Marilyn Monroe was a talented painter and loved to write poetry.
She always feared criticsm and judgement over her 'lack of knowledge' and would only show her poetry to very close friends like Norman Rosten, Milton Greene and Carl Sandberg. Marilyn's favorite poets included Whitman, Frost and E.E. Cummmings.
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POETRY
Life -
I am of both your directions
Existing more with the cold frost
Strong as a cobweb in the wind
Hanging downward the most
Somehow remaining
Those beaded rays have the colors
I've seen in paintings - ah life
they have cheated you...
thinner than a cobweb's thread
sheerer than any-
but it did attach itself
and held fast in strong winds
and sindged by leaping hot fires
life - of which at singular times
I am of both your directions -
somehow I remain hanging downward the most
as both of your directions pull me.
From time to time
I make it rhyme
but don't hold that kind
of thing against me-
Oh well what the hell
so it won't sell
what I want to tell-
is what's on my mind
taint Dishes
taint Wishes
it's thoughts
flinging by
before I die
and to think
in ink
To the Weeping Willow I stood beneath your limbs
and you flowered and finally clung to me
and when the wind struck with … the earth
and sand- you clung to me.
I left my home of green rough wood,
A blue velvet couch.
I dream till now
A shiny dark bush
Just left of the door.
Down the walk
Clickity clack
As my doll in her carriage
Went over the cracks-
"We'll go far away."
Don't cry my doll
Don't cry
I hold you and rock you to sleep
Hush hush I'm pretending now
I'm not your mother who died.
Help Help
Help I feel life coming closer
When all I want is to die
- 1958
I could have loved you once
and even said it
But you went away,
A long way away.
When you came back it was too late
And love was a forgotten word.
Remember?
- A poem from Marilyn to Bill Burnside in the late 40's.
I've got a tear hanging over my beer that I can't let go
It's too bad
I feel sad
When I got all my life behind me.
If I had a little relief
From this grief
Then
I could find a drowning straw to hold on to
It's great to be alive.
They say I'm lucky to be alive
It's hard to figure out -
When everything I feel -
Hurts.
O, time
Be kind
Help this weary being
To forget what is sad to remember.
Lose my loneliness,
Ease my mind,
While you eat my flesh.
Nite of the nite
Soothing
Darkness
Refreshes
Air
Seems different
Night has no eyes nor no one
Silence
Except for the night itself.
PAINTINGS
The rose painting shown below was a gift Marilyn gave to President John F. Kennedy for his birthday.
The second and third paintings are "self portraits" of Marilyn.
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