Here’s to a life lived in mirrors
Looking at you, looking at you
Looking back at you looking back
Through your glasses very darkly
To Greta Garbo on the phone
Waxing lyrically quite fantastically
About the joys of being alone
To Joan Crawford on the prowl
Couching a cast with every vowel
Telling Marilyn about her calling
And about the bombshell falling
On the emptiness of an ocean
Where no blonde is an island
Not even one in transit to Venus
Or some other heavenly body
Liking it hot and sometimes cool
Recounting their sins so Cardinale
Occasionally cracking a commandment
To a Sophia Lorenaissance princess
Returning home from Casablanca
So beautifully and unusually a suspect
Knowing she’s below suspicion
Lavishing serenely back in Hollywood
Wondering why Anita Ekberg fell
Like the silver dream’s golden foil
For fame and famous familiarity
Rediscovering tee-shirts as she went
That extra length for helpless notoriety
Without surviving such polite society
Or Grace and Kelly looking in
At you looking at her surprise
When stardom started whistling
At that gal from the windy city
Skinning her bucks Madonna style
Whip wisecracking her lady cat wiles
When Doris finally made her day
Inside that very holy wooden shrine
Renowned for famous fickle fortune
By passing shadow’s tripping failure
In the limelight of fantastic glamour
Having it all and loving the clamour
Before the system really damaged her
For toughing it out like Frances Farmer
The Deity from the silver scream
Her voice alone playing Saint Joan
When the mogul empire struck back
With a cast of riders in white coats
Halting a sweet Cordelia on the inside
As the tinsel world bade a shallow farewell
To another Angelina on the flipside
But glamour is as glamour does
So clamorous to a made up self
An’ there’s no clamour like Hollywood
Clamouring for another famous mirror
To see ourselves as others seldom see us
In realms of glittering golden clichés
Shimmering on the scarlet carpet
While worlds spin in awestruck wonder
At the mystic vision of light and shadow
Entranced by the mystery of the alchemy
Illuminating this lower light to heaven
Our senses ripped and vision stripped
By beauty’s outrageous plunder
And imagination’s helpless surrender
To that mirage with hooded lids
Never looking back at anything
Bringing it all to her Bette Davis eyes
And both her Betty Grable’s surprise
Shredding each soul’s futile resistance
Before the onslaught of her Divinity
Traipsed her spell through tinsel town
Draped in black with a golden halo
Stole the show with her red stiletto
Embedded in that wanton poster
Telling the world she won an award
For acting as she never meant to be
Selling it like some reluctant Ophelia
Wondering why they call her Cordelia
Whilst leering at her cinematic feature
Wearing hats of metaphysical mystery
On dreams eternal in a transient moment
Where every sin is an open invitation
To every door with a sign saying exit
Where tough guys come and wise guys go
But looking at you goes on forever
Inside hats of sparkling wonder
In the Hollywood hell of other people
Flashing their bulbs in prurient homage
At the sinning flash of a new décolletage
Of heavenly strutting star slight women
Stealing the show and loving the glow
And straightening out the golden rainbow
Dancing light fantastic on the brick yellow road
That’s the way those winning women glow.