Sundown

National Velvet, my first movie,
Lit my pre-pubescent fire.
Velvet Brown was oh so groovy;
Taylor was my first desire.
Liz, I fantasized, requited
Love routinely reignited.

Vaulting steeplechase obstructions
On her Pie, a piebald stallion,
Velvet won despite instructions
Barring females. But my hellion,
Covered (hard to fathom) up
As though a man and took the cup.

Skip ahead into the ‘50s,
Newman and Montgomery Clift think,
Just because they’re idol nifties
They can lovesick Hutchens hoodwink?
One, in a Cat on a Hot Tin Roof;
Two, with A Place in the Sun? Oh poof!

1960, time I called her,
But her line was always busy.
Even though with crooner Fisher
She was dialing Laurence Harvey
Home phone for whom, Butterfield 8.
Eddie, though, by then her mate.

Not for long though. Cleopatra
Ditched him for Mark Antony.
Richard Burton was the fellah
Umpteeth husband, twice to be.
In Virginia Woolf enthralling,
Both played characters appalling.

Maybe that’s why I lost all hope
That a fragment of her life she’d
Somehow grant to me. Oh quel dope,
Elton John best praised her top deed:
Funding AIDS cures. We agree?
Still, The Sun’s Gone Down on Me.