The Thing That Couldn’t Die (1958)

The Thing That Couldn’t Die (1958) 69 Min. Black and White. Will Cowan produced and directed David Duncan’s clever screenplay that uses elements from Frankenstein, zombie movies, and psychic horror to create this “accursèd chest” buried by command of Sir Francis Drake. The subplot involves a teen crush and a night at the prom.

 

 

The virgin with her dowser looks for water.

Fracking causes earthquakes from

Excess pumping under earth’s crust.

                                                     

The split mind — right hand,

Left hand — social conditioning chooses,

Force of inertia consolidates.

 

Beat it down! Beat the brain down!

Evil is habit sanctified into ritual

Dualities, guilty or more guilty.

 

Purity, chastity, and virtue

Anchor innocence in a charm

Against forked twigs and tongues.

 

The handyman, all muscle for brain,

Opens the box and is blown away,

And kills those who get in the way.

 

As if dollied into an MRI

Mapping electrical impulses

That tranquilize the severed head.

 

Neurologists are reading blinking lights,

\

And coming to conclusions

Which regions should be redacted.

 

Obesity is contagious. The fatter your friends,

The fatter you become. Groupthink

Validates behavior.

Because the brain’s an autodidact

That claims control over all

Unconscious functions,

What the fearfully religious repress

Is their own excremental physical drives,

Their historical genocide.

Digging continues, head-hunting

For Shakespeare, or Salome, listening to

The mumbling lips of John the Baptist.

 

[Disposable Poem April 19, 2016]

Dr. Mike