Upon Viewing "The Last Days of Marilyn Monroe" on Cable TV After Dinner Last Night

Can you imagine Bobby Kennedy
choking a handful of
barbiturates down
Marilyn Monroe’s throat?

Can you see Bobby Kennedy,
flap of his head open on a California kitchen floor,
inserting barbiturates through an enema on her bed in
Los Angeles now, naked and 37, passed from one man-hero
to the next like
some cup of blood?

No, we are all touched by this
black dog,
who has come to sit by him late at night these days:

“Stay here, little doggie,
whispers Winston Churchill.
I may need you when the sun comes up and the
day of my people begins.
Do not fail me, black dog of my
pain, come sit near me,
by the heat of the night fire.”

© 1992 Daniel X. O'Neil

back to complete table of contents