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Wednesday, 10 April 2013

NaPoWriMo - Day 10 - Dead Reckoning

Yesterday's prompt was to write a poem inspired by Film Noir.  Thanks to IMDB, this one consists almost entirely of Film Noir titles.  See how many you can spot!


DEAD RECKONING

While the city sleeps,
the stranger turns the dark corner
and slinks along the twisted road
to the house by the river. 

He’s on dangerous ground in a lonely place.  

A stray dog yelps
as he slides the letter
through the narrow margin
beneath the door.

Rebecca,
the woman in the window,
his kind of woman,
the woman he adores with every vestige of human desire,
has no suspicion of the secret beyond the door. 
But he knows now that he’s the wrong man for her. 
The glass key of his heart
is shattered.

Out of the past,
one deception,
one act of violence,
one single touch of evil,
has caught him. 

Sudden fear impacts the desperate hours.

The lady from Shanghai delivers the killer’s kiss.

"Farewell, my lovely," he gasps,
as Sunset Boulevard
turns into Nightmare Alley.

3 comments:

  1. Replies
    1. Thanks! About an hour, I think. Half an hour looking up the titles and another half hour putting them together. It was great fun!

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  2. I can imagine. I did something similar once with Ella Fitzgerald song titles! A cleave poem no less.

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