The following poem has nothing to do with showbiz…except that it owes its existence to the fact that it tells, as compactly as possible, the kind of story I always wanted to tell on TV but never could.
There were rules back in the day, about what topics you could touch and how you had to stroke them. Life and and the danger of losing one’s life were beloved by network execs. But there sure as hell weren’t any I ever met who wanted to read a script or watch a show about suicide. (Not even if it was action-packed.) Poetry, however, knows how to welcome:read article
NOTE FROM LB: I started my showbiz life in the music business, as a drummer, and played in bands of every genre that existed at the time. The most difficult music for me to play was what then was called Country and Western, because the rhythm sounded like rock but wasn’t quite, and while the lyrics sounded like truth…
The Love I Know
by Larry Brody
Country music gives us the verities:
Love,
Betrayal,
And Death.
I live it all everyday, yet still I listen, as
Betrayal becomes the most beautiful
Possible reward, courtesy of a backbeat
And a mournful slide guitar, and
Death grows more desirable than
The most perfect lifetime, drowning
Betrayer and betrayed in a torrent of
Fiddles that could overpower any tide.
But country love pales beside the
Love I
Know.
No voice, no instrument,
No sequined yoke dress or hand painted
Pair of boots
Has ever been touched as I have,
By a woman whose truth makes
The certainties of Nashville and Branson
As false as an ember from Garth’s
Or Reba’s
Ceramic campfire log.
Larry Brody is the head dood at TVWriter™. Although the book whose cover you see above is for sale on Kindle, he is posting at least one poem a week here at TVWriter™ because, “As the Navajo Dog herself once pointed out to me, ‘Art has to be free. If you create it for money, you compromise your artistic vision by trying to please those who are paying. If you don’t accept money, you can be yourself. Like your art, you too are free.'”
Who is the Navajo Dog? Keep coming back and you’ll see.
NOTE FROM LB:
NOTE FROM LB: