Two Poems by Michael Ceraolo

 

Tillie's Punctured Romance:  A Suite

 

              1

      The Movie Itself

 

There had been a few features before,

the majority of them foreign,

                                          but

there hadn't been anything like this,

so we were definitely taking a gamble:

would the audience stay all the way through

a feature-length comedy?

 

                                        They would,

and they did    Of course,

Charlie would benefit the most

from the movie's great popularity,

                                                 but

Marie and I did well as well,

                                         and

formed a mutual-admiration society

SPOILER ALERT:

both of us realize

we're better off without him

Now in life . . .

 

 

               2

        His Mother

 

Mack was a momma's boy,

and so she was against me

at the start of our romance

But as time went by

she realized I was the best hope

for the grandchildren she wanted,

so she eventually came around

and supported our getting hitched

For whatever good it did

 

 

               3

       Mabel's Stormy Love Affair

 

My friends said

Mack wasn't "husband material",

                                                but

being in love I didn't listen to them,

though I must have at least

partially absorbed their opinion,

because when I heard Mack

was with another woman

on the eve of our wedding,

I didn't dismiss the allegation,

but rushed over to confront him

 

Big Mistake

 

The other woman (who shall remain

anonymous in this poem because

she's been named in many other places)

and I started arguing with each other

instead of with Mack,

                                and

she beaned me with a glass vase

 

Friends tried to keep it quiet,

even coming up with

a couple of alternate explanations

for how I got hurt,

                           but

I was in bad shape

and a doctor had to be called

 

I needed brain surgery just to stay alive,

and was never really the same after that

 

Would Mack try to make it up to me?

 

 

                4

         He Did and He Didn't

 

Mack was desperate to keep me,

professionally if not personally,

promising more features,

promising better scripts,

promising a decreased workload,

even giving me my own studio:

the MABEL NORMAND FEATURE FILM CO.

It was everything a girl could want,

professionally if not personally

But it wasn't everything it was cracked up to be:

though the studio had my name on it

it was tied up with Keystone

through complex financial maneuvers,

and the bigger fish swallowed Mack

and, by extension, me,

                                   and

though I still earned a nice salary,

someone else got the profits from Mickey,

the most popular movie ever

when measured by tickets sold

 

 

Oh, Mabel Behave

 

I once wrote a poem called

Short Short Story:

 

"I'm bad, bad, bad!

If there was one sprig of poison ivy

In a field full of four-leaf clovers,

I'd pick it up.

If it was raining carbolic acid,

I'd be the dumbbell sponge."

 

                                             and

some of that 'badness' was well-chronicled

in the newspapers of the day;

the December 8, 1920, issue

of the Los Angeles Herald

listed me

               (correctly in this instance)

                                                      as having

one of the Six Best Cellars,

                                         i.e.,

a cellar stocked with booze

(purchased legally before Prohibition took effect)

 

There were other things

that haven't been referenced yet

that didn't make the papers at the time:

a miscarriage of Goldwyn's baby,

a stint of drug rehabilitation

in a center in Watkins Glen, New York

in 1920 (though I did relapse

after returning to Hollywood;

today I would have tried rehab again)

 

And there were other 'misadventures'

that were well-chronicled both at the time

and in books down through the years:

 

the fact that I was the last person,

other than the murderer,

to see Bill Taylor alive;

the fact that my chauffeur shot someone

while I was celebrating on New Year's Eve,

                                                                and

I was forced to testify at his trial

even though I didn't witness the shooting

My chauffeur was acquitted of the shooting,

but it came out during the trial

that he was an escaped convict

(something I didn't know),

                                       and

there were calls, many successful,

to ban my films because of my 'involvement'

in these scandals;

                            that, and declining health,

led to a lack of movie work for me

 

People may not know this,

but I was a practicing Catholic:

I was a regular at confession

and I received last rites

while dying of TB in a sanitorium;

I regret the marriage ceremony wasn't religious

 

You probably want to know

if there is life after death

I could certainly answer that,

but I'm not going to;

you'll have to find out for yourself

Michael Ceraolo is a 64-year-old retired firefighter/paramedic and active poet who has had two full-length books (Euclid Creek, from Deep Cleveland Press; 500 Cleveland Haiku, from Writing Knights Press) published, and has two more, Euclid Creek Book Two and Lawyers, Guns, and Money, in the publication pipeline.