As I left rehearsal tonight,
Where I sang my all time favorite tunes,
I looked to the black sky,
Above the playhouse I saw the full yellow moon.

The moon was so full,
The wolves come out to play,
The wolves hidden within me,
Feasting on my persistence all day.

A dress over my shoulder,
A script in my left hand,
The second act closes,
And a clockwork cast disbands.

The lights from the playhouse
light my path for one or two blocks,
Until I arrive at my house,
And am forced to knock.

It's 9 o'clock now
and it's just hitting me,
With what I feel with other actors,
What in the world is intimacy?

We come just to go,
Night after night,
Acting out freehand visions,
Of an unheard of playwright.

Round and round it goes,
Never to end,
Show after show,
Simply comes round the bend.

The same faces outside,
Month after drawn out month,
In stores, schools, and coffee shops,
Of which it must be the millionth.

Perhaps it takes one day,
A month or a season,
For some maybe lifetimes,
Because there's no rhyme or reason.

But you'll realize that who they are in the coffee shops,
Is different from on stage,
More human, more normal,
Without a key for their cage.

From 7 to 9,
Each night at a building called the Evergreen,
The children may be powerful,
And old men once again seem nineteen.

For two hours each night,
In West Side Story, Wicked, or Rent.
All you can do is stand among these gods
and stare in wonderment.

By night, black's colorful,
By night, dull sharpens up,
By night, we're who we want to be,
And we have the whole world in our coffee cup.

For two hours, highlighted lines
Stare us madly in the face,
And we crave the moment we throw the book down,
All doubt gone without a trace.

By night, ugly's beautiful,
And strange isn't strange.
By night, men are women,
With a director who's deranged.

You know you're in heaven
when it's stuffy in dressing rooms and you don't care,
Because nowadays
you're used to breathing more aerosol than air.

You know you're where
God, Allah, or Buddah sent you to to be
When you get four hours of sleep,
And you live on Top Ramen and cold coffee

For once in a day,
I don't get these funny looks
When I talk about other boys
Like they're from pages of storybooks.

The first time in forever
I can finally be me,
Is under the eyes of 10 actors,
And under the nose of bigotry.

By night, the coffee shop average
Strays from a dance shoe-beaten path,
And a show's curtain call
Is a storm's aftermath.

I'm born once again
when I set foot on stage,
And the fact that I'll die each night,
Brings not a tear, stomp or rage.

The moon is a million miles
from Centralia, don't you see?
Just like the star I one day have to be.

At rehearsal tonight
I saw a moon.

The reason I loved it so much, you ask?
Because only by night can this flower bloom.