The priestess of superficiality
touches her hair
with an anxious
and irritating gesture.
A pat and a push
of feminine anguish
trying to impress
and longing to attract.
A co-dependent coy ploy.

An attempt to stop
the red hair
greying to pink,
at the sink.
A nip and a tuck, to tidy things up.
A faded age spot blotch.
A blemish
a bump
a wrinkle
a protest
a whine.
A hand freckled by time
lifts to beguile
with a fake gesture
which has lost
even pretended
intended charm.
A crescent sag to the mouth
in an unguarded moment
unmasks the truth.

A mimic brain
she repeats a phrase
she was tossed
a minute ago,
and uses it second-hand
as an initiation oath
with her phoney tones.
A scattered
one dimensional
personality,
she twitters
like a
demented sparrow.
She should be told
that twenty steps
down one path
is more beneficial
than one step
down twenty paths.

In the bendy trendy brigade
she ties herself
in manipulated knots
desperate for
sycophantic acceptance,
in a shallow
soul-less setting.
A pseudo-religion
of idle ritual
where self is sacrificed
on an altar
of frenzy doubt and anxiety—
this is society?

She has lost herself
in a maze of
decided and dictated patterns
and expanded expectations.
A plinth of peripheral hopes
defeated desires
and trivial conformities.

The golden thread
that would lead her back
to her own place
has been dropped
in a mire of formality
and become a stagnant string
of social occasions,
where small talk
and blethering gossip
are the themes
in another wasted
triangle of time.