One Night Only

Contributed by Ryan Camuto | gargoyle@flagler.edu

Turn out the house lights,
direct your attention to the man on the stage
spilling his insides out
every note streams over the audience
for eternities, at least through his eyes

Fingers clench around his six stringed
martyr , wrenching out angelic
messages of utopia, spoken without a word,
created in the glistening glow of the burning
artificial sun. It was

a Symphony, a majestic sight in the
limelight upon the stage. This is a
moment in time, a heterotopic
place without a place. Transcending the
physical plane and rooted in
something higher. A world within
a second in time
One
Single
Second
and in the
brevity of the overture
we rise to the apex of emotion the
Crescendo explodes through
the crowd and a mark is
made in the mind
of the on-looking
collective
eye

This minute is gone as fast as it came,
once the summit is met
the plummet
to
the
end begins

No more scramble to shine.
A somber note is played,
the door lights turn on.
A strong reprisal comes
about as we arrive to the show
closing.

One Night Only.

An eternity in the blink of an eye.
Tomorrow a piano man plays,
the audience will return
to the seats but this will not be the same place.
There is no connection like this
in the rest of eternity.
The show expires and the
six stringed maestro’s time is
up. No spectacle is made
of his exit. He’ll end up alone in his vehicle
to a different place far from here.

Under the marquee a man says
“it was such a short lived masterpiece,”
as if a elegiac speech
“It’s a shame it is over,
but I hear a wondrous piano man is here tomorrow.”

The maestro is gone, but his footprint
is true. A boy stood by the door,
in pure fascination. The man as his muse
he now sits in his room,
echoes of the night ring through his head
trying to contain what he saw and heard
pulling it down, from the place without a place
and scribbling it down, in the form of word.