TIM THORNE
Sample poem
Celebritocracy
You gotta have class. Only Marilyn Monroe,
Princess Di and a couple of Balkan war criminals
got their own 'Candle in the Wind'
and even Marilyn had to wait.
The Saxe-Coburg-Gothas
and the Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburgs
and the Battenbergs of Hesse
used to have class. Now they have to marry it.
Should (Heaven forbid!) a barefoot yachting mishap
prove tragic, Our Mary would deserve more
than a new version of 'Candle...'
Perhaps a revamp of 'My Island Home'.
Ever since the pretty princesses were spun
at us post-depression while we forgot
the jolly game of Dukes and Nazis
in a blur of tulle and fairytales,
the little girl in all of us
has clapped hands and danced
with sibling squabbles over whose turn it was
to be Lillibet or Margaret Rose.
Celebrity needs a context. Even Paris
wasn't built in a day. There has to be
a cast: the grumpy one in jodphurs,
the gin-soaked social climber with the dogs,
stock characters that prove
all the world's a sitcom:
the randy, the dotty, the stuttering reluctant,
even the locked-away gibberer.
Buckingham Palace and whatever it's called
in Denmark—Legoland—
are not quite Graceland or Ramsay Street
but as long as there's a princess there's hope.
Just keep the bulimia down and the details light.
Brunette is the new blonde. Plastic bags
are the new land mines. The candle, my friend,
is blowin'... but the times are unchanged.