Get Your Premium Membership

Badly Spliced

An actor returns to his Beverly Hills mansion – blows his brains out with a 38 special. I must have dozed off, cops at my door, a line of chain-smoking flashbulbs in baggy turn-ups. I watch myself being taken away in a body bag. The movie is badly spliced. Black Packard’s keep morphing into flying saucers. We are all wearing hats, even the writers in the backroom are wearing wide-brimmed hats. The women are wearing hats. They wear pencil thin skirts, and talk out of the side of their mouths. A screen flickers; a skinny man behind an obscuring microphone apologizes for the delay. Meanwhile, space aliens have landed in Brooklyn, and are exterminating people in hats. It’s a radio show hoax, but I don’t know that – until I wake-up into a world filled with terror and chaos, but there are no aliens and few brimmed hats. I check that my Glock is loaded. I can’t sleep.

Copyright © | Year Posted 2019




Post Comments

Poetrysoup is an environment of encouragement and growth so only provide specific positive comments that indicate what you appreciate about the poem.

Please Login to post a comment

Date: 7/31/2019 11:06:00 AM
Grins and thanks Caren, I often write time-shifting poems, it unlocks the imagination to explore surreal situations. Much obliged to you.
Login to Reply
Date: 7/31/2019 4:33:00 AM
This reminded me of the 1940's movies with Edward G and Jimmy Cagney and Humphrey Bogart. Wow! The old detective movies came flowing into my brain. Thanks for this! Bravo! I liked the way you came full circle and COMPLETED the poem. So many rarely do that!
Login to Reply
Date: 7/28/2019 12:05:00 PM
I like to read your poem, as it had to take a toll of time of reading two or more times. It is beginning to make some sense, so you could calculate the number of times. Take care.
Login to Reply
Ashford Avatar
Eric Ashford
Date: 7/28/2019 12:33:00 PM
Thanks for putting in the effort Tamanna. The poem is one of those time-slip writes. It riffs off 40's movies and styles. It also references obliquely the time when on a radio program of around that era, Orson Wells, read a story about spaceships over Brooklyn. Folks at the time thought it was a real news breaking event, and the was some panic! The poem ends in the present time and it's not a better time in my opinion. Thanks again.

Book: Shattered Sighs