ATTACK OF THE FIFTY FOOT WOMAN (2003)

I am not sure how someone
came up with this idea but
it is brilliant.

I have no reason to believe
that the man who imagined it
did so while reading sad letters--
many of them--but I have
no reason to believe he wasn’t.

you may say: “perhaps a woman
wrote it.” cautiously, I would reply,
“I have no reason to believe”
and then would interrupt myself to say:
”no, she didn’t.”

who is she?

the woman who didn’t write the screenplay
for ATTACK OF THE 50 FT WOMAN.

I would very much like to meet her.

meanwhile, the other woman, this 50 ft. woman,
is apparently very angry at her husband who is
committing hanky panky left right and center
and she is determined to find him and take him
in one of her huge hands and crush his whole
body like a walnut.

I believe that the trailer even shows a picture
of him, dressed nicely in a suit, in her hand,
squirming. you can almost feel the anticipation,
which is delicious.

the walnut part I added myself. I tried
to crush one years ago during a strange
and interesting flight of fancy but it only
left a reddish impression in the palm of
my hand and little aching in my fingers.
I felt foolish and alone.

later that night, and far away,
I dreamt that I was living
in babylon and listening to marduk
the short-tempered god of babylon
talking on and on about floods. “then
I will make this flood” and “then I
will make that flood” until I fall asleep
in my dream and wake up and see

that I am right in front of the t.v. and
there is the 50 ft woman in front of me.

it’s just as well that she’s there. we
live in a society today that would
not honor or respect a 50 ft woman,
who, once upon a time, would have
been likened to a god. it’s all in
the dream.

even though the 50 ft woman was
made fifty years ago, truthfully, they
didn’t care for her much even then.
they liked things like spoon bread.
and 5 cent cigars. not fifty foot women.
and there was only one of them.

my doctor says: “you must learn
to stop romanticizing. it is bad for
the internal organs.”

still, someday I will leave this world
without a word and go to a special
place that would embrace the 50 ft
woman, even if she is attacking
something. I am certain that it would
be unlike any place that I have ever
imagined, although I do imagine

that there would be palm trees but
no, no, it would not be babylon.

there would be walnuts, in abundance,
and a bed of grass in which to sleep,

there would be more than enough
room for everybody, scoundrels
would be there, and hope would

flourish, and televisions would
work miracles as they often do

and the grass would stretch out before
you, or me, for much much more than

just fifty feet.