Poem-A-Day #234 : Study

Study

Scent of old books and tobacco

The swell of viola in humidity

Here the blaze of copper - the pop of heavy fabrics

What ivory object falls from a shelf

Collapses - becomes an archetype of lines on carpet

Here is the form man and the form room

They are fighting for dominance of space

These objects want to divorce

Want to be only themselves and their shapes

The scent will leave will drift like a cloud of toxic gas

Poem-A-Day #198 : Sonnet for the End of Days

Sonnet for the End of Days

The earth is awake

Opens itself all over then leaves the mouths to hang open
like old wood doors and gates that will not shut in their swollen frames

It Venus flytraps - honeys the corners of its lips

The earth is hungry

All that melting has it in a bulking mood
pre-gaming the workout the salts of bodies will electrolyte it

It is not content to feed on the constant churn of slow-moving rock
or the bursting of dead bodies into it

The earth is needing is in heat is feral it cannot even deal right now

The grinding within is the sound of teeth mid-nightmare
is the refusal to smooth itself the refuting of self

Negation and scorched salting

The earth is a death-throe from knocking itself out

Don't Breathe

*
Water scares the shit out of me.

A day on a boat. Swimming in a lake. Spending time at a pool. These things do not calm me. To this day they call up a set of pre-made plans of escape.

The fear manifests in subtle ways.

Because I couldn't handle water in my face I insisted on baths until well into my teens.

The ocean is almost too much water to be afraid of so I can be near larger bodies of water without too much of a problem. I can even wade into water a bit. My height allows me to get fairly far out before I become buoyant. It isn't until then that the concern kicks in.

I'd be terrible on a cruise and have often thought about how I would deal with that situation. None of them are good solutions as they usually involve hiding from windows and fresh air.


*
I love horror movies.

The more full of tropes the better. I live for the moment when victims go up the stairs when they should go out the door. When they don't check to see that the villain is dead. I love trying to guess who will be the 'last girl' and who will die first.

Fede Alvarez
Photo by Gage Skidmore

It's a game. It's silly. It rarely scares me for real.

This evening I saw Don't Breathe. The movie was directed and written by Fede Alvarez. He also was responsible for the surprisingly good remake of Evil Dead from 2013

The premise is deceptively simple: three thieves enter a house owned by a blind vet to steal his money. The vet is not what he appears.

Where the movie enters into greatness is in how the premise reveals itself and plays out.

This is a brutal movie. It does not relent. The final act manages to up the ante of the film while subtly referencing horror tropes.

And it does this without being overly gruesome or falling into the pitfalls of torture porn that has ruined a lot of horror films in the years after the successes of the Saw series.


*
This circles around a question that I have about horror movies.

What scares us?

I'm sure that you have an example like mine. But these things are not what I'm actually interested in. Most horror movies don't actually depend on the things we are really afraid of. They play off making us jump and our natural inclination to be turned off by gore and death.

What I'm thinking about though is more what scares US. Collectively and culturally. What are WE afraid of.

Horror doesn't always feed off of cultural fears. But they inform it. The 80s were full of films featuring nameless, powerful, murderers coming after groups of beautiful youths. These fears can easily be tied to cultural fears of lawlessness and cold war fears of the 'other'.


*
Don't Breathe is set in Detroit. Most of the movie takes place in a lone house in an otherwise abandoned neighborhood.

It Follows was released in March of 2015 but made its way slowly into theaters. The story is, again, deceptively simple. A monster chases a young woman and wants to kill her. What sets it apart is that the monster is sexually transmitted. You have to fuck your way out of the death. This is a pretty good upending of the classic trope from 80s movies where the people who have sex usually die early in the movie.

The two movies both use traditional tropes to both utilize them and to break them. Though they do this while maintaining tension and refusing to make fun of the genre.

These are not the Scream movies. There is not an attempt to undermine or mine the genre.

Did you notice that both are set in Detroit? It's key to what I think scares America most in 2016. We are not afraid of terrorism, immigration, or any of that.

We are afraid of collapse.


*
Since the 1950s Detroit has experienced a 60% drop in population and even though the metro area of the city still has 4.3 million citizens Detroit has become the poster-child for what happens when an economy collapses in the 21st century.

This is what scares us.

The idea that a once-prosperous and important place could become unimportant and less wealthy goes against everything that American Capitalism promises. It proves us fallible. It says that the American Dream has cracks in it.

