Existential dread from The Core (2003 film)
Aaron Eckhart and his signature chin impress
but it’s not enough to distract me from
corpses made of actors lost too young and
dogs from any movie filmed before, say, 2004.
Every film is a horror film if you take it there.
Feels like any screen I look at someone is dying—
grief has me freaking out my husband, who
has started asking if I’m ok every twenty minutes.
I don’t know how to tell him I don’t deserve my answer.
Just like a clam I shut up when I’m afraid.
Know that I have always been afraid, but not
like I used to be. Once I was only scared to be alone.
Movies don’t have to be well-made to fuck you up.
Now I think the only way to die is alone,
or maybe it’s that I hate parties I can’t adequately
plan for. Hilary Swank has a haircut but I can’t
quit thinking on all the ways the earth might kill me;
riptide, super-volcano, extreme weather event, etc.
Stanley Tucci goes out like a hero, blown up.
The Core is no good but I'm worried about
ultra-violet light and being charred to cinders if
violent things happen to Earth’s magnetic field.
What must I do? I assure you I can’t keep going,
xanthic, quaking, flattened by every stupid B-movie.
Yellow. Xanthic means yellow. I’m begging, for the
zillionth time, please. Let me believe there's more.
Mostly Lies
I don’t fear death
and neither does my father,
though if he were afraid I would know
the right thing to say on the phone.
I don’t google my name.
Definitely I never google my name plus poet.
I rarely forget what I’m doing
while I'm doing it even if I’m interrupted.
I’m neither medicated nor undermedicated
and my husband doesn’t
ask me every evening if I’m ok
because night time doesn’t drop me off
like a child at the wrong bus stop,
nothing in my pocket
for the ferryman, only questions
about what happens after dying,
which I should reiterate
I neither fear nor am obsessed with.
I imagine it’s like before I was born,
soft and gray and formless
as wool roving, some of I tease
a fistful, plunge barbed
needle into fluffbelly. Fibers matting,
condensing—armpit; eye socket.
Consider: the phrase taking shape.
Who does the taking, what remains
after the giving is through?
With my left hand, I turn
the wool. With my right, I stab and stab,
but my thumb is never pricked, and nothing hurts.
The Presuppositions Of Kyle XY
what if u woke up slimy in the woods
what if suburban nuclear family adopted u
what if no belly button
what if 2006 happened again
what if u were so young u didn’t need glasses yet
what if u fell in luv
like 40 times a day
cuz in 2006 u were 20 y/o
what if ur friend and u watched a tv show asking q's like
what if u had another u but stronger faster smarter
what if another u was in danger
/ dangerous
what if u had no history but u still had to go to high school
what if all u wanted was to understand help belong
but instead what if u were born a weapon
what if u didn’t know how to act around people
and what if someone was patient with u anyway
didn’t u know all things that happen stop
