Poetic texts

I'm more than a wheelchair and a talking machine, Denise Landry

Characters

Denise: playwright, uses wheelchair & lightwriter.
Denise’s Inner voice: reflects on her dreams & memories
Isabel: Denise¹s supportive friend, disabled performer
Starla: disabled performer, vain about her acting, wants leading roles
Paige: in wheelchair, occupied play director

Setting

(Fall afternoon. A little but busy local theater full of disabled performers and helpers, ready to read over their new play. Paige is getting ready to direct their new play.    IMPROV)

Paige
   Ok everyone, gather around. (everyone gathers) We¹ve got to cast this play about disabled women’s dreams that Denise wrote.

Isabel
   I would be fine doing a supporting role.

Starla
   And dear Denise, I of course, will take the starring role and make this play marvelous!

Denise
   (laughs)   We are all great performers here, Starla. Why don’t you read the script before you choose a role.    (Starla sighs ok        IMPROV)

Paige
    How about you, Denise? Why don’t you take a role and join us on stage?
It’s your play after all.

Isabel
   Yes, it would be nice to have you on stage.

Denise
   Oh no. I just write plays. I can’t speak, or move around easily. I’m sure I can’t handle a lot of lines using my wheelchair and talking machine.

Paige
   Well just think on it. It would be great to see you on stage, showing people what you can do with that wheelchair and talking machine. Everyone else has a copy of the play? Okay then, let’s go backstage, and read the play over.
(everyone exits, leaving Denise alone to think.)

Denise
(thinking out loud) I’m more than a wheelchair and a talking machine. The outside world sees me in my clumsy, moving wheelchair. My Cerebral Palsy disabled body with twisted hands busily typing out my small and great thoughts on my noisy talking machine. That’s what most see in me. But I hope people look pass the disability, and see I am a woman with common desires and fears. A woman with memories, hopes and plans...

Inner voice
(repeat) A woman with memories, hopes and plans created deep in my mind by a strong Inner voice.
   I hope to be accepted body and soul by everyone. I need my friends both disabled and non disabled, and I to mingle and share our lives together.
   I like having people to love, and to love me back. Not only family and friends, but hopefully one day, I will have a beautiful, caring man to share my heart with. I fear being without love. But my heart struggles with the need to trust people. I have to trust that people will help my disabled body do things, care for me. But my heart, always wonders, ″Are they scared of my odd body? How long before they change heart and leave me? ″

(Starla enters flustered with her script)

Starla
   Denise dear, I have a question. On page 1, my character...I mean the lead character picks up a shirt from a chair, then pushes the chair then turns around. I am a great performer, but, I doubt that I can do all that in my wheelchair!?

Denise
   Yes, you’re a great performer, but no one here expects you to do everything by yourself. There will be stage helpers. They can help you. (Starla goes oh and exits; Denise sighs and thinks)

Inner voice
    Being truly understood has been hard for me. My inability to move blocks my true thoughts from others. Creating walls between me and the talking world. For years, I tried many written and mechanical ways to communicate but all still left me feeling unvoiced, disassociated. Then five years ago, I got a great gift. The mighty, little Lightwriter, voice synthesizer sitting in front of me today. Finally, a way to knock down those communication walls! I can now glide my fingers along my lightwriter’s keyboard, spell out words and say out loud, ″Hey people, I’m here! I’m ready to take to my place in the world!″

(Paige comes out)

Paige
   Denise! There’s a word on page 2 that Starla and I can’t make out. It¹s the sentence that reads: ″Go, try new things, meet new people and let your presence be... what?″

Denise
   ...be known.

