Affairs of State, August 1962

Affairs of State, August 1962

“‘Tis dangerous when the baser nature comes

Between the pass and fell opposed points

Of might opposites.”

“I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself

King of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams.”

                                                (Hamlet)

At thirty-six, something just had to give.

Too many broken contracts, drugs, drink, men,

Appointments missed, sad, shipwrecked marriages.

Miss Monroe dreamt of smoky sets in hell,

Shooting a film, take on eternal take,

Director hostile as his sullen crew:

Forever snarling at her, in contempt,

‘You’re seven hours late again, you bitch! Drop dead!’

Obligingly, she did, or so it seemed.

She died one August of an overdose,

A ‘hot shot’ given in the guise of love,

Knowing too late she’d been betrayed again,

Naively trusting her two latest lovers,

Smart Jack, slick Bobby, smooth adulterers,

Tough guys in suits, hard as their mobster friends,

Cramming her fat with promises and lies.

‘Hell hath no fury…’ In her jealous rage

She swore she’d strip them naked in the press.

Jack sent her a cute tiger, crouched to spring,

‘Keep your mouth shut or I shall open mine.’

That night, the tiger she was toying with

Took her to bed, then fed upon her flesh.

They’d told her they’d take care of her. They did.

So nutshell king and princeling reigned secure,

Yet still woke sweating, haunted by bad dreams.

Marilyn vanished in the autopsy.

Leaving plain Norma Baker in the morgue,

That easy studio lay, that crazy hooker,

Veteran of a thousand casting couches,

With lips that could suck chrome off Cadillacs,

Lank hair like pond weed clinging to the drowned,

A staring death-mask blotched with green decay.

They dumped her in a freezer, like spoiled meat -
Another dumb and frigid mortuary blonde.

A faithless maid, grieving to see her breastless,

Coffined on her last set – on time for once –

Thrust two small cushions under her Dior gown,

Upholstering her with false, pneumatic bliss.

She was an artifact until the end.

‘Probable suicide’, the verdict ran.

But ‘murder, though it hath no tongue, will speak

With most unnatural organ’. Hamlet was right.

A woman slain in the act of love,

With her last dying breath, the ancients said,

Calls down winged furies on her murderer

And those around him, till the debt is paid.
The drama thus unrolled in classic vein –

Murder on murder – a blood-bolstered plot,

All witnesses tongueless through sudden death.

The stage was strewn with corpses by act five,

Jack, Bobby, Oswald, Ruby, on and on,

Though Johnson blundered in as Fortinbras,

Or bungling Claudius – no one could be sure –

Blustering about his Great Society

And bawling out, ‘Go bid the soldiers shoot!’

Till they obeyed – and laid three countries waste.

Meanwhile – Immaculate Apotheosis!

Marilyn rose again, transformed to Meme.

Whispering ‘I wanna be loved by you’,

To multitudes of breathless votaries,

Ascending to the stars on a billion screens,

She shimmers like the Vision at Fatima.

Washington glowed that month like rotting fish,

Black lilies festering on its cenotaphs.

In gun-crazed Dallas, sly tarantulas

Hunted their prey under a murderous sun.

Dead men were plotting in the Oval Office,

Killing time while assassins bided theirs,

Toasting ‘dead friends’ in bourbon, over maps,

Blazoned blood-red, of Cuba and Vietnam.

COPYRIGHT (C) 2010 J D FRODSHAM