Already Dead

A crackpot gringo in Guatemala told me:
when the pilots of the suicide planes began
their dives down at the ships they were already dead.
Coming from him, a smug didactic metaphor.
Remember Joplin's 'Mercedes Benz,' on Pearl?
The reason we found the final chorus so moving
is that when she shouts everybody! but no one joins in
and she goes on singing alone she's already dead.
When JFK took Marilyn Monroe in his arms,
each could tell that the other was already dead.
How they wept! It was love in a great tradition:
two corpses holding each other, crying if only
I could live for your sake o my beloved. They went
from that place bravely with deaths to finish for everyone.