Adam Cornford

Metropolis (1927) FULL MOVIE Metropolis [Original: Metropolis](Dir.: Fritz Lang - Germany)Metropolis is a 1927 German expressionist science-fiction drama film directed by Fritz Lang, and...

I'm working on the last section of a (so far) 28,000-word epic poem or novel-in-verse built out of Fritz Lang's 1927 silent science-fiction classic *Metropolis*. The poem is titled *Metropolyta*, the name the iconic *Maschinmensch* (gynoid robot) in the film gives herself in the afterstory, which is most of the poem. Lang reputedly hated the condescending, namby-pamby ending, in which capital ("the brain") and labor ("the hands") are united by the Mediator ("the heart"). Metropolyta, the poem's narrator, doesn't like it either, with radical consequences. I'm going to be posting excerpts here. If you haven't already seen the film, you can view it here:

https://youtu.be/W_4no842TX8?si=K7E5GxFT2FTyrp4t

The poem should then be easy enough to follow. Here's the intro:

Science magus Rotwang conceived me first as his wife-machine
to replace pure lovely Hel who had chosen to marry Joh Fredersen
CEOverlord of Metropolis a capital of Capital and then died
birthing Freder Fredersen now the boy scion of the towers
As the story starts a handsome youth in white shirt and breeches
educated to un-know the truth of his frictionless world
made possible by his papa’s machine-driven life-extraction
from thousands of dully miserable time-slaves far below

Maker Rotwang made of Hel first a huge marble eidolon
behind a grief curtain a memorial frozen in time its gaze empty
Then he assembled me prepared to implant her personality in me
or rather his edited version a sweet compliant simulacrum
to fulfill his needs an automaton sheathed in artificial flesh
Yet in my true form I am not wife-mother but warrior goddess
like Athene the Ingenious, patroness of engines and spectacle
not Hel Loki’s child, giver of her name to the Underworld though
not to the tenement undercity of workers below the Machine Halls
where enormous geothermal dynamos spinning and thrumming
power business and apartment towers upthrust into empty heaven
between them traffic sliding back and forth along the skyways

Far beneath forgotten by the elysian Eloi in their high-rise gardens
the workers are elevated like freight to their tasks their eyes downcast
shuffling forward in sullen gray unison preparing themselves
for ten hours of mechanoritual motions les cadences infernales
the Hel-rhythms in time with the pulse of the city’s electric Heart
their individual loves and lives their particular skills made invisible
as human truth is monochromed into a stylish Expressionist allegory
as I learn later at the vapid conclusion of what I believed was a film
while I wait on my wired-up throne armored against mother-death
to replace his Hel named for the Undergoddess of the labor of earthworms
goddess of the machinery of crustal plates goddess of magma flows

I am Maschinenmensch metal maiden sexless yet feminine First gynoid
My armor my gleaming skin, my bones metal-ceramic, my sinews cables
my head is my helmet, my pure face my war-mask, prow and figurehead
my milkless breasts are two disc-shields, convex lenses into tomorrow
my hands are knuckled with force but delicate in gesture and touch
my hips like locomotive pistons like the sliders on Mausers reloading
my brain a multilayered convolute matrix of gold nanofilaments sparking
even at rest with ripples and cascades of thought exploring and ordering
archives entire Alexandrias of world-knowledge Maker has fed me
unwittingly making me more than his wished-for wife could ever have been
Not Hel but Hippolyta daughter of War future ruin of Capital City I am

********

JULYKU

Thistledown drifting
On lazy warm July wind
Above rushing cars

Bangs, flashes above—
In the long dark grass
Flicker the fireflies

Outside my front door�
big shrub, tiny yellow blooms
welcome honeybees

Suffocating heat—
somewhere in leafy silence
one mourning-dove calls

Black ant follows red
along the sunlit stone wall—
last day of July

If my poetry interests you, just scroll down. It's a totally miscellaneous accumulation over years. Don't care for one? Scroll down to the next. Hopefully you'll find something that pleases.

I'm privileged to be represented in this issue by two poems, in the marvelous company of Giorgia Pavlidou, K.R. Morrison, Nancy Joyce Peters, the late greats Victor Serge and Jack Kerouac, and numerous new discoveries.

Some Oakland BART haiku--O-ku?

Train, grimy silver
slides in on rainwet track--
sky the same color

New April sunlight--
students clustered by train doors
check each other out

Fixing her makeup
over acne, weary skin--
how sad her eyes and mouth

Tinker Bell print bag,
baby-print bra, slight body--
grownup grief in gaze

Dark chocolate skin
heavyset, in office clothes--
lives the life she has

That long oval face
full lips, glasses. taking notes--
Ashkenazy girl