MISE-EN-SCÈNE

Rearrange the furniture.

It’s your room.

The mise-en-scène: play with it.

It’s your movie.

And the feng shui:

consult with the invisibles, 

why don’t ya,

it’s your fortune.

The where of where you put things

is not arbitrary nor accident. Placement

is almost a kind of sorcery, really.

It’s all in the treatment,

in other words,

that you either see or don’t.

And if you don’t, well then…

a lackadaisical approach

may just creep into your relations also

and have the people in your life

begin to feel

a bit like coffee tables

or ottomans,

if you’re not careful,

that you shuttle about 

because you’re bored

or in a bad mood,

or because your sense of decorum

is elsewhere,

probably out watching

a mid-day matinee—

that is, until it finds

another reliable genre

of distraction

to replace the magic

of the silver screen.