Poise

The looking glass asserts a dialogue
Comments silently on years of experience
Condensed minutae; photoshot segments of life
Selected from kaleidoscopic patterning
Layered memories like wafers
Tesselated; uppermost intensities of yesterday

A woman’s face appears in profile
Ingrained forehead, narrowed furrows
Shows up corrugated, reserved, self withheld
Disguised lines, hidden beneath lush Max Factor foundation
Revealing secretly lingering clingings to her youth
Eyes blink, flutter eyed
As she vainly endeavours
To renew her once admired appeal

Then she smooths her veined neck
And arranges her style
Important only to herself

Leaving the mirror erect

Standing otherwise defiant
Staving off advancing age
With civilised permitted pretences

Polished glass hangs intact
It proffers no judgement

She fingers a Vogue magazine
Denying any cracks in her surface yet

Interruptions

So they threw again
Pebble-shattered silence
Menaced the perspex
Defaced window
Splat-sharp as pepper shot

Premonition felt reserve
Gauged they had limitations
To revenge being sweet
Small likelihood of splintered seats

So sit there unperturbed
Shut eye

Surely it will pass
Transport rumble on?

Then comes a variation on a theme
Mere two minutes later, at next route stop

Cherry ice cream splurge
Colours passenger vision
Seat in front laughs
Soft touch
Ridicule resounds

White-pink runnels sliver down
Like candy floss melt
Sweet stickiness like goo
Wasted luxury

Culprits only eleven
Shaved headed vagrants
Seeking refuge at home
Identities disguised very nicely
To their benefit

Day passes
Evening shifts and slides
Flow of multicoloured sunset
Striped orange, day’s decline

Order resumes on the number twelve bus
Still, prediction of order falters
Next week another vehicle rams in
With a vicious manoeuvre, badly timed

Driver hops off, halted abruptly in his tracks

Could have killed us with possible resentments
Suppose so anyway; that’s how it seems

But all get off unscathed
No shock treatment

That hard

Driver confides it happened three times
So who’s punishing who?
Blind steering?

He rapidly writes in accident book log
To submit to file; traditional style
Long forgotten script
Doubt anyone will even read it

Stored away obsolete or what?

That’s how it is now
Been the same for ages
Transport chaos and conundrums
Slanderous clashes; interchange in chaos

Doubt anything will change
No regret’s been demonstrated
Drivers return to work; that’s all

They cleaned the ice cream smears fast
Lobbed stones lay crushed underfoot on sidewalk for days
So we’re reassured no one can end up lacerated around here
Can they?

– Tracy Allott

Author’s Notes:

The poems “Poise” and “Interruptions” are based on simple reactions and feelings about the state of being human, and in the case of ‘”nterruptions,” about effects of the noisy neighbour syndrome.