I was asked (for $5) to write a poem about Patrick Duffy and his work in the TV show Dallas. I’ve never seen Dallas, so I grumped about the impending Google “research” it would require to pull that off. Here is the poem:
Patrick Duffy
hopped out of the shower
rendered a year
without any power
and made many wish
that Anthony Perkins
had been there with a knife
instead of a gherkin
nevertheless
Bobby James Ewing
remembered (by those who bother)
as the one TV character
with a support garment for a father.
Obviously in the first stanza I struggled with a reference to the shower scene and a way to suggest that perhaps some fans were a little peeved that an entire season was basically written off in a cheap example of a kind of deus ex machina, but the only connection that came to mind with “shower” and “someone should die for this crap” is…the movie Psycho. I had difficulty rhyming and ended up using a preserved cucumber reference, which really has nothing to do with anything, but does sort of rhyme.
And then I was told I took a cheap shot at the character named Jock Ewing, but really, who doesn’t giggle on that one?
Well, whatever. $5.
