top of page

"Disney’s recycled animations" & "SPOF" by Mike Santora



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.

Commenti


bottom of page