A poster leans gaunt
against a lamp post,
its translucent skin
hung in its plastic film
coat pinned by corners.

Her face has seen better
before the wind and rain
had crept its fingers in
to caress her youth;
half of her is smiling,

the lipstick a smoulder
of tone black chaste,
the eye catching yours
in its fine-lined frame.
But the eye on the face

next to her is smudged,
ink drowning the socket
like a welt of a bruise
down her cheek, the lips
dribbling down her chin

like a cut, and the hair
strewn over in curtained
bleed as though she'd cried
tears down the image that
prophesies to her end result.