My Stage

I stand on my stage, as I have for twenty-one years,
Acting out every scene and story of my life as if
It were real, believing the joy, the pain, the losses,
The gains, and the love like they would never leave.
And after every showing I trot backstage to the few
Who know how the world really is, with its falsehoods
So prevalent in our everyday lives that to think otherwise
Would be considered complete and utter madness.
The only solace we take in acting out one fallacy
While breathing in the other is that they are
Separated by a maroon velvet curtain, shielding
One set of lies from the other so they do not all
Come together and douse an incurable poison over us.

Until one day I take centre-stage, and my eyes begin
To cheat me of my perspective, as the truths untangle
Themselves from the lies for the very first time.
I falter and fall, I get back up, then I trip again
Because of the revelations and contemplations
Suddenly surrounding the place that has reluctantly
Been home to this architecture of denied deceit.
And the people in the crowd and the people backstage
All look the exact same, players playing me for a fool,
None with my best intentions at heart and all tricking me
Into thinking that the stage and its behind were really
Different worlds in different times with different hopes,
Dreams, failures, lovers, chancers, liars and realities.

Flames engulf the so treasured maroon velvet curtain
From nowhere as it becomes quickly apparent that
They want me to move on to a new stage where the
Act can start again as if this realisation of mine
Never happened at all - but I do not want to go back
To being a puppet on a string of some sly supervisor,
So I embrace the newfound truths of my personality
As if they were newfound family because it is only in
Those truths that salvation and escape can be sanely sought;
But with every re-reading of these truths about me,
And every glance back at the lies I once lived,
I soon see that I cannot tell which life would be worse:
One filled with truths or one filled with lies.