i

i shot an elk last night
and i barely know what they look like,
majestic and brown
buckish and lazy?

they tread on this earth fattening up for winter,
preparing themselves for the onslaught of cold.
while i aimed my rifle through the safety of glass
and metal, wood, lead and a bit of fire,
he simply looked ahead and with desire
began to chew the grass at his feet.

ii

there i was down on bowery street
with a pair of rented gloves and a handmedown jacket
racing ‘cross town to my yeats reading club.

with some plath on my arm and a bit of mine own,
i tread into a world that for sometime has owned
me, yes deep in the day and always at night,
the drug that is verse and its piece that is prose,
takes me and wakes me like plucking a rose
from its warm yet sullen earth, its once and former home.

and so pollination or maturation were only yesterday,
but now you represent ‘love’ or at least a gift,
slowly dying always fleeting — life.. at short shrift.
and yet we pretend that everything is still alright,
while you’re a simple symbol that always whithers away,
something bound to fall like a lover or the sun
who crashes through your horizon every morning
and just like that they leave you again.
leaving you with nothing to show for yourself
‘cept maybe a tear or even a grin,
a smile or a glassed over stare,
maybe some ice and a bottle of gin
but no one’s waiting at the top of your stairs.

iii

i shot an elk last night
and took silent pride while i did it
it was so easy.
it was too easy.
God forgive me, i have done it.

there he stood, the sun froze manufacturedly
upon him like a stage spotlight,
and he chewed his grass so golden brown
that i wondered to myself with my usual frown
who’s aiming at me?  someone is assuredly.
upon my stage there must be a light
to show my doubts and all of my frights,
someone while i’m sleeping.
someone will pluck.  it.  out. 

and no promethean heat will e’er enter my lungs
no more will my frigid alabaster heart beat,
but it shall stay frozen as it is now
like my toes that once treaded this ground.

iv

surrounded by poets on a street north of houston
i sit across from a liquid brooklyn,
while zombie-comedies flourish flatly
i laugh out loud like i haven’t in a while.

a john-goodman-in-the-big-lebowski-look-alike
reads from his book of anti-god rants and hilarious antics

everyone seems to know him, this sarcastic famous f***,
and this contemporary or at least modern-comic poet
goes on about angels and rednecks and god and cain and dinosaurs

insincerity runs rampant like woody allen on acid,
or maybe lenny bruce during a catatonic food coma
with the vocal prowess of jeff foxworthy and the charm of a stockcar race.

with metaphors as good as a word or two thrown together
(with the delicate fecundity of a trash collector on a frigid monday morning)
the oaf pontificates on humor, and other impossibilities of today.

as the laughs ensue and continue and continue
i keep writing in case something hits me or at least
until this is all over.

v

and so again and again,
i take aim with my pen,
such a beautiful calligriphic mess of some lines
just some random observational narrative rhymes,
but with each sip i take and each beat
i break.  him.  down.
I can’t believe the judgment the hatred or my pen
the high incestuous climbing of my clammy achy skin

i don’t sweat, i take aim.
i don’t fear, i take names.
and suddenly my forefather’s of thought 
take me under their golden wings
fill me with words and other splendid things.
things i have never seen before
things that come to me in the night,
beats that keep me walking
keep me talking without fright.
it’s not easy for you and ain’t easy for me
so why did i get off on this voiceless killing spree?  

they tread on this earth inspiring and desiring
just to talk a little truth, whatever there’s may be.
and there i was taking aim with my pen
through the safety of the empty glass just in front of me.
but something just tripped the wrong set of wires.
he simply looked ahead with artistic desires,
and began to chew and spit on the grass at his feet.

vi

(whether the green monster took hold of my heart beat,
or maybe the yellow belly of some wannabe hero
took me aside and said, “Here’s the match Nero!
All’s you gotta do is hold it close enough,
the heat of your weapon will do all the rest.”
and i choked down his fire and it burned in my breast
and…)

i shot an elk last night. 
and he didn’t even know it.
buckish and majestic
the nature of expression.

i shot an elk last night.

but really…  

he shot me.

