Poem of the Month - March 2017

 
I dream of an empty stage:
Vacant seats and velvet curtains.
I dream of vanity
Lights
And lipstick mirrors.
Theatre delights.

I dream of delivering
Monologues to mice,
Songs to sparrows,
And bats (to be nice).
My captive audience
Stunned to silence.

I took the stage before.
Don't know if I will again.
But I think about it
(Yes, I dream about it),
Now and then ...

I want to show you something
But there is nothing of the old lake left
Nothing of the neolithic river that ran to it
Nothing of a something
That seemed to lead to somewhere

Cut to
My father in his panama
The sunlight halo
His face in obscurity

Cut to
My ex-wife stepping down
To where neon flickers

We had made a child
Losing the baby unravelled us
Unmade all meaning
As if meaning was something
And something was needed

We made two children more
I felt unworthy of them all their lives
Terrified they'd find me out
And run off and join the one that got away

Cut to
The old lake's shadow
And the ochre cutting where the river left
Nothing but this thousand year story
About something

Excerpt 87 from Journal 5, 'Reaching My True Love'
   -from 'Journals To My True Love, Part 2'

My Love, you become the story, fragmented and
   dispersing slowly...
I let you go; this replaces the intense passion as you
   become lines; notions; whims, where you ever
   anything more?
As the story unravels you become it... I believed
   in you, yet never did, but I believed in the story...
I have no story; but I have you to let me tell it...
From nothingness you arose... Into the air I saw
   you rise...
A thousand men inside you that I have known...
And you so deftly constructed and defined...
Construct me now to recieve me as I have recieved
   you; we shall become this story...
For I am no one and neither are you...
In life how I never loved, but how intensely I loved you...
How my pen ran your blood blackened onto paper
   notebooks; I bled you dry as pens ran out...
I painted you in words so cohesive as your atoms
   vibrating like your pulsing soul...
This pulse was the story; how it resonated with my
   own and mirrored it for you are but me and we
   are all but nothing...
We stand together in this paradox where nothing
   matters and we hold hands in a grand charade
   which endlessly flows in vain...
All we are left of is our own air; our nascent spirits...
And the only testament is this story...
How fervently it spills onto a blank page and how
   time-worn its pace...
As our faces fade so do we as sun in late afternoon...
Setting into a horizon we slowly shrink and fade...
I would die for you to live; for us to thrive...
How I would simply die to tell our story...

When sullen nights obscured the way
to somewhere, you were there:

We slept in empty fields to find warmth.

We walked through ancient towns:

         Some just barely alive
         others on the verge of death.
         While others waiting their turn.

We were together hand-in-hand
beneath the blood moon, in the fifth direction.

When the bones of my feet ached, the will to stand
gone, you were there to gently push me.

When the storm pounded the mountains around us
the rain falling unbroken, you were there:

         After it passed you payed tricks
         with my eyes you blinded me
         as you darted between the clouds.

When the sky cleared and the earth shouted
We danced like idiots
for the joy to be alive.

I could not see you, but I could feel you
in my heart, in my breath, in my eyes.

pictured: "Susanna and the Elders" by Artemisia Gentileschi (1593 - 1656)

No grass, or trees, or sky except a playroom blue
creased with cotton clouds. The stone divider
between Susanna's garden and the world
collapses in its duty, as grotesque and hateful
men leer down from the blank, blind-eyed sky,
invading the stone garden. One whispers in
the other's ear. Susanna's neck bends sideways.
The homestead has been breached, and ugly fate,
its mind and heart as bleak as weed-choked tombs,
now dictates the movements of the human actors.
The drama is drowned in punishing daylight,
and we see that evil lives in light as much as any
dim-lit grove where dryads dance together and alone.
The burning sun excludes even God and His prophets.

branded Thomas Anthony Rampersant  
resurrected as Tara

Diva.

born of the old south
i could not rise
from the shackles and sermons
that cursed me

my body was carved
long
lean
and luxurious
working the shrimp boats
in the harbor
from age 9

while friends and brothers
suckled on beer and football
from sunrise until dying day

i watched Ginger and Fred
in gramma's trailer
a 13 inch world
set on her kitchenette table

but Tara burned

emancipated in the north
through lessons at Ailey's

yet I was never good enough
for the company

but I had to eat, so

I danced for women
I danced for men
both wanted the same thing
but men paid better

and promised even more

though many hid in the same lie
I once did

they were your

brothers
fathers
husbands
lovers

and for three minutes in a darkened corner
their throbbing indignation
was set free against me

within me
within him

Im no longer a PYT
just another old bitch
who needs his ART

But I still dance
as Tara
Drag Queen supreme

Some nights I'm Diana
Other nights Patti

But I cherish my volunteer work
at the senior center most

where gramma spent her best last days

In full drag
I waltz with those old men
who remember Ginger and Fred too





*ART - HIV treatment,  also called antiretroviral treatment (ART)