RIFKAH GOLDBERG

GETTING THE ACT TOGETHER My life until now Much like a Pinter play Creative flow largely uninterrupted by cleaning Mealtimes rarely coincide with hungry mouths Suicidal tenant hovers around Another one waits in the wings Ex-tenant leaves desperate messages Always accompanied by my ever-scratching cat Green 'phone beeps on wicker stool Green electric kettle refuses to work Cupboard door threatens to fall on my head Books and music abide in every possible corner Sleep among hundreds of canvases Schizophrenic shift between painter and prude Undone work religiously piled by the computer While miraculously conjuring up gourmet meals In an all-time two-week record This plot thickens into a veritable stew You stride into my life claiming Where there's a will there's a way To team up two pairs of children Who do not match in any way For both of us now to be in two places at once With huge spaces for obsessive creative outputs At the end of act one as the curtain falls Act two totally impossible to predict For the real stuff of life and love is Far stranger than fiction could ever be March 2001