[audioplayer file=”https://admin.rattle.com/audio/MillerLight.mp3″]
That year, each night, in a polyester tuxedo
And a propeller tie, I would climb up
The narrow stairs into the theater’s loft.
Inside the red running-lights,
In the housing of each projector, I opened
The five gates one opens to thread the film.
The 70 mm lens was like a golden idol
We kept in a velvet box when the theater
Was closed. The mechanical gates fed
The god through a thousand sprockets.
They snaked the film before the hot light
And back to the reels where they lay flat
On circling tables of steel. The best ushers
Could lace a movie in under fifteen seconds,
But I was never best, feeling, of course,
That the blankness between films belonged
To me in the way a teenager feels things do,
Staring out into the great empty sail
At the front of the theater below, darkness
Partial and yet primal. No, it was not God
I felt myself to be, who had dropped out
Of college already twice and had the manager
On my case for coming in late stoned.
Still, looking out over the audience below
Awaiting to stare in rows of one direction,
I was God, a little. “Let there be light,”
I said, and with the snapping of a switch
Began not one but many worlds shining
In the darkness. I saw them all,
And said of some that they were good.