Busted Up


 

     Memoirs of a myopic voyeur

        on a public-transported Monday morning:

     behold a bevy of cleanlimbed young women

        upfully dressed for careerbent success

        in their designated-as-designer outfits

     with obligatory tennies worn over anklesocks

        (heels in accoutremental shopping bags)

     and a quarterhour's cosmetic application

        still fresh-as-paint on eyelid and cheekbone

     nestled semicomfortably in seatcorners

        pillowed on arm or purse or rattly windowpane

     Cinderelli catching Z's while their rained-upon

        bus of a pumpkin shuttles workwards

 

    Amidst this dormant tableau vivant

        sits one particularly literal Land-of-Nodder

     with head bobbing for invisible apples

        and chin reiteratively pointing down

        to the corresponding upthrustedness

     of her crisply businesslike jabot blouse

        (sorry: male eyes do seek out such sights)

     but on her face along with the makeup à la mode

        is an imploring implosive expression

     suitable perhaps for one whose dreams

        of executive corporeality may in time amount

     to no more than wham! bam! just the fax ma'am!

        get out in that office and rattle those pads and pens!

 

     And as if that were insufficient indignitywise

        she can't even catnap in this fishbowl

     without being given the shortsighted once-over

        twenty-thousand-leagues mistreatment

        by Little Captain Nemo Under Slumberland

     even as the jolting bus-stop sends her asprawl

        (there's many a slip 'twixt the skirt and the hip)

     thus wakened by no charming prince's kiss

        Fleeting Beauty hastily renews the stick on her lips

     recovering some sense of immaculate perception

        as she busses her own compactmirrored reflection

     before the prettily-designed tableau parts company

        and its gone-to pieces go their separate ways.

 


 

Copyright © 1989, 2004  by P. S. Ehrlich

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