Poetic License: Poem Noir: I, Voice-Over

Sep 17, 2011 2 min read

I am Voice-Over

and all I can tell you for sure is this:

daylight is for suckers,

for nameless girls by the pool,

the body flying off the roof –

waking up with amnesia;

nighttime’s for the moonlight seduction,

the silhouette skulking in the bushes,

the flash and shot in the dark,

headlights in the rear view mirror;

everything else:

it’s all interiors and mirrors

shuffling and reinventing themselves

with lighting and angles

and lamp shades as co-conspirators,

deflecting surfaces, covering up deceptions,

betrayals, identities, blackmail, murders;

while I, Voice-Over,

trail the thread through the labyrinth city

past abductions, beatings, chases,

police and crooks in relentless pursuit,

and femme fatales switching allegiances

from frame to frame to frame-up,

veils unveiling and dresses lifting

for whoever comes first and/or last;

I, Voice-Over,

who still can’t remember the combination

to the safe behind the picture

in the office of the nightclub casino

that holds the secret of who I really was

or am, and who everyone else is

or why they are all pursuing me;

and each time

knocked or drugged unconscious,

the echo-chambered nightmares haunt

and tantalize with surrealistic clues

while captors pretending to get careless

let me escape so that they can follow me

to wherever it is

I, Voice-Over,

cannot remember, except that suddenly,

in the eighty-ninth reeling minute

everyone is in the office of the nightclub,

whipping out guns or grabbing them

from each other as they change sides

and shoot each other dead

between the confessions and revelations,

while police sirens wail

one careful minute away on the soundtrack —

night and the city dissolve outside the window

and I, Voice-Over,

the only one left standing

move toward the now open safe,

remove, then burn in the fireplace

the papers that would have told you and me

who I really am or was

and what everything was all about;

I guess, looking back, you can say

I never really wanted to know,

I, Voice-Over,

who warned you in the beginning:

daylight is for suckers