Directing Herbert White (5 page)

Ledger

I've tried to write about you.

I didn't know you.

There was the one time I met you in Teddy's,

The club connected to the Roosevelt Hotel,

The night Prince was playing,

Around the time of all the award shows

When you were nominated for everything

For
Brokeback Mountain.

And you were with your woman, Michelle;

Two blonds, quiet and stern, mystical.

I wrote a poem about you before,

Back when you died,

But it was coded and unclear

Because I didn't dare write about you openly

Because your death had made you Holy

In Hollywood. You got it all

When you died, you got all

The gold statues because

You were the Joker, with your tongue

Swirling and your death.

There had been a time

When we were up for the same roles,

10 Things I Hate about You

(Based on
The
Taming of the Shrew
),

And
The Patriot—

Funny, you were Australian and so was Mel—

You were the knight in
A Knight's Tale

Although I'm sure you wished you weren't.

And then something happened,

You played gay and you took off;

You were an artist

For a moment.

Was it too much?

Was it the drugs

That helped you?

The drugs that killed you?

Was it the acting?

Was it all of us,

Outside the screen,

Just watching?

When I Hit Thirty-Four

I looked around for love

And I knew by then

That love wasn't worship,

That love was ease.

Love was the smooth river

Of forgiveness that takes all

Obstacles, pollution and debris

(Love is of man, he sets the rules),

Pushes them downstream

And leaves them in the ocean.

I like the beer bottles that collect

Along the shore, the trash

From diaper boxes and Clorox.

These are rainbow-colored punctuations

Stuck into nature, man-made things

Corroded by my love.

Sometimes things are washed

Clean as when a hurricane

Moves through, sucking up houses

As if they were cardboard.

Love is not of man;

Nature sets the rules.

I've lived a life;

I've learned a few things

And this is a new lesson.

It says,
surrender.

Telephone

In my parents' old bedroom

With the blue and white wallpaper

Of paisleys and flowers

There was a cream rotary phone.

I'd lie on the bed

That I used to lie on with my dad

As he'd pretend to steal my nose

—It was really just his thumb

Between his fingers—

I'd play with the phone,

Working the circle

Over the numbers

And forcing it back,

Slower than going forward.

My father's middle name

Was Eugene, but when I was young

I'd say “blue jeans.” The phone

Was a toy until I had people to call.

One day area codes appeared.

So many numbers to remember.

Now you don't have to remember any.

Love

Love is a woman

Who does many things.

I don't laugh at her

Anymore, she's no fool.

You're the fool

If you think art comes from craft.

Art comes from framing.

Art comes from human imperfection.

Arrogantly, I once wondered

If I would be like Flaubert

Living with a person

Who would never understand my work.

Now I realize that I am understood

Only too well;

I'm a raging Kowalski whose

Temper can be measured by

How little I can give.

How abusive my reticence.

I wish I could turn

And be smacked

With an angel's wallop.

My wandering eye

Is glutted on the world,

But like William Friedkin

Said, after filming fantastic

Landscapes in his failed film

Sorcerer,
“Instead of nature,

I should have focused

On the landscape of the human face.”

Acknowledgments

Thank you to the editors of the following publications where many of these poems, sometimes in earlier versions, first appeared:

The American Poetry Review
: “Los Angeles Proverb” and “Film Sonnet 3”

DIAGRAM
: “Directing Herbert White”

The Huffington Post
: “31”

The Paris-American
: “Hart Crane's Tomb” and “Film Sonnet 6”

Post Road
: “Film Sonnet 4” and “Film Sonnet 5”

“Marlon Brando,” “Seventh Grade,” “Fifth Grade,” “Fake,” “Nocturnal,” “When I Hit Thirty-Four,” “Telephone,” and “Love” appeared in the chapbook
Strongest of the Litter,
published by Hollyridge Press, 2012.

The ten poems in “The Best of the Smiths” appeared in
113 Crickets,
published by Dymaxicon, summer 2012.

“My Place” and “Second Grade” appeared in
A California Childhood,
published by Insight Editions, 2013.

“River” appeared in
Actors Anonymous,
published by Little A/New Harvest, 2013.

Thank you, Jeff Shotts and everyone at Graywolf, for making this the best book it could be. I have found a home.

Thank you, Richard Abate, for your guidance and belief.

I have been blessed with the best poetry teachers alive: Alan Shapiro, Alan Williamson, Ellen Bryant Voigt, James Longenbach, Rick Barot, Heather McHugh, Tony Hoagland, and Frank Bidart. The Warren Wilson writing program is a little bit of writers' paradise on earth. Thank you to every­one who is a part of it and the three women who made it run while I studied there: Deb Allbery, Amy Grimm, and Alissa Whelan.

Thank you to my family, my friends, fellow writers, fellow filmmakers, Michael Shannon, and everyone else who people these poems. You are in me, and I consist of you.

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