Marilyn Monroe - poetry

I think it is now pretty much common knowledge that Marilyn wrote poetry and this combined with her marriage to Arthur Miller who encouraged her reading and added depth to her writing. The saddest of love stories in many ways though towards the end he treated her badly, it was a love story none the less and it would seem the several miscarriages MM endured during their time together destroyed their love affair and in the end their marriage. This is well documented elsewhere but it always struck me as the cruellest and unkindest way nature has of crushing such loving relationships. I may have over romanticised this but it stands that her undeniable depth of sadness was her inability to have children. May have been the reason why she drank so heavily and ultimately sent her to an early grave. Either way she is maligned and dismissed too easily. she was undoubtedly bright, intelligent, funny and driven to make herself better than she thought she was.

“I will kiss you and hold you close to me and sensational things will then happen. 

All sorts of slides, rollings, pitchings, rambunctiousness of every kind. 

And then I will sigh. 

And when you rest your head on my shoulder, then slowly I will get HUNGRY.

 I will come again to the kitchen, pretending you are not there and discover you again. And as you stand there cooking breakfast, I will kiss your neck and your back 

and the sweet cantaloupes of your rump and the backs of your knees 

and turn you about 

and kiss your breasts 

and the eggs will burn.”

 – Arthur Miller (a letter to M.M.)

“On the screen of pitch blackness 

/ comes the shapes of monsters 

/ my most steadfast companions … 

/and the world is sleeping 

/ ah peace I need you 

– even a peaceful monster.” 

– Marilyn Monroe (A.M. was the ‘peaceful monster’)

believed to be pregnant

beginning to show - photo Sam Shaw

in love and radiant

Life —
I am of both of your directions
Life
Somehow remaining hanging downward
the most
but strong as a cobweb in the
wind — I exist more with the cold glistening frost.
But my beaded rays have the colors I’ve
seen in a paintings — ah life they
have cheated you

leaving hospital

Stones on the walk

every color there is

I stare down at you

like

these the

 a horizon —

the space / the air is between us beckoning

and I am many stories

besides

 up

my feet

are

 frightened

from my as I grasp 
for towards you

young young young

Incandescent 

Andre de Dienes an early art shot 1946 

I guess I have always been
deeply terrified at to really be someone’s
wife
since I know from life
one cannot love another,
ever, really

MM poetry from 'Brainpickings'

“A sex symbol becomes a thing. I hate being a thing.” 

― Marilyn Monroe