CINEMA AUTEUR

Let's blame it all on Visconti
"Ludwig,"
"The Damned," "Ossessione"
it's easier to go beyond the pale
as fans posturing
at his films reviews
and cross-dressing our egos
screened, spliced and
and patched up music
in a pictured neo-realism
becoming a color painted diversity
snatched in a manic phase
of a demanding personality
Luchino, coming back
late from the Italian library
well read and artistically literate
in his own roost and palace
rarely charitable or considerate
as a fan of Proust and Callas
playing a poetic recording
of a chorus of Don Carlo
an elaborate Traviata
and La Sonnambula
Visconti with a comic sense
of the funereal
gnawing at the projection
of transforming his mother
into fragrances,mountains
castles in his media business
loving his lyrical romances
in visceral split screens,
jump cuts and images
prancing alone as a Hamlet
without an Ophelia
by his own subtle mirrors
of a solo musical Narcissus
by an abandoned single bed
with its solitary white emptiness
but there is no chatelaine
in his brainy tricks for publcity
along with sound chances
of defeating brown fascism
by red hammer and sickle
there is a sigh of rain
on every bicycle in Rome
now broken down
by his poetic window sill
wishing to wrap himself
in the celluloid closet
knowing how many lires
will pay for his artistic deposit
of theatrical celebrity.