Magic Lantern Poetry, Part 2: A Magic Lantern Show!

dragonfly in amber

a boy needs a father
a man needs a son
I am neither and in need of none

she laughs a lot
I light her cigarette
she smokes, I do not

we whisper when we speak
if we speak at all

the watchers hide
behind mosaic eyes
I am tired
it is the war I know

this is not Eden
and there are no apples
a Buddhist monk
sitting in defensive posture
a lotus flower
douses himself in gasoline
burns a hole in my mind

my heart drowning in tide pools
my soul dries in low tide
we are all child soldiers
saving the world from more wars

a yellowish-brown sheen
just below the surface
wings shimmer in the light
I still search
for a temple to call home

Author's Note

In spending time contemplating the duality of imagery and visual language, I have been combining two magic lantern slides to create one slide of an interesting image to accompany my poems. Most slide combinations are one color slide and one black and white slide. I would hope the collage of imagery is maybe a relation of visual sound (Megan Watts Hughes), the background movement between color and black and white (Akira Kurosawa), visual creativity (Joseph Boggs Beale), and visual language story telling (William Blake).

 

Part 1: Interview with Terry Borton of the American Magic Lantern Theater