The Ballad Of Jayne And Mae

… early morning – bloody ‘67
month of June
East of mae
into the lethal mist – Spanish Trail
a mansfield perhaps of tearless, virgin-eyed potatoes
across ditches on either side
maybe cotton, dark hands-waiting
ermine of soil bleeding white but darkly into sedimentary sorrow,
Mississippi River splitting the vaginal lips,
caressing mud-silent between the breasts of America
captioned by a blonde wig
maybe a scalp violently flung over eyebrows arched to scorn the bawdy
cadences of mae,
flagpole erections saluting Goddess Size with liquid smut of
titillation advertised as inoculation against jaded wet-dream
obsession
voyeuristically coiled,
silken whisper away from bosom,
flesh expressed competing with expression of flesh,
‘That’ll show that other Hollywood bitch!’
‘Yeah, but when’s jayne gonna’ do it again?’ – oh!
jayne is dead!
Jayne is dead!
emptiness unraveling coiffs of fame
East, West, through valleys of aching adoration
stalking *Mae’s vaudeville shimmy
’shake it, vamp baby!’
flirting cant of head, flash of thighs and
canter of girlish voice ripening to full-womanly husk -
- and fly! – fly! – fly!
around the Maepole
singing the flesh electric
until besmirched by mud of narrowness for eight days in shriveled
blood-stained minds,
Obscene? – Mae West?
ah yes! dares she celebrate what genitalia of shame
hides in obscene prisons, she, honoring scripture of body and heart
Babylonic-blasphemous eros-love
of man for woman, woman for woman and man for man,
an all-embrace, anthem of sweet profanity
soaring once more free above iron-barred hypocrisy
and fly! – fly! – fly ecstatic!
around the pole in the month of Mae and Jayne’s girlish worship of
** ‘falling out of bed every night
to make room in it for God,’
her horse-haired bow shimmying to knit fissures in dreams
across violin strings in the driveway of her childhood home
sirening passing ears through time seeded
by the sands of grief, joy, triumph and failure through the hourglass
of womanhood -
- East of the Mississippi River caressing mud-silent between breasts,
West of Biloxi:
‘my god!
she went out into the nightclub audience for a final time after her
performance,
sat in a man’s lap asking about his wife and kids!’
during moments pursued by the Spanish Trail, Highway 90
her three children backseat-sleeping
never to recollect the mother-of-all-horrors,
a Mansfield of shattered dreams shredded into steel and glass
concrete-confetti ripped from the walk of fame,
while the bosom still is full-proud
though the girl’s bed now is nightly empty except for her cradle of
dark soil,
vamp shimmy of her silent bow captured slow-motion in the mist
acrid-spiraling toward the sun waiting to Westward-greet the dusk
not eclipsing electric dawn-forever
rising from the bosom of Jayne and Mae…

… America…
… morning – bloody ‘67…
______________

* Under the stage name The Baby Vamp, Mae West began performing in
vaudeville at 12, later becoming famous for her ‘lascivious shimmy’
dance. As a woman, she wrote, starred in and directed a number of
risque plays, and one of them, The Drag, referenced the work of Karl
Heinrich Ulrichs, the first known gay to ‘out’ himself. West was
released – on good behavior – after eight of a ten-day sentence to jail on
public obscenity charges, the prison warden being so enamored of her
that he nightly took her out to dinner. She was an early champion of
humanizing all sexual orientations, and during a police raid on a gay
bar, said, ‘Don’t you know you’re hitting a woman in a man’s body?’
Like her successor, West did night club performances after her movie
career faltered.

** As a girl, Jayne Mansfield ‘fell out of bed several times every
night to make room in it for God’, and entertained passers-by with
performances on her violin in the driveway of her childhood home.
She married Mickey Hagaritay, resulting in his termination as one of Mae West’s ‘muscle men’. Like West, she turned to performances in night                    clubs after the fall-off of her Hollywood career, her last one being at a
dinner club in Biloxi, Miss., on June 28, 1967, after which she left by
car for a New Orleans television appearance. While her three children
survived, Jayne Mansfield died instantly around 2:25 in car accident on
Highway 90 also known as the Spanish Trail.