Schooled by Cinema.

                      1

You teach us with machines
Wars imagery,
Projecting through dark halls transparent dead,
Their days of terror refined
To a grey grain.
Blood, black spots on flat figures
Sprawled across backgrounds
Of merged perspectives.

We accept
Presentable profiles turned
From the sun the camera used,
Young fingers trapped in grey sand
As shells bang black and white.

These are the facts we glean
As we relax in the big black box you provided
Consuming our popcorn
With enthusiasm.

Eyes bright with concentration
We sample the gory details.

                    2.

Taught by Machines  MACHINES  MACHINES 
We study these victims falling
To deaths long since experienced;
Jaws loose, arms extended
signalling defeat.

We thrill to their defeat.

Their young flesh burned and furrowed;
Their clear eyes glazed, then shuttered;
Their fine wits drilled and hollowed
By precision made machines.

These celluloid soldiers embrace
A vacuum of fallacies.

                   3.

Dear teachers, what`s the point?
Why wont you tell?
Lacking the scope for contention
You spew out
Facts  FACTS  FACTS 
That are only abstractly defined,

Blind logic to hoodwink the mind?

Grey truths that can`t be refined?

Confined by concentration, then
Conforming to subtle images
Our vision narrows sharply.

                  4.

Do you extol a mans brilliance in battle
Or here condemn the banalities of war?

Do these grey documents contain
An insight into our future?

Is life just a limbo of images?
Dare we look beyond the images?

Are we merely the slaves to our future?
Blind shadows adrift in the night?

Our fears being real,
Our culture, a balance of mysteries,
Will we be thus exposed to grey oblivion
When our sun grows colder,
Outshone by brighter light?

Dear teachers, where is truth?
Why wont you tell?

You do not reply.

You are busy projecting the films.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter. 
August 18th. 1966. - April 21st. 2008. 
5th. poem in series of Poems in Times of War. 

Although this was the first poem in this series to be composed, 
it completes the cycle which should be read as a single work in
five sections.