If I come back to earth as a movie star,
\nI want to be that guy nobody knows.
\nYou know who I mean, don’t you?<\/p>\n
As a young man, he gets slapped around by Bogie In Shane<\/em>, he’s the sheepherder Years later, he turns up in a Vincent Price He’s in a couple of hundred other movies I want to be that guy because He’s the first to get killed in the war I’d like to come back and be that guy Gary Corseri <\/em>has performed his work at the Carter Presidential Library, and his dramas have been produced on <\/em>PBS-Atlanta and elsewhere. He has published novels and collections of poetry, has taught in public schools, prisons and universities, and has published work at <\/em>TMS (Transcend Media Service)<\/a>,\u00a0The New York Times, Village Voice, Redbook Magazine and other publications and websites worldwide. Contact: gary_corseri@comcast.net<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" If I come back to earth as a movie star,
\nin The Maltese Falcon. <\/em>
\nHe’s Sidney Longstreet’s punk and foil.
\nHe’s got a pug nose and he makes you
\nwant to rub him out.<\/p>\n
\nwho goes face-to-ugly-face with Jack Palance.
\nPalance plugs him, and his stupid little body
\njerks in the muddy street.
\nYou can’t even feel sorry for him–
\nhe’s such a dolt!<\/p>\n
\nlow-budget horror movie
\nand you can’t wait until the little dweeb
\ngets his spine ripped out
\nby the monster.<\/p>\n
\nthat no one remembers.
\n(The Film Preservation Society refuses to preserve them!)<\/p>\n
\nhe is the greatest actor who ever lived–
\nthe anonymous Everyman taking the hard knocks
\nfor all of us,
\nthe guy who makes the hero look good,
\nthe heroine look smart for turning him down.<\/p>\n
\nand the guy nobody misses.
\n(One slack-eyed G.I., longing for Betty Grable,
\nlooks at another and says,
\n“Did anybody pull his tags?”
\nAnd the other one shrugs and says, “Whose?”)<\/p>\n
\nbecause then I would know in my human skin
\nwhat it means to be lost and ordinary–
\nlike a hungry kid anywhere without a name–,
\nor to fall down bloody in a muddy street
\nwhile the slick gunfighter laughs
\nand we all laugh in the dark.
\n_____________________________________<\/strong><\/p>\n
\nI want to be that guy nobody knows.
\nYou know who I mean, don’t you?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[182],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-69283","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poetry-format"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69283","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=69283"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69283\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69283"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69283"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69283"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}