What is left when the curtain falls
leaving hollow halls, cold white walls?
The Troubadour stands with nothing at all
Empty, spent, music rent from deepest soul
Delivered to a crowd both drunken and loud
beyond all control
Metaphor lost during months that it cost
to tear into heart, break through the frost
caused by that crowd, drunk and loud in their chairs
demanding debonair flair
Pretending to care
what the artist infers when the world isn’t there
Still Troubadour tries, in sunshine sighs
those nightly cries bereft of all ties
For family has gone, they just cannot live on
with one so obsessed, by a dream so possessed
self-assessment invested in impossible contest
and contextual conquest
Confound the crowd! all drunken and loud
Drowning out human heartbeats howling proud
Some day they’ll see that entertainment for thee
may be another being’s Earthly purgatory
That day finally came
It all seemed the same
but something intangible seemed to have changed
Subduing the crowd, not so drunken nor loud
who waited breath baited for curtain to rise
and when it did, the surprise
“The Troubadour has gone!”
cried the gathering throng
“Dear minstrel passed on
from where spotlight once shone”
Wait! Could they be wrong…?
For on the far wall
Was a note very small
The Troubadour’s parting song to us all
“Where were you I wonder, the day I bared it all?”
Words by Josefus Haze
Artwork by:
Sarah Kemp
Blake Thompson
Jadfrey Mercado
Imogen Lewis
Robyn Lindop
Martine Albriktsen