for Princess Diana

Her last one was made of gauze,
a thin covering to replace the torn
silk of her evening gown.

Both are missing from the collection
that hangs here on an army
of torsos that rise from sleek metal

poles assembled in the vast halls
of shopping centers -- each in its own glass
coffin, like Snow White, letting us glimpse

the Diana that strolled a thousand magazine
covers --- solid, smooth like Venus
on display in the Louvre and free

of the stench when urine, blood, 
and sweat ooze from her
shaken body; the opening

strains of a symphony
that will never reach overture,
the equation of steel and inertia  

over force by asphalt that makes her
the quotient. The orgasm that ripped
her clothes with shattered glass

had its aftermath captured
and edited down
in a shower of lightning that makes her

body became real in its trembling
at the caress of steel, the surge of electricity
through leather, a last grasp

at solace for mutating skin
emitting its truth in waves --- a pungent, mad lust
for existence, trying to bribe the cold

metal with her star, exposed under an overpass
to a sky that is saturated
with flashing lights.  She is

invisible.  In the fury of that instant
(a simple twist of the Mercedes’
against the unforgiving

concrete that was on my T.V. by dawn),
the dress’s no longer needed
her body, becoming

anchored to marble slabs;
I wonder as I stare
where is the one

she wore that night, is it too filled
like an awkward balloon, collecting
time in some scientists basement,

a testament to her submission 
recounting the passion, telling a story
we can only imagine.

Some Other Kind Of Index