On Broadway, Saturday Matinee

Find your seats and turn off your devices.

Take off your hats and don’t step on feet.

Unwrap your candy; don’t snap, crackle, or pop it.

Do not usurp the armrests or rustle your programmes.

No fidgets, no whispers, no cameras, catcalls, or phones.

There’s standing room only if required at the back of the House.

Overture and Beginners…

Everybody raise their Jazz hands.

Ronda R. Scott-Marak

5 August 2017

Diminished

For him, and me, and us:

A person spends most of his or her adult life with work associates;
more than family and friends.

At the end of that phase of living, whether by choice, circumstance or age people forget that closeness. They forget the friendships and camaraderie forged in pain, joy, and loss that they all went through together and that feeling frequently disappears when people drift apart.

When the ones gone from the circle are forgotten, ignored, and the shared experiences are swept under the rug or tossed into the trash it hurts.

It especially hurts their family when the lost one, no longer in anyone’s thoughts, sickens alone, neglected, or dies unmourned or unremembered.

Nothing is lonelier than becoming invisible and overlooked
by those, you have not yourself forgotten.

Nothing diminishes us as humans than neglected or disregarded friendships.

Ronda R. Scott-Marak

© 6 January 2018

Perchance

"To sleep, perchance to dream"

(With thanks to Wm Shakespeare)

Physical pain can reference many sensations;
sharp, dull, buzzing, aching, throbbing, or constant but it always means discomfort.

Pain always hurts: physical pain distresses your body,
and emotional misery can hurt everything.

Exhaustion is palpable; it is a different sort of pain, a disabling, constant distress
that exacerbates all the tender spots, known and unknown.

Sleep pretends to help;
it promises dark quiet where the mind and body can drift in peaceful dreams.

Sleep might rejuvenate the organs and muscles to a degree.

It may calm the mind, relax the turbulence,
but it doesn’t relieve the fatigue in every molecule of body, mind, and soul.

I fear not even the final sleep will cure that.

Ronda R. Scott-Marak

© 9 January 2018

Colden Vortex

"A winter's day, in a deep and dark December"
(With thanks to Paul Simon)

Cold as brittle as icicles hanging from branches and eaves 

Bitter and breathtaking, it turns exhalation into frozen mist 
and exultation into gasping pain.  

The popping and crackling of ice-laden branches, the syncopated snapping of logs and lit kindling;
the sharp tang of pine, incense of wood smoke, sweet, acrid, and ozone.  

The wind, like lashes on exposed skin, whips inflamed flesh into white and red weals, freezing tears in squinting eyes.  

Blue and grey skies, frost-bitten toes,
grey-blue fingers,  inflamed dripping nose;
running like a cataract over an ice-slicked slope. 

The Polar vortex eddies and roils through the town.  

Ronda R. Scott-Marak
 © 29 December 2017 

Finis “…I’ll Cry if I Want To”

(with thanks to Q, Lesley, and the lyricists)

I don’t go to parties;

I am no longer a Party Member:

I am not a Republican,

I am not a Democrat,

I am not a Socialist, a Tory, or Labour.

I am not an Independent, a Libertarian, or an Anarchist.

I am not a Progressive;
I walk in lock-step with no one.

I do not take any side except my own.

I am a questioner, a delver, a free-thinker.
I believe in fact and not innuendo.

I am a Compassionate and a Realist.

You do not want me on your jury.

Ronda R. Scott-Marak

© 8 December 2017

Dam’s Burst

(With thanks to Mr Sondheim)

The sun comes up
I’m still thinking; no rest, no sleep.

The ability of forethought, to think clearly,
to find solutions, is both terrifying and comforting.

Knowing answers is no blessing
when no one’s asked the questions.

Questioning has no benefits
when considering the conundrum of existence.

I’m still waiting; it’s like ‘I’m losing my mind’.

Ronda R. Scott-Marak

© 1 November 2017

Big Bang

Chemical reaction
or psychic spark,

Intentional manifestation or physical science;
Theory or legend?

Indisputable fact or hypothesis?

Does it matter?

Once there was vastness; now there are solar systems.

Whether this was creation or causation
is of less significance than the astounding magnitude of existence.

Does our knowledge of science negate the possibilities?
What caused the spark of life to ignite?

Mayhap what is termed magic is a so far unidentified and misunderstood philosophy;
or perhaps the unknown used what we’d call quantum physics as a tool?

Ronda R. Scott-Marak

© 1 October 2017