2


Reader, you become light-

headed watching (reading) this:
Lucifer's afterimage.

Reflected from incandescent
overhead lights:
images from film ^ a fan's bric-a-brac
columns of words between stills
prolix captions
reflected in the Minister's glasses

Bond, priest of style and kitsch
lethal elegance
women are trained to love
a single personality in multiple bodies,
a comic hero scattered among the stars

Kubrick, producer philosopher,
from Spartacus to Odyssey
with budgets, accountants, staff
like clockwork,
has paid for his shining poetry

Brakhage , anonymous film
maker, frame by frame
cutting celluloid eyes
light unmediated by
films so rare
we only read of them in books

These words: the absence of light
Film,
a reflection of light project
-ed ^
thought in images:
plot thought

Words, tired vessels for belief,
how poorly they stack up
against a photograph,
how they clog the present continuous of film
projecting at sixty frames per second
a film is worth 720,000 words: