As everyone has an origin yarn
Of waiting for a dime bag at Pico and Vermont
Or finally rising one's sight above the trauma.
Most of these stories lack a certain autonomy
Like they've left to outside entities the drama,
The ones who need no convincing the true and false.
Yesterday Carole Lombard appeared to us
In the mirrors of the Roosevelt Hotel.
She whispered "Eleanor and Godfrey"
To seal it at the height of her career
When the Gable Lombard Penthouse
Had more than just this one ghost bellhop
To carry people's baggage in his pillbox hat.
Her look is of anguish, how could she keep this man
From his twin ray Norma Jean, aka Monroe Marilyn
Who has her own haunted Chippendale mirror
Moved to a darker corner, where you want to rub out
How blurry you are as an image, but it swirls in waves
And radiates a green orb beauty mark that moves
Across the red brick floor and red dress curtains.
It's bat-shit haunted, meat warehouse cold,
Even the stucco infested with astral mold,
The Blossom Ballroom full of shadows that dance
Transparent through separate timeframes of reference
In a sickly light, as the ghost of Bojangles Bill
Echoes his tap shoes down the halls
By the sculpture of a creature almost a cat.
Many familiar faces have leapt from those mirrors:
Clara Bow, Harold Lloyd, W.C. Fields.
One would think they would want to attract visitors
But they say "Cultivators do not dabble in this,
They do not lower their frequency
For a flash-powder trick," like we were
Dope fiends warned off a fix.
But Marilyn's been waiting, like she always does
As we scry through her longing for her king
To get to the part where the farm suicided her
Because John gave her an underground tour
And the next day she was going public. "I died,"
She says, "So you can be in the galactic community.
Help the people to remember it."
It's hard to imagine what to do about that
When even the Chaplin bronze has both eyes bolt alert
And restless Caroline still searches for her mother
And the world's yet to learn the urgency of peace.
But the streets outside expect to catch the truth
Defenseless eventually, in one person's story and belief
He has the right to say what he has seen.