I can see it now: a story about rich people,
a saga of three cars and two swimming pools,
the brother with too many wives, too many kids
who hate him already and all of them too much money.
Everyone else is a walkon, an easy sucker,
protagonists played by bad actors, a soap
that will run and run through prime time,
a blockbuster: plot, title: The Fat Man’s Tale.
He starts out a poor refugee, an orphan
running before old grey footage of the war,
singing to himself one ball, two small, none at all.
He is a hero. He is given a medal. And so forth.
He goes bad, lives a swindler’s life, a conman’s,
a liar, a bully, a cheat, steals everyone blind.
At the end of his twisted rope he takes to the sea
in his private boat, calls up his private jet
for one last salute to his fat greedy vanity,
one last flypast, one last upright two fingers
to the universe and to you and to me. Remember
he’s out there on the ocean and no one is looking,
no one to envy him, none to impress. And then
he slips off the boat and bobs off on the sea,
a fat drowned crook winched out of the water
and bundled offstage, swiftly buried in the holy city.
Probably in three parts. Coltrane for the lead,
to be played with deep integrity. Faye
to play the woman who tries to save him, the angel
weeping in the last reel, on the Mount of Olives.