gingatao

Mike Figgis Riff

some deep profundity plops like some bubble
through thick purple ink
only to splatter down a cracked porcelain sink,
if i just speak in some spotlight like
some frill necked lizard coughing dislike
hunching his spine truth as a shield
especially in dry spells
like this when the dust
makes poetry a mental martial art
Ozymandius, where is your crumbling
hungover statue now?
staring blindly into the sun like some
actor playing Bukowhiskey,
there is courage in your momentary erections
set against time in a blind
Tipota landscape
seen through Mike Figgis’ eyes. 
 
 

(Mike Figgis wrote and directed Leaving Las Vegas. Ozymandius is both a poet and a famous poem set in the desert by Shelley about how the works of men decay over time. Tipota is a writer who writes surreally often in a very filmic way. Ben Gazarra starred in “Tales Of Ordinary Madness“, a film based on Charles Bukowhiskey’s book “Erections, Ejaculations, Exhibitions and Other Tales Of Ordinary Madness”

So this is a poem about landscape, both the physical landscape of the desert and a cultural landscape the theme of which is similar to Shelley’s. Our efforts to defeat time. An iconic image of a man in sunglasses staring into the sky over a deserted landscape can be found in all these references in various forms.)