The People’s Cinema

As blank as scripture to a ruling class
Discussed in hells they do not think exist,
Cracked and abandoned to the slicing grass
      And disabusing dust,
A movie screen shows nothing in a morning mist.

Here’s where the happy endings were never had,
Or, like the long and lonely, never shown.
No one rode to the rescue of who was good,
      No star was born, none shone,
No dream came true, or fun began, or life went on.

A Classical outside. Like a Parthenon
Or meant to be, but more as if that mother
Had quite disowned this worn and woebegone
      Shell of light. Its father
Was a woman’s face in a glass. She ordered it like weather.

Here’s where the stepping leg of a pale princess
Would never gleam in the flank of a silver Merc,
No carpet lap at the tips of an angel’s dress
      As that began its catwalk,
No head be turned or heart won, none have all the luck.

It had to open faster than today.
She scratched a deadline on the skin of earth.
They couldn’t meet it but they couldn’t say.
        They swallowed back their breath.
The sun abruptly set in each unchewing mouth.

Here’s where the plans were laid, and here ignored,
Here they were changed, here lied about, here lost.
Here’s where they pulled the trick they could afford,
        Here’s where they paid the cost,
Where a workman sang all day, baked in a wall to the waist,

When every short cut snapped on the one night,
Caving and bulging floors like a bigger child
Had waded from the future for a fight,
        And each thing was spilled,
Each dimly praying gap of air was found and filled.

The lamp went out on no one knows how few.
Interred, incinerated, a foot stuck out
Live from a ceiling waving in a shoe
      As the auditorium set,
And the sun was down, and the building up, and the deadline met,

And no one goes there now except to nod.
At what you get when men take on the sun.
At what men do when told to by a god
      Who’s gone, and wasn’t one.
How riches look in daylight when there are none.