Performance

We all perform for the social world.
Some, more passionately, than others.
Is this performance meant to be mourned?
Or perhaps celebrated for its complexity?

Do you shine on the stage,
Then question the mootness when you are alone?
Do you remove your filters when the light shines on you,
Then tape them back when the Act is over?
Do you find that you act once around others,
Then rehearse it a dozen times at home?
Or do you instead act, and not act?

What a shame it is that our language spells and sounds those words identically.
When they could not be more different.

Actors complain all the time about the performance.
They despise it.
They abase it.
They rally to end it.

They whine about pleasantries,
Expressing the silliness
That is the delicate fat of “please”’s, “thank you”’s, and “sorry”’s.

They lecture about fake smiles, laughs, and cues.
They moan about the exhaustion of theatre.

Then they state—rightfully—that the size of your sepulcher would not be decided
By your competency on-stage.

They dismiss the Play, until the “performance” degrades to an insult.
Until even soliloquies are discouraged.
U n t i l   e v e r y   p o e m   l o s e s   i t s   p o i g n a n c y .