Poem 251

On a film set there’s someone in charge of continuity, matching everything to previous shots usually with the help of polaroid photos … I’m using it here as a metaphor for those ‘mornings after’ when there’s a mysterious emotional disjunction between where you felt you’d got to the previous night with a relationship and where you seem to be starting from in the new day (a sense of masks being replaced and a return to a mode of performance and self-awareness you’d managed to transcend – a slightly embarrassed step back from honesty) …

( title comes from a filmmaking term … the arc of this poem is similar to Poem 212 … )

Day For Night

There is some mistake here
in the continuity
      this is not the expression
I was wearing
when we broke for the night
words as bright as pins
were on my tongue
            ready to fall
                                  you
were like the heavy head
of a rose bending
and shedding
                          above me

I remember but these eyes
   are someone else's
one of the crew perhaps who saw it all
from the back of the room

now morning is on the job scattering
polaroids
                 that murder yesterday's light
                 sweeping only stiff unconvincing crumbs
of feeling together

give me back the heart I had
           warm my hands with your skin
puncture this new sheen of makeup
let's run our lines again
            over and over
            faster and faster
until we fall together and like magic
speak the truth