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The Film Critic

He knows watercolors fade fast.
                                   In going to the bijou to study movement in film,
he recalls a river from his youth.
This river distills movement.

But this criticism is incorrect.
The film is a natural history-
the river fictional.

He is led to believe that swimming can be fatalistic.

His assumption:
that a river in motion can be troubling.
The argument of a drowned man is that the river lacks movement, that it is

Stagnant almost, while blanching his body.
Nothing can be further from the truth.

There is always the film to contend with in every way except directly.

Some rivers are motionless-
                                 others are not.

drowned man is not the result of his environment.
Following the method of Magritte-
A drowned man dries up,
                                 evaporates into the atmosphere,
then comes down as rain, his body in bits and pieces.

Watercolors can be fatalistic.
This is the manifesto he has drawn day by day in his untidy room.

Chagall would visit,
but the vacuum is broken.

Cleanliness is an aversion to hell.

Indirectly, these events are not related, but who is to judge?
A shift in the moment causes extreme paranoia.

                                                  The irrational is part of a logical process.

All interiors are cinematic.
Some interiors may be non-existent.
Content may involve exteriors,
                                      but no exterior can exist.

The cinema offers the lunatic many solutions which otherwise could be misconstrued
as fantasy in a world of reels and cinematic effects.
                                                                   Hence, the following:

The film is Prague.
Credits roll over vase and flowers.

(Charon makes an appearance in a motorboat.
He is hardly disguised.
                                 It is a misguided effort.)

(The train lunges its dark, metallic fist into the night.
A mist descends.

            Wir haben hier keinen Morgen.

One is led to believe there is a river.
One almost smells it.

A piano is heard rustling
In the fading tree line.
                                Arias. Minuets.)

Some justification can made for the lighting.
(A man approaches with an aposteriori remark.)
                                 "Paradigms are the structural basis for all film."

The watercolor fades frame by frame.
Vase and flower remain under a lithographic poster on which is printed:
                                                                      Marriage Be Merciful
Circumstance presents him with innumerable choices.
If in the choosing, we (I am with him now) succumb to whimsy,
                                                       Then let us not depart from the world
Without an alternative to fatalistic delusion.

The wild beast must be tamed,
Slaughtered and cannabalised as if he were human.

Only then may we assert we are truly carnivorous.
                                                     Dark lighting precedes Genesis.
The priest is irreverent standing next to Rousseau.
Someone thinks less of him each year.

Christian Langworthy's early poems appeared in a national award winning chapbook of poems entitled The Geography of War and in anthologies such as: From Both Sides Now, Watermark, Premonitions, Poetry Nation, and Asian American Poetry. His work will also appear in the forthcoming anthologies: In The Mix, Bold Words, Asian American Literature Anthology, Risen From East, and Vietnamese American Literature 1975-2000. Christian's new poems appear in the literary journals Fence, Mudfish, and Can We Have Our Ball Back? He is also writing a novel, excerpts of which have been published in forums such as PBS American Experience, Salon.com, and Manoa.

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