As If Mingled Throughout our Air Yet Distant, Distant, Distant
Elusive as pale pulsing ghosts that hide
In Gallino robes, stars’ glamour shifts
From seeming to enchantment. Like a bride
Suspended in a galaxy, glow lifts
And levitates. The stars and starlets shine
Above, beyond us. Not just on the screen
But on the internet, that giant shrine
That covers all the world, the stars are seen
In gloss just everywhere, remain detached
And distant always. Held in mystery
By wand-like Hollywood these ghosts are hatched
As if from Leda’s eggs. The history
Of stars is brushed by studios. They write
Distorted scripts of wraiths in spectral light.
~ Phillip Whidden
A Witch in Port au Prince
A witch in Port au Prince or something like
Her hints the spell required. This spell defies
Both death and time. It operates its spike,
Injecting magic botox near the eyes
And in the film star’s forehead by P.R.
The actor and executives conspire
To cast the spell. The actress makes a star
From attitude colluding with the pyre
The studio has built to alter facts.
It changes names and hair, and carves a nose,
And covers up the past. Candor detracts
From glamour. Someone has to strike a pose.
The personality created takes
A body and revamps it till truth aches.
~ Phillip Whidden
Blonde Braying, Braying, Braying, Braying
Why bother with salvation when that “blonde”
From bottles does the trick? The Hollywood
Of hocus pocus Harlow’s hair has spawned
One billion knock offs. Even Bollywood
Would try the spell if it could get away
With platinum mandorlas on a face
Of Bengal beauty. Glammed peroxide’s bray
Enhanced by lighting would produce a grace
Parvati might begrudge. Forget the wand
Magicians wave. A wizard is not sought
When in the local supermarket blonde
Can be procured and platinum be bought
For dimes. No woman needs a savior while
A jar of bleach combines with lamplight’s guile.
~ Phillip Whidden
Hexed: Stagey Witchiness
A vacuum perceived requires a fix.
It may not be a real lacuna but
The fear that it might be results in tricks
Of golden surgery. The star must strut
As if there were no fault. No plastic knife
Will do the job. A golden one cuts best.
And if an actor chooses the wrong wife,
A new one will be pressed against his chest
Beside the scarlet carpet at the next
Awards. A super someone is compelled
In every way to stave off being hexed
By ordinariness, boringness quelled.
A Caravaggio is hired, it seems,
To paint new starlets in limousine dreams.
~ Phillip Whidden
Feeling Like Eternity and Not Just the Golden Era
That halo light from Hollywood shines down
Across the decades. Garbo’s eyes still glow
And Marilyn enwrapped in glitter gown,
The sequins spangled, neckline cut so low
The breast bone almost passed between those shapes
The halters hold, the sparkles on her hips
So swollen, full, and, yes, the starry scapes
Across her breasts and belly, pure black lips
Against the white, white backgrounds—all of these,
And open mouth with teeth, the glowing arm
And shadowed shaven armpit, all to please
The generations after her great harm.
We almost manage to forget the pain
As Hollywood commanded in its reign.
~ Phillip Whidden
Shirley Temple and Judy Garland’s Shoes
Some stars of Hollywood are eyes, all eyes,
And some are legs. A few are mouth and lips,
Like Marilyn, spread open, hinting thighs
Might hinge ajar for love above her hips
And then the final view, not scarlet as
The kiss would be but pinkness like the route
To glory. Pink and red mixed up cause jazz
Of possibilities, the perfect chute
That Plato never seemed to think about.
Did men inside this constellation show
Some body part? Did they have stuff to flout?
Their arms and shoulders maybe gave off glow.
..But don’t forget the kids. When Shirley sang
….And danced, film’s innocence trilled glamor’s twang.
~ Phillip Whidden
Curly Top and Dimples
I never could wear Shirley Temple’s pumps
For dancing or sing cutesely enough.
My dancing would be more like Goofy’s thumps
Around. The acting would be just as duff
As hers. Still, maybe I’d get by if dubbed
With Judy Garland’s voice. My schlumping pair
Of two left feet could magically be scrubbed:
Tricks digital could make me Fred Astaire.
My hair that’s always been too fine (read: thin)
Could never be as thickly curled as hers
(Blonde Shirley’s wigs). Her satin perfect skin
Makes mine feel like rough hide, a muddy cur’s.
..But then I’ll never have to be as neat
…. And prim as her performance, puking sweet.
~ Phillip Whidden
A Skin-deep Sea in a Fake Heaven
The depths of shallowness are what the stars
Dive into. Starlit deeps make slickness glow
Like Barbarella dressed for sex-grooved Mars,
Or Marilyn with one leg raised to show
The blue pool has not killed her yet. Like Wilde
Intoned: the cigarette is “perfect” in
Its “pleasure”; “exquisite” and undefiled
Because it leaves one unfulfilled like sin
That Hollywood provides, with ersatz thrills
On celluloid and Silver Screen. The schlock
Of Taylor, Marilyn, and Presley spills
Through Warhols, turning glamor prints to chalk
And not ambrosia. Mocking beauty staves
Off glitz, liberating Tinsel Town’s slaves.
