We Now Return To Our Regularly Scheduled Programming

 

Somebody changed the clocks while we were wrestling with our nerves all night.

It happened so fast it was almost like it didn’t happen at all.

We were waiting for direction, reluctant to change what we thought we already knew.

They said we would have to wipe the slate clean to allow room for a creative solution.

Please try to understand. 

The old ways don’t work anymore because they just don’t sit right.

 

Holding it together has never been easy, especially when you’ve been up all night

You wake sleep deprived because your mind will not shut up.

You obsess over bad decisions, bad hair, bad skin, why even bad is more bad than usual.

 

Who has the script,  you hear someone say?

Lines!

Clearly we have all forgotten our lines.

Do you hold the baton with menacing abandon as you apply the rouge?

Is there something about the other night that is still haunting you?

 

Outside, the sky is nothing like you thought it would be.

Everywhere we see faces melting as the rain pools on slouched shoulders,

Buttons fly off frayed sweaters, and all the zippers break at the same time, 

split from the bottom up.

You were barely able to pull it when it snagged on something tender.

 

You hear your inside voices unspooling.

You are fooling no one.

Your shaking hands know better as you raise the hot spoon cautiously to your hungry lips.

 

We are drowning in acronyms. No one speaks in complete sentences.

WTF! FYI- I feel like going AWOL.  LOL.

Does anything make any sense anymore?

Can you explain why a foreign alphabet is floating in this suspicious broth?

Did you perceive a bitter note on the finish?

Did something sharp catch in your throat as you tried to swallow?

Does your stomach conjure a mess of emotions that slowly is creeping up your esophagus, hell bent on escape? 

Meanwhile on the tip of your nose, a saline drop slowly gathers steam.

It is growing heavy with the weight of having to hold your nose, while your struggle for air.

The suspense is killing us here.....

Finally, it crashes into the soup, just as your spoon dips in for another mouthful.

 

The audience shifts in their seats. Have they lost the plot here?  

Do we have to go back to the beginning just to find our own voices?

No one understands what they are seeing tonight,

but allow me to speak for the crowd,

“They are anxiously waiting for the action to resume”

Any casual observer can see

They just want it all to be over.

 

The drugs have had their intended effect, calming the restless nature of the narrative.

No one even remembers why they are here, 

or where they were going before it all began,

The random confusion makes perfect sense to the actors rehearsing their bows.

 

In the cover of darkness, the audience has ghosted the play, exiting before the actor utters the line that everyone had been waiting to hear....