Curly Howard Misreads Edgar Allan Poe
By Paul Fericano
The director yells Cut! and everyone on the set
is relieved to feel the weight of the day lifted
like a dark comedy of unscripted errors,
no one more thankful than Curly Howard
who retreats to his trailer for a quick smoke and a drink,
rubbing as he goes his shaved cue ball head,
where once the hair grew so thick
he actually appeared handsome to women
who fought to run their fingers through it.
He's reminded now of the sacrifices he's made,
the punishment he endures at the onscreen hands
of his older brother, Moe, who lovingly calls him Babe,
the mixed emotions he feels with each conk on the head,
each slap of the face or fingers poked in bewildered eyes,
and all the bricks and bottles and picks and shovels
and falling pianos and entire buildings collapsing
down around him in heaps of lowbrow humor and pain
can't hide the desperation of his clownish art,
the dreary midnight in his laughter.
Sitting alone, the alcohol convinces him otherwise
and he imagines himself a student of serious literature,
finding wisdom in the works of Edgar Allan Poe,
reading tales of unspeakable horrors befalling others,
grateful for this small refuge of scholarly insight,
and he commits to memory poems of young love dying,
mourning loss in a small room, much like this one,
childlike and powerless to rescue the slipping away,
the black doom of wings waiting above the door,
and he reads as he rocks, repeats the line
Quoth the raven, 'Nevermoe,' over and over again,
until he knows it to be absolutely true.
Source: http://www.silverbirchpress.com/hollywood_catechism.html
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