At the behest of Yahoo News, Pulitzer Prize-winning writers James Tate and Paul Muldoon and blog-prize-almost-winning writer James Franco were commissioned to capture Obama’s historic second inauguration in verse. Instead, Franco hammered out something called “Obama In Asheville,” then donned a stained T-shirt to drone it into his webcam while lying in bed. It contains lines about Tom Cruise and burritos.


At the behest of absolutely no one, I commissioned myself to write a poem about James Franco’s poem.

Chicago, Illinois, is where The Bob Newhart Show takes place

And there are some good pierogi places

F. Scott Fitzgerald didn’t like pierogis

Too drunk

Then dead

To partake of the grand potato dumpling


Carl Sandburg once ordered gingerbread pierogis on a dare, I believe

He is another writer I have heard of

“Tool maker, stacker of wheat, city of the big shoulders”

Are some lines from his poetry that I could quote here

To make it seem as though I am writing a similar poem

Where was I?

Oh right

In Chicago

Writing a poem about James Franco’s poem

That he wrote for Barack Obama

Who probably had a pierogi before

When living in Chicago

Before he became president again


Barack Obama is not James Franco, and clearly

This is one of Barack Obama’s great regrets

As he stands up there, smiling, receiving the burden of history

The People turning their eyes to him

Much as James Franco was asked by Yahoo News

To write a poem about it

Perhaps you were unaware of the connection between Zelda

Fitzgerald’s death in a mental institution

And the inauguration of Barack Obama

And how it might take up at least a few stanzas

Of a poetry assignment?


But Franco knows

“I write confessions and characters, and that sort of thing”

Franco says

Like poetry

And the confession that he had a hard time concentrating on this assignment

When there are so many other people, places, and things to talk about

That James Franco is interested in


Have you ever seen Apocalypse Now?

James Franco’s class at UCLA has; he called them, mid-poem

Ensured that they would put it on the syllabus

Of the class that he is teaching

When he isn't writing poems

Frank calls his friend Franco—sleepy Frank;

Old, sleepy Frank, friend of Franco

Says sleepily, “that my poem was a difficult task”

Petitions the universe, “How to write about a man written about endlessly”

Goes to sleep

Good night, Frank


Franco ponders on Frank, asleep now, and the weight of his task

He goes “to the little burrito place where they know me.”

"Hola Senor Franco! Como estas?"

"Bien. Un burrito grande por favor

Tengo un muy importante poema

Necesito un burrito importante"

Franco eats his burrito, much as Cormac McCarthy probably ate a burrito once

And contemplates the task of writing about Obama so “it’s not just for the converted”

Or just for the last couple of stanzas

Of a rambling, self-indulgent mess


The burrito gives him indigestion

His stomach is embroiled in partisan bickering

“BURRITOBAMA,” Franco writes down

Before scratching it out

But hark, the windows of the soul are illuminated with a dim memory

Of that time Franco actually met Obama once

And so he does have perspective

Worthy of writing a poem about the Inauguration

Apparently


Christopher Hitchens was there that portentous night, talking of Borges

And in a related story, “We waited in a private room with the likes of Tom Cruise

And Katie Holmes, and Claire Danes”

Who were there for the Correspondents’ Dinner

And also for the living Borges story that is

“James Franco, Author Of Barack Obama”

“He knew me from Spider-Man. I asked him for advice

I was scheduled to give the commencement speech at UCLA

And there were some undergraduate knockers against me.”

And not the “young breasts” kind

That would be a more interesting poem


Then some other stuff happened where Obama said something

But Franco was already thinking of how much he doesn’t want to see Obama beheaded

Like another swearing-in poem someone once wrote

Because Obama isn’t a king and he needs his head

To remember the time he met James Franco

And to perhaps one day see James Franco take on “the role of a lifetime”:

Obama himself; James Francobama

Whom Franco would play as kind and then

“Let the writer put in all the political crap”

Which is a note about his performance

And not to whoever was supposed to finish this poem for him


Because he is busy thinking about playing Obama

Using his “soul”

“I’d win the Academy Award if I just captured that”

Obama didn’t win the Academy Award today.

He was inaugurated.