Still-Unstill

The static frame erases itself—

and the moment begins to move.

I go nomad with brush and ink,
forget every fixed thing.
I am the killer—
of thought, of reason—
ringing the death-drum,
drunk on neural ecstasy,
both hands raised in a funeral march.

Which instincts walked past me?
Who said I must be a wanderer?
This art will not stay.
In film—when, where—
I was their charioteer.

One pot for birth,
death on the riverbank.
On the canvas—
a dangerous velocity,
brush pushed by a drunken lover.

Where is the cool water?
Where they once spat,
once hurled stones,
now the river flows on both sides.
From this bank to the other—
a seagull arcs in flight.

Like the sun,
I grow thirsty for something unnamed.
This—
the reins on my eyes,
life slipping here,
a sailboat summoned
on the chest of a tide.

Here—
pinned in the frame,
the flag of still-unstill time.
Through the speed of sight
I call for revolution—
or maybe for a mind
that will not ache,
a flute of thought
that will close its eyes.

With the whole body,
I will drink this feeling full,
a cinema beyond the mind,
a hymn to the nervous system,
layer by layer, every day,
entering the pores,
the body sprawled in comfort,
sweating in a cool heat,
the immersed soul—

and on the screen,
Apu’s story plays.