One last thing before they cue
the music and cut to commercial…
Actors are always talking about method.
I never had one. A few moments
watching an old man with a limp
and I had it memorized, just knew
the daily indignities: dragging his obstinate limb
up the bus steps, sighing when a young
woman offers her seat: You are too kind.
I was an empty vessel, waiting to be filled up
with second-hand feelings. Screenwriters
put foolish words in my mouth and you
folks at home believed them. Bums in seats.
I should have run for president.
No, acting was the easy part. It was the rooms
full of tinselly talk, perfect teeth. Like climbing K2,
one needs time to adjust to that rarefied air.
Startled by the bidet in Paris, tumbling
out of a stretch limo in NYC. I won’t bore you
with the details – O the stucco and vinyl-sided
misery of that little town where I got my start –
but suffice to say, nothing had prepared me.
Tasting a glass of wine in a fancy restaurant
while the waiter hovers over my shoulder, fizzy
animation but with underpinnings of street life.
Simply exquisite, garçon, now fuck off.
Pardon my French. You’ve seen the tabloids
in line at the checkout: excess was always my MO.
Hard to pass up a line of coke when it lies
on a starlet’s airbrushed ass like a landing strip.
I’d circle for awhile, then point my nose down.
White pills to fall asleep, little blue ones to get it up.
Priapism an occupational hazard – for that,
the good doctor can make a house call.
Never mind my recent work goes straight
to video and the housewives from Kansas
no longer write me love letters. I can’t complain.
I’ve got this glorified slo-pitch trophy and a new liver.
The old one, preserved in formaldehyde,
should fetch a pretty penny on eBay.
If I wasn’t Botoxed, I’d be grinning ear to ear.