Carmencarrion

Darling, don't be scornful of the little cripple
selling newspapers with your headline.

It was she who taught your mother a silence so deep
that it ran through her like black blood, carrying rot;
it was the endless shushing at mama's knee
that made a dancer of you after all.

Poison, though trembling in a perfect sphere
at the tip of the world's most beautiful finger,
is still poison;
taint is still taint,
even if you christen it with a fine swung champagne
and send it down the skids into a clear blue channel.

Your fans, they love you erratic, charmingly gut-shot.
They place the rose in your teeth, and you live off the thorns.

That doctor you keep leashed at your feet
can't even find the lesions beneath the lace;
he delivers his diagnosis while dancing on his hind legs,
in traffic,
with silly paper hearts taped over his eyes.

In the end, you still manage to remain obscure
even while performing, spot lit, in front of thousands.
You are a snappish, self-governing state
draped in silk, and wearing a stylish hat groaning with feathers.

Darling, don't be scornful of the little cripple.
Don't do her your turned brand of vile mischief,
then walk away in three inch heels,
laughing.

Your reviews have been slipping, and your notices turn up in birds' nests
with the dead mice and blank-eyed fledglings.

Feel the clips in your hair, like talons.
Sense your mother's eyes on you from out in the red plush seats,
though the footlights stop you from locating the bleed.

Take my hand.
Trust me.
I'll lead, just this once, light as a draught horse,
and you, Darling,
why, you will follow down stage
like a pretty hearse,
driverless and sinking
through the brittle ice and into obscurity.
_______

I wrote this using words found HERE.