The Pantheon of Hindu Goddesses in America

Here’s to a life lived in mirrors

Looking at you, looking at you

Looking back at you looking back

Through your glasses very darkly

To Greta Garbo on the phone

Waxing lyrically quite fantastically

About the joys of being alone

To Joan Crawford on the prowl

Couching a cast with every vowel

Telling Marilyn about her calling

And about the bombshell falling

On the emptiness of an ocean

Where no blonde is an island

Not even one in transit to Venus

Or some other heavenly body

Liking it hot and sometimes cool

Recounting their sins so Cardinale

Occasionally cracking a commandment

To a Sophia Lorenaissance princess

Returning home from Casablanca

So beautifully and unusually a suspect

Knowing she’s below suspicion

Lavishing serenely back in Hollywood

Wondering why Anita Ekberg fell

Like the silver dream’s golden foil

For fame and famous familiarity

Rediscovering tee-shirts as she went

That extra length for helpless notoriety

Without surviving such polite society

Or Grace and Kelly looking in

At you looking at her surprise

When stardom started whistling

At that gal from the windy city

Skinning her bucks Madonna style

Whip wisecracking her lady cat wiles

When Doris finally made her day

Inside that very holy wooden shrine

Renowned for famous fickle fortune

By passing shadow’s tripping failure

In the limelight of fantastic glamour

Having it all and loving the clamour

Before the system really damaged her

For toughing it out like Frances Farmer

The Deity from the silver scream

Her voice alone playing Saint Joan

When the mogul empire struck back

With a cast of riders in white coats

Halting a sweet Cordelia on the inside

As the tinsel world bade a shallow farewell

To another Angelina on the flipside

But glamour is as glamour does

So clamorous to a made up self

An’ there’s no clamour like Hollywood

Clamouring for another famous mirror

To see ourselves as others seldom see us

In realms of glittering golden cliches

Shimmering on the scarlet carpet

While worlds spin in awestruck wonder

At the mystic vision of light and shadow

Entranced by the mystery of the alchemy

Illuminating this lower light to heaven

Our senses ripped and vision stripped

By beauty’s outrageous plunder

And imagination’s helpless surrender

To that mirage with hooded lids

Never looking back at anything

Bringing it all to her Bette Davis eyes

And both her Betty Grable’s surprise

Shredding each souls futile resistance

Before the onslaught of her Divinity

Traipsed her spell through tinsel town

Draped in black with a golden halo

Stole the show with her red stiletto

Embedded in that wanton poster

Telling the world she won an award

For acting as she never meant to be

Selling it like some reluctant Ophelia

Wondering why they call her Cordelia

Whilst leering at her cinematic feature

Wearing hats of metaphysical mystery

On dreams eternal in a transient moment

Where every sin is an open invitation

To every door with a sign saying exit

Where tough guys come and wise guys go

But looking at you goes on forever

Inside hats of sparkling wonder

In the Hollywood hell of other people

Flashing their bulbs in prurient homage

At the sinning flash of a new decolletage

Of heavenly strutting star slight women

Stealing the show and loving the glow

And straightening out the golden rainbow

Dancing light fantastic on the brick yellow road

That’s the way those winning women glow.

Author's Note

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