell me what is to be done and I
Will do it.
For you, of course
But also for me
For grace.
Those scientists have proved that doing good
Deeds for others
Almost does the doer more good
Than the done for.
Will you let the caged worries fly out
And flutter in my hands for a moment?
For me
For my grace
For my improvement
Give me the instructions for loving you.
If thou has any sound or use of voice, Speak to me.
A prayer for guidance
A ritual for receiving
A plea to the spirit
To cut through the noise of it all and find
A way to express
To tell
To explain
To point the way
A plea as simple as please.
Stay illusion.
What you are has been made clear to me
I know you are immaterial
A veil
Between me and reality.
I know you have kept me
Blind and deluded
Laboring under false pretenses and impossibilities.
I know everything you told me was a lie
That everything I felt was unreliable
That everything I saw was colored with gauze
And not what it appeared to be.
You are a dream
From which I have awakened
I know there is no substance
No material
No there there.
I know I know I know
But don’t go.
I’ll cross it, though it blast me.
That thing before me,
The one that seems insurmountable,
The obstacle impossible –
I will stand in its sight lines,
Right in its crosshairs,
Between one plane and another.
From this position
I am a target.
I could feel a shaking and a rocking of all
That I have known.
Something could shoot right through me,
Standing in the path,
But stand here I must
Because this is my path, by god and
You cannot sway me from my forward march;
Try though you might.
In earlier times I might have stepped aside,
Let this cup pass,
Turned around around and tried another way
Another route
Another goal
Another end.
But the time has come to stand stalwart,
To build myself like a tower
One with a drawbridge and a moat
With loops and slits for shooting arrows
Arteries and spouts for boiling oil
And giant iron locks.
But this tower has legs
And once it is built it will walk past the blasts
Walk on
Into whatever comes next.
The Hamlet Project 