10 glass houses + 20 stones / 10th daughter of memory muse

(another uncontrolled printing of a choka is 5/7, 5/7, 5/7... ending with another 7 syllables.)

choka #17

O me to be trapped

Forever on the outside

to circle trying

To understand a/way in

But glass is solid

To name a hard nothingness

Without a crack or

Muntin of a meeting place

And so to recoil

Into my own hush-hush prism

Of well defined space

Figuring the alien

Out there circling

The glass bowl of a sharp eye

W/in an/other eye 

Creepy but now contented

Strange but for contents

You’ll know when the light is on

Remember there’s no

Way hiding the obvious

Though safe from weather

Except from the winds of change

— Of normality

And the winds of cunning words  

Does all of this count?

Is this place indeed soundproof?

If i can’t hear them, 

Are they allowed to hear me?

And etcetera

i can see i can see through, 

i can see stones lined

Up like gray broken teeth.

Standing in a row

Announcing just quietly

That someone has gone

Down beneath to stain that spot

If you cant see me

You aren’t here you are there. 

Eyes clear and open

Though imbedded w/ mem/ries

Streaking the one good

Decent enjoyable view

Unless reminded

Why the need to think about

The day after now

And the yesterday prior?

The glass and stone meet + play,

Who will always win the game?

Vigilante

visual antics

individual acts

more into the grand gesture

than the blind hem

these days

choka #9

Contemplative mind

Moment in time is magic

Highlands are between

The yearning + the learning

This will conjure up

An episode of kinda

Full of excuses

W/ emphasis on humane     

Attentive devout

Life is an algorithm

Warrior cloud heads east

History of logic is  

Full of dramatic

Episodes of eureka

That will lend credence

Well this is nothing like that  

Gathering feathers

Needing somewhere to place them

Currently commune

Words are not my first language

Compassion near by

Obvious not yours either

Plateau in the clouds

Ends unexpectedly soon.

If we cant escape our fears,

What then, will they do to us?

(i'm positive this will not print correctly. It will be run-on. Which is okay w/ me. But know a choka is 5/7, 5/7, 5/7... ending with another 7 syllables. Just figure it out.)

Dropping her fetters in the wings, she walks into the straight jacket in the theater of the mind.   

She squints her eyes with childish solipsism making the eidolons mere whips in the dark space. The others had fallen into an echoing silence over the years, long ago. And just now.

Offstage in queue they sport costumes of heavy antique bullion and quilted brocade designed and built many years ago, mimicking a hundred years before that. A set of lovers coo, a pirate is selling buckets from a red corvette, another dangling a silver spoon, a child inside a feline, a drooling hunchback, a chorus in deep eggplant chiffon, each waiting a turn while the henchman fumbles with a noose.

Brushing by the understudy she hears break a leg whispered under a breath. The cliché rings in her ears until the deafening roar of the audience applauding becomes inescapable because of its absence. A queue is up. Closing eyes altogether, she gathers herself and charges out onto center stage expecting to be spell bound.

Settling into first position, centering, she glances up at the vacant right box. The big seat is empty. It is worn with wear, and has always been empty. He is not coming. Again. There is freedom in that seat being empty.

Her eyes travel to the pit where the conductor’s arm is paused midair. Once and again a bond with the stick is made. As it begins to flaunt and conjure, she easily steps into the slipstream following in the wake of a major chord.

The exalted feeling is somewhere amid earthbound limitation. That gift does not come from a butt in the seat. Habit dictates she play her part without hesitation, as there is a cycle to round every week, on this night about this time.

When there isn’t scenery one must chew the curtain. The deep crimson fabric pulled up into a sculptured form hovering and leering at the wraithlike audience. The newly replaced footlights again glare like skinned eyeballs staring down and daring a reaction. Her flow steps up the pace into the air and glides from stage left to right. This is when you can believe you are in the presence of a god. She knows sometimes it does not happen. Sometimes everything is in place and there is only disappointment. A spin turns staccato, as she becomes a marionette leaping and dragged down stage.

Rejected again. They aren’t coming. You think my dancing reeks? How about this move…

With a chaotic thrash of the body her leg shoots out and a foot ends in a severe punt to a footlight.

-bash

How does this one grab you?

- POP

Chaos takes the dance away from her.

One by one the lights erupt, flicker and die.

 …And this, they are foot-lights, yes?

- crash

She spins and hits with deft precision of practice until the only glow left is coming from her face.

The music ends in a deadly crescendo as her breath heaves and the lyrical stillness left behind brings her back to perennial dark Monday. Audition was again over for another week. She descended the stage steps into the house, making room for Next.

-30-