The nightclub muse
She was once the nightclub’s sexual muse
though erotic is a word you wouldn’t use
to describe her now.
Her writhing moves entranced the blokes
but now she’s just ammo for vulgar jokes
they shouldn’t allow.
She won’t accept that the looks she gets
arn’t born of desire but lad’s cruel bets
but she still puts out.
She takes em back but she’s no whore
just lust never love and a closing door
maybe a ‘see ya’ shout.
Her Friday night red pulling dress
lies scrunched amongst the mess
of her bedsit floor.
Alone and sober she wipes a tear
the mirror revealed her secret fear
when herself she saw.
She pauses putting her lipstick back on the shelf
all she wanted was to be loved for being herself.
A sad existence. Very well penned. Interestingly enough, I’m working on one today that’s simply titled ‘Muse’.
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Thank you Lynn, people’s lives go wrong in many ways, resulting in sadness and it’s not really their fault. I met a woman like this once in a café, she poured her heart out and listened. Her early life choices were bad but once made there was no easy way to change. I went past the café about a month later, she was sat alone, again, with some lads smirking at her, killing time, So sad.
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That is sad. And true, oftentimes things happen through no fault of their own. At least there was one bright spot if no others, that was your listening. Sometimes that’s all a person needs, a little compassion, someone to be there and listen.
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Your poem is reminiscent of T. S. Eliot’s Ptufrock. Sad lonely and desperate lives, summed up in the minutiae of life as in ‘putting her lipstick back on the shelf’.
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Thank you Roland, the lipstick, the mirror and the dress on the floor were indeed the key elements.
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Sorry, Nigel, for my mis-spelling – of course I meant ‘Prufrock’.
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