The Five Senses

     A failure is someone who 

Believes the successes of others

Are metaphysical more than factual; as such,

Michael Dutch,

Young director, bearing an aftertaste of film school

Has invented more successes than anyone. Cashed out

His savings to make his first feature length which fell apart

During editing. So he lays an agent, says “commercials”, 

But instead something more substantial reaches 

Through his resume to hand him  

a quiet check in exchange for 

His eye, but also his equipment. Three days

           to film, two to 

                   edit, five

                             hundred dollars. Not 

Much but he says okay it’s L.A.. Won’t have

To travel far to continue starving. 

2. 

Over lunch, the producer, his name: Collingswood. 

Corduroys and button down, a Tai spot

In Silverlake. On a legal pad sketches out

the film’s gist—

  first

In a series of five, linked by theme: The Five Senses.

One will star deaf actors; another, 

Anosmia, 

           will be cast

Without a sense of smell. Agensia, the third 

                installment, 

No taste; the fourth featuring quadriplegics, if they 

Can find enough. The first to be bankrolled though

And make casting calls will be sight (or the 

    bald, sensual 

        lack of it). 

They’ve already finalized the principals: the female lead

   a blind surfer,

The male, a guy who teaches yoga. “The deal, we 

Issue you a script each morning,

                    in braille. Can’t  

Read it? Good. And by the way, in case

They didn’t tell you: it’s a porno.”

3. 

A success is someone who creates failure

   by leaving it in his 

Or her wake—the patch they cut cleaves 

Lives that spread behind them inclusively 

   as opportunity. (You will be a 

  great man, or will be a useful one.) (Makers

Can’t be choosers.) At a 

two floor bungalow

In Laurel Canyon, Michael

Unloads his camera and tripod; in the 

   living room overlooking 

The back deck overlooking the fall of a 

Hill into some lower neighborhood, he spots

Props already arranged around the room: 

Dozens of wall-length mirrors. In the kitchen 

Collingswood hands him the script and mentions

Furniture will be switched around by the crew

Between scenes, sometimes even during 

Filming—so the cast, like mazed mice, will 

Have to dig through strange acoustics to 

Reach each other delivering their lines. At noon

They begin filming. A wide-hipped curly Latina

Assumes a calmly dignified bearing

    as the actors work over her body. Something

Solemn, disjoined about 

           the look of them

kneading a human wad

tiny but shyly intricate

Through the viewfinder. Siamese mirages

    of them from every angle

Wobbling around them. A spatially synchronized 

Orgy. But the slowest, most atmospheric aspect

Was their mouths and how they moved and the

Manner of phrases that left them. Plotted 

like

voiceover monologues in a Malik film,

But broken among the memories and instincts of 

Many speakers. “Tomorrow”…”I’ll go”…“To the store”:

As mundane and awkwardly spaced as that. 

After the first scene, Michael already knew

He was making himself useful 

   to a masterpiece.

4.

Hadn’t he seen it once before? When Tarkovsky 

Plucked a few hairs from the Chin of the Tao 

And glued them to the enormous transparent eyeball

Of Stalker? Some bit of barely hashed

        natural wisdom—how, when young,

A creature or plant

is weak and pliable; when old, more 

Sovereign and self-protected, strong and

Rigid. Brittle as such, it snaps or crumbles. Thus

The superiority of the vulnerable. To give

Where pressed, and adapt accordingly. 

The next day Collingswood handed him 

Another script—several sheets of braille—and

A fresh memory card for his camera. 

The day before he had insisted on taking the old one.

Where yesterday they told him, against the norm

To use only a tripod, now

The instructions called for him to shoulder

The camera and walk the room barefoot. “No 

Socks,” Collingswood said, looking down 

His glasses at him, “We want all ten toes.”

But then, in the basement den, where they were

Filming, he noticed the actors still wearing

Shoes beneath their robes. Many held mirrors

during the shoot,

And wandered the room whispering, counting off

A numbered sequence of steps they’d memorized. 

One-two, left. Five steps, right. A count of ten

Between each step. One moment even found 

The main actress on her knees fellating her 

own reflection.

As she finished, all four men in the room (and

Their reflections) seized up and

groaned, in concert, as if planned. 

And surely it was, Michael, guessed

Since his fingers were illiterate to 

The white plastic bumps he’d handed them. 

After filming, Holand, the production assistant, 

Waited for the memory card. Handing it

off, Michael asked

            “That’s it? Whispered numbers?” “Whoever

Put up the money,” he said, tipping his Coke, “That’s

how they want it. And so do you.”

5.

The third day, no one showed up. The house, locked 

And shiny as California in the windows. 

On the doorstep, an envelope; in it, a note from Collingswood

Attached to a check two hundred higher 

    than promised. “Finished filming yesterday. For

confidentiality’s sake. Sure 

You understand. Best wishes, C..” No word of good

Work or plans to borrow him from the future. Stiff 

Envelope, out shook one other thing: a small white card

Pocked with nibs. Ran his fingers over it

But already (and how did he?) knew

    what it was

and where it’d sit him: in two weeks, 

At the Pink Castle, front row. All those bodies proliferating,

Mating in the glide and wink of mirrors, and every

     odd angle or so 

His 

Own rapt with bewilderment—one eye alien wide, recording,

The other blinking as if it didn’t know where it was going.