Mark Damon Puckett

star couplets

Mark Damon Puckett

famous people are never in poems i wonder why

in a barn at bread loaf i stood by seamus heaney his pink face, nobel white hair

we talked about the ginger man for a few seconds poems are short, so are times with the famous

in los angeles at book soup around midnight i sold robert downey jr. a very tall dictionary

we spoke in scottish accents, mine sounded better not much time with that guy either

i worked the cash register-whoopi goldberg: a play, meg ryan: children’s books, donald sutherland: penguin classics

it just gets more famous in this poem

allen ginsberg bought his own photography books johnny depp got oversized ones with kate moss in them

he asked me, are all credit cards pretty much the same? oh, i also rescued val kilmer’s amex he dropped

104

winona ryder: stack of mags (with her in each) and a smirk elisabeth shue: interview magazine with her in it for an oscar nom

fabio wanted a magazine called video toaster i said we didn’t have it but later realized we did

sorry about that, fabio jim jarmusch, seal, tom waits, regulars. seal bought poetry.

let’s go to manhattan now moving out of the 90s

val kilmer again, variety party remember that time i rescued your amex at book soup?

hung out with candace bushnell on the upper east side we sang queen songs (all night)

at a new yorker party in gramercy park bret easton ellis introduced me to “salman”

as stephen king walked by on a cane don delillo skulked in a corner, david hockney asked, had i seen gladiator?

zadie smith, jeanette winterson, julian barnes tall tobias wolff and richard ford (his eyes blue as light)

doesn’t add up to much time, meeting them i feel bad the famous aren’t in more poems: that’s why i wrote this one.

105

subtract the queen songfest with candace and i met the famous for three minutes

yes, around thirty of them for, say, six seconds each. my time with them, i confess, was brief

life spreads out in your empty sky when your past becomes bigger than your now

there were a few hours tho with celebrity photographer patrick mcmullan

(andy warhol gave him his first camera) we rode around manhattan in a limo

to take pix of kyra sedgwick, matthew modine, a pregnant ione skye

then, at the plaza hotel patrick said to me, all this, mark . . . means everything.

this is my star poem it will never be a book

106