Another drama teacher says, "In this scene, as in all scenes,
your character's objective cannot be simply to want to leave.
Otherwise, you would."
And, in this first stanza, I think about suicide,
or maybe the idea of death.
But let's not say me, let's say the speaker,
so my mother can continue to read and not stop to cry,
or to think about burying another child,
or wonder how she'll retrieve my body from Kentucky--probably a Megabus.
So, in the first stanza,
the speaker thinks about killing themselves,
and here the phrase "to leave" means "to die."
Here, I play a Scottish prince who flees the scene of his father's murder
and never returns,
because I imagine he's opened up a brewery in Ireland
with a bathhouse in the basement.
In Act Five, I play a man who does not speak,
and my friends, working crew, scrub blood from the stage between shows.
So, in the second stanza, the speaker dissociates.
The speaker is always asking "for a friend,"
or maybe just asking for a friend--
always trying to make a living being someone else.
So the speaker is an actor, right? And they're rehearsing this play--
Spoiler alert--it's Macbeth.
Spoiler alert--like everyone dies.
So, everyone dies, right? What's that phrase?
"Don't take your work home with you"?
Another drama teacher says, "Your first instinct is boring."
Which I must take to mean if I would choose "fight,"
I should instead choose to lipstick, to disco, to unhinge, to swallow whole,
to fuck, to masturbate to something new.
And if I would choose "flight," I should instead choose to teleport,
to camouflage, to evaporate, to rocketship, to lightning bolt,
to drop my voice and broaden my shoulders and wear straight-cut blue jeans.
Don't rely on your first choice. What's the eighth choice?
I mean, no one wants to watch a death that hasn't been choreographed.
And, in the third stanza, we've got a series of action verbs.
Or, you know, a list of things that you can't do
if you are depressed, or dead.
I mean, the speaker doesn't mean to conflate the two, but, well, you asked.
So, yeah, action verbs, right.
It's this dumb thing that actors do.
Because you've got to make a bold choice, right?
So that is the question-- Fight or flight?
Or stand there and let the Megabus hit you.
And another pair of kind eyes asks if I have thought of leaving,
and have I wondered I'll always be someone living
who is asked about their final exit.
And, in the fourth stanza, someone asks the speaker,
"So, just how sad are you really?"
And this is sort of a placeholder for anytime anyone suggests free therapy,
thinking free therapy is actually free,
as if speaking the truth out loud doesn't cost you anything.
In our production, it is decided
that the women and children will be murdered offstage,
and so we are spared from having to fall back
on our first instinct--to turn away.
And, in the fifth stanza, the speaker feels selfish.
Every night they watch a country draw its last breath
across a valley of asphalt on loop, and then dare cry for themselves.
But it's whatever.
Today I put on lipstick that a friend from Minneapolis sent me.
I ate waffles.
I did two loads of laundry and I danced around my bedroom.
And fuck if that isn't a shit ton of action verbs.
So, yeah, it is a poem about depression, but it was still a poem.
And how lucky we are that we hold hearts
that turn our hurts into something that can be sung.
In most poems, a line break indicates a breath.
So you have to hear it,
how, in every stanza, I am breathing,
in every line I am still alive.
(cheers and applause)
Thank you.