~DWAYNE THORPE~

FREEZE FRAME

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Even in the finest film there is a time
inevitable as the blank in conversation
when the actors pause, caught on camera
judging, their expressions, adjusting
the tilt of their bodies, attitudes of their heads,
aware for just that moment, as you are aware,
they are actors who for a second misplaced their roles.

The fit was almost perfection, the faces they made
up almost to the director's careful dream
which almost matched the stream beneath the words
that nearly echoed what the writer meant.

But all enchantment has to take a breath,
phlegm in the singer's voice slightly burrs the note,
they feel their bodies, are aware of hands and feet,
and we, popcorn nearly gone from the box,
feel ourselves too, our eyes being bombarded
by eternal photons reflected from the screen.

For a fracted moment we feel the real dark
all around the pretense of fog on the tarmac
where the plane to freedom was about to take us away.

© by Dwayne Thorpe