Listen,
she was once young in Dior clothes,
a Bardot,
but now to her fury she’s old
and in acrylic and corduroy
the colour of lead
has wordless walk-on parts
in cosy comedies,
an extra, not superstar.
No longer self-assured
she is a prisoner of the times,
of the small-minded
who commonly have no sense
of a youth that fades
and its sadness.
Her films were once the jewels
in the studio’s crown,
awards coming like
clay pigeons shot easily
from an empty sky.
She’s wary of this modern world of
zero hours, scammers and spammers
which seems not to have a grown-up in it.
Her hours now are lived in
Meridian Chain Hotels’
poky, seamy rooms
where she idly re-enacts
her famous roles.
What an end to be faced,
and who could not sense
her longing for past fame,
once brilliant, that’s become
grey days, not days of grace,
spotlit merely by the greedy glare
of an open fridge,
a dying cinder
in a lifetime’s ash.
Refer to: Aug 2020 – Colour coded
Cross Words
A great response to the challenge. I love the clever idea of representing two of the required words by outrageous homophones – two birds with one stone!
This is a great poem anyway regardless of meeting the objectives of the exercise which I’ve forgotten, assuming I ever grasped them in the first place!
I love this poem. Definitely up to Ken’s usual standard despite having to include such an odd collection of words.