RandyI know why you’re acting rebel suddenly,
headward with a hunch,
looking back to the movie screen,
turning your back on it,
the credits: art’s ever-rising breath
of self-appraising superiority
over life.
And though we steam our silence over coffee
in the fluorescence of some eatery,
you have not turned your back completely
on the moviehouse dark,
and weighed down by it you go on
with your rebel’s gung-ho hunch.
Did the movie steal from us
some possibility of original romance?
I know that next
you’ll light another cigarette
—that you do with such a pinch!—
knit your brows at each puff and
let the smoke
cloud you in a fantasy
this could be some such love
not at all in need of cinematic grandeur.
For hands in pockets, leather-jacketed
—lucky you brought such costum
