I Lost it at the Movies

By Kevin Sweeney

I Lost it at the Movies
with apologies to Pauline Kael

Some days life feels like Jack Nicholson’s nose
in Chinatown after Roman Polanski sticks in
that little knife and rips it open. Now with
a maimed face, you go about your business
making sure Los Angeles won’t lose its drinking
water though residual pain from the slash wakens
you in the night, but it’s 1937, so there’s no
Ibuprofen let alone Hydrocodone; you’re stuck
with aspirin and whiskey which would help
if you already knew that later in the film you’ll
get to sleep with Faye Dunaway who studied
theater at B.U. but in the movie she’s Evelyn
Mulwray; hence no boring stories of obscure
Boston bands with true artists. She’ll never
say “There was a time when my only friends
were the musicians in Cambridge coffee houses,”
so self–involved she doesn’t notice blood leaking
through that bandaged nose, dripping onto your
double–breasted beige suit, making you curse
the shoddy metaphysics of a God whose
word arrives through the prophet, a revelator
speaking only to you, the Moses of North
Broadway. “Forget it, Jake. It’s Chinatown.”