Paige
       be known? Thanks.    (Paige leaves)

(Denise thinks back)

Inner voice
   Taking my place in the world has been my biggest struggle since my birth, thirty-eight years ago. Turned wrong inside my mother’s womb, I whirled and twisted around.   Struggling to stay alive; fighting to get much needed air. Finally I found the mighty birth canal. I came out pretty, and crying ″Hello″ to the universe. Ready to discover things, but the moving, talking part of my brain couldn¹t help me. Not enough oxygen during birth destroyed that part of my being. My spirit was strong, willing to jump and play wildly. But my fragile body often told me, ″Can’t do it. Too hard. Find another way to deal with life and enjoy it.″So I joined the disabled world. I got wheels to help me move and learnt to communicate with words on paper or with a computer. Feeling safe within my disabled body and with my special path of schooling, friends playing and wheeling around.

(Paige enters)

Paige
   This play¹s great, Denise! You should be proud of yourself.

Denise
   Thank you. (Paige leaves Denise)

Inner voice
   I am very proud. I have done things some people thought I couldn’t do. I’ve gone out and met doubting so-called ″Normal people″. Many have asked, Poor thing, how can she keep up with us? I could. I’ve also shown non disabled people how to deal with disabilities with respect. I’ve opened minds, and gotten my new friends to pass along my message. That is a great feeling. And I have goals in life. I dream about seeing my written thoughts, published and read by the outside world. And I would like to find a home of my own to enjoy my future in.
   Yes, I’m more than a wheelchair and a talking machine. I am a strong, caring woman who is succeeding in life. And maybe...

(The director and performers re-enter, talking about Denise’s play.)

Paige
       Starla, why do you keep making mistakes with the last line?

Starla
   I just don¹t understand the ″Be proud and believe″ part of the line.

Denise
   The line is, ″Be proud of yourself, and believe in yourself.″ Let me show you how to say it on stage.

Isabel
    Does that mean Denise, that you are ready to join us on stage and show the world what you really can do?

Denise
   Yes, I am! (turns to audience) Everyone, be proud of yourself, and believe in yourself. (cast repeats line loud

Lemon, Anne–Marie Zarlenga

It reminds me of a smell when I was a teenager and I moult by perfume Jean Nate that reminds me of lemon. The first time, I thought the lemon was going to be very sour. But then, I asked it and I liked it very much. Now I want to be a lemon when I go home and I take it to the hospital with me. Maybe I will loose weight. I am fed up with taking proteins that make me gain weight. So the lemon is very natural to loose weight. I have a complex of being overweight. I feel that I have no self-esteem. I consider my self like a big whale. My niece tells me I look like Winy! I am Very ashamed. It’s true; I gained weight during the last year. Nobody recognise me anymore. I don’t recognise myself! Lemon has become my best friend. I will introduce him to my family!

My Spirit, Terri Riccio, juin 2006

I ask of you to please come closer
To look deep into my eyes,
Where you can see within me;
My true self.

For I am just a regular soul
Withn goals & dreams,
Who wants to enjoy life;
Who wants to feel
Perfect, Whole & Complete!

I really love life
So, please! I ask you
To give me the freedom
To fully live it, for I do
Accept & respect myself!

Yet, I can’t help
But question myself,
Wondering if you can see
My true self;
Instead of my physical body.

So I am asking you, my soulmates,
To look me and see me
For who I am not for what I appear to be.
As I tried to speak using words,
But unable, so thought of a way of how
To communicate by writing a poem.

Rolling down life's highway in a wheelchair, Denise Landry

Rolling down life’s highway
In my chair with four wheels,
I see people who were once
Speeding past me,
Stop and wonder what I am.

They watch me wheel down
The road as if I was part
Of a sideshow passing through
Town, trying not to think,
″Poor little thing, how could
Such a broken body handle
The hard bumps of life’s highway?″

But I park myself beside them
And tell them, ″I can handle
The hard bumps of life’s highway
As well as they ever could.
I have rolled my way through
Mistakes and learned from them.
And with the help of my chair,
I have pushed my way through
The problems of love, hatred
And paying bills.″

Then I go on the road again.
And I hope the next time people
See me stuck on the highway,
They will see me as I really am
And give me a hand.
So I can join them back
On life’s long highway.

See also poetic texts in french