A piece from my Postmodernism class — another assignment where we were asked to use a specific set of words centered around our individual areas of “expertise” (in my case, this was film production).
guillotine
I met Charlie Chaplin in a landfill.
He seemed shaken to his core, tangled in the
skin of a gas filled blimp that had shriveled up
and blanketed the earth in sound some time before.
His lips hung canted, and with muted smirk
he eyed an apple box full of heads
which spoke all at once about the temperate
sky of colors, and other worries of the dead.
It was hard to see through the edging fog
that sulked thickly over the depths of the field –
it seeped like honey down the perforations of
the giant’s back, resentful of man’s continuity.
Behind me, a tuft of earth had been cut away,
where Kubrick had dug a trench and made
a careless shelter from a moldy barn door
and grumbled at some candles by his feet.
A wild sound came from above and beneath,
and I thought I heard Charlie’s voice fade
into the crunching of cans and cranking
of scrap – “Please, Recycle!” he squawked.