D. Carradine | C11H17NO3
Born to his mother’s second marriage of three,
and his father’s first of four,
he tried to hang himself at the age of five,
flying straight into the devil’s bed
and chewing darkness like he loved the taste of it.
Years later, while high on peyote,
he began wandering nude around Laurel Canyon,
tearing down the monolithic peace of his neighborhood.
Friends attempted to right his weirdness,
but the man refused a ride to the ordinary,
and developed a heavy hand for the throttle of crazy, instead.
A bona fide kung fu fan,
he knew Tai Chi, Qigong and Chinese medicine.
None of it helped him find
a more balanced self.
They said behind our heart
lives a matryoshka that contains hundreds of selves
shoved one inside the other.
As we go through life,
the more selves we unveil,
the less we understand
who we are and what we are made of.
One thing is certain:
His life was one of those existences
that deserves a sequel.
So take note, Reincarnation.
J. L. Joplin | C20H25N3O
A pack of frat boys voted her “Ugliest Man On Campus”.
They laughed her out of class, out of town, out of the state.
Kids called her “pig”, “freak” and “creep”.
Her confidence was abused.
Her self-esteem was mauled.
Despite all that, she read, she drew, she painted.
She walked barefoot whenever she felt like.
She dared to be different.
The day she cracked a bottle over Jim Morrison’s head,
it was everybody’s opinion
that “Janis is tough and doesn’t give a fuck.”
But the “Queen Of Psychedelic Soul”
was just a little girl from Port Arthur.
Boys ripped her heart and tossed the pieces
into a field of nothingness.
That’s when you find yourself at war
with everything.
Your body is dragging you
in front of a mirror
to shame you and ridicule you,
while hundreds of bullies’ mouths
walk in and sit around to wait for you to crack.
Instead, you blossom.
Fuck them.
P. J. Pollock | C2H6O
There are ghosts that shriek and bawl
and don’t let you sleep, the fuckers.
But without them,
you wouldn’t be able to see
the things you see.
Sticks, trowels, knives and dripping fluids
that turn into feelings,
sand and broken glass that tell stories
that get pinned to the hard floor.
You muddle things up,
switch stance
and get to where you need to go.
Along the way,
you learn that the things in life
that are worth fighting for
are the ones that make your eyes squint.
They might be out of reach
but they are there,
and sooner or later
they’ll be yours.
T. S. McQueen | C10H14N2
Ghosts,
swirling in a forgotten hospital
in the city of Juarez,
among IVs, green tubes
and white cold machineries.
A silver cross
turned upside down,
brightens the last mile of a man
abandoned by his mother
and flicked away
to a reformatory school.
Terence Steven McQueen,
enrollment number 3188.
As the world’s highest paid actor,
he grew the wacky reputation
for demanding free items in bulk.
Hundreds of:
Razors,
soaps,
jeans,
shirts,
socks
and underwear.
It turned out
none of it was for himself.
All was for the Boys Republic in Chino,
the school that rescued him
the day he ran away
from the bare knuckles
of an abusive stepfather
and the ungiven love
of an alcoholic mother.
The real Great Escape
happened
when nobody was watching.
J. J. Gandolfini Jr. | C17H21NO4
He made us forget
the size of his shoe
and remember
the size of his smile.
He welcomed
toughness and vulnerability
at the same table
and never left
before they were
through with him.
He embraced messes,
traded characters
and added a cadence
to our nights.
He spoke a tone
uniquely universal.
He believed in hard work.
When a talent is handed to you
you mix
you bind
you hold
everything you got.
Sand that meets rock
makes concrete
only if the shovel
does the work.
That’s how the son
of a bricklayer
made his way
to the Golden Globes.
K. H. Hepburn | C9H16O2
Ever heard of the pants
that crushed Hollywood’s sacred code?
They belonged to a woman,
in a time when pants
weren’t supposed to belong
to a woman.
It was in the early 1930s,
when for wearing pants in public
women could have been accused
of “masquerading as men”.
But a girl from Connecticut
as daring as a color out of the spectrum
began to whisper
“screw you, patriarchy…screw you”.
As the whisper grew louder
and the words became clearer
the men turned around
expecting the voice
to come from behind
cause all their lives they were told
that behind every great man
is a great woman.
Instead, there she was
standing in front of them all
carrying zero fucks,
made to be no man’s shadow.
That’s when Hollywood
had to go Hepburn
realizing that Hepburn
wasn’t going Hollywood.
Flip the script
before the script flips you.
G. K. Panayiotou | C4H8O3
He was branded a “washed-up pop pervert” by a US newspaper.
They wanted him to apologize for his sex life.
They needed him to confirm that each song that he wrote
was written for women, not men.
Because a gay singer is no match for a straight audience.
So they stopped the music,
took him down from the billboard charts,
slapped him around with gossip,
and put him back in the closet.
When he decided to come out,
he did it in a public toilet in Beverly Hills.
The aftermath was bloated on bla bla bla,
followed by a ton of judgmental shit.
In between the jabbering and the chattering,
something weird began to happen.
Whenever he stood in front of the mirror
a chubby little kid,
whose name sounded as complicated
as the life he was living,
would show up.
Georgios Kyriacos Panayiotou.
But if you google George Michael,
the browser populates your search with 4 words:
Songs.
Death.
Faith.
Freedom.
Algorithms always try to make things simpler.
N. J. Mortenson | C11H18N2O3
Nobody saw her brain.
Too much blonde in her hair.
Too much red on her lips.
Too much sex everywhere.
It’s all about perception, isn’t it?
We take What It Looks Like,
we glue it to What We Think It Is
and we come up with Our Own Truth.
Forget that she was
one of the first women to own a production company,
in a time when a woman couldn’t even own a bank account.
Forget that she had
the guts to stand up for a black girl
that was denied the stage because of her skin color.
She called the owner of the club
and told him that if he let the black girl perform
she would take a front table every night.
The girl was Ella Fitzgerald.
And she was Marylin, the Hollywood star
who showed up at a front table every night.
Still, a woman can’t have curves
and a high IQ at the same time.
Society has a hard time accepting it.
There was an open casket at her funeral.
The only comments people made
were about the puffiness of her face.
R. M. Williams | C17H21NO4
He was voted "Least Likely To Succeed" in high school,
according to those who love to classify,
label and categorize.
These are the people
who run lists and ranking systems,
as if stacking human beings
could give them a better understanding
of who we are and what lies ahead of us.
There’s no top 20, 10 or 5 ,
nor “the most” or “the least”,
nor template or blueprint,
nor recipe or formula
that can help us contain
the uncertainty of our existences.
Our days march unscripted
even though we like to think they don’t.
For every list that we make
or ranking system that we fabricate
there’s a bucket of hours that gets lost.
Mork and Mindy’s writers got it right.
They used to leave gaps in the screenplay
so Robin could improvise along with the play.
“Nanu Nanu” went ad-libbed for 91 episodes,
reminding us that we are born and we die
and the least we can do in between is improvise.
This must be the reason why
everybody thought he was an alien.