Not Enough Sleep + Too Many Movies + Complicated Unrequited Feelings + Tendency to Make Analogies and References = This Ridiculously Long Poem

i'm flickering on
a projector screen
my eyes and tongue and head all fuzzy
words expressed blurred on the page
and in my brain
inebriation
sleep deprivation
not missing a beat
this is a classic
tonight
will most likely
be more of the same


hope that boy's there
drunken bogey
and i'll be bergman
reciting lines
perfect dialogue
cut/scene/fade
and he'll return to becall
the script still works
and i'll swoon
each time
i see him on the silver screen
this works out
the moviegoer
the cinephile
and the archetype
in black and white

when he's not calling me "kid"
he's more than rick blaine
more than bogart
his credits include
olivier's hamlet
and a brick with a twist
unambiguous orientation
found in newman
still
the archetypes
don't end there


oh the novels we speak of
the works that he's read
his literature lifeline
although proverbial
is all quite impressive
he's been
young werther in goethe
fitzgerald wrote him amory
(once again blaine)
when hemmingway birthed him
jake barnes was his name
but
he can't confess compson
can't deal with faulkner
in face of the fact
macbeth first brought up
sound and fury
signifying nothing

funny silly cliche
how
the characters
are all the same
their lot is stock
broken boys
i mean men
i mean those
coming of age
and then aging
---or just prematurely aged
lost and lonesome
waning idealist
dark
cynical
jaded
burnt out romantics
debauched
and desperate
habitually
intoxicated
from their youth
to their primes

lost the plot did I?
personal prologue
erratic subsequent shift
to male lead lime-light
even so,
i'm the ingenue
it's still my story
(or is to the highest extent
possible in patriarchy)
i'm the god damn damsel
trench-coated gamine
stocking and chemise
cig perched between
gloved fingers
smoke breath fusion
so cold
in the absence of technicolor
i'm the girl
that opened the scene
restless and weary
scorned by love
embittered by loss
mirroring
the departed lover
(never present enough for true departure)
i am the timeless
heroine in gray-scale
offsetting and delineating
fractured other half
met cute
but didn't end well

here i stand
at the station
or in the ascending rain
almost as forlorn
the unattained love
who injured me
by way of
unrequited love
and yet
i am not
like him
i may not be
the femme fatale
or the american sweetheart
or have a fraction of his heart
but i am
not like him
i am wide-eyed and hopeful
a candid romantic
still holding out
as the credits roll