Someday a klaxon will sound in the swanky Disney Marvel Studios offices.

Those talented film-school graduates whose movies have made a pile of money

Will panic because

They’ve run out of villains!!!!

 

That big bucket stuffed with the stuff that

Makes nice, normal, reasonably good looking people

Put on a costume and make a big mess–

Is empty!!!!

 

And yet, when all seems dark for the Extended Universe

A plucky unpaid intern rounds up a bunch of quirky, trash-talking, highly talented film school graduates whose eccentric skill sets have yet to bring them a steady job.

They hatch a complicated plan that will require them to wear costumes, impersonate celebrities, fool security guards, steal fancy cars and get into high speed chases with the police, and other diversions

So they can break into the Writers Guild’s secret vault!!!!

 

That’s the storehouse of scripts that nobody–not even the latest internet streaming service– wants to film,

And pitches that nobody wants to turn into an original TV series,

And compromising, unquestionably career-shattering video and photographs of this producer and that director, which may explain why some of those scripts that nobody wants to film–are filmed!!!!

There, way in the back, shoved up against a wall, spilling out from a garbage can, are too many

 

Stepped-on thumb drives

Crumbling Post-It notes that were flushed down a toilet,

Restaurant napkins marked up with confusing plot details and the name of an A-list actor who might green-light the project

And furiously crumpled balls of paper!!!!

 

Inside one of those paper balls is a short, coffee-stained character sketch

About a humble person who

When not working in a coffee shop/Wal-Mart/cupcake shop (bookstore has been crossed out)

Writes poems!!!!

 

One day, you, the part-time poet, passes another coffee shop/low-price department store/cupcake shop (bookstore is again crossed out)

And you see a GREAT PERSON inside

You tenatively, respectfully approach and ask,

“Would you read my poems?”

 

Greatness pauses.

Greatness turns toward you.

Greatness glances down at what you hold in your trembling hand.

Greatness says, “Sure. Love to.”

 

And, for the first time in your life, you understand perfectly what a sartori is,

that feeling of effortless joy that comes from occupying a perfect moment, your body rising, your feet leaving the ground.

Until Greatness adds, “When I’m dead!!!!”

Your feet return to the floor.

 

Greatness explains: “While you’re scratching out your poem, I’m

Eating lobster

Driving a fast car with nobody in front of me

Making the play

 

Accepting an award

Taking a bow

Singing to a sold-out stadium

Making love on the beach

 

Guest starring in my own movie,

Making a half a billion dollars,

Telling a joke that gets a laugh,

Changing the world and then changing it back again.”

 

Greatness winks. “That Pierian Spring that you’re supposed to drink deep from?”

Your nod and remembering the interminably long “Essay on Criticism” by the famous 17th century English satirist, translator and poet Alexander Pope, who was sickly and deformed and never married and wrote that fabulous couplet, “a little learning is a dang’rous thing;/Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring.”

“It’s a crock. What you want from life, you have to conquer.”

Your mouth shuts itself.

 

You walk for a while

Quickly

Without direction or intention

Until you find a costume shop.

 

The money you saved all these years appears in your hand. A caustic bile rises in your thoat. The putrid logic of violence-for-violence’s sake begins to make sense.

“I want to be Alexander…”

Your eyes move from pen that is in the clerk’s pocket, to the long, brutal sword on the wall.

“…The Great!!!!”