by Sam Markewich

[loud, angry and directed] WOULD YOU STOP LOOKING AT ME THAT WAY!

[sheepishly] That is (heh), well, I mean to say you're beautiful, and, well, I...

[challenging and questioning] Would you rather...

...like you, or [searching] should I rather like to pay you the compliment of...

[confident , joyous] Really, when I speak I can't deny it, your beauty I'm referring to.

It's, how shall I say...ah yes that's the way. [increasing in excotement] It's like hyacinth, it is, like water's moon lit glow. A sandy beach, a warm night's walk, a snowy peak -- yes, that's it, I know, I know!

[typical character] ...but I was just trying to say...

...,like, you know what I mean.

[doubtfu dismissal] Yeah right, like you know!

[like a story teller] There were four of them on that day, walking through the forest for the trees. One stumbled over a root and broke a knee. One was bitten by a snake. One was reading William Blake. One's lips fell to catastrophy. One's tongue began to flake. One's vocal chords were muted. One's words were convoluted with such a cristal clarrity. The book lay open in dissipated pools of mud on sandy beaches.

[the forlorn, pitiable poet at a reading] And there I stand alone in bitter night, awaiting. You do not show, and I, alone, walk hand in hand in sorrow like the night on city blocks of painless window panes, where shards of glass remain intact and muscles crumble into the hunched shoulders of a late night walk. Myself, alone, suicidal, and I don't have to...

...kill...

...kill a sole to see myself, moribund, a reflection in a lake without a sound.

[voice change, somewhat frantic, elastic in pitch and rhythm ] Well, if I were pressed, I'd say a snowy peak cannot begin to state my rage at this innability I have to find the words. It's really quite upsetting. I feel like a tree falling upon deaf ears on an island somewhere over there, where no one goes, so no one hears. And, yet, I've fallen, I swear I have. My fruit lies bear upon the ground for all to see. Yet no one picks it up. I canot explain it, your beauty runs too deep.

[again the poet] and I...

...a language...

...alone await your call. and I...

...or, would you...

...alone await.

[romanticized, a serenade] You are like a birds' song, so sweet

You are like a spring time red of rasberry

You are like the velvet spray of misty night

You are, like, the dazzle of milkweed blowing in the sun

You are , like, a language that would weigh a ton

You are a, like, poem which has come undone

You are...

WOULD YOU LOOK AT YOURSELF!

[again the story teller] The four walked for miles that day, finally settling, sheltered, beneath the cool comfort of a maple tree. One stumbled as before. One rotted to the core. One set out for the key. One conjured up the door.

[again the poet] And I sit...

...yourself?....

...behind your tear while countries go to...

....Or, do you have to choose?