Waiting for Bardot (1965)
While Uncle Sam’s draft awaits us
we’re a couple of teenage dropouts
waiting for Brigitte Bardot to appear
in public like a lust-holy vision
to plug her ballyhooed new movie
with its five-minute striptease scene.
We’d seen her naked in Contempt
our famished eyes feasting upon
that flicker of Technicolor tease
and we’re waiting for a real-life peek
waiting for an in-the-flesh glimpse
in a crowd in the cold … waiting.
Horror Show 1968
We see the Tet offensive on TV and murder
in Memphis and murder in Los Angeles
and cities exploding in hope-slain ruin.
We watch a jaw-dropping documentary
disguised as drive-in art-house horror
in which the dead devour the living.
We witness police wage war on war protesters
and scared-stiff suburbia senselessly resurrect
twice-dead Milhous and Orwellian law and order.
And hooray the movie’s hero somehow survives
until he doesn’t … until his bullet-in-the-brain
anonymous corpse adds one more for the fire.
(For George Romero, 1940-2017)
