In the darkened basement rooms, in between stacks of knick-knacks
from dated telephones to sculpted Tutankhamun heads to racks of clothes
dragged out of previous centuries (or from off of other film sets),
among the shelves of cameras, tripods, lenses, structures on wheels
and small cranes, with my eyes getting caught on every sight,
a perpetual snag, and the moths that pound their thousands of wings
in my chest, that make it so tight, flapping at vibration rate
in the place of a steady beat. But I find they completely placate
when the tall guy with the long hair and the Indian girl
with the dimples offer me their gazes and their smiles, silently
cheering for me and for the film they are making in the air-conditioned
subterranean space while the sun bakes on parks outside and people
sleep deliriously in pools of sweat, at home, on transport, in offices,
on lawns, in the big world of seasons, in the big world of social grace
and of reasons-- it's enough to make anyone forget, it's unreasonable--
and here, away from it all, I glimpse the creation of another world-
as whole and as seasonable, made out of midnight musing and
coffee-break conversations, built out of an arrangement of heavy
black blankets and angled light bulbs, everywhere light falls
the space it is intentionally orchestratedly using to throw just so
the shadows and illuminate the life into an idea. Those ideas that patiently wait
in the noisy room that I can't allow to open its door today.
Not today, but when I do, there will be so much light, I know
that it will seem that a star has become, not of me,
because I am not a star, and nor did I ever really want to be,
I just wanted people around me to be happy and laugh when they
looked at me. I wanted to light up their dark so things wouldn't be the way
they seemed to be, but they seemed to stay when night came
and fell and fell on me and my spark was blotted out, I tried but
could never spark the same. People would say they missed it, just
missed the chance to see it, but I was turning transparent,
I was feeling that I ought to be invisible, like dust, and I was too
much of an intrusion, a burden, an obstacle, too much and too apparent
and I told myself I was an eyesore until my eyes got sore too
and if there were stars, I couldn't have seen them. I saw only threat
where I'd left a vacant place where I should have had an identity.
In those basement rooms, I almost hear the crowds behind the noisy door
and the moths too, all communicating in a hum, 'Soon, not yet.'
But a star will become of me. That night that came and fell before
will get up and walk elsewhere willingly, shadows will shrink away, afraid,
and the shadows will no longer have faces or features to frighten me,
they will not be blind places. There is so much to be made
that is star-flecked, part of the star army, the night's apostles,
I could feel it, even in the darkened basement rooms, the light on me.
via GIPHY
