Supporting Artists

You feel invisible at times.

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'Rhubarb and custard'

Your lips are moving as your morning alarm,

Looms towards you like a lee shore,

But ignores the ones who get to live the

Easy life.

Life is happening to them.

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Drink your drink and feel grateful.

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Like it’s just an illusion; that the whole

Frail system of taut wire and

Face-scorching, agonising hope

That you expose to the world

Chin quivering,

After too many knocks,

Is just an intricate prop to be enjoyed.

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Like a music box

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And then as soon as possible,

Ignored, humoured

Or discarded as the next emergency

comes into their lives,

And you can go.

Back to being some entertaining memory.

You fade from memories.

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And scene. That’s lunch.

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It’s odd how precarious

The simple act of being can feel,

When your stumbling, important words are rerouted away

Elsewhere,

And your best efforts

Invoke a polite grin and raised brow.

As if you should feel proud of yourself.

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Well done for having a bash, but that's enough now.

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It feels like theft.

Once, a squalling bundle of wriggling,

Creased potential, smeared in innards,

A prayer answered;

How could you have been robbed so? Losing

Any value in the world. Diminished

To less than shadow, or a whisp of smoke.

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Something stolen, something irreplaceable.

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It’s grim to realise your own limitations

As the childish, phosphorescent

Hope that they maybe want you for

Something only in you fades

And you see yourself

As the world does.

Faceless, anyone. No-one. Interchangeable.

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You’ll do for something. A bag of yoghurt in a hat would do.

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You yearn to scream

“See me please, someone please notice my passing.

I have been here, haven’t I?”

And you’ll search for people

Whose eyes seem to look for you.

You will want to change for them and be loved.

In your haste to feel, you will fail.

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Happiness was never meant for you, really, when you think about it.

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It’s cold and reassuring

To know that the world is neither concerned with you

nor Yours. You have no ‘Yours’.

There’s a comfort in knowing that, no matter the misery,

The shit bits of your life

Are so pointless that no-one will be disturbed.

By them.

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Sleep is a prison when you shut out the screaming world.

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Dreams are repeats of the slowest defeats,

The Lonely unravellings. The world gasps at

How little you ever knew.

You are invisible.

Hope, Fail, Decline. Let hope build itself again

Try to catch the camera once or twice.

Be a good sport.

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The supporting artist helps the lead actors perform.