I’ve always been a Master of Sabotage, but only if it applies to myself. The reasoning goes, if I’m just going to be Icarus, fuck the fall and burn the wings, not caring until later that I never learned to fly.
Today. Yesterday. Last week… I’ve been biting my tongue, sitting on my hands, and staring at the Sun with matches in my pocket and wings at my feet. And I can’t allow myself to move.
Because this time, I want to taste those clouds as the wind takes me higher. I want to feel the heat as I climb to just the right spot. And I know I might end up in the dirt, the sea or worse, but first, I want to fly!
So forgive my silence, my stasis and my temporary fear, but I’m waiting for that moment I can trust myself to pick up my wings and put the matches down.
Chris Dean is a storyteller, spoken word artist and self-proclaimed Magpie Poet who writes from the heart of Indiana where they live with their husband, dog and too many cats to mention.
Their work has been featured by Cajun Mutt Press, Fevers of the Mind, Dumpster Fire Press and the upcoming Gal’s Guide Anthology. Their debut Book of poetry, Tales From a Broken Girl, was released in 2023 by Storeylines Press.
The film critic sat sullen-hearted in the suburban all theater wishing it was dingy hard boiled 1970’s decaying metropolitan porno theater instead There was a time when cinema was real more real than real itself reels of reality restoration of being resurrecting thought profound contemplation while jerking off to depressing Russian literature and French existentialism
amid cowboys snorting coke lassoing used cars at the sundance advertisements and say “no” to drugs propaganda and sports the trailers played which used to be the best part of going to the movies
franchise fatigued wars in the stars twilight of the superhumans stillborn resurrections from days of the future past toys from decades ago brought back into our neo-retro present chasing fleeting visions future tense spoiled by demonic nostalgia tainting something once there ever allusive
the film critic couldn’t quite put their finger on it
they packed a gun fully intending on using
it fondly reflecting on stolen solitary Saturday nights lime in a cheap imitation Mexican beer as short-lived domestic sipped lightly between bites of frozen pepperoni pizza a taxi driver flying over the cuckoo’s nest apocalypse now desiring a street car pale rider rom-coms played on fueling the fault in our stars hindering true romance for a lack of love
they’d never purchased snacks of this sort before a slim snap of spicy meat nut-coated rainbow iced cream bagged sticked
unlike Oedipus, there was no mother to fuck just the incest of greasy engineered populism for entertainment no kingdom to abandon but the wasteland at the zero-hour at this midnight theater
they broke
movie spectators, half on their phones glued idiotically to screens somewhere there or other
what do you want me to say? You know where this is going…the film critic gouged out their own eyes from the sheer banality of it all silently screaming having no real voice at all, crimson flood from sockets soaking where an erection had ever seldom been used
