by Earl J. Wilcox
There were a dozen of them in all,
those colorful Marilyn Monroe
paintings by Andy Warhol,
who gave them such obvious
yet oddly sad names
as Orange Marilyn and Lemon Marilyn,
signifying Andy’s choice of colors
to depict the bleak but vapid life
of a soul so lost in the universe
she appeared to us, like him---
the presence of all color,
the absence of everything beautiful.