Sticky feet from the soda spilled popcorn butter drained sour patch kids filled floor. Cushions big leather red kickback feet come up as the blaring of the latest action blockbuster made for short summer dollars. Entertaining but vapid as the characters who hardly wear any clothes spew one liners about saving humanity covered in dirt and sweat. Fade to black after exploitation of explosives called a movie. Stand up feet stick to the ground
a glowing rectangle piercing my mellow eyelids that flicker like butterfly wings. pressure fizzles out like a soda can cold on my palm. condensation droplets wiped on my sweater the cotton soaks it like a wick leaving stripes on my forest green chest. butter popcorn handfuls, oily munching on yellow foam peanuts soft with crunchy kernels in my back teeth duel with molar caps, off white porcelain cracks like grandmas china shelves crashing on the floor, shattering. a sip of metallic pop citrus bubbles on my tongue like acupuncture needles. my tongue on the positive end of a duracell double A tastes like blood. mouthful of cotton gauze, bright lights filtered by dim orange lenses. seafoam dentist chair drooling on a bib tasting my own plaque as i gag on a clay mould. jaw hinged open
Walking through the tunnel of light, the corner of the silver screen blinks in anticipation of whats to come. From the tunnel’s open mouth, we find ourselves between the cascading rows of strangers and a wormhole, this is where butter stained breathe lives. My heart flutters and my eyes falter searching for two open seats with the careful precision only before exhibited by astronomers. My feet stuck like gum on the puny floor. You push past me with the machete of your will, cutting past the red vines and soda streams. You push me past yourself and I brush the backs of my knees on strangers shins, but you give them the front of your knees. The bright air dims with the lights, and the wormhole opens. All of reality suspends for a brief hour or so, except the heat from your arm on mine.
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Marquee bulbs are near burnt out, in monochrome they flash half a name in disarray. Theater underkept and donor funded, for now here to stay. $5 for a ticket to either a Sharon Stone flick or a Tennessee Williams adaptation, no in between. Atmospheric in the historical sense, the ceiling inside is painted as a sky at dusk with stars that really twinkle, and the 100-year-old recirculated air is heavy with cold dust from a non-place that everyone remembers. Up the stairs carpeted with swastikas in questionable Orientalist taste, through the estate-sale smelling mezzanine all plaster columns and woven tapestries, always to the same seat which is stuffed red velveteen like the others but the difference is it’s mine. Alone here save an old man named Doc three rows over who I am not unconvinced is a ghost, I curl up like a cat and shiver in the AC as the pre-movie pipe organ player’s fingers and feet croon out ‘Moon River’. The sound tosses itself over the stage framed with ornate carvings and rushes past balconies lined with chipped Greek statues before reaching the ears of an audience sparsely composed of retirees, the dead, and me.