CINEMA AND VERSE- A TRIP THROUGH TWO CENTURIES

Always ready with verses to imbue his bibliography with greater purpose, here’s this cinephile tracing a journey through two centuries of cinema.

He’s fortunate to have watched each of these titles through the current years, some of them adding to his love for the visual medium of storytelling most recently.

Here they are, in chronological order.

****

MOBY DICK(1956)

These harpoons
bloody
the most elusive
pearl of the sea.

Where is your mind,
Ishmael?
I can’t blame you
for all this frothing madness
around you
has made you wander
on the ship
that has moved towards
the lip of the docks
and burns with the
heat-strokes.

All reason is dead.

THE DEFIANT ONES(1958)

Free men
have put our skin-colours
on the line,
chained and fenced us in
around these
antebellum counties.

We run.

We have no colony to seek home.


For these few days,
we’ll be taken by
the rain,
the gorge,
the ridge
and the hedgerows.

Then
if luck permits,
we’ll breathe
across the river.

BOMBAY TALKIE(1970)

HEAT AND DUST (1983)

We look through
satin curtains
and gilded rails.

But we fail ourselves
when at the golden ripening
of the sea
and the dry hills
barely hanging
over these thirsty plains
across our clandestine windows,
we break
a dozen other
dreams
and
still see each other
the very next day.

The two of us lived.
But hardly caught
our breaths.
All of it
like dirt particles
on the doormat.

HOOSIERS(1986)

When
the body wilted,
languished
with the weeds
and nights and days
promised
pock marks
spread across the cerulean sky,
a
Spirit
appeared.

The vast field
of hearts
runs through this town.

It triumphs
with the travails.

IN CUSTODY(1994)

Dear Poet,
the word is out.
Your mansion
and your filigrees
are locked out of
heaven’s gates.

You have procrastinated much.
Just don’t ponder
the end of these days
and make it a couplet
for another trembling
pair of hands.

ULEE’S GOLD(1997)

The nectar flows.

The blood bursts,
in syringes and empty rooms.

Your esoteric mind
is the only piece of the puzzle left
to solve.
For the night is darkest around you
when you speak.

A SOLDIER’S DAUGHTER NEVER CRIES(1998)

Across the pond,
we leapt.

Our empty nests
made out of wood
and drying paint.

We only stick
with the new
wallpapers.

BEAU TRAVAIL(1999)

The longest days-

The desert roses-

All of the platoons-

crush them under the
isolation of
a sun that never
blows out
its candles.

Don’t look it in the eye.

***

THE HOURS(2002)

Tiny wrens
rise with their
pleasing sounds
around us.

The hours pass
with the river
reaching our
beds.

The self-inflictions
must be surrendered.

It is beautiful to
finally
sing with the wrens.

DOGVILLE(2003)

On the edges of this town,
life
folds into
horrors
unspoken.

She has fit herself
into the smallest
of cages
in our nation.

When she leaves,
there will be—-

there will be
smoke and fire
gutting
the ranges.

ALL OF US STRANGERS(2023)

The ghosts are here.

They are here……

They have come.
To their suburban
necropolis.

Be tender
when they stay a little
longer.

UNDER THE BRIDGE(2024)

Search for them.

The girls
who have made
the thorny bushes
their hiding place.

Their youth
falling like meteors
on an island
too hidden
to seek.

****

All clips are courtesy YouTube.