In the beginning was technicolor - written early last August

Emory University

18 January 2018

In the beginning was technicolor

  

In the beginning was technicolor

in seventy millimeter cinemascope

and—initially blinding me—

technicolor in seventy millimeter

cinemascope brought me up

on its widescreen glory

across a flickering rectangular

universe whose externally delivered

illumination transformed the surrounding

darkness into our individual consciousnesses

of light and of image and of movement—

the sound only always followed from a distant

place inside the darkness within us

but the sound caught up and all coalesced

as sound and moving image into

thought and feeling directed inward

from the externally delivered illumination

and made into what in our bone and flesh temple

of awareness we perceive as art

In the beginning was Hamm’s and PBR

served one dollar and twenty-five cents per pitcher

and then Jack Black and retching up my guts

while standing knee-deep in marsh mud

of which I was unaware when I hopped

from the dock onto what appeared to be

dry land and solid ground to take a piss when I should have—

in the company of women—

just hung it over the dock and pissed

in front of everyone

but even the Jack couldn’t make me do that