I can see why our hero's breathless leap appeals,
how air consents to bear his dance of swords.
Spacious vistas burgeoning with cloud, a lone
tree always in the foreground. Wafting petals.

Perhaps the faces they stare at are truly beautiful.
Perhaps explosions always seem more real
than the harmless gossip outside, the rain.

But emblems of who we are and cannot be
are not what keeps the audience here, gets
impenitent callers shushed by otherwise
placid neighbours. Do you find courage
because a woman's face locked in the mirror
resembles your mother's grief?
If streetlamps in a car chase flash past
at the precise speed of your childhood?

I thought not. Art doesn't work like that.
You pay, you go in, you waste 90 minutes
with light entertainment, drama, adrenaline
and emerge, a little spent, but ready to go on.

Maybe you'll talk about it for a while.
Dream of how to change the ending,
have the lovers kiss or not kiss, survive,
set things right in the sequel. Tonight you
may venture offscreen, behind the eyelids
where I also love to sit. Holding the camera,
telling everyone to look at this, and at this.