Stage Fright (Held Me Tight )

Stage Fright -  A Poem by Paul McCann

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSd0_YwB11w

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Fright or flight. its  Friday night .

Fight , flight , fight , flight its  stage fright .

Turn the microphone on ,

The stomach is feeling  hard and tight .

Shadows fell around me as winter kissed the microphone .

and my voice froze like a cold frosty breath across the entire audience .

Stage frightened people   .

I looked through the strange steel bars of my cage and saw every single face staring at me .

.. (outside voice  narration) …

and my voice froze like a cold frosty breath across the entire audience .

(outside voice  narration) …

I held tightly to my six string and the stage was the most lonely place on the planet .

(outside voice  narration) …

It was Friday evening and the bar was packed with young people who wanted to hear some rock and roll .

My fractured brackets of songs disappeared into an abyss  .

My fingers fumbled on the fret and the strings on my guitar clashed together like a muffled thud on the roof of an old tin hut .

The only thing that offered some relief was the girl who walked towards me and grabbed me around the throat and kissed me on the lips .

Suddenly like an old  kerosene heater in the corner of my soul, the ice melted and the cat on the roof fell to the floor , where three layers of sound surrounded the audience to keep them warm .

(outside voice  narration) …

I was joined on stage by three , who must have over the years seen stage frightened people like myself  and developed a way to play around that .

It was brilliant .

They filled in the spaces where I stood solo and between the void of the audience we killed that stray cat who got in the way of this runaway train .

The band were exciting and new and we called ourselves tight .

The girl who kissed me, plugged my instruments in and turned the microphone on

Suddenly something happened and after a while the hand around my throat  released its grip  and my voice found a new direction and sounded like an echo from a distant heartfelt embrace

I held on tight to my six string and love made it last .

Production by  ABC pool and shown in Electra Festival Melbourne

Written by  mscraic - (Paul McCann)  in  collaboration with Pool members .

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSd0_YwB11w