With feelings of grandeur she accepted the challenge,
Lost and delusional, she sought guidance from the Greats.
As the words weren’t written, a facade appeared in front of her frosted-glass eyes.
It was grande and it was classic, old and timeless,
window after window of silvery faces.
As they would glide through the labyrinthine halls,
she, in her haste, fumbled and would fall
like a newborn trying to take its first steps.
Her words were not like theirs.
Instead of graceful and flowing,
her words were clumsy and a little lost.
Their words well-rounded,
Her words deformed, half finished, scarcely made up.
Instead of Shakespeare, her style was more Shakespeare’s Richard of Gloucester,
with the limp,
without the cunning.
With the incentive,
without the power.
Bruise after bruise she still sought guidance.
Lost and confused, she looked to Mamet, Ibsen, Chekhov or Brecht.
In absurd haste she confusedly tried Beckett,
But Beckett didn’t work so she went back to Barker.
Fall after fall she would sprint through the hallways chasing the Greats.
From baby steps to sprinting,
“Surely,” she thought, “This is too good to be true”
And it was,
because
Every now
and Every then
When she would gain momentum,
the Greats would always out-run her.
“This is not a race!” she cried,
With pity They left their tracks on the floor,
but her splay-footed walk struggled
to keep
in line
With The Greats.
She took a sharp right turn and landed at a door,
Journalism stood there with one arm wide open,
the other behind his back.
“Here,” he said, “Here is where the truth lies,”
And she turned on her heel with haste
and continued to chase
those silvery faces of the Great Ghosts,
in the Halls of Playwrights Past.
