Fragile flickering celluloid reels
Behind the light of the projector
A single beam of changing colors
Displayed on the silver screen ahead.
Fixtures dim and black the room
Filled an audience anxious and waiting,
Waiting to see what’s to be seen.
I love the look of film!
In its variety of size and color
35mm and 70
Digital and Film
Black and white to Technicolor
Three dimensions or two.
The history of an art form
Forming before your eyes
Seen here are the scenes of time
From anywhere that’s been seen
A dynamic show of lives lived and lost
Brought in pieces pieced together
By those much like us
Unfolding a world survived
By war and a way of life lost
Fallen years ago
Survived by the look of cellulloid
A world encompassed in film;
Where time is never lost
And life is always found.

:)

The light of the television
dimly lit two
lovers,
but not really.
He stunk of wine
from the lips and
mauve teeth,
she stunk of wine
by proxy.
her legs, only slightly
unshaven, he stroked
gently, which they
both enjoyed, but
not really.

***** pots, plates, and
cutlery lay placid
in the sink.
They'll be washed
sometime soon,
and put away in  
cabinets of wasted
white wood, very soon,
but not really.

The floor, like them,
began growing clothing
like wild moss or ivy,
and claimed the room
& claimed them too.

The movie, he'd recall,
but, then, she would
not.
He watched the blood,
and conflict,
and at times laughed,
and she saw him,
and conflict,
and didn't laugh at all,
which he knew was strange,
but not really.

On the dim, small, screen,
The lean and hungry man had his
Nemesis on the
sepia-tone ground,
and finished it all,
with rage and mercy,
with a stomp
to the
heart.

They watched, her eyes wide,
for she knew this was
them, her on the ground,
and him in the air, and she gripped
him a bit tighter,
which he noticed,
but not really,
which she noticed,
but not really.
In the dimly lit room,
they could not see
they were alone,
and it was true,
only Bruce Lee & He,
and She.

You made me wait for 45 minutes at a Banh Mi shop as the afternoon sun
morphed into a ceiling of darkness. I read a story on Buzzfeed
about break ups and relationship rocky as the road my car sat on.
The gas station was lit up like a theme park, but no one arrived,
and soon I believed you'd been taken, or you'd forgotten about me.
The cicadas started chirping and the humidity in the air cooled down,
and when I was about to turn over the engine, your black Honda scuttled into the parking space covered in puddles. As though, you knew
you could survive on any terrain, whether rough, or wet, smooth, or dry.
We talked briefly, small chit-chat, nothing worth mentioning.
I had already devoured a double-cheese burger and some fries,
but I didn't tell you because I didn't want you to ruin your appetite.
You touched my bicep, told me to flex. I did as I was told, like an old dog, wanting to please its master. My muscle hurt after your fingers drew away, as though my skin showed a wound, something ugly and worn.
I tried to smile, but inside I was drowning in false ****** expressions, and shortcut body language. We went inside, shuffling to the L-shape line, you picking up Mochi Ice-cream from the freezer, and me just happy to be in your presence. You said, you missed me and I knew you mean it too.
I said, you don't know how good it is to see you. You nodded and put your head on the nape of my shoulder. Closing your eyes momentarily, I touched your hip and held on for dear life. Because all around us, war battered young and old in countries stricken by fear and poverty. Gifs and Memes provided us with distractions, as you showed me the trailer to a new rom-com. They're just like us, you said.
You're right, I said. I gave you back the phone, before the trailer ended.

I'm sitting in a theater and watching my life on the screen
Every song I've ever loved plays in the background
I see myself underscored by lyrics I wish I wrote
All of my moments are time perfectly
To crescendo and dissolve on cue
And it fades to black before we see my big decision
Do I run from the edge? Do I hide myself away again?
Or do I pursue the life I seem to crave,
And earn my sweeping cinematic moment
While my favorite song plays in the background?

The credits roll and the music presses on
And before long I realize
That I've been staring out a car window
Listening to music that makes my heart hurt
And wishing that life were scripted
Yet again

Wimbledon’s playing on the TV in the living room. Dad and I are watching on the sofa.

In the kitchen, Mom cuts carrots and cucumbers with a long blade. She slices the vegetables one by one. Orange pieces. Green pieces.

