"Even Funnier than Pretending to Do It Is Actually Doing It."
"Action.
Mania, monster to follow.
A searchlight against our window above the block they closed off
to shoot the Godzilla remake woke me.
The neck of a crane was nuzzling the cathedral downstairs,
an edit away from fantasy.
Zoom at will.
You were still asleep.
More perfect than one to one is no scale.
I thought about it again.
The day we met, my friend Bethesda's boyfriend
explained-- about having let his roommate Manhattan crawl
in bed with him every night she'd
been gone-- what's even funnier than pretending to do it.
And he actually laughed, she said, and cried.
It is funny, in actuality.
Like sitting, standing, walking, sleeping isn't it.
An actual secret takes time, and here-on-out, hypnosis.
When we went down for Chinese, every doorway
had soldiers under walkmen, doomed extras waiting
to shoot the illusion again.
What is not razing, scorching, swatting and lashing?
What good is camouflage on 25th Street?
And, does Tokyo come back from something like this?
In the original, they had to recreate everything
in miniature and fill the screen, steady the camera.
Now in New York, you put the succubus in afterward.
Action mania.
Tanks edge, troops scramble, live, aiming for its eyes,
for platforms on the craning crane head, a storey above us.
The commotion is incomplete, an engine of cries withheld.
Not so, laughs.
There is a light trapped in my eyes, that
doesn't go when I close them.
I crouch over you to see you, to make sure of you.
The director calls for Continuity
to prepare a second take, a mayhem more the same.
I'm thinking about it again.
I am doing it, this time on location.
Pandemonium never sleeps.
You cannot pretend."