My Documentary Filmmaker

My Documentary Filmmaker

My Documentary Filmmaker

He says some fascinating themes are unfolding.
   I’ve always wanted to be seen
as part of a social movement
   to do with ease or truth.
The filming began a month ago
   and he has access
      to all my archives.

“It’s a good medium for portraying the sly
   tussle between intent and fear,
hesitation and resolve, when
   a person finishes
a triumphant sentence and then fails
   to sustain the steel
      in their eyes, looks left,

blinks twice. We never hide anything, not really,
   folk just doubt their first reading
but they saw it. They did see it.
   What might they see in you?”
. . . Well! I signed the contract right there. Now
   he cakes me non-stop
      in make-up and praise.

“Do I look like I give a flying macaroon?!”
   I commercialise my madness
for him, so he can spread the hype.
   “Oh look I’m a big train!”
I said the other day. He loved that.
   He wants infrared
      lenses for breakfast

which no one’s ever done, not even his rival –
   a woman in an over-sized
pea-green cagoule and a navy
   blue head-band like a small
girl who carries a midget camera-
   man on her back and
      pops up in every

pocket of corruption with a knife whizzing past
   her ear, shouting “Tell me something
I don’t know!” in the faces of
   hapless area-boys.
“If she leaves a calling card, bin it,”
   he tells me, convinced
      she wants to steal his

latest muse for the cover of Time magazine:
   “me with a coat on looking glum”.
I won’t answer any questions
   about my secret life
or my scorpion jar, or health, and
   besides he seems more
      worried about ‘art’.