Film Over Our Eyes

by Daniel Wilcox

We ‘dry’ Baptists
Got guts and minds
Immersed in
The ocean of no-nothing,
New ‘cawled’
Wet with innocence
In the dawn of don’t;
Y’u no know do knows
Of both spellings
Including no film
Except (“see no…”)

Over our youthful eyes
Not only did we no fast
Moving… but picture this:
No poesy, no do-si-do,
No rolling rockabilly,
Only Billy the Graham, “Just
As I Am” that is,
Not the Graham of Fillmore’s
“White Rabbit”;
No Slick, but grace, yes.

Oh, the film over our eyes

But

My first date
Wanted to see Hailey Mills. Wheeling,
Dizzy (not Walt or Dean) with worry
I walked her down
With trepidation
Under the glaring marque
Into that pit wallow of wrong

(“Abandon hope, all who enter here…”)

Only to find the Disney film
Summer Magic,
Rather moving, a picture
Of overly decent fun,
Not dangerous at all, not like
The images in my own mind
Mined deep into surging lava;

Oh, the film over our eyes

Though
Fast frame a few
Years into our Medusa’d future,
And projectors gone wild,
R-shuttering eyes strange
Wide into
The restricted blazoned
Display, Beyond PG
(Pretty Gross), so graphic;

And many a theater
Became an ‘easy ride’
For this Bible belt boy
Into carnal knowledge,
Shattering
Hades--

Graphic blood-letting,
Words never Scriptur’d,
Negative nude scenes
Razing our senses,
And vicarious mayhem;

Oh, the film over our eyes

Director-leer-
Gazing (“see no, know…”);
I been through the mills
Thrown too many times down
Into the sea,
Those millstones around our necks;
Next stop,

(Not Hailey’s picture show,
Or that last one down
Texas-mixed way,
Nor Cecil’s 'B' Mills),

But the brain(swine)wash
Of a ‘Last Tango’d’ mind--
Been ‘Brando’d’, thanks Simon,
(Not Simple, but the Paul’d one)
Down the starred Walk of Fame,

Oh, the film over our eyes

Glazed, cataract-vague vision
Unholywood’d, Ash-shamed
Y’u know,
See!

Juxtaposed

by Daniel Wilcox

She said, Never have I had a single evil urge and argued so ardently, yes, really sincerely in her secular innocence. Or was that self-chosen ignorance, blind-sided? Lowering the bar so minimally debased that only the vile need apply for infamous, wicked status--the debauched ones an open conduit to debouch the pit?

He said, Always, I have had a mingled evil urge and grieved so dejectedly, yes, really repentantly in his sacred guilt. Or was that self-chosen obsession, blind-sided? Raising the star so supremely zenithed that only the pure need apply for exalted, righted status--the chaste ones an open conduit to deliver the peak?

Shipping Thirty Pieces

by Daniel Wilcox

Many ‘amor’ or less youth sold One
For counterfeit coins of whim,                          
Pigged out sluicing the trough on
Fool’s ‘mental,’ tin-canned
Eye-nailing gyrated skin;
Along with prodigal’d millions
Bowed by the thin luster of delusioned media;
(Easy cash, easy go—so easy),
Posed broads-cast out from the Trojan net,
Yes, sleazy mindless you’s
Knock, knock, knocking their prodded gaze
Up tawdry lasses of loss
Who’s there?
Aborted relations,
In the ‘guilted-less’ age,
Or hug-noosing themselves with guilt--
A modern secular ‘whoreship.’

Joan of Arc

by Daniel Wilcox

So
Joan
of Arc
trans--
ported
on the deluge
of history to us,
feminine ‘noahing’
opening up a window
to heaven
i don’t
believe.
no, Joan,
hilted
swords
aren’t
crosses.*
so
up
s
i
d
e
d
o
w
n
a
n
a
c
t.


*Reverse of Miguel Unamuno’s infamous
statement in The Tragic Sense of Life that
a sword is like a cross

Borderlines

bu Daniel Wilcox

Seven Catholic rebels hang by long ropes
from telegraph poles,
down the railing line
of tracks back to the future,
but around the necks of historical ire--
repeating rifles, revolting scenes;
we revel (ation or lution?)
from 1917, a year fat with sacrifice,
to 011 when Aztec gods decapitate the heads
(0 God!)
leaving no longer anything for a rope to cinch against
in Mexico. Oh, execute the reprieve.

Traveling Within

by Daniel Wilcox

Allegedly, I’m bipolar
               but I spend all my days dream-widened by the
                              center-meridian at the equator,
               jungled warm in the lush verdancy.
 
Super-sized with earnest emotion,
               my every thought and act
                              floods with fervent intensity;
               compassion sunburns my inner skin.

No arctic cold hardens this human clay,
               no iceberg of a harsh snowy brow,
                              neither frozen north or south within.

I weep shards of scalding pain.
 

The endless sweat of warm mercy wellsprings
               in this tropical brain;
                              though I may not be lateral,
 
My temperament’s compass directs

               me sweltering true east toward the Son.