Under The Spotlight

Under The Spotlight

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All the world’s a stage
And I hide in the green room with stage fright
A coward petrified
to play simultaneously all the many parts
Across the borders of my secret life.
A director's bark and a prompter's pull
I put on my mask and masquerade with you
I play the child and plead your sympathy
You respond readily with echoes of empathy
Then I am Iago, driven by motionless malignancy
The great manipulator, the ageless survivor.
I am the stud, an affectionate affectation
Making fake love I sigh like a furnace
Playful, sorrowful, sweet and angry
We play our roles
For a while in sexual ambiguity
Love turning to hate and jealousy
Ready to kill in rage, revenge and animousity.
Then I sit in bespectacled acquired respectability
behind an armour of undeserved authority
Nose raised superciliously in Ceasar’s hubris.
I give you only a hint
Just a subtle hint, of the unspeakable things to come
And you shiver into submission.
It’s difficult to be dignified
When you are on all fours, believing the hint
Telling, nay pleading, great Ceasar
To treat you like a dog.
You cry a muted curse
Thou artless earthvexing vassal
Thou churlish claybrained strumpet
But the agony is hidden
Words refuse to flow from your quivering lips.
You change your tune
Not with uncommon common sense
But the illusion of tears
Whining, clinging, complaining,
A veil of anger and jealousy
A lover scorned
Matching my perversion
With magic, superstition, evil spirits
and a midsummer night’s dream
Extracting your pound of flesh
From a tongue tied Shylock.
The web of life is of a mingled yarn
Good and evil in subtle shades
and infinite superficial charm.
With a flourish I make my exit
from my chosen role
In wild laughter and a volcano of hyperbole
You seamlessly take my part
Switching, recombining effortlessly
As friend, lover, rival
Enemies easily confused
A friend yet again.
Slowly the lights dim, the curtain falls
The world erupts in uncontrolled applause.
I withdraw and hide, tired and forlorn
A drunk’s random walk
across the borders of my secret life
Of the monotonous and the mundane
Sobbing hopelessly in dreary darkness
Away from the fraudulent spotlight.