The quivering Oak outside my window seems to droop today.  It may be the rain of a few days ago or the cool gray skies of today that make my tree shiver in place.  It may be it’s readiness for fall.  In the distance I see leaves turning, slowly turning from green to gold and brown.  I hear the shouts and smell the traffic and I even feel the sun trying to warm up the day.  Every Fall is something new and something ended and something blue, something chipping away at yesterday and plowing forward to tomorrow. 

The path I have walked (or run, or driven, ridden, or even crawled) is slowly coming up behind me, being purged and replaced by Johnny Appleseeds and Susy Marigolds.  And up ahead, I use the stones of my past to concretize the future… but maybe a road doesn’t need concrete or even stone.  Maybe the urban reality of concrete forests and asphalt jungles is a sad one — the roads are already marked, the maps are already written, and the paths have all been traveled, trodden through and through. 

          Can you make your own way and blaze your own trail
          While riding their trains and holding their rails?    
          What is it you search for, oh artist in me?
          Can you play their games and be totally free?
          Can you make your own art each and every day?
          When politics and smiles just get in your way?
          I refuse to be old and look back all wilted
          To then be an artist with a past that’s been jilted.
          Why can’t I sing of new found beauty and lost love?
          Must I wait like a heavy cloud to cry up above?
          “We too feel pain and must be respected!”
          Cried the Little Prince upon being dissected.
          You think my world is small, you think you know me well,
          But this Steppenwolf inside has oh so much to tell…
      

(But let me save this for the ring, those five minutes of artistic grandeur.  The comical conversable laughable criable liable to make every actor scream, those things that get you out of bed in the morning, and those things that keep you up at night:  the audition.)

So for now I will leave the stones – the aforementioned stones of the quickly-fleeting past – I will leave them all behind or at least share them with someone else, for you may need but a few to cross a little creek, or you may need quite a lot to slow a raging river.  “But I am quite finished with neatness!”  cried the little boy to his teacher.  And she looked on in horror, and also jealous amazement, as he took his blue crayon and drew all over the lines… All across them and around them with all of his colours.  “I don’t want to be messy, or careless, or ‘free’… (that false freedom to act however one pleases, without recompense, remorse, or even thought for your fellow mates)  I want to be happy and I want to be me!”  So let the waters come and let the rivers rage, I will swim and drown if that be my quest, or I will ford the river in time because EVERYTHING is fordable.  Fighting and working hard everyday is an affordable investment, because it inspires me and gives me more energy to deal with every challenge in the road ahead.   

And very soon the road will be covered, blanketed over in umber — raw and burnt.  But as the leaves change and before they all fall, I will take a lesson from the urgent Oak and steadfast Pine, I will stay in my place and work for a better tomorrow because I know if I plant the roots now, and I mean really plant them, I can survive the winter wherever I am and whatever it is that she may bring.

And through the thick clouds the sun shines on barely, barely letting us know that she is there, through some gray and dull flouresence she shines on in vain.  Come fall, come what may. 

          I will shine as brightly as I can 
          ‘Till I burn your clouds all through,
          ‘Till I melt her snowy-whitness
          And, Master Art, I am with you.  

          But that time has not yet come 
          And I’m ahead of myself, I am.  
          For the morning has left and left us the afternoon, 
          And before I walk along the birch-lined lyrics of my past
          I hear the voice of Sandoz cry out to me at last,
          ”And now, back to work!”      

The Media Archive has been updated with some really fun photos from promotional shoots (for Michael’s latest showing of “My Well Schooled Heart”), to headshots, to even a relaxing day at the park with a very special friend!  We hope to have Michael’s latest YouTube videos up on the Media Archives soon… but for now, please check out his YouTube channel. 

If you missed one of Michael’s shows in July, you can find a few videos from “Pyscho Cabaret” and “My Well Schooled Heart” filmed and uploaded by the wonderfully talented Jill Leger on her YouTube channel … here’s a preview of one of her videos… It’s Michael’s opening number from “My Well Schooled Heart” at Signature’s Sizzlin’ Summer Series…

Check back often and please let Michael or I know
if you would like to see anything on the site that isn’t already…or just to say hi!

