As the Show Must…Go On!

Desperately seeking an audience
With kings, queens, and commoners
Call in the troupes!
Who will perform her
Aspiring thespians
Willing to do Shakespeare
Or any low brow play right
As parts are parts
Whether broad way
Or way, way off
A bawdy comedy
As familiar as drama
And as Greek as tragedy
Of chorus
Getting a leg up
On those with less rhythm
Two bit players
Ticketed by seasons
Perhaps a woman of an uncertain age
Seeking the roll of a lifetime
The lines are long
And few are chosen
Luckily
Protagonists
And amateurs all
Make for stiff competition
Breaking a leg
To be cast
Blinded by fancies
Of bright lights
And paid with applause
In dark rooms
Only wishing they were someone else
Until curtains for all
Calling them out
Unmasked
And wearing customs
Both foreign and familiar
Giving spy to private moments
And public scenes
Usual suspects
And unusual characters
Tugging hearts
And funny bones tickled
Inhabiting the dreams of others
Constructing story after story
With strapping sets
And suggestive facades
Getting down to it
With a portending fear
Of under study
Practicing your lyin’s
Until with sincerity
Putting on
A peril
As gossamer as taut
Utterly made up
Like guise and dolls
Hoping to hold up
To bright lights on disquieting duds
As once alive audience
Recumbent in such getups
Prone to rein checks
Less than charitably
If over season
Choice words
Employed too generously
Making out like a bandit
As if
Amateurs turn pro feign
Still putting on errs
In a sense
Beyond approach
Unless crying
Author! Author!
Then too
Their credit
Setting the stage
For public scrutiny
And curtains
For private dramas
To play right
And becoming actors
As some life long
Vocation
With every few weeks run
From the on set
Fashioning a dress
Rehearsal
Imagining you’ve arrived
Opening night
Wear all cheap talk
Is exchanged for some notorious scrip
Taking another’s word
As one’s own is silenced
Propping up delicate worlds
That can be destroyed
Like cellophane crumbling
A hard candy to swallow
Or cell profane
Making a bard dandy too hollow
To see stars circling and falling
Uniformly emptying the stage
For the row to follow
B4 you sunk my battle
Ship ahoy
Can you hear me now?
Ushering out
The end of
A cacophonous patron
Of coarse, it could be
A night mare to be ridden
Into the next production
A play within a play
Full of mock puns
Yielding false starts
And startling double-takes
As hearts race
And our worst fears ketchup with us
Dying on stage
Putting our best end forward
Too sad a claim
Enough to bring the house down
Or perhaps so fetching
From the edge of one’s seat
To recover
As unruly
As the show must
Go on
In her dialogue
Not with standing
Ovations
Out laud
A cross the country side
Only just surviving by assuming another’s name
A compelling ingénue-ity
Making up for every pre-tense
As you take the stage
With your commanding presents
Though petrified
Masking it well
With a wink and a smile
You totally rock
And given props
Taking flight
Not walking on water, but skipping
A stones throw from the coast
Safely in the pocket
Like music in your years
One for the ages
And all for won
Giving berth
To the generations
Of awe uplifting
And knaves razing
Ever suspending disbelief
As a play
Like a child
Takes a village

This poem is a gift and a tribute to my sweetheart and muse, Maryjo.  She is an actress about to be in a Neil Simon play, Proposals, put on by the Village Players, here in Toledo.  Her son, Connor, is also acting in this play.  Maryjo has fulfilled many of my dreams, not the least of which is dating a beautiful actress!

You can download a printable PDF version of this poem here.

This poem was accompanied by a prop: a pocket-sized, polished orthoceras fossil which looks like a theatrical mask winking!  This serendipitous token helps explain the verses near the end of the poem:

Though petrified
Masking it well
With a wink and a smile
You totally rock
And given props
Taking flight
Not walking on water, but skipping
A stones throw from the coast
Safely in the pocket
Like music in your years
One for the ages

May all of life’s theatrics bring you real joy!