Oscar Wilde Acting Lessons

(what do you do once you become

dissatisfied with the mask you wear?)

actors beholden to the beast behind our production.

curtains close(?) void social contract(?) contagious freedom(?)

i stand broken living into this phantom

fully real

repressed to fake physicality —

gaslights fueled by civil charades (how many more do i contain?).

DIE TO SELF

yet who is selfish enough to know what [who] to kill?

impious niceness unaware of being wholly

hated by way of that which lies within

freed by cavalry’s noose: “and the Truth shall set you free.”

(clears throat)

“An Ode to Oedipus”

Anima

Animus

Fighting the mirror; cowering at her eyes.

Murdering what you were is easier [than]

knowing what you want — liminal anxiety.

Attraction

Distraction

a stumbling first act of autonomy

retreating to the teat of libidinal gratification. (serve me!)

“My mother and my brothers are those who hear the Word.”

A soul blinded by somatic revelation

Patricide

Matricide

seeing with eyes to see.

Tiresias: pious selfishness pinned and plucked by maternal modesty,

the noble reward of suffering.

Damned

Deemed

guiding odyssey onward.

Foreign

Familiar

inward frustration.

Implode

Explode

ripping the veil of Maya:

nothingness.

(the Underground can stand on terra firma for the price of thirty pieces of silver.)