Long lines at midnight, breathless hype,
shiny sheen, the high gloss of marketing,
cosplay and balletic spoiler avoidance,
slammed multiplexes, overloaded ticket sites,
Croesus-like CGI kissing earnest steady-cam shots,
fan service, callbacks, countless punches.

Childhood idols fleshed out
on the grandeur of the silver screen,
writers room noodling netting billions
long after all the shaggy boho creatives
that originated it all were lowered
into the loamy maw of anonymous grave plots.

There's a degree of validation for the pasty
and hopeless, the low and lowdown
in watching a distinguished professional legend
pretending to be Bartoc the frickin Leaper
as though it's not silly, as though all
your idle moments, all your random diversions
really matter in the end, as though it all ties up
with a master-planned through-line of purpose,

as though it all mattered when you avidly read
about Iron Man, Hercules and Giant Man punching
out the red-shirt Skrulls (or was it the Krees?) on some spaceship
for a few minutes back at your grandmother's house
back before she was dead, before you were consumed
with the caustic sting of bitterness and bile, all the
accrued weight of a life generally but pleasantly wasted.