Directing Herbert White Read Online Free PDF

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
    â€”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”
    â€œMarlon 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