Life is theater
You are greeted
the door shuts, you are seated
outside, inside your head
Life is theater a tall wooden structure
Using curtains to separate the scenes
Drama, implication, intrigue and rupture
The script is your personality
So son and daughter avoid being appalled
Don't feel awkward as mere pretenders
Soon flames will consume it all
Your performance remembered
Begger is messing through the trash on the other side of the road from the shops
Black plastic sack full of nasty stinking things
He pulls a pouch out of the sack
Opens it carefully it's full of tobacco
He sniffs it and touches it
There are little white mould spots all over it
He takes out a portion rolls it up in a small slither of newspaper
Making it looked like a back and white tailor made novelty
He lights up the thing pumps smoke
He smiles and exhales a big plume
relief and exhaustion dripping off his mendigo chin
He stirred and looked across the shop
There was a round brown skin man parking his expensive bicycle into a steel grade
But as he did so he regarded the begger as if he knew him
Or to check what the strange man was doing under the weeds the size of trees
The begger took another puff put down the rubbish sacks and turned toward the brambles
In two seconds he was gone
The man finished locking his bike up
And couldn't believe the man had disappeared so quickly
All that remained was the strange smelling plume of tobacco smoke
He sits and he waits and he observes
He doesn't act
He holds back
He looks
no expression
Theres no opinion
No feeling
Up and down or in or out
In favor or against
He doesn't agree or disagree
He isn't swayed
by the sentiment of the crowd
By other men shaking and shouting
He is not part of their circus
Not part of their merriment
their drama
He stays cool and silent
He just observes the crowd
Their feckless ways
Sometimes looking out hungrily at the world
Cheeks become thinner
Eyes fixed to steal
fixed indeed on that next meal
The world with all its cruelties
Always presents something delicious
from out of the blue
Just when you thought there was nothing left to do
There it would be a sumptuous meal waiting
Steaming hot into sight
Bringing the appetite
Encouraging consumption
Looking at the world in speculation
about how everything worked
how society moves and how people function
Hunger in those eyes that stray on
Hunger was the vibration
When we are hungry we dont have the same emotions
For when we are merely satisfied
We become the unquestioning fat
inward looking and supplied
Not to improve ourselves or hearts
but just to self absorb wantonly
Yet when we are hungry we look outwardly constantly
Looking for that delicious meal that suddenly appears out of nowhere
Out of the blue
taste all through heightening
Steaming hot and enticing
Making us salivate
Sharpening the senses
Being sustained by the experience
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I'm not telling you
I'm not telling the story a new
It's not a version or a view
It's not an implication or a clue
Whispers of who one is
settling inside the head
reminding one of those stories
Light as feathers, heavy as lead
I'm not telling you
I can't get it through
Come to your own conclusions
adjust inconvenient truth
Whispers, shreds of gossip
Some which become gospel
flowing out like a loose faucet
Into minds of lost people
The skin is tatooed
the wall is graffitied
I'm not telling you
Read the ink worn and fleeting
The tyre marks through the snow
Into parks and infront of the hotel woe
head held high you see your car sticking out
The lopsided way you park seldom to check
never ever bothering to self correct
Snow melts from the inner hubcaps
dripping down from the shaped bowl
The bar behind you noisy and dull
Your hand snake like searches keys
Whoops your handbag falls on to the wet pavement
The slap it makes feel like one in the saving face
You clench fist and teeth, bend retrieve no grace
No ease, underneath still on concrete were your keys
Dream of an easier life that imposter disease
Adjusted with all the settings in love in health
the things you are too afraid to give yourself
Key penetrates door like a rapist
You are in against it's will, metal slides
heater on, radio blaring it's advertising
Shopping and shame with a garnish of fear
You swing the steering wheel
In the other hand adjust your underwear
Windscreen wipers hit the ice and slip over it
You wait for the thaw but the ice doesn't care
How things could be different you insist
You brake softly sliding into that intersection fate
The worrying feeling that life is all about choices illuminates
Like yellow to red as you slowed down for it
An old woman pushing a shopping trolley hobbles
One wheel skipping and rotating just not aligned
Will this be me your fear asks in that voice oh sublime
A whino trying to get from one side of the street
carrying her failures in beaten up stolen supermarket trolley
All your thoughts and feelings up on the screen
Oh how we are exposed and how we expose ourselves
The spectators begin tentatively drawn out fits of laughter
Laughing at the concerns and fantasies that run through the head
You turn for some of them are clapping but it's irony without wit
You grab your handbag push out your chair and head for the door
You open it toward you and stop cold as the screen announces your seceret
Not a small shame but a devastating fact you built layers over to hide
The a pause from the audience a few seconds pass and they start chuckling
Lively bellowing follows at perhaps the worst moment of your life
You blink and focus on the screen there you are as a child suffering
With no one to count on apathy hugs your bedroom house and town
And only know does someone care but they don't care from the heart
They care to satisfy and ridicule your life with their insane laughter
Coughing and bellowing, it's the best entertainment they've had all week
The barman turns up the volume and goes into trance
You break down in tears faces swing back to you
Then to the disgrace of your life on the screen
The volume of their hysterical cackling overpowering
The screen and laughter pouring through your head
You turn and pull the door back snow flurries enter the place
The people inside turn back toward you with filthy frowns on their worn faces
You leave it open
