With the words, “Jack Twist, I swear,”
into our guts did Heath Ledger tear.
It wasn’t enough that love was lost,
’cause poor Jake was by a tire-iron tossed.
Like long ago did Bogey forgo,
So Bergman could take off with a schmo.
One David Lynch throws fists and kicks
usually at the solar plexus.
But in two flicks did he find the heart,
and I ain’t talkin’ that “Wild” film, by far.
In “The Elephant Man,” there was a lost soul,
shirtless and bent for a commoner’s show.
Then Anthony Hopkins knew he find
within the “crudeness” a vivid mind.
As John Hurt spake, “I am John Merrick,”
’twas a lifetime’s worth of triumph and merit.
Then the Bible he recited, what a joy to see
pure inspiration found for the lowly.
Though the end was near, and John Merrick wanted to sleep
on his back for one good night, and thus, his soul to keep.
Lynch had us by then, but brought us to
Merrick’s reunion with his mother, into heaven he flew.
Merrick knew it wasn’t the end, but his life fulfilled,
and made us all wonder if we have, in fact, so much as lived.
* * *
Lynch went back to the surreal for the next few years,
then captured one Alvin Straight to bring back the tears.
In a tale of a loner driving back to his kin,
he saddled into a John Deere, going farther than ever been.
Across fields, and miles of road,
Lynch kept the camera at an elegant flow.
Used to channeling nightmares and dread,
he now showed us one who’s purity never fled.
When he reaches his brother, the reunion is short,
But Farnsworth’s journey is the sublime sort.
Lynch forgo the nightmarish for a twilight dream
of a man who’s life was fuller than ours ever seemed.
Lynch has tread a “Highway,” a “Drive,” and an “Empire,”
but does his best work let tears dampen the fires?
