common era
BY MATTHEW BRUCE HARRISON
j
Some say Plato dreamed up
cinema, made shadows
on a wall mate and murder so
well showgoers believed
and never knew themselves
the show, their lower
selves immobilized
below the motion
picture, held charmed
to stalagmite, meanwhile
heads rocked and arms
foreshadowed
the outdoor-concert
power-ballad sway
in time, miming images
all their own. Here is
a theory of real estate: man
who just so happens
to glimpse a species
of dream claims to be
sole projector, prime
speculator with a stake
in every last future
container of light. And:
man gesturing to the exit
sign may be your landlord
still, if he stands before
a common hole
and calls himself the door.
When it goes dark inside
we sense the sun came first
and water, sand, and rocks.
Even amoeba got besotted
with oozing selfsame
shadows for millennia
before human fists
and claws animated
radiant walls, touched
index fingers to thumbs
and linked thumbs
at dawn, splayed fingers
and ta-da: meteors burst
into butterflies, lazy
seagrass and new trees
and giraffes ate lions
ate starfish ate snakes ate
dragonflies ate pelicans
ate demons ate moons,
to hell with the chain
of life and men
stoned men and one day
a dying king said make
the shadows last, decorate
my death with shadows
painted red, sun-gold, trace
them with quavering lines
unreal as the line where night
meets the seam forever
flickering at the world’s
end. Movies: we’ve lived them
since troglodytes and lava land
still bubbled, since waking
ate away sleep. We look out
from bone-domed caves
but never quit spelunking
our buried odeons.
Neither did that ancient
barker in a tunic
of metaphysical isness
humbugging a true
light. If there is light
there will be enough light
to view us moving
around us and besides,
besides, these brief
illuminations
of life remind us
to suspect the glare
of reeling creation
is really a trick of fire.
