The Cinematic Poem by David Knox

It's a strange task to put something down in ink
The things worth saying
Are the things that can't be said- I think
The songs that mean something to sing
Are beyond words above language
The kind you can't directly engage
All this to say what I now say
Is worth saying, worth it to me

When I write a movie script
There's something about me
That becomes
Invested
Inserted
Infused
Into my characters, it's a feeling that is foreign
For I feel what they feel and not what I fell
And yet their person flows from who I am, closer than kin
Simultaneously their emotions are born of mine
As their emotions are born in me.
It's not quite as if I see what they see
And yet they are me, more than just a sign
Of something I feel, something I thought
They're a piece of myself that I brought
To fictional life with words that don't
Describe all that they are, nor all I am
Sometimes it feels like their identity hits me, unplanned
But then there's the sense it was always there
Was always here
Was always me-

Some characters scare me
Are they all pieces of myself?
Are they all mine? If they're mine are they me?
Do I have that darkness? Their darkness?
That light? Their light?
That hope? Their hope?
That despair? Their despair?
That love? Their love?
That hate? Their hate?
Is everyone so attached to their characters?
I feel their pain it makes me cry
I cry real tears in fake dreams
Fake stories with fake screams
If it's all so fake, then why?
So close, so near, and when they die...
Do I lose them? Do they live forever
Without ever living or do they die and
Pass away? Am I allowed to wonder such things, allowed to ponder?
One thing I know
Every characters I make I feel
And in each script there's always one, always one much like me
Am I self-focused or simply too attached?
Even as they breathe I breathe
As their story I weave
They weave mine
The beautiful irony wherein they write or influence my life
As I write theirs
So what do they feel about me?
How do we interact? Am I free?
They seem to have influence, seem to exist
Theirs is not a power I think to resist
So I'm left with question
That they're asking
That I'm asking

What are we to us?