Reflections: A Play, Act 1

(The Bard steps out from behind the closed curtain and stands in front of it, center stage)

Bard: Oh sing to me you gracious Muses, beautiful,

Fair daughters of fine memory and God, divine

Tradition

I’ve battled beside Gilgamesh, the Bull
 Of Heaven slain by us. I’ve fought beside
 Achilles, hot beside a burning hull,
 And watched as Agamemnon, captured, died.
 With Oedipus I’ve lost my vital eyes
 With insight gained, avoiding my own lies. 
 
 I’ve been to Hades too with Gilgamesh,
 Again with Dionysus…

On the Rationality of Poetic Verse

Of rhyme that stabs the poet with despair
Of ever saying what he really feels
Without clichés like “laying my soul bare” –
So all I’m left with are these spinning wheels.

Reflections: A Play, Act 5

(The Bard steps out from behind the closed curtain and stands in front of it, center stage)

Bard: Behold as Adam rises through the human and

Beyond. From where he was he has descended through

Reflections: A Play, Act 3

(The Bard steps out from behind the closed curtain and stands in front of it, center stage)

Bard: A human, all too human past is left behind

And now we must descend into a lower world,

On the Eve of Decadence

Is it for you, O Rome, to rule the world,
Or is that time now past?
The great Republic stagnates like a swamp –
Did we dare think it’d last?

Electing Death

Dark, the clouds fill up the sky –
 Thunder rolls, we can’t deny . . . 
 The valley fills with deathly pale
 Horses who don’t neigh, but wail.
 
 Death is leading dissonance,
 Overwhelming common sense –
 He promises to end all change,
 Changing Hope to something strange.
 
 Townsmen come out of their…