Editor’s Note: Standard disclaimer: Marlow is a real person, and veers into poetry on occasion as he does this rainy morning. Me? I slogged through the taxes this morning and stabbed the button and sent them in. What an obtuse and frustrating system we have created. When I printed out a paper copy for the files, the mass came to around forty pages. This is absurd. Perhaps not as crazy as wanting to be Hollywood Famous, but you never know. Over to Marlow!

– Vic

Hollywood Famous
Coastal Empire

Long ago I knew this neighborhood boy. He lived just down the street from me on West North Broadway just up from the Olentangy River. Both of us were the oldest of our seven child families, attended the same schools, rode the same buses and played at the same parks. He was a studious, quiet person. Almost twenty years ago, I read about him in the news. Yesterday, someone sent me digital press clippings that he had been in the news. He was once again Hollywood Famous.
This prompted some free verse.
Hollywood Famous

he was five foot nine with dark brown hair
deep set brown eyes
with a wiry body
he was quiet and rode an old used bicycle
to school and work
he didn’t go out with girls
he didn’t hang much with boys
he’d pull up on his bicycle
put his foot down on the ground at
the park: “Hey. Marlow, where are you going to go
to college? You’re smart. You’ll get in anywhere.”
He was smarter than me so
I’d say the same back to him but
he’d say right back to me or others who sometimes made fun of him
“college is not for me. I’m headed for Hollywood.
I’m going to be famous.”

they never got to him in one way or
the other.
they did get to our school’s assistant principal for girls just after we
graduated, she left the nunnery, married a defrocked priest,
had children and moved out west.

in the class pictures of 1967, graduating class,
spring , Dante Soiu’s photo was there on the same page
as mine and he looked very different than the rest of us.

under each photo there was something unique
about each student:
“Loves baseball and canoeing the river . . .”
“Engaged to a student at OSU”
“Wants to be a housewife and a mother . . .”
under Dante Soiu’s photo it said:
“Going to be Hollywood famous . . .”
Dante Soiu of Watterson High
class of 1967

he should have changed his name
he looked so deranged later
with his beady eyes

now he looks mildly off the hook
he was born under a bad sign
Scorpio, the predatory arachnid
riding his old
used bicycle.

Dante’s 1998 news story | Dante’s 2016 news story

Dante 2016: acquitted and adjudged as recovered; now Hollywood Famous twice

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