Inwardness is a tonal effect of the elliptical
          after William Fuller

what clouds conspire overhead
eventually comes out in the wash
glass dust sprinkles greyheave

in falling light, halving
sound silts passageways
between thoughts afloat

in the auditory canal
a new kind of water
hollows out the human

rounding up our senses
as stray numbers in an equation
variations on an enigma

assembling what can never be built
a new public monument
from our innermost lights

 

Marey's Revolver

Edison was deaf when he invented the Phonograph and
Plateau blind when he created a rudimentary form of cinema.

 

we're in the frame for something
     sparkling, emulsified.
Shots patched frame by frame
     the reset limbs still ache:

Bell-Magendie's law.
     Mad scientists muscle in
to another creation myth: Plateau
     stares down motion, tears

retinal oceans off sun's eyelid.
     The doctor has changed his mind
an uneven swap, granted
     there are means, ways

but it's the mean ways we keep
     and grow as culture. The box office
records failed flights, compulsive returns
     to typecast menace. Marey's revolver

diagnostic; still loaded, safety catch
     on the ghost story of reality.
Hatching mad schemes in the dark
     under the hood of a Black Maria

the Doctor grants the strangest lesson:
     matter can be dissolved, transmitted
and reassembled – the audience
     will never buy it! It's 1936!

Copyright © Simon Perril, 2003