Even the connoisseur of juxtaposition
raised a seasoned eyebrow
at the scenes on the LCD
eggs toast & conversation
pleasant enough
were soon shown lacking
through caricatures of murder
spoofed dismemberments
faces sloppily deconstructed:
silver screen treatment
of death over easy
about to be villi-fied.
Pan from juice glass
to little aggressions of the jaw
to morsels bit into & ripped
-- no dissolve to blood type,
surgeons, pathologists,
tissue specimens --
but to spirits set darkly free,
sister fiend with brother fiend
writhing together in a Bludgeon Beulah
in a parallel world
of segregated cognition
of swing-and-thwack choreography.
When the complaints come
of spurts synthetic, gore too skillful,
regrets too compassionate
we’re exposed as hand-wringing targets
camouflaged in theater blood
& dressed in open-backed hospital gowns
because our plain little lives
are shamefully ascetic
for having never strangled once
nor having whispered midnight vows
to pivot from restaurant patron
to thirsty hound at a breakfast cabal.
The proprietor said
“All scenes are crime scenes
where pleasure has smiled.
“We are wiser for them.
We sense the zombie who occupies us
& the ones it secretly covets.
“How perfectly a victim’s life
still twitching on the fork
complements the hot dark coffee.”
26 February 2012
Old Town, San Diego