Fellini

‘Cut’, this Cinecitta boy framed childhood
with clowns and comics, puppetting fantasies
of spaghettied characters, zoomed fairy tales—
spooled lives that were naive and neo,
acted dreams, huge breasted, so unfaithful
and time-lapsed, his romano happiness warm
as a circus tent beneath Il Duce’s lips.

‘And Take’, Rome as script, passion, open
montage of life, looping Gelsomina hauntingly
to his focus, constant, split, panned
and produced, ringmaster tricks, projecting
truth as dissolved emotion along La Strada,
prosciutto memories in shade, smirks, sham ...
dreams lie backlit across her enormous tits.

‘Credit’, then drawings of puberty, boyish fear,
Satyricon, now legend, musting such love
coloured, sounded, pranking faces in orgy,
a troupe kaleidoscope down cobbled streets,
provincial truth, opaque and dazzling,
this journey to self, rompish dubbed and directed,
wishes fade to memory within a child’s fibs.

So ‘Cameos’ of death, women, sex unserious,
and complex, screened by lire, making films
is like making love: They start as myths, lensed,
some caricatured, fat arsed and wiped fresh,
live unedited, not uniform, though paparazzi may click
emotional indulgence, this clear celluloid concludes
simply and technically: two mimes gently kiss.

Only four kings

Of the great American silence,
Framed by slapstick,
Their whimsical chaos chased thrills in celluloid
Spliced each darkened screen to a crazy mirror.
This timed burlesque of the world,
Pity and pathos edited from villains,
Where falling flat, twitching moustache
Tramping roads behind bleak shacks,
His big shoed pantomime projected
Laughter to each person's eyes.

Only four kings, childlike and clowning,
Focused imagination from tricks,
Keystone and bungling, the ‘great stone face’,
He was our dunce, a reflected character masking us
From fisticuffs, all floppy-toed dramas in glumness
Spare, grey, stoic-tracked, his dashing beauty
Was a tint of dream, duty silhouetted against nature,
Action to props where the speed of the age
Brightened minds along its way.

Just four kings, their stunts as signs,
A flat horizon or rustic scenes, cheeky epigrams,
Hanging from a clock, his prosperity through glasses
Was an urban eagerness, crowned while we wait
Or, gold rings in hock, all real and straight.

Only four kings but the infant twitches slow,
Lonely hatted in eye black, outgrown in his jacket,
Little twirling mouth a mute forgiveness,
Chaplin, Keaton, two Harrys, their names are gifts,
Perfection and procession, blinking truth to us
The remembered darkness of when life was lit.

About the Poet
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