Thriller Matinee

 

The grand old

Grand Lake Theater

in elongated  afternoon

 

 

 

 

 

Came today misled

 by an erroneous ad in the newspaper

I was expecting to see

 2001, A Space Odyssey in 70 mm

That's next week they said

without admitting any mistake,

So I decided to stay for this

I'd seen the hair-raising trailer

and suspected it would be an escape

from my day-to-day concerns

 

Look who's here

another elephant

it's unredeemed garishness

excused by design

by school kids

 

 

Charming I'm sure

but I'm not here to see this

Never have particularly liked

ant Spike Lee joint

Infiltrate hate,

Spike is infamous for claiming

that Black people cannot be racist,

Wonder what he thinks about hate,

But then he lives on Martha's Vineyard

and I'm more or less

a white man in the disphoria

of Oakland

 

 

 

Into the heraldic

mystery chamber

for the moving picture

The Moorish Auditorium

so-named

 

Had to change seats twice

At show time a puerile

man mountain sat in front of me,

followed by a senile guy behind

who said oo-oh during fight scenes

then laughed like crazy

 

The film did its job

lots  and lots of very elaborate thrills

in sequences of a mainly analog variety,

People are killed regularly 

death framed without remorse,

Giant stretches of credulity

and of course super-abilities

just short of Marvel comics

 

Poor middle-aged Tom Cruise

has to fill the screen

Still doing a young man's job

 

 

 

I was as high

as the labyrinthine

patterns in a

ceiling of stars

 

After the film

I wandered over to the lake

with my lunch bag

 

Somewhat dismayed to see

it crowded with lodgings

In this case a fort constructed of

pissy old mattresses  

spray-painted with slogans

to pretend it's more of a protest

instead of just a make-shift shanty town,

This is what passes for governance

and humanitarianism

in a crap-cavity town,

This individual grabs a prime spot

at the head of the lake

then acts territorial and hostile

toward the public who try to use the park

 

White lady calls cops on black man

just for staking a claim

 in a public park

 

The landscape was

scary and desolate

enough as it was

 

 

 

 

 

Someone is scratching at the window

That's what the bars are for

 

 

 

Home home on the strange

where the prickly cactus flowers

flourish

 

 

 

 

 

9 August 2018