Undue Influence

How I am affected by seeing performances from the past or reading them. Especially Janis Joplin.

I can hear your voice behind the glass,
As if you were in the room next to me.
Croaking out raspy words of promise, to Stand By Me.
Your sister in fate pours out Another Little Piece of My Heart,
As we confide, me from well lit rooms,
And she from smokey, beer soaked bars that match my mind.

Where are you now, that you seem so near to me?
I know you both to have moved on into eternity.

And yet...

And yet...

Your vivid colors and sounds give you away,
Breathing a life that is somehow more than you ever were.
Did you know?
Did you ever think for decades to come we'd know your secrets,
And fall in love with your words?
Did you know you were the last tinge of magic on the underside of this world?

I would never know, locked in my box of doubts.

I would never know, living on isolation, sipping loathing like weak tea.

Hearing the songs and tough choruses, knowing that was the Day the Music Died,
Reading the couplets, already imagining the dagger in Juliet's breast,
We see the end and wish they knew,
But the complicated steps of each dance go on.

They must go on.

They will go on.

They have gone.

It is good and it is right, even as our hearts ache and throats gasp.
We watch them enter the plane.
We watch her kiss the final drops of poison off Romeo's lips.

Is there someone in warm rooms, shivering with my cold?
Somewhere does someone lament all the doors,
I've never opened and curse the ones I have?
When at last my story ends,
Will it all still read as hollow as it does now?

Tragedy, mystery, romance, ordinary living or cautionary tale...
What will be my moral?