Plastic Jazz, or, An Accident in the Editing Room
Film is the sad under[ ]score,
The heartattack trumpeter, gyrating in silhouette,
Prophet of the city’s doom, a human skyline quick to sway.
Iconic by the lines,
The barrier between himself and all.
Iconic by the hole he leaves
In this place made of tones.
Film covers the hole like a forgotten bowl of soup.
The hole in the whole that you can’t see, trapped
In plastic memoriam clear, black, and absent,
Like the ghost of the projection
That is its true content,
Like the smiling brass pariah, miles high,
Who, in spite of signifiers, is
Solid, not shade.
Mimicking himself in metaphor, in truth
His truth is lost clear, black, and absent,
And plastic – inflammable (or flammable).
You cannot fill the hole,
So let’s light it on fire the end.
