MISE-EN-SCÈNE

Rearrange the furniture.

It’s your room.

The mise-en-scène: play with it.

It’s your movie.

And the feng shui:

consult with the invisibles, 

why don’t ya,

it’s your fortune.

The where of where you put things

is not arbitrary nor accident. Placement

is almost a kind of sorcery, really.

It’s all in the treatment,

in other words,

that you either see or don’t.

And if you don’t, well then…

a lackadaisical approach

may just creep into your relations also

and have the people in your life

begin to feel

a bit like coffee tables

or ottomans,

if you’re not careful,

that you shuttle about 

because you’re bored

or in a bad mood,

or because your sense of decorum

is elsewhere,

probably out watching

a mid-day matinee—

that is, until it finds

another reliable genre

of distraction

to replace the magic

of the silver screen.

THE SPECTACLE

Which is it,

puppets or puppeteers?

Strings, wires visible

or shadows dancing

behind screens? Sleights

of hand or engineering feats?

Contortions

or acrobatics?

Enigmatic exposures

or skilled obfuscations,

disappearances?

Things seen 

or not? Or both 

at once? 

Whichever...it is still 

all a strange choreography,

a spectacle

that fools no one,

but ohhhh!

does it dazzle.

The truth is:

the moment we enter

the Grand Chapiteau

we have already decided

to suspend our disbelief,

for a bit of theater.

This is how we believe

in believing, one more time.

EAVESDROPPER

I was minding my own business,

really I was, with my nose

to the keyhole and my eye to the grindstone,

when gossip tittered like a myna in my ear.

I have no etiquette

when it comes to buttlescutt,

but that doesn’t mean

you need to show me the ropes.

I know what a rope is.

And, no! you don’t need to convince me

that that big fish will fit

in that rinky-dink lake.

I simply won’t believe you.

I just ain’t that gullible, Mr. Smitten.

Go ahead, call me

an eavesdropper, if you must.

But a name is just a name

not a broken bone. 

Or as basic as a hangover

in the rain.