I Shoot Pictures, Don't I?

Location

I hold the Super 8.

I am Ingmar Bergman

creating God in celluloid.

I am breaking up

my body

like modern Picasso

and serving it

on nitrate strips—extremely

flammable, so I can light up

your eyes with my ideas

caught on fire

and videotape.

 

The aspects of my ratios––

the cuts of my edits––

the light, the vision,

the mise-en-scène

of all the places

and people I've been––

demand a camera,

a silver screen,

a screenplay that mutters

in Courier typeface:

 

KELLY

(slick)

Of all the lines in all the movies in all the world...

 

Today I am still

in development––or pre-production,

as they say in the movie biz.

 

But tomorrow

I will set the scene, snap

a clapboard together

and demand

action!

I will finish out

my Courier font line:

 

KELLY

(cont’d)

...I had to quote this one! Play it again, girl! For old times' sake!

 

Then exit my own obscurity,

stage left, and in slow motion

bullet time.

Those three acts

to act out—until I fade out

to a superimposed

FIN.

 

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