Saturday, May 30, 2009

An Inconvenient Spoof

We're back! Like Girl Scout Cookie season, the literary vacation I like to call the Poetry Vending Machine has come and gone too soon. If you're here, you were probably part of the circle jerk, so I'll keep the re-intro short: I'll be posting up poems here that were created during the '09 Orlando Fringe at the Poetry Vending Machine. Yes, even the bad ones, along with a little commentary. We wrote these for passerby in 20 minutes or less, using a title of their creation and three words that we had to use somewhere in the poem.

Let's start at the end, shall we? I wrote this one for Karate Guy cast member and go-to local actor Eric Pinder for his Fringe Spoof benefit on the final day of the festival. It was the very last thing written at the booth, and it kind of summed up the whole thing for me. I wrote the first half sitting in the rain under a tent, and finished it up later on at home, drunk on the camaraderie, hilarity and nudity of the Fringe Award show. Also, just plain drunk. I never got to see Eric read it at the show, but I'm told he gave my turd a nice little spit-shine.

Actually, I kinda dig it. Nothing written in 20 minutes on less than a page could sum up my Fringe vacation, but this is in the ballpark.


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An Inconvenient Spoof


Twenty years hence,
you’ll be paying fifty bucks
plus Ticketmaster fees
because good parties are like zombies:
you can’t keep them underground for long.

Orlando will be just another stop
on the Fringemania tour.
The parking spots will be 30 bucks
but you won’t need shotguns to get them
and the audience will settle politely
into their plush seats
as the curtain opens on Ricki Lake
as Beth Marshall, stage left
booze in one hand
magic wand in the other
and poof
the somber façade of Orlando
the city dutiful
will fall away
as gay burlesque improv monologue dancers
descend from the rafters on wires
to the rousing sounds
of terrible food vendor reggaeton
competing with the shrieks
of children and queens alike.

The theater will be dry,
the best beer tent quotes
will be one-liners,
lost in the sound mix
and the reviews will dismiss the whole mess
as capably acted, ambitious
and precious,
a tall tale too good to be true.

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