Cinema Complex Poem by Hans Ostrom

This complex isn't simple: boxes
within boxes within boxes. Figures
stroll across a neon-glossy floor
toward dark caves, bathrooms, or
sugar and salt: they and I
are already dead--like people

photographed by cinema in 1939.
And we've been replaced by others
who move about here just as we do,
we did. Maybe one of them

is morbid, at least fatalistic,
and feels for a moment that time
has already departed, leaving
behind only ribbons of light
that spool images
flickering imperceptibly

on screens
and kernels of corn explode
into tiny thunderheads. Before
going into the movie, I think
this scene I've been in
may have been the better movie.