Charade
I was thinking of the sad
scentlessness of film,
of how everyone in that scene
from Charade –
where they pass the orange
under their nuzzling chins –
is dead.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxNo wonder
the doctors keep ringing
us up as meat, covering us in the butcher
paper of gowns, when we keep
waking from the roulette dream
as a gnat prodded by the devil’s
tiniest pitchfork.
Who doesn’t
think deep down they’re the real
inflatable man, davening
and crumple-punching
the auto lot?
xxxxxxxBut sometimes having
a face and feet and bank account
and sorrow, feels like the way in
somewhere – like a hole you lower
your face into to have a partial
burial, or baptism in the gentle
amorality of earth.
