POEM: FRAGMENTS

Fragments

Body bags rip open, spilling their bones.

Father Gillespie prays, clutching his jones.

Tattered flags are brought back, patched, from afar
like dead-letter days once  wished on a star.

Young Susie Salesclerk begins her last rounds.

(She’s just found Jesus in old coffee grounds.)

Singers in alleys, criers in the streets—

Choirs of churches dying for retreat.

Sands by a desert, water by a stream;

Patient by a window wakes from a dream:

Inland there's fever; fire's in the air.

Past the shoreline--icebergs--float by everywhere.

Babies in dumpsters, fallen like the leaves.

Truffles in wine sauce; champagne makes you sneeze.

And so, to sum up, here's our epitaph:
What's heard by the dead is summoned in their wrath.

WELL, I READ THIS GOLDEN OLDIES AND DID SOME EDITING, and still I’m bummed out and depressed. I guess the title has something to do with it. The word, "fragments" doesn't suggest a warm, kumbyya around a campfire, does it? And the poem is fragmentary in the images presented: a priest examining the bodies of soldiers returned from war; a salesclerk’s religious conversion; drunks singing in  streets (though the line could have other interpretations, I guess); half-empty churches;  a patient waking up to a new reality; environmental disaster, aborted babies, decadent rich—in other words, business-as-usual. The images would fit nicely in my “News of the World” poems, with snippets of this and clippings of that, with things that stab and slash, or at least prick and cut (or paper-cut) us; those things we do and see every day.

The priest (another priest!) looking at bodies spilling out of body bags, having to clutch at his bible or rosary, or anything to keep his faith going, I thought was a fairly powerful image, suggesting the ‘centre no longer holds’ (it’s spilling out). It contrasts with the new-found faith Susie discovers in pile of coffee grounds.  

I like the image of a patient looking out of their hospital window and seeing fires raging across the horizon, and icebergs melting in the harbour. Was the patient sick because their world is sick?

In the next stanza, the image of the most precious of life—newborns—discarded like garbage juxtaposed with truffles, a ghastly over-priced fungus being served at dinner. Skewed moral values are on full display. The poem ends with the dead's "final wrath". Their wrath is their decay, the evidence that all our works and days will eventually be for naught. All our doings—the good, bad and the ugly—will be swept away someday by Death, the great leveler of saints, sinners and everyone in between. Whatever we imagine for our epitaphs will not matter. All the comforting words and images of ourselves that we hide behind will be exposed as futile.
Thus, the fragments of our lives are all that we have. In between them, and what comes after them, is nothing. So it behooves us to make each piece--no matter how small and insignificant--as polished and shining as we can. Jeeze! No wonder this poem bums me out!  
So, what to do, what to do…?

Well: Live each day as if it were your last. Love, instead of hate. Drop one less baby in the garbage. And war? How about nappies instead of napalm. Prayers instead of wishes. Compost heaps instead of carte blanche. Do's instead of done's. Hymns instead of hums. The list could be considerable. Feel free to add to it. 

Cheers!

 

MOVIE REVIEW: THREE MOVIE REVIEWS

Three Movie Reviews: Django; Mayhem; Eleven Samurai

Three enjoyable movies I’ve seen recently on DVD and YouTube. Django is a bio-pic about the famous French “Gypsy” jazz guitarist of the 1930s and 40s, DjangoReinhardt (23 January 1910 – 16 May 1953) . The movie is set during the German occupation of France, and depicts two years in the musician’s life as he manages to play his music and walk a fine line with the German and French Vichy authorities. As a Roma, he and his family stood the chance of being herded off on trains to Nazi extermination camps. The movie depicts his time in Paris and his eventual escape across the Swiss border into freedom. The movie ends with his return to Paris in 1945, and a concert he performs in memory of all the Roma who lost their lives during the war. Interesting to get a glimpse (however fictionalized) of this legendary guitarist's life.

Mayhem was a surprisingly entertaining movie. It is about Derek Cho (played by The Walking Dead fan favourite, Steven Yeun), an employee of a shark-infested corporation who is unjustly fired due to the manipulations of a fellow employee. As he is being escorted from the building, the CDC and a host of SWAT teams surround the building, placing it under quarantine. It seems a chemical the company has been developing has been released in the building, causing people to become extremely violent. It sounds like the making of a bloodfest and it is, but in the best Bruce Campbell, Evil Dead tradition--sans chainsaw--though there is a small bone saw that comes into play in a satisfying manner at one point. The corporation is peopled with the most unpleasant human beings imaginable, and the plot centers around Derek and a client making their way to the top floor executive suite to demand redress for himself and his client whose home mortgage has been foreclosed. The festering, fetid corporate environment of greed and avarice explodes into violence and chaos as fellow employees, under the influence of the escaped virus, take revenge on each other. It sounds like a nightmare and a horror show, and it is. It is bloody and violent. And quite funny. 
The violence is tempered by humorous scenes and asides, and camera work that give the movie an overall 'comic book' feel. You end up rooting for the two as they bash and slash their way through all those unpleasant folk, some of whom perhaps will remind you of your own coworkers. Revenge is a dish that is best served cold. Though not always.

The Eleven Samurai is a B&W 1966 Japanese period piece set in November 1839, during the final decades of Japan's Tokugawa Shogunate. It involves the Oshi fief being falsely blamed for transgressions against a neighbouring lord. With the threat of their fiefdom being disbanded, a group of its warriors seek to assassinate the son of the former Shougun, to prevent this from happening. The plot of gaining access to the evil and cowardly Nariatsu is exciting, as are the fight scenes between rival samurai bands. The movie is set in the backdrop of an empire in decline, with corrupt officials and warlords that the band of wronged Oshi fiefdom samurai are determined to vanquish. Little guys versus the big guys. Sword fights. What more do you need?