The Poet Dreams of Writing a Screenplay
Aug 19 2009


It was boffo, block-buster
box office gold.
With the A-list
of Hollywood stars,
ageing divas
in walk-on parts,
heart-throbs, starlets, crashing cars.
A laugh-riot tear-jerker stylish noir,
a duster, sex farce, auterish art.
They called it epic, biopic
borsch-circuit shtick,
a sure-thing teen-flick summer-time hit.
There was song and dance
and computer tricks,
romance, seduction
lots of skin.
We laughed, we cried
wanted more of it.
And in the end
some unfinished bits,
just in case there’s a sequel.

And in less than a week, it died.
Bad timing, they said.
Didn’t get
the word-of-mouth, the crucial buzz,
enough thumbs-up.
But just you wait
for the DVD
pay TV
overseas release;
it’s sure to kill
at 30,000 feet.
A captive audience, I thought
— just what it needs!

It closed
a stinker, a loser, a money pit,
the big block-buster
that broke to bits.
Yet after all
the producer got rich —
typical Hollywood ending, I sniffed.