Moving Pictures

I watch fake monsters to ward off real monsters.
Some hapless old coots twiddling their thumbs,
and there is a frantic call from offshore,
a pretty girl says a few lines then gets nabbed,

or maybe it's just lights in the evening sky.
and soon this one guy's life becomes razor sharp
who escaped before by pure accident
and thinks he has now been anointed.

In classic budget films there is no
deep moral ambiguity to puzzle over.
Make it go away. Be decisive and brave.
There's a jump scare, you get to watch a fight,

for a moment you think it's going badly.
Murder that beast in messy blind rage.
So, I root for the creatures to win,
to slap down jump-suited US virtue

Sometimes they do, the Earth goes back
to the way it was before people built fires
and built eyes looking down from space.
Time to start over without thumbs.