The Bane of the Blooming Moon

The Bane of the Blooming Moon
1
In a cottage
at the end
of a trail of tears
a newborn baby
was cradled in a doctor’s arms
unresponsive.

Beside himself
with terror,
the father snatched the boy,
and raced outside.

With an axle
he crushed the icy lake surface
and plunged the child in.

It came out crying.

2
The old rancher
with uncouth manners
looked upon the tiny infant
and predicted its demise,
but it had other ideas
fighting off the convulsions
that wracked his body,
the temperatures
nothing but a bathtub of ice
could dispel.

3
With his parents
traveling the vaudeville circuit
he slept in the drawers of cheap hotels,
was cared for by chorus girls
backstage.

At seven,
his mother,
the singer,
took a very public dose
of mercury
and
lived
though her marriage
and career
ended.

4
As he retraced the steps
to his ancestral home,
clouds dispersed
and the moon transformed
the disconnect
between words and thoughts,
shadows at the bottom of his soul.

The church bells chimed
across the makeshift bases
set up in a field
of weeds and thistles.

Near the swamp
a wildcat’s back arched
to the sky
as if to ward off evil.

Who is the Man of a Thousand Faces?

(Photographer: Ron whisky)

(Photographer: Megapixie)

Zero Dark Thirty

I have finally got round to seeing Zero Dark Thirty.

Although the director, Kathryn Bigelow, says that torture did not lead to the location of Bin Laden, the beginning of the movie had quite a bit of it. Considering it received a Best Picture nomination, one can only assume that skin-flaying will figure prominently in next year’s choices.

José de Ribera – The Martyrdom of Saint Bartholomew

My Man Godfrey

For those who love the screwball comedies of the 30s and 40s and for some reason or another have not seen My Man Godfrey,  you are really missing out.

Roger Ebert’s got a great review, at the end of which he says:

“This movie, and the actors in it, and its style of production, and the system that produced it, and the audiences that loved it, have all been replaced by pop culture of brainless vulgarity. But the movie survives, and to watch it is to be rescued from some people who don’t care that it makes a difference … to some people.”

Razamataz

I have noticed for quite some time a difference between what I want in a movie and what I get.  Certainly an easy way of explaining this is that I’m not part of the age group being targeted, namely one that grew up with video games a tad more sophisticated than Pong, which actually only came into existence when I was in junior high school.

Movies tend to move at such a breakneck speed that I am at a lost to understand exactly how this or that is connected.  Perhaps that is my mistake.  They aren’t connected but thrown together as randomly as the colors on a Jackson Pollock canvas. I tend to see them as equivalent to a sophisticated Blair Witch Project or as a conjurer who must distract your attention so they can perform their magic.

Give me The Man in the White Suit any day.