1. “Action!”

I just don’t know what I’m supposed to be
                                    Whatever you like – I’m just completely lost

Now I’m in this dream place …
you can imagine how I feel
                                    …. That a man’s attitude determines to
                                    a large extent how his life will be

You notice things if you pay attention          
                                    Feelings can creep up … I thought I was in control

Separate and equal are two different things … doesn’t make it right
                                    I don’t want to survive … I want to live

Hope and results are different…one doesn’t create the other
                                    [Looking at himself in a mirror]
                                    There’s a reliable disappointment

Some men change – well, they don’t change –                                   
they reveal … themselves over time, you know?
                                    Some … change … Helloooo-OOOOO-oooo

You and I have unfinished business
                                    Tell me what I got to do to make things right

I’m thinking I’m utterly selfish
My angel … flung out of space
                                    Anything interesting up there in heaven?
                                    I was just sending up a prayer of thanks

Without the existence of copies,
we wouldn’t understand the originals
                                    Toscanini once recorded a piece sixty-five times –
                                    “It could be better”

…... (Go. Alone. Without me.) ……
                                    Thump-thump-thump-thump

***

2. When Done is Done – Festival Panel

“…very similar to being in a café somewhere in Paris
and looking at the people waking by”

                                    “Everybody’s a mad scientist,
                                    and life is their lab.”

“It’s a reflection as opposed
to an interpretation”

                                    “Maybe more than a teller,
                                    I am a story listener”

Films / Directors: 12 Years a Slave, American Splendor, Bright Star, Brokeback Mountain, Carol, Certified Copy, Hidden Figures, A History of Violence, In the Mood for Love, Inland Empire, Kill Bill, vol.2, Lost in Translation, Mulholland Dr., The Shape of Water, The Tree of Life, Twin Peaks: The Return / David Cronenberg, Claire Denis, Ava DuVernay, Abbas Kiarostami

Sam Rasnake’s works have appeared in The Southern Poetry Anthology, Best of the Web 2009, Wigleaf, MiPOesias Companion 2012, Big Muddy, Poets / Artists, LUMMOX 2012, BOXCAR Poetry Review Anthology 2, and Dogzplot Flash Fiction 2011. His latest poetry collection is Cinéma Vérité (A-Minor Press).