Poetry
Norma Therapy
by David Ortmann
written in 2003
For dramas real and imagined,
a fabricated hurt,
a self-created tragedy,
or words that cut cut cut
(Cut away from me?)
the therapy is always the same.
Swanson was short, you see
Four-two or something,
seeming so much larger
descending that eternal staircase
for her final close-up.
Barefoot, too, as she was afraid
to negotiate those stairs
in Norma's heels.
I feel naked without my eyebrows,
disarmed and vulnerable
before the mirror.
Twenty minutes and the face is exquisite
from soaring arches to beauty mark.
A velvet gown, a leopard wrap wait
next to the feathered turban and diamond bracelet
wide as a shirt cuff.
Champagne and a cigarette,
(in a holder by the chair)
Everything complete.
I've made up my mind.
We'll bury everything in the garden.
I am comforted,
my only audience the darkness.
Alone with it
as Norma could never be.
Mr. DeMille, I am ready
for anything
now.
San Francisco
2003