Tenterhooks

 

Painting by Sir Anthony Hopkins

 

stretched between maybes

tremble tissues of batwings

extended suspended from

overhead recesses dark and

theatrically cavernous damp

taut and fraught with the

flopsweat of uncertain endings

anxiety shudders with cold

possibilities membranes

divide when from then hanging

curtains of skin in proscenium

attitude blinding the actor

to obvious outcomes no sense

of the audience all of his choices

of speech caught on tenterhooks

black iron forgings catch drop

of the drapes veined in turn

with their coursings of pulsing

soliloquy colloquy obloquy

no loss for words among thespian

creatures the trick is to draw

down the right form of rhetoric

this is no time for embarrassing

truths from some too-honest

leadership life and blood loyalties

hang in stark balance and

consequence augurs for quick

stepping out to the footlights

performing whatever deceits

keep concealed the real nature

of sharp-toothed insectivores

 

 

From my book Ephemera