NOTE FROM LB: A Hollywood poem by a Hollywood guy.
About what it felt like to be this particular Hollywood guy.
For those who want to know more, there’s a longer note after the main attraction.
Kid Hollywood
by Larry Brody
Kid Hollywood used the living room’s dark, the
TV tube’s glare, and the glittering stars with whom
He made friends
To hide who he was, what he wanted, and all he
Could be.
Hid because there’s no audience, not for
Poetry.
And no money. And no
Friends.
Hid because to be was to feel,
Was to reveal,
Was to be at the
Mercy of those who found truth in the tube
And the dark, and the glitter.
Kid Hollywood stood guard, donned 60-page armor,
Brightly outfitted, perfectly formatted, immaculately conceived
Scripts that delighted, and corrupted, and spun
Truth into straw.
(Not that Kid Hollywood knew.)
Kid Hollywood wrote,
Turned out word after word, all dingy disagreements, all
Confrontations, all
Car chases and screams. He wrote and he sat in that
Living room’s black hole, and he stared at that
White-washed screen.
The Kid wrote, and he sat, and he stared,
And he bought, how many dinners for how many
Constellations, how many configurations of Sirius and
Orion and the Big Bear?
How many luminous experiences with
Luminaries who could remember
Neither their lines nor
His name?
(Not that Kid Hollywood knew.)
Kid Hollywood wrote, and he sat, and he stared, and he bought,
Because he feared. He feared that
To know him was to push, was to prod,
Was to maim and permanently impair
The talent
He’d already
Darkened from all the glare.
Or was it really the Kid’s own
Wounds Kid Hollywood so feared?
Is that why his last series
—You remember, the unsold one,
The one he called, “Despair”—
Found no audience, no money, no friends?
(Not that Kid Hollywood knew.)
NOTE FROM LB: While living in Santa Fe back in the early ’90s, I got into the habit of writing at least one poem a day, starting before breakfast and ending…whenever. Over the years, various individual poems won the usual poetry awards (because prize certificates are a lot cheaper to give out than money?), and on special occasions I would compile them and make my own physical book versions to give to friends and family.
A few years ago I turned a volume I called Kid Hollywood and the Navajo Dog into a Kindle book that sold one, count ’em, one copy to someone I actually didn’t know. It’s still available on Amazon.Com, but if you want to read the contents for absolutely free! free! free! all you have to do is come here to TVWriter™ once a week because starting today I’m posting selections.
No, not to get people to buy. Just the opposite, in fact. As the Navajo Dog herself once pointed out to me, “Art has to be free. If you create it in order to get money, you always end up compromising your artistic vision by trying to please those who are paying. If you don’t ask them to pay, you can be yourself. When you, the creator, the visionary, take that road, you automatically free yourself.
The work above is the first piece.
Free.
For, I hope the benefit of you and me.