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
