Under the Stage Lights

I can’t breathe!
Some vine has snaked its way
up my throat from my belly below;
it lays heavy on my tongue.

I’ve been here before:
abandoned by Confidence
in a last-minute ambush.
My heart punches mercilessly.
I fear it will break through, and flop,
like a fish, on the wooden floor.
My trembling hands clench together for
comfort, but find none.

At last I open my mouth to speak.
Out falls dead leaves.
The wobble in my voice is not vibrato;
nothing operatic unfolds.
...

I will try again tomorrow

Sunday Morning, After My New York Recital

Drenched—yet again— in failure
I rise from the ashes in holy strength
White, and red with determination
to untangle the beauty inside me.
I arise to be a Me I don’t yet hear or see.

Backstage: before my new york recital

Sometimes we dance together
tippy-toed, teetering
on cement ledges
high
up
in
Night

She draws me
into her
bosom
with a
motherly
embrace;
i am
covered.

i
ache
to swaddle
my black body
in her
midnight tapestry, and

fall
asleep (forever)
where

fears
can’t
torment me.

i reject her
embrace, and
embrace the
scorching, Bright
Scorpion.

onstage at my new york recital

—an armed fiend.

One crisp strike—

He’s inside! ,

playing surgery with my belly.

His poison-tipped taunter

pierce perpendicular—

thrashing—snipping—biting—di/ssecting… — rendering me

s_p_r_a_w_l_e_d_

across an icy, sterile stage

trembling—

knotted entrails

dangling out—

Exposed—

no friendly darkness to blanket me—

Voice

aborted, breath

strangled-to-death—

Confidence, Self-Esteem

dripping, pooling

on
the
floor
.
.
.
.