LOCUSTS
Tom Cruise took the call in his I AM THE POWER t-shirt at 3pm. By 3.15 Lars was L.A-bound sunglassed & solo yo he only worked alone oh & the gin he ordered mid- flight was a thick unsparkling matrix of iridescent blues & variegations. Sure Nicole will act, Stan made an historic job of her & she chooses her roles whacked on Botox, completely rigid in thought. Lars will see anyone in court who tries to mess with his snapshot of the real, it reads like the contract that never lies: Hubbard is haunting the eternal skies. Cut. Cut. Tom has a little rentboy on Sunset who sings like he means it & Tom nods his head all sagely and says: we can get you treatment for this. Nicole will act. Everybody must act & get staked-out on camera in the 'wood & the rules - well, there really ain't no rules, except the laws of the universe in the Book of L. Ron & these have been well-recorded at the cost of millions & Lars has a film to make, period. Take one: the alarm clock & a fug of cigarette smoke wait to snap Tom outta Lars' dogme dream but ol' cruisy dozed off to Action! weeks ago. Damn it he looks sexy asleep & Nicole forms an expressionless gunfire moue in taut response to Lars giving markers to sleeping beauty through his dark vermillion eye. Lars watches the camera roll beep keeping its eyeline one step behind the clock & time is statistically neater in the lens & hollywood is a dreamland of friends - cowled-up crows who perch crookedly on the set pieces from a Streep je ne regrette rien epic & shift & bustle heavily & scowl. Beaks and wings stick Tom's oscarworn face like butter to the film in strips criss-crossing the set, lines on a hangar floor with Nicole barking up from the grid, the dogme dog that lost her cue. Off set she’s no less off-world, woof after method woof in her caravan while she switches the late-night service to cruise control & Lars re-writes the script, checks for glitches.
ANDREW F GILES has work in Ambit, Magma, Equinox, Poetry Scotland, Ink Sweat & Tears, And Other Poems etc, has written for The Spectator & The Scottish Review of Books & edits Scotland’s online literary arts & culture journal New Linear Perspectives. He was recently included in New Writing Dundee 7, & the SPL’s Best Scottish Poetry anthology 2011 edited by Roddy Lumsden, & longlisted for The Rialto’s poetry competition judged by Sir Andrew Motion. His article John Burnside’s Poetics of Failure: a Havoc of Signs recently appeared in US journal JERRY.
Read more work by Andrew F Giles:
Poem in Ink Sweat & Tears
Poem in Scottish Poetry Library
Author’s Website
New Linear Perspectives