Previously posted is a poem for the third draft of my feature screenplay “Windy City.” Draft two borrows from a song by VNV Nation, but I thought it best to write something of my own as a backup. Here are the lyrics as they appear in situ:
A gust carries some equipment away and tugs at the cable. There is a loud SNAP. The workman turns his lamp away from the locks, toward the cable and finds -- a slowly lengthening CRACK.
WORKMAN
CABLEFALL! CABLEFALL!
The cable SNAPS. Half of it CRASHES across the trolley tracks, wiping them away like chalk marks. The other half SLAMS back into the building. The upper floor windows EXPLODE, raining big chunks of plastic on the old workman and his crew.
WORKMAN
DOWN! EVERYONE DOWN!
INT. HOTEL - LOBBY - EARLY MORNING
A low, distant BOOM. The power flickers. Nadine and her sister Ashur are crammed onto a cot in the dark lobby with the other refugees. The building GROANS in the wind. Ashur is too frightened to sleep. Nadine begins to stroke her hair.
NADINE
(sings)
Morning clouds in disarray/
Bright and cold, this is your day/
Ten points off the rising sun/
Tell me why I feel this way?
Tell me what you've been and done/
Silhouette in solid space/
Future's half-forgotten face/
Stillness grudgingly withdrawn/
Far off engines mutter dawn/
Slow to wake and slow to thaw/
You'd become my paragon/
Hope that time could not withdraw/
Gone too long, returned too soon/
Stowed and moored by afternoon/
Scrambling spotters, busy clerks/
'Til this evening's fireworks/
Dancing through the final song/
Rubbing hair and other perks/
Heart ungimbaled, stomach wrong/
Ship returning, fortunes won/
Voyage ended, and begun/
Ashur sleeps.