Halloween Poem #27:

Stage Craft
by Michael Romani

All of the magic in hocus pocus
Is merely that of diverting focus
Legendary in its sleight of hand
It's all just illusion; understand?

Like guns on a stage in the first act
As matter of order and certain fact
Must eventually come to be used
It's a matter of stage craft no to be ill used

Somewhere offstage someone is dying
But, then someone is always busy dying
And while other doctors would not play God
To do otherwise, to Frankenstein, would be odd

There is it is in that moment's levitation
When to the audience's dulled perceptions
Sees a woman sawed in half on the stage
And then back together with a turned gauge

Discussed over high winds and double malt
Are the sting of storms rolling in their assault
It's there in the compulsion to play actor
With its disabused protocol of confused factors

Digging deep into all the psychological dirt
We find bygone memories in two sheets and a torn shirt
Morphine shrieks cause the mind's shambles
AS the master of the stage endlessly rambles

Composed as a shell game with nothing to see here
Foreheads wet with tension soaking in its fear
What's really at stake here is seldom ever known
Behind which cup is the answer never quite shown

There inside the old actor's ragged trunk
Is a pile of imagination disguised as junk
All of this given to us with polite applause
Distractions spoken quietly within a magical pause

As Halloween approaches suspense hangs in the air
Some yearn for costumed simplicity others for flair
But all know it's for the treats we put on the show
As grown ups and children act their part in the flow

(c) October 27, 2019  Michael Romani
All Rights Reserved