Marilyn Monroe

I flick through the channels:
...a hurricane off the coast of...
Magenta is the perfect combin...
you knew I loved her and yet...
with temperatures hitting below...
Then I stop, a white permed angel stands,
Her white dress blown up like wings revealing her legs,a vision of purity and glamour with
red lipstick on her lips and nail varnish on her hands.

She is the icon of beauty and of women,
Not the kind of women like you and me but
Ones in magazines and catwalks, real women,
To whom all hands are extended and no doors shut,
Time stands stock still, surreal to have this angel,
Here in my bedsit with the pizza boxes strewn on the floor,
The broken front door and all the dirt and smut,
That capets every surface and gets trapped
beneath my nails.

But I have one on you, I think, I am alive,
Whereas you can only blink out of t.v. sets,
And the still sepia and tinted photos that survive,
In peoples garages and behind glass frames in museums.
How would you look now? -I think to myself-
Would you dare wear a dress like that? Tight
at the waist and low at the back or would it show
Too much celulite, too much skin, too much fat?
Would your thin dried up lips suit that bold tone
Of lipstick now? Or would you look like a clown
sucking a hard, sour lemon? Your skin tight over
the bone and botox, your long wispy eyebrows
dipped into a frown.

Would you laugh as you once laughed, confident,
carefree? Or would you keep your mouth shut,
To hide the blackened teeth -and the gaps-
Where they once sat, sparkling like stars?
And who would you grin at now? Would you still have trails of sicophants and saps,
Hanging on your every word as you hang onto life
Like a limpet clinging on against the tides,
As your stomach and each heavy breast sags
at your sides?

When the wind blows as it does tonight,
Would it catch your bleach blond curls and
Blow them from your head and into the sky like a cloud?
As in desperation you try to cover your scaled head,
Scabbed and scared from decades of bleaching, all
swollen and red,
Your sweet honey rimmed voice shrieking,
Like a crow, gravelled,as you shower all around
you with tar coloured spit,
From all those crack filled evenings
And all the fags that you lit.

With a small fuzzed blip she dissapeared
Into darkness as I turned off the set,
Ran my wrinkled hand through my grey hair,
And drifted into the kitched to put a can
Of baked beans on the stove to share
With my husband.