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© Gerald
Nicosia GERALD NICOSIA
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POEMS FOR MARILYN MONROE AND THE VIET NAM VETERANS Over my shoulder while I type - Marilyn Monroe, a photo by Milton H. Greene In a gaudy ballerina's skirt and dÈcolletage leaning forward from a wicker chair breasts full and unafraid eyes wistful and wounded yet hopeful and expectant and everything she had to say in the gesture of just three fingers beckoning come to me. It's a photo I check with each morning as I write of men destroyed by war to see how I'm doing, maybe to see if I can live up to it and to remember that there is more to this world than cannons and automatic rifles come under my skirt she is saying come inside my dress there are good things there that will not tear you apart things warm, soft, and wet not hard, jagged, and cutting she invites the thrust of nothing but human flesh and blood she does not want to be hurt any more by all those men who waited for the chance to be killed and kill their lust for her Marilyn the pinup girl of Madison Avenue War kill by the numbers and count the ears of your dead like twenties on the dresser of an uptown whore. Marilyn don't stop looking over my shoulder and forgive every one of us who wished we could own the jewel of your beauty that killed you like the beauty of morning sunshine on the waters of Bien Hoa like the jewel in the toad's forehead only you were the jewel and the toad was in your forehead and that toad was the need for love. |