Thanks and Happy Browsing!

Performers:  Terri Allen, Chris Cochran, Emily Leatha Everson, Arlene Hill,
Michael Vitaly Sazonov, Judy Simmons and Lonny Smith

Director:  Judy Simmons
Musical Director:  George Fulginiti-Shakar

Join the insanity!     6 Performances!
Thurs. July 10, 7:45 PM
Sat., July 12, 7:30 PM
Thurs.,  July 17,  6:00 PM
Wed., July 23, 7:45 PM
Thurs., July 24, 6:00 PM
Friday, July 25, 5:30 PM

]]> http://www.michaelsazonov.com/blog/2008/07/10/opening-night-psycho-cabaret/feed/ http://www.michaelsazonov.com/blog/2008/06/25/my-well-schooled-heart-2/ http://www.michaelsazonov.com/blog/2008/06/25/my-well-schooled-heart-2/#comments Wed, 25 Jun 2008 16:43:50 +0000 Michael Sazonov http://www.michaelsazonov.com/blog/?p=36

MY WELL SCHOOLED HEART

I’ve been re-working my one man show, adding songs, subrtacting songs, developing a new ending even!  So I’m really looking forward to performing it as part of Signature Theatre’s summer cabaret seriesThe performance is ONE NIGHT ONLY!

JULY 31st at 8:30 pm

Please click here for tickets

and more information

Also I’ll be performing in a half hour set
after the very talented Natascia Diaz on July 30th at 8:30pm…
I saw her in Carnival!  at The Kennedy Center last year and My parents and I saw her in the National Tour of West Side Story – she was the standout of the show!
I’m looking forward to sharing the set with her…

Click here if the embeded image doesn’t come up… Hope you enjoy it! Rate it kindly :O)

I had a great time delving deep into the clinical mind and scientific heart of Albert Camus’s Dr. Bernard Rieux.  He was a lot of fun to play — as much fun as one can have on stage dealing with things like the plague… the blind brutality of incurable diseases, the frustration of a crippling bureaucracy, the Absurdity of tragedies that present itself when people, surrounded by death, quarantine themselves from the rest of the world to contain the pestillence that’s killing them all.  Life and Death.  Faith and Fate.  And “Man.”  The show really started cooking as the run progressed, so I’m sorry to see it end so quickly.  I want to heartily thank Robert and Elle and the whole cast and crew at Scena Theatre.

Now as I read the stories about cyclones, earthquakes, fires, and floods taking lives by the thousands, I can only hope that Camus (through his cast of complex characters and arguments) is both wrong and right.  As much as I hope that there will not “always be victims, because that is the order of things,” I too hope that tragedies like these can “help men to rise above themselves” because after all, I hope there are always “those who, while unable to be saints, refuse to bow down to the plague…”  Those who, in the time of true testing, strive not for lofty answers or reasons, but work for cures.  “Their actions and desires are limited to ‘Man’ and his humble, yet awe-inspiring love, and they shall have their reward.  It’s only right.”

And from the relative comfort of my computer, I can sit here and type this as (a hope for) truth.  Yet amidst these recent tragedies, I can only think through the paradigm of Camus’s characters…  Is it out of my hands to help everyone?  Maybe.  After all, Dr. Rieux sent his own wife away to die alone in a sanatarium because he knew he was incapable of curing her.  Is it always out of our hands?  Maybe not.  Is tragedy always so far away and so well reported on?  Never.  As a former professor of mine once said, “the whole world needs the whole world.”  So I pray for those dealing with these tragedies every day just as I hope others pray for me.  Because, as the town of Oran finds out in the midst of the Plague, “it can’t do any harm.”

Check out my rendition of “If I Ever Say I’m Over You” by John Bucchino… I recorded as part of my cabaret and debut cd back almost 6 months ago.  Click here to view it… and rate it kindly :O)