A Litany For Brittany Poem by AtreyaSarma Uppaluri

[Brittany Murphy, a 32 year old Hollywood actress and singer, met with a premature death on 20th December 2009. She is suspected to have been a victim of anorexia nervosa and a heavy dose of prescription drugs like Vicodin after she had undergone a series of plastic surgeries. RIP.]


Now the three-score-and-two year old young Brittany Murphy
A promising Hollywood star really spiffy
Chased Michael Jackson, the great musical sensation
Alas, drugs had done them both to self-ruination

It’s a deadly sin to be an addict to Vicodin
It’s so vicious to be propped up on a Viagra spin
Fatal reactions congeal with untold risk to your weal
Never they would heal; not a chance for a remorseful feel

With undoing dopes you can ne’er get back the vital hope
Crises with will power only we ought to learn to cope
You aren’t going to be saved, whatever be your moola
Whatever has added to your name - craze or brouhaha

You worked up your kisses into a hissing wave
Your drugged hugs had you dug into your early grave
Brittany and Michael for all their hyped charisma
Are proof enough against plastic miasma

We should take care not to allow the speed of life
Or the social permissiveness so wildly rife
To dangle and double up as our future’s knife.
Let it not thoughtlessly overtake our dear life
And cause to the dear ones distress and endless strife

Going queer ways out of our unnatural avarice
Would land us into irredeemable morass of vice.
Our pure, natural vitality is a gift divine
Let’s not wreck it and thus our very being undermine.

[Dec 22,2009: : Lincoln, Nebraska, USA]