Free Verse

Leaving the Playhouse

Cast and crew crush me backstage with grimaces and shaking heads — Cutting off questions with expostulations, rubbed beards, raised eyebrows — And toasting with Star Wars cups of Diet Coke. Deliberately, I smoke a wilting green pepper — As questions about my miscues continue — Above the bebops of the baby piano and ballyhoo shrieks from banshees — And other bandit babies — While rebel red ribbons around the ceiling fan Explode birthday balloons. In my manuscript, I exit the stage, through the black scrim, Around the set pieces and the props of Toy Land, exiting at 100 steps a second. Should I use a trap door under the living room table? Employ a Deus ex Machina? Or jettison an extra pod to Tatooine?

But instead, I float weightlessly in the Kaleidoscope of Kaos — Unable to breathe. How long have I gone without air? How long have I forgotten my lines? Didn’t they notice my face was blue — and not a comic’s mirror? Didn’t they know the role of Puck was no longer listed in the Playbill? Would Family Lear need to trudge to Dover without its Fool?

What Fool would dare rewrite Shakespeare?

So why won’t you let us read it? “To explain would diminish me as a person,” I think. We’re no strangers to this Globe — As I left my costume at home and now — Who recognizes me? I check the stars. By twenty years, I’m late. The tastes have changed. The times have changed. The roles have not. Did I just realize this? But around the carnival table, above the shrieks — An ear gets sliced from Darth Vader — Would I like an ear?

“An ear would be lovely,” I reply. And above the screams for the largest slice — This ear actually comes from my heart. But, alas, the ear is not for me.

Why should I expect so much as a single ear for such a short time?

A large knife appears, glistening with guts from the cake. A yell from the pit: “You don’t cut a slice like that in front of a child! What were you thinking?” That’s right: What are we thinking? I swear, I swear, I vanish like Hamlet’s ghost on stage.