Description: ...to give a brief overview of the piece, it highlights the somewhat unfair perceptions that certain women get from men and particularly other women because of how they speak, how they dress, who they affiliate themselves with, their complexion and a myriad of other completely trivial factors used for incredibly myopic deductions. In this piece, however, I tried to do it through the eyes of the ones who condemn...so there's little mockery or satire, rather just the jaded perception of the voice.
Scrawled over bathroom Walls
And toilet stalls,
Your tarnished name
And your dual lives.
It always says,
"Call for a good time
Eight-Six-Eight
Seven-One-One..."
Three-Eight-Two-Five.
Everyone looks at you through the silhouette parade
Traipsing before your table,
Through the din of death
Protruding past your teeth.
The flame climbing it's way
Up the cigarette shaft,
Burning it's own wake on the way
To the top.
Your flesh is obscured
By such troublesome fabric...
Threads that advertise
Your anxious availability.
Your make-up done
To picturesque-perfection
To be preserved in megapixels
And distributed like
Loose change.
But truly, at what cost?
Everyone has heard the rumours;
Ignoring circumstance
A single cent
Can make one a whore
of unmatchable extravagance.
Still, though
honesty of this nature
Only escapes in murmurs ("I won't deny...that one guy...
Three-Eight-Two-Five...)
But please, go ahead
Reside among your secrets, besides
I've got ten dollars
That says you're worthless.
But there are always whispers
Exchanged between the words... ("Have you heard about her?
She sleeps in the beds
Of bankers and bank robbers
Of magistrates and miscreants
And sits comfortably
In the throbbing lap of luxury.
Always in church
And always on her knees
But I swear to God
She know nothing about piety.")
...of (dis)honest approval and awe...
Your smiles hides
A parasitic irony that lies beneath...
The dimples on your cheek a target;
Reservoirs for the lusts of lesser men.
How does one get past
All the fabricated infamy
Of a name smeared like bargain lipstick
Across the corners of your lips?
Where every pissant
of a misnomer
of a man
has proudly
claimed
to have
kissed?
He writes your number...
A dozen leave a signature
All co-signitaries
To your exaggerated imprudence
But...
It's gone far beyond human proclivity
To pervert innocence and beauty;
It's all based in spin and scandal...
It's all based
In the nature of your sins
Touched until dirty
You get around like currency;
The current communal indulgence...
I've gotten dollars
That have said you're worthless.
Submission Name: Three-Eight-Two-Five
