Swizzle Stick

teaching Metropolis

April 6 prompt: Rabbit hole — start a poem on one topic, and let it lead you down a “rabbit hole” of discovery, burrowing into various topics, and maybe ending far, far away from where you started. (Let yourself do research on this one. Enjoy Google and Wikipedia!)


attention is a medium of exchange
we need to conceptually, sociopolitically,
connect this film to Frankenstein,
to representations of worldly upheaval

(oh god this coffee is stone cold) now phones away
engage your brains & watch

first scene is subtle in choreography
workers shuffle out at shift’s end
at half the pace of those who shuffle in
uniform, syncopated, symbolic
this film is almost a hundred years old
try not to view its techniques as cliche
remember to refer to context in your essay
(that man outside can stick his leaf-blower
up his arse & get a fucking broom)
Weimar Republic, attempted democracy, high inflation
purpose of cinema as social escape
use of allegory as social critique
(here I am in Plato’s cave, or maybe this is Biblical)
is it true to assert that the film is in greyscale
when directors had no freedom to choose colour?
consider Expressionist kaleidoscopic eyes
take note of Moloch as hallucination
what’s the effect of this high-angled shot?
is silence a technique, they ask, silence
with emotion implied through dramatic gestures, wide eyes,
okay I’ll pause it we’ll take a short break
(my energies are broken) (I need hot coffee)
take note of the motif of head, hands & heart
but who is the mediator? not I said the spider
as I write in blue board marker neat notes
in dot points, academic, logical, needing
caffeine, sleep, engagement in this metropolis
in this silent, flickering film