CRUISE MISSILE IN THE PANOPTICON

for Stephen J. Walter on Oscar Night

You rattle some cages, set the walkways aflame.
Guards eat breakfast watching; your moon eyed
cellmate lover Paz warns "abren los ojos," as
in the spooky Spanish flick before Hollywood
remade it slickly with Tom, ubiquitous Tom....
who also appears in this Piranesi palimpsest
as the warden high above, about to vault past
every floor of the telescoping prison where
cellmates make love give birth & change sexes
in a colorized version of your own grey cells.
Locked down in the yawning atrium's dungeon,
looking up, awaiting your life's end, you wish you
could fly like Tom, until you guess it's an observer
frame problem, as in those Einstein cartoons
you never quite figured out, even with balloons above
the scientists' pensive heads offering gravity tips
for dummies, for the A-list actor playing the vector
X is firing and falling, free falling toward fearful you.
The wild part happens now, because right before
Paz pinches you and turns into frumpy Fanny Mae,
you feel more alive than ever; Tom's about
to crash headlong into you at a Galilean rate
of speed, yet this split second is pure joy.
You've figured out he's the bad guy, not you;
you've got your gun out, mission now possible.
Before the credits roll over your studio audition
nap break, it's payback time, the star's gonna die.

The 18th century utopian philosopher Jeremy Bentham's panopticon was a prison;
a circle of cells with windows facing inwards, towards a tower,
wherein jailers could look out and inspect the prisoners at any time,
unseen by their subjects.