Disney’s recycled animations
It’s been said that Woolie Reitherman
had the cels of those scenes
drawn over each other
because it had already worked
once, so why not again? Well,
because that afternoon
Christopher Robin walked
a resurrected Indian jungle
and began to feel the transfusion
flowing through the landscape’s veins.
Déjà vu at first,
and then the full embrace
of a parallel abandonment.
The stock-phrase-pastime
of slinging rocks over the bluff
was really young Christopher
questioning the colonialism
of Mowgli’s god.
How did I miss that? And if I missed that,
it seems certain that I, too,
am an organic sketch
drawn over many past lives.
Tell me great animator,
how did the last me
fair when our leg was fractured,
running through cinders
in the schoolyard?
Or when we approached the burning
car in the early hours before
our breakfast shift at Jennifer’s on Pearl?
The night of the fire,
the night our neighbors
nearly spit-roasted themselves,
how often do they live?
And does the flame continue
to follow me through time?
It does, doesn’t it?
It’s rare
but sometimes out on the rocks,
if I stand still enough,
I can feel your ventriloquism
in some kind of celestial acrylic.
I must admit
it’s easy to lose track of your life.
Sometimes, I swear I can hear
your clear sheets flipping,
layering themselves over us
the weight holding us down,
moving us along.
SPOF
Such poor machines
we really are.
What engineer worth
their weight in gearing
would craft so many Single
Points of Failure. So many
non-redundant environments
with no backups,
junctions where one failure, one loss,
ends the system’s hum
within the world.
But that is exactly
how some of the best
lives are built.
We hold our husbands, daughters, brothers,
mothers, sons, and wives
with all the strength
of a stripped bolt.
Tightened,
with almost no
hold at all.
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