Bang!
I remember a moment in my high school black box theatre –
Just like that.
Line; read
Imagination zooms to the past and drops
A platform on my foot
The edge of it is sharp and breaks the skin
Leaving me a jagged scar
Long faded now
But once, angry
Once, wide, and gaping.
Memory retains the black metal and wood,
The blood
The pain
The surprise
The location (downstage, in front of the seating bank)
The quality of light
The only thing I can’t recall
Is who dropped it.


My edition of the play has an exclamation mark here.
There are relatively few exclamation marks in the texts. They seem
Bossy sometimes. Like they’re ordering an actor what to do or feel.
This one here, though, makes me laugh –
It makes me read Marcellus’ response to Hamlet as surprise – like
He’s startled him somehow and he’s thrown his hands to his face
In shock and saying “Good god!”
It implies, for me a sort of over-enthusiasm
For Marcellus to Hamlet.
This is punctuation, however (and it is an editor’s choice) – for this
I’d need to get all text geeky and look at a folio and both quartos
To even begin to guess if Shakespeare himself put that exclamation there.
Many a scholar will tell you to ignore all punctuation and I mostly do (even in my own writing – punctua – wha?) But this is one captivating exclamation work because it seems to say something
The words alone
Wouldn’t.

Marcellus has Hamlet’s schedule memorized.
Is he hanging out by his locker
Trying to look casual
As Hamlet gets out of class?
Does he just happen to pass him in B Hallway
Sometimes?
I want to give Marcellus a Blackberry
With schedules in it
So he can compare where he is and
Where Hamlet might be next.
Of course, Marcellus probably doesn’t have a crush on the Prince.
The place they’ll find him conveniently
Seems to be the place everyone is that morning –
A kind of Royal State of the Union address
Where presumably anyone could find anyone
Most conveniently.
Why do I prefer a story about unrequited love?
It’s a kind of imagination spin off.
Like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead or Lee Blessing’s Fortinbras
But this time unlucky Marcellus gets a play –
One wherein he’s painfully jealous of Horatio
And eyes Ophelia suspiciously everytime he sees her.
Maybe he even pushes her into the stream.
No, no, that goes too far.
But maybe he has Pirate friends he sends after Hamlet once he’s sent to England
And ghostlike he saves his life from afar.
Maybe Marcellus finally gives up in Act IV
And misses the final bit and if he’d been there
He would have saved them all or at least
Our Hamlet. His Hamlet.
He knows where to find that one most conveniently.

It seems like all our times are this:
Gracious and hallowed.
Because I have never seen planets strike
Or a fairy taking, a spirit stirring
Or a witch, successfully charm a charm.
That the absence of these things
Would indicate an unusual quiet
Makes me think that the nights used to be quite raucous
With planets rolling about like billiard balls
As fairies streaked through forests, thieving and making mischief
As witches cackled through the hours
And spirits stirred up trouble.
Those nights must have been something to see.
Here now, the wildest life I see in the dark of night
Are drunk and inconsiderate people
Breaking bottles
Side-stepping rats, disturbed from their hiding places
And the occasional firecracker
Shot off by men who never grew up.
I’d like to see some witches.

This makes me think about majesty.
This ghost is so majestical and so
Is the roof fretted with golden fire
(in other words: heaven, the sky, the firmament)
Majesty has only ever been royal to me –
But suddenly I want to connect it to magic.
Magic, majestic, they cannot be far away
And also so close to mystical
As if magic and mystical got together and
Gave birth to a word.
In today’s common usage, I guess
We’d say majestic – without the “ical” part
And maybe we’ve lost something.
I’m enamored of a thing so majestical
That to show it violence is a great wrong.
That part of me, searching for the sacred,
Feels comforted by a thing that is shielded from violence.
I want to be shielded from violence myself.
I want the very sight of violence before me to be an affront somehow.
I want to be protected
To have the dark evils of the world
Kept out of my chamber,
Dismissed as a distasteful joke.

The way you once saw
The things that you used
The places you visited
The spirit of the people
The energy of the revolution
The easy flow
The quiet afternoon in the woods
The pen
The paper
The street
The busy signal
The letter
The rough wood
The kerosene lamp
The encyclopedia
The dictionary
The record player
The waiting
The dreaming
The boredom
The emptiness
The roller rink
The dance hall
The court square
The milk bottle
The teapot
The spindle
The briar
The sleep.