Oh George, I wish I could be like you,
Keep the world at bay with veils and masks
To make movies that no one is allowed to see.
To let a beam of light in called the real.
The whole shooting match of The Tradition
You had it in your bones, no one knew it like you,
But you cast it like a magician’s cape aside
While they held on to what they did not understand
For dear life, as you concocted unimaginable futures
Like others use a mop, you had to be stopped,
For the world is much too fragile not
To be persuaded by your illusion,
Like a blueprint always turns somehow to stone.
What else was there for you,
Master of illusion, than the certainty of the real?
Real opinions, real conversations, real depictions,
No Fakespeare for you, it was more current than the news.
You had to choose from the bottom of a black slush pile
Through the hollowed out Hollywood hole – only that
Was worth the letting go, of endless improvised invention,
How the perfect can be better, the unique more extreme,
The future turned to rancid butter fat, to melt in burned
Producer’s Roman vaults – with no sign of your rococo picaro.
The people took it all in, hoodwinked at a glance,
But they hadn't had a clue on how their lives
Depend upon it; they would get so confused, if you were any less
Dangerous, or less generous in your profligate perversion
To do everything against the senseless established sense.
You shamed the sadists with the most to hide
Behind their bars of power, took in with tragic pity
Such orphans of the storm, exchanging Rita Hayworth
For Marilyn Monroe, as if the Black Dahlia didn’t hang
Over the affair like the acrid orchid scent of human flesh.
In a country without clowns, yours was a pernicious
Elegance, a stunning gravitas. You shot the camera
Like a gun, played the dissonant angles straight,
Bled not like any gunsel on the Cinerama plate,
Brought shades of gray to light the thing we wouldn’t see,
Blackened it to show the void we try so hard to be.
You took responsibility for Senator Joe McCarthy
While they fricasseed your effigy in envy of your nerve,
Your verve, your fire, and slaughtered the golden boy cow
Who refused to die a tragic king for Mephistopheles so pretty
As long as blood is fed, a rotting corpse alive obese besides.
“We will sell no wine – before it’s time.” It’s time.