Setting these horror movies amid the collapse is a cunning representation of a new fear. The creature from It Follows and the vet from Don't Breathe also have faces. They are not the masked monsters from the 80s. They are people who look normal. They are us responding to collapse.

Interestingly, both movies also focus on white protagonists. And both manage to show a Detroit void of minorities. So it is not just collapse in general but specifically white collapse that is the source of fear. Don't Breathe renders this in literal terms with a brief appearance of a white supremacist. Both films also point out that the 'bad' parts of town are not where our protagonists live. They are not the white parts.

The danger is in the collapse. The breaking. And in the breaking the real danger is in what we do in response.

Do we retreat into our corners and stare at each other in fear. Lashing out when one comes close to us.

Or do we try to build something new.

Poem-A-Day #168 : Wood (Part 15 : To Pass)

I don't think this poem wants to go for 30 days. I will see where I stand on that tomorrow, but I think it might be over sooner than later.

You should start with Part One - HERE.


Wood (Part 15 : To Pass)

You're quiet : I don't want to give the impression that I'm all doom and gloom over here but that's what trees make me think of : I mean there's life too : so that house falls down and I can no longer stare at it from the foot of my grandmother's yard : but once it falls I mean really falls to pieces that's when things get interesting for real : that pile of house was holding space it was an ancient wanderer who managed to hold steady for who knows how long but there it was : and psychically it was holding focus : no one talked about it for sure I asked and people would sort of hmmm around it and no one would remember where it came from or how long it had been hurting out there : it was an injured deer on the side of the road it was a dead leg that gangrene had taken but it was being left to rot on the bone : and it was holding my thoughts and maybe that's why it lasted so long : I had nightmares about it I imagined being in its upper floors as it collapsed I thought about what it had seen in its time : I gave it life and it was my fault it didn't just go like it was meant to : I kept it alive when I should have also forgotten it : and that's not as sad as it sounds because I have obviously not forgotten it but I also have obviously allowed it to pass :

There's a meadow there now all filled with blooming flowers of all colors : and that's the point really : that sometimes you let go : you walk to the top of the mountain alone and you allow your body to fall silent and then to sleep : you allow yourself to become food for whatever is next because honestly you've taken space that wasn't yours for too long and maybe what comes next will be able to use what came before : this is beginning to sound silly : I'm just saying that things die and then there in that death will be the sprouting of something : not the same something never that : but close and wildly different and that new thing will path itself right through a new life and the old thing will eventually be forgotten by all but the memory of that spot will somehow collect those paths somehow : I mean that's why we go on right : because somehow we will be allowed to be forgotten but will also be allowed to be remembered :

Poem-A-Day #167 : Wood (Part 14 : Continued Collapse)

A bit late. Start with Part One - HERE.


Wood (Part 14 : Continued Collapse)

The halo of light around the fire has pulled back in on itself : has turned red with the lack of fuel : we are in the moment of liquid fire : when the flames are red slime glittering across the surface of the charcoaled wood :

There is that moment when the carefully constructed tent of limbs falls in on itself sending a spray of sparking light into the sky : this is perhaps how fireflies are born : though I bet they come when lightening hits bedrock and the world is showered in anvil sparks and sand glass :

Think about collapse : that three story building that stood behind my grandmother's house and was all peeled siding and holed roofing : always too afraid to get too close I managed to stand in front of the sagging porch and place a foot on the first step once : the boards were so gray and cracked with tiredness that I couldn't bear to put pressure on them :

Yawning windows is a cliche but a very true one : though I think these windows and doorways were more open-mouthed horror than anything else : this was a very long death and it seemed to hurt : You could see into the house the doors were just gone : the entire thing was the color of ash : I wasn't there the day it fell but it had to at some point : the trees around it hushed like watching one of their own : the other houses clenched and refusing to look :

I fall into bed on a Saturday night and I wonder how my body will sail through it til morning : will the restless dreams come : the visions of a world flooded with water and the last few living on strange rusting islands built atop the tallest parts of the lost cities below : will I run through these close tunnels and feel only the salt of it on me :

Now awake I realize that those cities : all cities : are built like they will last forever : but anyone could poke that balloon open : the metal will salt corrode will rust will collapse and if not already the buildings beneath the surface are going to go down : that isn't bedrock :

I wonder about the looseness of life : the fire in the apartment building that flooded the other floors with water in its own attempt at survival : the ant that I just squished as it crawled across my table because I didn't want it on my new computer : our mere existence is the collapse of someone else's :