Blame It On Barrymore

Poetry from the Before Times…

When I resigned from corporate news a decade ago, I began the process of healing my heart by filling it with art. I was writing screenplays at the time, so I began immersing myself in the Golden Age of Cinema. I gave myself a PhD in film history on a portable Sony DVD blu-ray player, under the tutelage of a stage actor who moonlighted in Amoeba’s film section.

I have always been a poet, and even gave birth to one. My daughter is a Los Angeles Youth Poet Laureate, and a West Coast Youth Poet Laureate. And she was also the poetry editor for the brilliant film, Summertime, where she performs an iconic poem for gay rights on a bus and where her amazing words about Los Angeles narrate the film’s opening sequence.

I am beginning to excavate some of my Before Times art, and wanted to share this poem with you. I wrote it in 2015, when I was going through my John Barrymore phase. It is based on a true ghost story about loneliness’ haunting.

Blame It On Barrymore

I can’t recall the day that Barrymore swaggered into my life, but what does it matter, the point is he’s here, and I am no longer alone

Even as I type this I hear him correcting my use of swaggered

He prefers staggered, because he likes to keep it real, even when he’s pretending

I turn a blind eye to Barrymore’s aridity

I too am thirsty

But as I slither through my thirteenth year without spirits,

Jack holds my hand

And I creep into the next dawn

Never alone

And Barrymore is never alone either

He died lonely, in the clutches of a whore

But he’s not alone, he is loved

And no one loves him more than me

Not even Gene Fowler

Who taught me what love is

I can’t make public appearances 

Without offending someone

Blame it on Barrymore

We are both natural born raconteurs

Always trying to one up each other

Just for sport because we are truly devoted

The way Jack was devoted to Dolores

Oh and the things that now come out of my mouth

Truly, hideously, wickedly, brilliantly Barrymore

Barrymore and I both are trying to unfuck the world

I have a collection of living Barrymores 

And Jack is doing the curating

Thanks to Jack’s unfailing desire to rescue strays

I have a city full of miscreants who I water daily

With tears and spirits and petty ducats

And prayer

They know they are safe with me

They come with guitars

And canvas

With wings

With Steinways and standup bass

They come with pens

And despair

I take them all into my heart 

Just like Barrymore’s friends did “the monster”

The Hyde that lurked beneath the opera clothes

They never abandoned each other

I mean, Jack might abandon his pet vulture, maybe, 

A monkey, sure

But not the writers he called his friends

They were tight

Jack loves the writers, and that’s why he likes me

He thinks I have potential

Despite continually prompting me to get on with the libretto

And to refrain from using expletives in front of his whores

There’s a tree dying in my neighbor’s yard that reminds me of Jack, 

But of course everything reminds me of Jack

The tree is continually dying then mounting comebacks

Often in the same week

Standing ovations

A sea of red roses

As he recalls Hamlet verbate

He killed em in london

The great profeel 

He hangs on my wall

In psychedelic repose

He’s the last of my loves I bid adieu nightly

Good night, sweet prince, I whisper

Tomorrow we creep into the dawn

Sober and alive

Hand in hand

Getting on with the libretto

Trying to unfuck the world