Best Offstage Poems

It had been a day full of miraculous detail.

Freezing rain played the ground like a kettle drum.

Trees snapped and flowers curtsied 
before engaging in a pas de deux 
with blades of grass on the stage 
of this summer eve.

Our erupting blazing star...

Sported a set of...

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"OMLET"
            or
      "The Taming Of A Screwball"
      cast of characters:
      Julius Caesar
      A Roman...

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A red sun, pooling like a drop of blood,
coagulates at the edge of darkness.
And night flows over its shadows, a flood
black as pitch, inking a seamless starkness.

A gilded moon, like a pitted gold coin,
beams in the sky as a beacon of light.
And like swarms of...

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Black Powder
---------------------------------------

He waits offstage, his posture tense,
his gaze locked on the audience -
his first in years.

He blots the sweat that wets his face,
then walks onstage and gets in place,
amidst their cheers.

In bowtie, vest and dinner tails,
he's dressed down to his fingernails.
His face is flushed.

His eyes...

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Our Tall Duckling (original title)

Our daughter, always through her childhood,
at least a head above any other girl in her class,
stands somewhere offstage now 
with long lashes darkened by mascara
and with lips and cheeks painted pink.
She waits with other nervous pre-teens in her group
where I left...

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They waltz against the dark , offstage
Within a tearing pinch of light;
A pitch-black room …entrenched in rage
Was once the velvet cloth to skin,
Now ripped apart by hems of spite
As numbness dries low breaths, so thin

Frigid the steps…locked in a cage
Pale music on iced fingertips,
That dancing...

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"OMLET"
            or
      "The Taming Of A Screwball"
(Or: Rules Are Written By Idiots, Followed by Fools)
              ...

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I am MacDougal's parrot, he taught me how to speak,
    Whenever i repeat an obscene word, he chides, excuse your beak.
    It happens when folk ask him, if i'm his cockatoo,
    I'll fly into an awful...

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"OMLET"
            or
      "The Taming Of A Screwball"
      cast of characters:
      Julius Caesar
      A Roman...

Continue reading...

"OMLET"
            or
      "The Taming Of A Screwball"
      cast of characters:
      Julius Caesar
      A Roman...

Continue reading...

I remember the grey slithers of rain,
The jocular driver
As I boarded the bus
At Temple Meads,
And the friendly lady who told me
When we had arrived at the city centre.
I remember the little pub on King Street,
With its quiet maritime atmosphere.
       ...

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November!  When the auburn autumn leaves
retard the tinkling brooks of Vallombrosa,
and kitchen chimneys draw the old ones closer:                         
when timid...

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logical greedy
uncles unshaven, rocks and
arks terrified philanthropic cherubim blessing
logical operators, terrified detainees stones and
arks attacked
through the blessing
of cherubim
embarrassed greedy uncles
unshaven, basins and stones, cherubim terrified
bothered
embarrassed with
blessing, agglutinate greedy
uncles' rocks thorough meaning
of rock reservoirs hassling cherubim
terrified thanks to
greedy inmate physical violence, embarrassed offstage
cherubim kindly surprised
by bathos,...

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Noah will go First, soaring out of the Desert,Up and throughThe Surrounded  Horizon ----of curt 
Offstage Smiles, Indigo children who are Rain from the Sun.Wings of Alabaster Sin. {Death, in 
your Arms}The affect is most disturbing and my smile Is Immediate.Giggling the flames grow 
Higher,Oxycodone...

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So many of my friends have come and gone
like shadows consumed by the dark of night;
and my heart misses their extinguished light.
For once, each one shone as bright as the dawn;
they stayed awhile; then, the curtain was drawn,
and stepping offstage, they slipped out of sight.

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