~ Phillip Whidden
If macho stars are doing sex with men,
That must be covered up. Mere Vaseline
Across the lens won’t do. It’s cock and hen
That’s right for Hollywood. Shut down the scene
If Marlon Brando kisses Dean and/or
The other way around. Rock Hudson’s Day
Is just for show. He goes at night to score
With guys. The Silver Screen will not show prey
Whom he will chase and so no camera lens
Is watching. Raymond Burr is good in court
But not in laws against his type. Young friends
Were more his brief, the ones that he’d cavort
With. Mineo and drag queen glamor might
Have been a pairing but were kept from sight.
~ Phillip Whidden
The 1960s weren’t exactly right
For stars who touched each other in the way
That audiences hated. Lovers might
Endeavor to keep journalists at bay,
But Robert Benevides and his Burr
Were bold ones. They both worked and lived in love.
Of course they had to say in canny slur
That they were business partners, hand in glove
Professionals, or media reports
Were decent in restraint about their bed
Lives, veiling them with very smoky quartz
Allusions, readers wilfully misled.
The vineyard of these two produced a wine
Within the outer limits of love’s vine.
~ Phillip Whidden
Hollywood and the Plains of Sodom and Gomorrah
We only need the mouth, red, open, of
That star of stars, lush Marilyn, to say
It all. Just one small gesture makes us love.
The open lips of ripeness kill the gray
That dominates our lives. They symbolize
As opposites the hollowness we yearn
To leave behind. Elizabeth’s blue eyes
And countervailing lips were made to burn
Us in our hearts and never mind the jewels
She got from Richard. Eye depths saturate
More utterly than depths of sapphire pools.
Those irises are queens. They act like fate.
They doom us in our Tuesday small-town lives.
They turn to salt our ordinary wives.
~ Phillip Whidden
Elizabeth Taylor Never Managed Bangles to Compete with THAT
When class means one thing in Great Britain, class
Means something else in Hollywood. It’s glitz
There, glitz with gilding. Briefly, it means crass
With Cadillacs and white fox fur with tits
Concealed, just barely (emphasis on bared).
There came a time when royalty became
Confused with Hollywood, when flashbulbs glared
At Princess Grace, when blue blood bedded fame.
It’s not like yachts in Monaco line up
More classily than filming magnates own.
What matters is that some has both E cup
Brassieres and that they pose upon a throne,
An ancient one. The marriage of the two
Produces classiness’s crowning coup.
~ Phillip Whidden
Gods and Goddesses without Free Will
The palace of the glamor kings and queens
Is guarded at its gate by guys with guns.
They will not ever let the silver screens
Around the world show us the blemished sons
And daughters of semi-divinities.
The chosen ones must flash their polished teeth,
Smooth torsos, and thick hair as trinities
That Plato would admit. Nothing beneath
That sacred standard will be bowed through by
Those sentries. They are under strict command
To keep a cruel and unforgiving eye
Peeled. Imperfections stringently are banned.
..To reach the realm of walled up deity
….Requires the death of spontaneity.
~ Phillip Whidden
Mazel Toffs
It didn’t hurt to be a Gentile on
The Silver Screen within the Golden Age.
The Jews who ran it walked out on the lawn
(The Riv of course). They had to disengage
Their cut cock culture from the shiksa one.
They played croquet for goodness sake
And played at East Coast manners. To shun
Their pasts, they’d even change to fake
Names, “William Fox” was Wilhelm Fuchs. The game
Of golf was meant to help him hide his roots.
When Jews weren’t buying thoroughbreds, their shame
Was bent to buying Gentile women, silk suits,
And changing Yankee men to English chaps
With highfalutin speech to mend the gaps.
~ Phillip Whidden
Grammar Glamor
Aye, leave it to the Scots spell the word
A winsome way. The English did not change
Orthography of “grammar” to a slurred
New form that came to mean a widened range
Of scope, of starlets stalking down a long
Red carpet, or a slew of main male stars
In tuxes all awaiting that big gong
Of best, best, best. They do not come in cars,
No, no, too ordinary that. Gold limousines
Disgorge the actors, none of them in kilt
And ruffles on the chest. The kings and queens
Of Hollywood, not royalty but gilt
Pretenders, drag along ten-carat trains
And trust that we will all ignore the stains.
~ Phillip Whidden
Replacing Truth with Glamor
“Beauty is truth, truth beauty” ~ John Keats, “Ode on a Grecian Urn”
The trick is making it look effort-free.
