Jim Bellamy's image of the late great screen goddess Marilyn Monroe.

(with thanks to Mike Mcshane)

...

Cruising down fifty-second street
Along the soot-black macadamed metronome of roads,
Our ivory car creels to an eerie split
Between the skies and the temples of Marilyn's home
We stop and croon at the buzzards above
Vying for a place in the hearts of stone
That cross in abracadabra straits
From east to west along the convulsive staves
That spit the names of the Chinese Theatre
And now the skies give way to space,
Black and booming in spatial remand
And are caught at once in the garter-straps
Of Norma Jean's stocking-tops
Rocking and racketing from side to side
As stars bloom by and comets skirl
In endless epithet upwards and beyond
Into plumescence, sweet and raving
And I see where amphetamines were raised and curled
In champagned gasps down barbing throats
And sear my mind with tall farewells
Where phone-sex, full sex, mad sex waved
The eddying president from his bulleting throne
Into some disabled distance. Past
Arcs of ice we are speared by cups,
Peroxide bras, bars and crimes
That kiss and whisk from place to place
Like some much repletive love. And
As we are swathed in knowing, here
Comes deeper space, space unfound
And we are fixed to rockets heading high
Where no man's been, where no man's prowled
In any plane or poise, and
I see on a sudden, in endless rage
Norma Jean and her dog
Running and running and running
And I am shocked and stunned at how men rise
At how cold and empty we really are.

.....
nb. this poem is all about Marilyn Monroe

...

Copyright JDB 1998.