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The Actress

The actress stands upon the stage
And the bustling world that surrounds her
Silences.
Only on the stage is there
Solitude.
Only on the stage,
When pressed under the repellent gravity
Of open eyelids, is there
The peace of mind
To react instinctively
To the mechanics of social magnetism.
The spotlight burns down, bright upon her,
Softening her make-up—
Letting it melts slowly down her skin
As if it were a glass
Through which we could see her.

She prefers the classics
And the avant-garde
When she needs to perform.
She would rather have a brilliant tongue
Sit in her mouth behind her cosmetically
Bleached and re-calibrated teeth
And vibrate the words she could not imagine;
To speak the poetic vespers
That came deep from the dark mind's early gloaming.
She would like to exorcise the demons
That torment her in a public display
Of plagiarized mimicry.

She would pantomime the emotions
She could not express,
And, in doing so,
She receives the pity and applause
That, through her abstruse personification,
She is not able to receive personally.
For a moment—
A moment of collective illusion—
She and the public
That loves her,
That would tear her down,
Can cry together
Over the suffering of the character
That possesses her nimble, choreographed frame.
Reality is suspended
And the air grows thick as the melodramatic dialog,
As both she and the world search
For the lingering traces of humanity
In the commercial world of cynicism
And disbelief.

Later, she will peel off a layer of skin,
Unpainting the chiseled sculpture
Of her persona,
Revealing who she is behind the curtain
Of articulated gestures and scripted language.
She removes her costume
And stands naked in front of a mirror.
She looks at her reflection,
Wondering if she is looking upon herself
Or if her likeness is looking upon her.
Perhaps she is the reflection,
She muses. The masks of the past
Peer down on her as she gets dressed,
The glowing light bulbs above her mirror
Cast a shadow down upon them
And they hide in the translucent cross-hatching
Of shades.

Without her make-up,
Without her costume,
Without her direction,
Without her material to impersonate,
She is indistinguishable from the crowds on the street
That tousle around her
In their irregular patterns of comedy.
There, they do not recognize her talent,
Or that she is one of them,
As she wanders through their flurry
Of furcated destinations and desires.
What separates them
Is not who they are,
But how they are manifested
By the things that compose in them
The saturated lines of interest.
She walks home.
They walk home.
Who is to say there is any difference?

poem by Tim Stensloff
Added by Poetry Lover
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