Marlon Brando

I remember when I first watched

Brando in his wife-beater

And thought I had discovered him.

And then realized three generations

Had already succumbed to his power.

He has the strength of all that America

Has to offer from its art,

He is the bull and the ballerina.

I love Stanley Kowalski and Terry Malloy

Because they are the brutes

Puppeteered by a genius.

Instead of performances

They are manifestations of a wild mind

Wrestling with its crude incarnations.

Marlon Brando is man vs. nature

And that is what we want in a man.

Like Tennessee and Blanche

We want our poetic selves

Destroyed by handsome brutes

In wife-beaters and oiled hair,

The poetry of being fucked to death.