I glance over Mom chops up the carrots and cucumbers without a cutting board, taking each long carrot and cucumber and slices it with precision, as though she’s a professional like the film with Natalie Portman and Jean Reno.

But she’s not a little girl and she’s not a Frenchman. She’s like a mix-in-between, like the asphalt in our driveway and the grass sprouting in between the cracks.

Dad is a computer engineer. He used to be an artist. Used to study technical drawing in a university in Saigon.

He met mom when he was working on a play. She was the lead actress. Shakespeare had said, “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players: they have their exits and their entrances; and one man in his time plays many parts, his acts being seven ages.”

He’s right, but right now I can’t tell what act I’m in. Dad focuses on the TV. Watches Federer and Djokovic, his eyes, darting from left to right like the mood of a young boy that crosses back and forth from light to dark, and back again.

Blade in hand, Mom makes longer and deeper cuts across the cucumber, cutting away the skin, leaving deep cuts in the vegetable. Dad turns his head towards her, his neck cracking like the forehand swung by Federer.

He clears his throat, softly, soft as gas leaking out from a stovetop from a studio apartment, like the scene in Fight Club, a match about to be struck.

Mom sets the blade down on the table, and bites her lip. Her nostrils flare. I press down on the couch arm, and stand up, my head bent, my eyes wandering to the doorway.

The wind whistles
Here I am, me and my consciousness
Watching an old movie outside of common sense
I love you and I always have

I want to see if we can connect the old wiring
Let the electricity flow through the vein
It seems when I drink my words are more fluid
But here I am stuttering again

I cradled the unfurling shed snakeskin delicately
admiring the imprint of faces and places
swallowed up in time.

An ancient amative light sat patiently
on the blank sheet
before the electric medium;
the electric medium sitting buzzing
eager to tell another silent story.

I wrapped the skin around its spindle;
and from its den I extracted slowly and cautiously,
urging the skin into the hungry buzzing medium--

And minute punctures in the skin,
where the projector's teeth sink in,
whose teeth chatter like plastic wind up dentures
as the skin passes snake-like through its dusty plastic entrails.

The tattooed skin is illuminated at the heart of the vessel--
where the countenance of a single solitary bulb
omits a radiance, brilliant and magnificent--
powerful enough to cast the skin like a shooting star
across the darkened room

onto the patient white sheet
where my eyes await the tattooed memories
to dance before me.

I sit in my torn and weathered leather chair
echoing the silence of the screen--
(hypnotized by the hum of the projector--
an incessant electrical drone accompanied by the bombinate
incantations of chattering crickets.)

The stories are shielded from my inquisition
by layers of translucent grain
that leave textures gritty--
and a soft focus that leaves faces obscure
and expressions ambiguous.

(How clever you are to stay silent,
and leave me in such tempestuous musings!)

Vast pores pop up excitedly burned and scabbed intrusions
and if you linger for too long
the brilliance of the glare will burn into you--

Like the shaman who dances too close to the holy fire.
Like Apollo flying too close to the sun.

I must be careful,
and fully aware--
of your transience.

These ambulant hieroglyphs
speak volumes in their silence--
and I find myself drawn
to the blurry smiling faces
as they peer into my soul.

History breathes.
and History repeats.
but lies silent
in the sands of Time.
Becoming muddled,
but waiting.
for its story to be told;
for the mediums to rise from the grave.

I suddenly agnize myself as the last generation
to have its memories and histories burned onto tape.
and as I sit here I wonder
of the Society
whose soul I will peer into--
when I am unearthed
out of the sands of Time.

I thought love meant
       Butterflies in your stomach
       Your heart skipping heartbeats
       Or a faster rate for that matter
       Being mesmerized by your significant other
       Watching movies together      
       Late night conversations
       Stealing kisses every now and then
       Staring at them and get caught looking
       Cuddling and holding each other's hands
       Enjoying the moment even when the future is scary

But love came out to be different from all of that
      
Love is letting all of those go
       When I thought it meant everything to him
       When all of it meant nothing at all
       When I thought I was his everything or even "something"

But no
       I am nothing
       What we had was nothing
       What I thought we felt
       Turns out to be what I felt
       I
       No "We"
       No "Us"

None

I kept a screen
Before my mind,
To re-run clips
Of your fine lines.
Glad for new-age technology,
The IMAX use of 3D;
I'll use the big screen monolith
To screen the edit
Of your breadth and width.