The style must seem as natural as hair
Inside an armpit. If the star is she,
Not he, the use of hair-removing Nair
Or razors is concealed. The nose jobs are
Expensive so the fans don’t notice false
Improvements. If there is a little scar
Beneath each breast, the camera does a waltz
Away from boob job evidence. “Nothing here
To see,” is Hollywood’s unspoken word.
The stars are packaged as without a peer
In Crudsville. They’d never squeeze out a turd.
The sting, though, is it’s all a trap. Seeming
Ousts being for the projector’s beaming.
~ Phillip Whidden
Replacing Beauty with Glamor
Improvements are improvements and they’re not.
The Silicon King Kongs hold us (Faye Ray)
And from their heights they treat us all like snot.
They say their next improvement will be way,
Way better, but, like love of beastly Kong,
It makes us squirm and wish for former times
And apps that we could use. The new one’s wrong
In crucial ways but big ITs are slimes.
Both old and new in Hollywood re-twist
The beauty we call life. They shape it, gild
It, making pigs’ ears into silk kissed
By huge investments. Ears of pigs are grilled
By massive money. Fausts these moghuls are.
They make from fakery a pig’s ear star.
~ Phillip Whidden
Angels Are Never Blue Except in Hollywood
The Tinsel Town attempt to stop the heart
Is far too obvious, just like its screened
Stupidities for teenage boys. A tart
Poised on a staircase after being preened
Shows off her legs like Cyd Charisse. A stool
Displays the black boot calves, Marlene’s thighs,
And we are gasping and supposed to drool.
The shirt of Brando, off, reveals the size
Of sweat stains in his undershirt and we
Are meant to gape. Each studied look ignores
The ordinary, archly. The decree
Is audiences must be given whores
To worhip, male and female, often both.
The studios have sworn a stylish oath.
~ Phillip Whidden
The Holy of Holies
If Ingrid Bergman can’t be made to shine
Divine as God, then Hollywood will flop.
When she does not flare bright as Christ, the shrine
(Not just its curtain) will be torn and drop
To Limbo (or to something even less). The fans
Will be new atheists. They will not buy
The tickets or the merchandise. The cans
Of film can just stay closed and pilgrims sigh
Away from popcorn Eucharists. The Coke®
They would have swallowed will remain unslurped.
The movie moghuls will have failed to stoke
A trance and CO2 will not be burped.
..Effects and angles must replace the glow
….Of God. She mustn’t look like some Jane Schmo.
~ Phillip Whidden
Blessèd Are the Beautiful
The people built for glamor are built for
Worship. Adulation of the crowd
Is studio directed so that, more
Like worship, it concocts a Venus proud
Of her authority or actors veil
Themselves like royalty in Oz. We do
Not want their camouflage to fail.
Collaboration is required. The view
We want is of a chest or bosom seen
By camera lenses which deploy the charm
That we desire. We each require the screen
To show us beings far removed from harm.
..These potentates are perfect unlike kings.
….We do not want to see the puppet strings.
~ Phillip Whidden
Stradivarius Apings vs. Hurdy-gurdy Stridulations
When TV came to living rooms, the shine
Of Hollywood began to dim. The screen
Beside the coffee table brought a wine
Of newer vintage tending to demean
The chance for movie Hollywood to rule
The roost of ritzy glamor. Glitziness
Of glitter was now haunted by the ghoul
Inside the home. The camera’s glitzy tress
Of platinum on blondes could be replaced
By Lucy’s madcap tangerine-hued hair.
When glam could be replaced by beauty laced
With slapstick, glam was just shoved down the stair.
So Fred Astaire and Ginger might be soothe
On floors, but Hollywood had lost its smooth.
~ Phillip Whidden
The Minx and Sacrifice
The reason Marilyn appealed to both
The men and women was because she meant
A dual thing and not just beauty. Too loath
To say that, though, they melted to her scent
Composed of victimhood and vampishness.
They, deep gods, or destiny were set
On using her. Her glowing dampishness
Glowed, whispered huskily. We knew we’d met
A gorgeouness ill-starred among the stars.
Her crippled childhood shone right through blue eyes
And hinted at itself in tiny scars,
That beauty mark, much bigger than its size.
..The men preferred the vamp around her lips.
….The women knew too well those threatened hips.
~ Phillip Whidden
What Movie Stars Can Never Be
Enchantment is a slavery to stars
Of sweatless screens, the cinema, tv,
Or Netflix, or on smartphones. Out on Mars
Stars walk around, and though that’s stupid, we
Watch on. We know that we are lacking like
Some Sad Sack clown. An Emmet Kelly springs
To mindless mind. He rides a pint-sized bike
In circles making hollow laughs. From strings
The studios are dangling us, puppets
For gods’ amusement. Movie stars of course
Are gilded marionettes. They are Muppets
Controlled by magnates giggling above, coarse.
..Both we and stars will never be a flick
….On celluloid. We’ll never be that slick.
~ Phillip Whidden