Under The Influence

The following poem was written in a writing class while I attended USF for my BA in English.  I submitted it under the pen-name of R.W. Weaver to a contest as part of that year's Suncoast Writer's Conference.  It won Honorable Mention for the Estelle J. Zbar Poetry Award.  I hope you enjoy it.

Under the Influence

For some it’s a concert, all sweaty and horny.

For me it’s a movie, all pungent and bottled.

To affect, to offend; to be affected, offended.

All in the confines of a darkened room.

It begins at the booth and I’m shut outside,

Begging for entrance, voices scratching through glass.

Or, maybe before, when still in the car,

Examining posters of Imagic Rivals outside.

Inside it’s midnight, even at noon.

I swoon to the scents of sugar and popcorn--

The warm and buttery cotton-candy of film--

The jingle of ice, the slurp-sip of the fountain soda,

The sticky-crunch to my step I try to ignore.

House-lights cool and conversations hush, hush.

And I cannot breathe the anticipated air.

The rumble of speakers, oh, how they tease, always precede

The Imagic screen for which I had come.

The sights, the sounds, intoxicatingly honed.

I shiver from it, and pulsate inside,

A thrill beyond body, my mind high on idea.

I scribble on napkins, inside of the lobby,

Where characters crowd, hyper-excited,

And I’m caught in the stream of what we’ve just seen.

When I have sobered, I read what I wrote,

Find the writing has bled, the characters blurred.

Hung-over and numb, I’m convinced of the worst:

Nothing I write will evoke what I felt.

© RMKS 1999

Thank you for indulging... (me).