ACT I: Hollywood’s Magic
1958
Rock and Roll’s backbeat
Blast from jukeboxes and dashboards
Its animistic energy
Pulsating in the gyrating hips
of hell-bent hipsters
It demanded attention from its audience
A time of ivory idols
Elvis
Strummed and sang his way into stardom
Clark Gable and Marilyn Monroe
Broadcasted images of love and marriage
Into newly minted color machination machines
And life was Hollywood–
Brilliant shimmering
Scripts and screens
Contrived and concealed
Plastic and pleasant
This was the set design of our initial encounter
At Coney Island
A world of whirling mechanical dervishes
The neon phantasmagoric fantasy
Of the Wonder Wheel
Suspending love 150 feet
Above unsuspecting masses
In concert with the collective contrived consciousness–
a Hollywood scene.
The ephemeral thrills
Of the Cyclone blue arcs and sparks of electric trolley poles
Sending Dodgem cars careening into each other
The thrum and hum of youth
Unmoored from the reality
Seething inside the beast
You appear just in time to light my cigarette
With your Zippo
Take One!
We talked,
I laughed
Our taut skin and tone muscles
lustful illusions;
We didn’t know any better–
How could we?
You joined the Navy
Chasing skirmishes and skirts
Each port awaiting
Their dose of Hollywood magic
In the form of young men playing pirate
I stayed home
Stranded maiden
Playing the housewife to be
We must have drained a thousand pens
Each letter arcing the light between us
like the sparks of the Dodgem cars
The shadows promising more wisdom than
Than their sources
Everything was bathed in blinding blithe/light
The Coney Island Hollywood wedding light
ACT II: Hollywood’s Disappearing Act
1986
Gable, Monroe, and Elvis
Are ghosts
Hollywood’s magic unable to
To sustain their lives beyond the celluloid syndicate
I returned to Coney Island
The sprawling rides
The denizens crowding
For their momentary piece of illusion
Carved from machine and masquerades
Foolish lovers stuffing their mouths
With processed meats and cotton candy
Even rock and roll has changed
At once more sophisticated and harsh–
But Hollywood
Is more convincing and real than ever
Celluloid yielding to digital deceptions
Trapping thousands of unsuspecting actors and actresses
Into roles
Some can never play
That’s a wrap
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