The Tragedy of Macbeth by Joel Coen
by Matthew Klane
Images by James Belflower with the assistance of DALL·E 2
When, in disgrace with Fortune and men’s eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,
Desiring this man’s art and that man’s scope…
– from Sonnet 29
1
Spotlight on me speedrunning lines. Macbeth
makes meaning within a meaningless set
of abstractions. The protagonist’s
prisonlike fate inside a standing ovation
inside a standing ovation
standing on its own ballyhoo. #mood
Take a stab inferring a designer
from the design. The diagonals are
downright frightening. I’ll do Zack Snyder
doing Orson Welles for Halloween.
I’ll do an Agatha Christie whodunit
or the medieval romance Wes Anderson
never made. Weaving decades. You’ll wonder
does the world really need another crown?
2
Does the world really need another
masterpiece of a masterpiece of
self-centered, self-contented, self-parody
(nodding to German Expressionism)?
another onanistic genre prism?
anti-pastoral trigonometry?
See one lonely haunted castle homebody.
She manifests as a trio of crows
roaming a photo negative firmament
out of the fog and onto the fringes:
a bony contorted figure in the sand
twisting herself into a frog-leg pretzel
turning attention towards an audience
with a God’s-eye view of no man’s land.
