This Plain Life
(and its Faustian deals)
By day, I live this plain life
of cups of coffee and café sandwiches
with ham and cheese and sometimes tomato;
if I want to be a little risqué,
I ask Paul or Paula (yes, that’s their names)
if I could have it toasted.
In this plain life I scribble plain notes,
like this one, discuss the day’s affairs
with my plain wife in my plain language
while I put a smile or a grimace on my plain face.
By night I live an operatic life,
filled with Faustian deals
and heroic characters for whom
I play the role of Falstaff.
In this tempestuous life
I can be Prospero or Caliban,
Ariel, or I can be the dragged around Dedalus.
I can watch words and pictures bleed from my ears and eyes,
all over my cheeks, my chin, my shirt and the sheets.
I can know it’s so real that I’ll never wake up.
But I do wake up in this plain life,
with pockets full of the coloured pebbles of words and pictures,
and silver footprints that lead from the bed,
to the window, and up onto the sill; where they go from there,
I might, if I’m lucky, find out tonight.
