theater

Being illuminated in one act

21st_century_poems_pablo_saborio.jpg

 

The dark enters the scene (left)
to crush the last day
into trim of twilight.

You sit sensing the wall
watching your mind
being sponge
absorbing gainsboro
from the wall’s last
paleness.

You must be struggling

the ocean the sea a shelter
in some mountain.

There is a crackling
in the woods,
a decision to move.

The wind
not an object of pain
travels through the pines.

Needles trembling
thin creatures
not afraid
but as a web of wave
through which
you already
in awe.

The wall reemerges
(mistlike entrance)
to become a window.

Drawn
ashore by the emotion.

Drinking the ocean,
thoroughly
drop by drop
until
the mind craves its break.

You look up.

Enter moon (right)
conscious of its own silence.

The moon
casts its light
an echo bare
washing your chest.

Your deepest response
allows a pause
first to savor
and then smile.

You close your eyes.

Curtain.

The Character – A short monologic play

The Character – A short monologic play

the_character_play

Characters:
Pablo
Wife
The Character
The character’s colleague

A café in Copenhagen. 1pm on a Thursday. Pablo sits 
on a vintage sofa next to his wife. Across them sit 
a pair of colleagues that discuss, in a profound tone, 
the “science of marketing”.

[The Character gets up, apologizes to his colleague for taking up two hours of her time. Begins to put on his coat and scarf on.]

Pablo: [addressing his wife] What a character, that guy.

The Character: What did you just say?

Pablo: [impassive] That you’re quite a character.

The Character: What the hell is the problem with you?

Pablo: What? Me? What are you talking about? What do you know about my world, my conception of the world, my inner drama, my subjective constructs? Do you have any idea what I mean by the word ‘character’ and could you have suspected that I see the world as a stage where we are all characters that pretend to be this or that, and some of us are better at it, and some are portraying so bizarrely absurd roles, that they deserve being pointed out and addressed as “one-of-a-kind characters”? I am conscious that saying out loud, “what a character” may connote a derogatory sense to the word. I am aware that we pretend to be immersed in a kind of social nebula, where things appear the same to all members of the community. But I’m sorry to say, that is not the case, we don’t all share the same monotonous perceptual paradigm and I’ll keep calling you and everybody else characters, yes characters in…

[The Character and colleague exit café]

Pablo: … in the absurd drama of the earth.

The End.

the iceman cometh

We all sat,
staring more to the left
than to the right
our heads slowly drooping
approaching the table
that’ll serve as a pillow
tonight… but then
someone gets up
amongst our snarls and grumble
stands on a chair
grandstand before him
and words somewhat
resembling these: 

 

I’d clothed myself
in all these dirty rags of dreams
I needed them
to protect myself
from the bitterness outside
the hostile quake of accidents
and frostbitten emptiness
just like you
– all of you!
we’re drowning in our illusions
like a matchstick
burning itself
slowly becoming blur and flakes
until one day
truth unattainable
we disappear – like
a wisp of nothingness
in the incommensurability
of the eternal midnight.

 

Someone threw an empty bottle
at him
knocked him out dead
and we resumed our rest
alongside decadent dreams.

contemporary poetry

down south

Nihilism Poetry

I’ll erase the ifs
on a one-way street
to perdition
till there is no more
ground to roam
crossing the enigmatic landscapes
whose symbols
remain incomprehensible
while the incandescent journey
coils spirals south
towards the dead-end;
then – a look back to
the effluvia of decisions
an impressionism of the past
of equal value
to the hallucinations of dreams
I remain dumbstruck
such as the puppet
performing an unlikely role
before the theater
of the night.

contemporary poetry

A line of thought

medusa

We haven’t reached the spiritual vertigo of Zarathustra, for in his abundance of knowledge became weary of too much wisdom; nor are we broken down by so much grief as Titus had to endure. We are not too small to be completely insignificant, nor great enough to awake with daily pride. Our real circumstances are somewhere in between the extremities, our toils are not fully tragic or heroic.

We battle through the repetitions of the calendar and if we strive to send out a message, a moral for our collected personal histories, what unclouded expression can give meaning to the facts of our plainer existence? What, for instance, is the final message of the universally acclaimed films of Forrest Gump or Amelie? What feature in their unwinding plots seizes the spectator’s mind-body and synchronizes its fictitious reality with our own living novels? The former film is a wonderful exposition of the Ying-Yang character of any human life, yet in the end the legendary up-and-down events of Gump’s life become simply a background for the truly memorable moments of his life as he describes them to his life-long love: gazing at the stars at night, contemplating a sunrise, running by a crystalline lake, and surveying without distinction the earth and sky. The latter film from the onset exposes a lover of life in her most basic and simple experiences: sticking a hand into a sack of beans or skipping pebbles on water.

For both films, besides the eternal search for love, these aforementioned singular and unpretentious experiences somehow seem to magically justify the turmoil of existence, our inevitable mortality and the lurking solitude that hides away in every human heart.

But while Zarathustra, Titus, Forrest and Amelie lie tranquilly behind the surface of a book’s page or the film’s screen, what is for the true mortal being the climax of his life? When do we find the ultimate recognition of our satisfaction, and if we do, are we able to leave behind forever the racing dream that we have called our daily reality? In other words, once we find a simple reason for our being, can we then allow it to return to non-being?

The search for fulfillment needs not reach the extremes of intellectual inquiry of Nietzsche’s Zarathustra or the emotional explosiveness of Shakespeare’s Titus, perhaps our day to day lifestyle will be enough if it be endowed with sufficient awareness, a recognition that behind our meals, offices hours and snoring sleep an intuitive beauty akin to what Forrest and Amelie felt in their rudimentary experiences is available to us.

After all, is not the triviality of the familiar set before the grand theater of stars and galaxies? Is it so surprising that this world as it is, is just enough, that we need seek no more, progress no further, attain nothing more…

Had today been the last day of this earth and we the living saw and participated in the last scene of this earthly play, would not every last smile turn into a divine sign, every last meal a most sacred ritual, every last conversation a most treasured bible, every last kiss a most unnatural miracle.

The potential of the ordinary is quite extraordinary once we acknowledge how rare and marvelous is our neglected existence.