Like a broken actor
fading in the cameras’ lens
his final performance
in stage chambers
dark and dusky
his pummeled ego
fragile as eggshell
here mingled midst
a failed feast
of footlight flunkies
who hiss and howl
at his presumptive intrusion
into their vacuum-tubed world
these toothless lions
these shunned voice-overs
of the b-movie universe
draped in panic
a parade of fading phantoms
lost in the age of radio
each an empty sound-booth soul
he — and these embittered strangers
stuffed full of their soured sorrow
step to their carbon-grained mics
as movingly vocabular as a cadaver
each dumbed to wordlessness
spirits deathly cold
they weep
*
rob kistner © 2022
Poetry at: Shay’s Word Garden