Poem: My Life as Antoine Doinel
by John Kendall Hawkins
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If my life were the longest tracking shot
in cinematic history, I'd run, I'd run
through all the stained-glass stages of the crossroads,
run through early morning streets stealing bottles lit by milk,
run from dream to dream, run passer de la haine à l'amour and back and fro,
run across the frozen one and many rivers, through forests
black and filled with secret saucy ceremonies involving antlers,
and run past gingerbread houses filled with children's laughter
and smoking chimneys, run chased by wolves in red dresses,
run from my credit report, run like I was stealing home plate,
hightail it from authorities sundry, I'd run so hard
the wind would be my path of least resistance,
and run, quarking like a quantum duckrabbit
through multipatches of being and not,
go the distance like the lonely long-distance runner
until I came at last to the licking lips of the sea,
not Moses, no Sartrian exodus, no waves parting for me,
and turn to the reader for the final freeze frame,
Finis! across my face, into the arms of my pursuer,
the dead man I will be.
