My Boredom With Film by J.S. Clark

My Boredom With Film

Dither at the fairgrounds, where black-faced clowns
used to slide away from broncs flopping past,

and the ice rink skidded with homemade skates
so that the children could grow to be as nostalgic.

The photographers could come back in and look
at what does not suit a proper frame, like a cow

dressed as a bull, and the losers winning the race
before the trumpets play a military tune like blasts

from dynamite off the top of a coal-rich mountain,
which becomes a ski-resort, then a film set today

as I sit directing from a plane zipping back and forth
to scout the site for the classic American western

where all the nations divorce the two coasts when
these meteors and diseases start falling like ashes

happening in a far eastern funeral or a wiccan bonfire,
and the crescendo of the piece is lauded by critics,

but I pound my chest and cry blood at simple vision
instead of human complexity in my work, so pop,

but unnerving to the sensitive who revolt at prints
and galleys and merchandise, too. The crowd and

the very smart just shout and brag. A snoozer hit.
Here comes a smarmy sidekick to give the work

more depth than the script imagines, and a glimpse
at what the history drew from, then drew away from.

 

About the Poet
J.S. Clark was born in 1979. His writing has appeared in brickplight, Slink Chunk Press, News From Nowhere, Section 8 Magazine, and elsewhere. He lives in Laramie, Wyoming, USA.