For awhile they sat alone in a dark
theater, with many others, watching cars on a busy street filmed in
black and white, and listening to the sounds of traffic and honking
horns. There were many noises. The cars went from here to there
traveling by a marina where boat whistles played a melancholy song,
and through the trees past an endless parade of birds and furry
woodland animals, all tweeting or munching on solitary nuts. The two,
a man and a woman, sat shoulder to shoulder. Their arms touched on
the rest, neither noticed, and they grew restless in the stiff seats.
The faces in the cars, sometimes they stared out in muted hues of
yellow or pink, seemed uninterested in their travels. They were like
passengers on a train, even the drivers, fidgeting in the confines of
a boundless commute. The man turned his head and looked at the
woman's face. He didn't know her. He stood up and excused himself to
the row of people whose feet he avoided stepping on and made his way
from the maze of the darkened theater.
Through the doors into the light of the
hallway he stumbled wearily, in a slow motion fog, until his head
cleared and the noises ceased echoing in his brain. Below his feet
the thick carpet grabbed at the soles of his shoes, catching him like
a fly in syrup, but the man moved forward with an outreached hand to
the glass exit door. A bright glare called him forth, until a black
figure stepped in his path and looked down its nose sourly. It took
his arm and led him around to a door and pushed him through.
Another dark aisle lit theater, and the
man looked out over the balcony. The immense screen was white with
projection from behind, and the heads below were many, all facing the
screen, and shiny. They sat rapt, anxious, and the man wound his way
down, down to the seats and found one empty. He excused himself and
sat down between a stout man and a lithe woman who had laid her hands
upon her cheeks. Her mouth was in the shape of an O. The man once
seated looked to the screen and found it white, just white, and then
looked at the woman. She was engrossed in the blank white image of
nothing. He could hear the clicking of the projector. The non image
flickered around the edges and an occasional black spot marred the
pristine absence of anything. They sat alone in the dark theater with
hundreds. They sat mesmerized, waiting to be amazed, listening to a
soundtrack that hummed, building to a crescendo of oppression. She
noticed him then, and laid her arm down on his, until their fingers
touched and made themselves a flesh pretzel. In the silence of a dry
crackle, with a sun white blank looking on, they sat etched upon a
bright rectangle, folded into an audience of many alone, together.
historically, there is no bear in the parlor
My fingers cross, make the sign of X
we snapped with the weather
i recall Hoboland and yearn
a think of the past
flitting thus and whatnot into the random world circulant
