The Fragrance of Slow Roasting Celluloid

My past lives in-between

the sprockets of

8 millimeter memories

whose color

long ago drained from its face

like mine did

when five-year-old me

stood in terror

at the toe-gripped danger edge

of the miles high

diving board at the pool

of our beach club,

my teeth clattering

like Lucero Tena's castanets.


My mind is a projector now.

that exhales the fragrance of

slow roasting celluloid

fresh baked Bakelite

and simmering lubricants

like the ones that flapped like

baseball cards in whirling bike spokes

in the back of classrooms

and family dens,

which

unspools scenes of my

heavily documented childhood

where I shepherded traumas

like lost sheep

and was forced by expectation

to embrace any gift or event

with the gratitude of a third world child

who had just caught a box of powdered milk

tossed from a Red Cross truck,

that approached dangerous levels of delirium,

not unlike, I suppose,

the performances of the

housewives of the 50’s

who, on the darkened stages

of late night bedrooms,

faked ecstasy,

re-tied aprons and traipsed off

like the living dead

in their bewildered nightgowns

to clean the linoleum floor

of their perfect kitchens.


Through the years, footage

shows me

marching to school in fall

like one of Sherman's foot soldiers,

prancing with ribboned poles

in the merriment of May

and boarding the bus

for the summer camp with an Indian name

where color war and sex awaited.

Until

overnight

film dissolving me

sprouts 

like a special effect

until I escaped from the

tyranny of high school.

Followed by

the long-haired

philosophical cigarettes of

of college

and free samples of girl flesh

And then came

the rest of life

which is a private screening of

that helter-skelter slide ride

of hope and heartache

with it's gnawing ache

for the perfect ending

which will come soon enough

as it always does,

unannounced,

like the snow sometimes,

which will prompt

the aperture

to slowly close

as I totter towards the horizon,

bindle over shoulder,

like the dreamfilled

bow-legged tramps that we all are,

as that tiny home movie reel

reaches its flutter and flickering finale,

the screen glows white

and someone switches off the machine.