POEM - Eddie and Bela

Run from a nightmare you told me about that makes you work, work to work if not to be understood and only to be loved for loving.

Last night was a good one that was one gooder than the one that you thought was your best and dressed you were lost in angora.

Look back and see that the mind that you are was the mind that could be only in delusion and contorted to find solution.

The streets of LA are mean and nasty and your nasty mean landlord and your banker and the priest you fooled are bound to get nastier.

Nastier could be an understatement since the guy from the Shakespeare gig looks like a fool on film forever more.

I tripped and we tripped and in tripping along to the next shot or the next lost cause and it was all lost causes and you shrunk back.

We never shrunk back until all the causes we fought for were soaked up in bad days and bad projects and the B-movies you fell to.

Falling was what it was all about it was and always is about falling and falling with a style that looked like a planned tumble.

Planned to twist a certain way to wear a certain dress to walk a certain talk and get a few to see it your way just once.

They all saw it your way and it was all the way Bela saw it that made it work and he believed you and that made everything work.

It all was a vision that Bela made true for a few weeks, a few days and the minutes dragged and then Bela dragged and slowed.

Slowing is dying and that's what you believed and the slowness killed the movie and killed the star and Bela was dead long too soon.

Sooner for dying and soon as if to die was to not remember that shows were going on and on and would go on and stop was not is.

Not even a stop that was law or was money or was talent or was any good sense of when to stop it all was not stop just try.

Eddie you're trying and trying is not doing but the California air is a death nail for you so breath slow most eager son of fortune.

It was a fever that got you and got her and him and they all caught it like pneumonia only more deadly and more of nothing to live for.

But caught they were and caught they remained until a skip on the record and jump to the next sound, screech, squeek, scream.

The plans fell like dominoes and they fell before they were beautiful and it was one then two then a dozen then Nine came alone.

Plan 9 was horror and science and none of it well done only done quickly and with friends and innocents and it lasted too long.

It lasted too long and is now famous and you are now lasting not before you were forgotten and that before you were immortalized.

The fame you won won its own and not yours it won for itself and it was a bad win and you are lucky to be dead to avoid the shame.

You tried as hard as Welles and "Citizen Kane" betrayed you and it was a sucker punch from left field in the groin that caught true.

I saw the worst mind of my generation splayed open and dashed against flimsy reels of black and white crucifixion two stories high.

It was never meant to be and "Plan 9" was a bad run and maybe if Bela had lived it would have worked better and maybe the money too.

It all died just too soon and the dawn rose too quick and your skirts were too short and the women loved you but misunderstood.

You thought it was right and it was for them but the girls never got you when the girls were worth getting the getting was far gone.

The new girls came too soon and they walked through those films like it was nothing to be naked and dirty and awful not art not really.

It was film and it was film and film was your breath and your blood and the freaks understood and the naked unwashed were willing.

The girls worth having never understood and the ones who understood aren't worth having and all of them are the same, just memory.

If I was to touch your shoulder in kindness would you cry too much I hear you cry so often when no one watches too close too near.

No one is ever near you are a distant time in penciled mustache and high heels untouchable and beautiful all fury and nothing.

If nothing then all and the only one left not afraid and unconvinced that the film would still come and the picture still live.

Bela was coming back soon and no grave could hold Dracula for long he was eternal and he will come one morning like a dark dawn slowly.

Then the picture will live and the picture will be true to a vision you tucked away at the funeral by his side the only last friend.

It was something wasn't it something that thing that you did that spark in their lives of this old man and this crew all outcasts.

Not outcasts any more and it makes the old man feel good and gives him the reason to walk out the front door to wave and to smile.

Bela lived for you Eddie and wanted to live longer even though the drugs said otherwise and the pain called the drugs.

You called and told him it was alright that he was worth everything he and the pain happens and the drugs happen but it’s all real.

And that's what it was Eddie and that phone call you just took was not unexpected but the daylight is repelled right around you.

This is darker than the old monster flicks you sat through and saw come to life with an idol for a friend but the scene fades now.

He's OK now Eddie and you won't outlast this pain but you'll live a little longer and try a little harder and laugh a little, laugh.

We all laugh at your masterpiece and we all still wonder what you were thinking and if you knew what it was and how it would come off.

And I wonder if you know if you are Glen or are you Glenda and would it matter and who made the film and who screwed it up.

A junkie you were just different and proud and the junkie you saved was old and it was a lost cause but lost causes were your thing.

And lost all along was a cause to be had and a cause worth having and a girl worth having were never yours to have and watch out, Eddie.

Bela won't stay dead long and the time may come that that California air doesn't give in and the drug of life will give out; gone.

Bela dance with Eddie he has a beautiful new chiffon and the ruby slippers he stole from Dorothy on the back lot of Oz.

Step one and step two and step 9 with beautiful Glenda and keep alert for the right hook from Glen and his strong arm in a soft shrug.