Let’s get hysterical.
Let’s go mad
About the Winter Solstice passing
And our football team winning.

We party hard
For Christmas and New Year.
The Americans do Thanksgiving too.
Bad times for turkeys
Great days for making sales.

Anniversaries, birthdays and Celebrity celebrations,
Big Brother and Get Me Out of here.
X Factor and Lithuania’s Got Talent.
All excuses
For making mayhem
And a fast buck.

Any present will do
No matter how useless
Or banal
At times like these.
Compulsory enjoyment
Even if you’re ill.

Oh what sheep we are.
(Apologies to sheep).
We must conform
Comply
Follow fickle fashion
And hug the herd.

We may be social animals,
But woe betide anyone
Who is
Different.

“Be yourself” they say,
But do they mean it?
Course not.
The “Individual” is cursed,
Cast out
A *****.

It’s time to stand back,
See the truth
And find your inner soul.
Break the brainwash,
Defy the dictators
The Nanny State
And really,
Really
Be You.

Paul Butters

© PB 1\1\2019.

These shoes be hurtin’ me
and this top’s too sheer.
I can’t sit in this skirt.
Do you think I want men to leer?

I’ll wear my skirt long,
like the Orthodox Jews:
A high-necked top
and a pair of flat shoes.

I’ll wear sneakers with socks,
and jeans or black leather.
I’ll wear wool scarves and hats
on account of the weather.

Is it really “fashion”
or some type of mockery?
To dress women like ******
seems to me an atrocity

I don’t care what you think
of the outfit I chose.
I’m considering Islam
just for the clothes.

Venus-Intergalactico princess,
Why is Victoria keeping so many ******* secrets?
It's time to let the Gucci cats out of the Louis Vuitton iconic bag,
Sparkling Supermodel? can you walk with your hands swinging behind your back?
Legs up front!
Look left!
Look Right!
Turn around!
now you qualify for first class,

Venus-Intergalactico princess,
in your hologram eyes I see a glamorous savage,
Versace snakes to replace your long hair,
Chanel number 5 the breath you fill up in the air,
Your face made of prada is nothing but expensive art,
When you deeped your fingers into glitter and plunged right through my chest to pull out my leathered heart-
I saw an Angel with Cashmere Wings
wearing a glowing Alexander Mcqueen gown
In Jimmy Choo Shoes,
You looked like a queen with a gigantic crown.

When asked
why she did not marry
the Duke of Westminster?

Coco Chanel replied:
There have been many
"Duchesses of Westminster,"
But there is only one
Coco Chanel.

"Everyone wants to be a little anorexic" she says

"You know, like, in a glamorous way, like fashion friendly anorexic"

I bite my cheek and nod, pretend to agree

All I can think of is waking up to stars dancing on the ceiling

Pale skin with bruises of unknown origins

And battered feet on and off the scale

Almonds in Ziploc baggies

Bite marks on fingers

Hair down the drain

Measuring crunches by the marks they leave on your spine

And battered feet on and off the scale

Enough water to turn organs into boats

Eating an apple with a fork and knife

Desperate hands grasping for ribs

And battered feet on and off the scale

Standing and the world going dark

Coughing around shots of apple cider vinegar

Carrying an emergency rice cake for weak spells

And battered feet on and off the scale

Enough green tea to drown organs

Sugar free gum to mask the smell of decaying organs

Whatever nail polish covers yellow and purple

And battered feet on and off the scale

How many calories are in toothpaste

Thinspo blogs

Pillows squeezed between thighs

And battered feet on and off the scale

Is today the day my heart gives out

Waking every day in a new body

Fingers clasped around wrists

And battered feet on and off the scale

Notebooks filled with numbers

Purple crescents under eyes

Fingers clasped around forearms

And battered feet on and off the scale

Elbows knocking into hipbones

Being scared of your own reflection

Lies to get out of dinner

And battered feet on and off the scale

The stench of *****

Oxygen that tastes of Splenda

Fingers clasped around biceps

And bleeding feet on and off the scale

 

If this is your idea of glamour

Then you can have it

II Pet 1:9 coming to mind as I finished, lo, the complexity of this piece, and this:  "...lacketh these things is blind and cannot see afar off--"



(sonnet #MMMMMMMCDXCIX)


How Shakespeare's lines 'non haunt the flag's detail
As't waves to bitter winds' capricious sense
Of play, with memries of late rallies thence
In tow, as all we'd grandly strut through'd pale
Before the empty eye of hours that scale
Down what we said was living, as pretense
Leers through the smoky limelight fading hence
Where leaves pile up too thickly for aught bail.
Is't cuz I've tried 'gain to be stylish fer
What fashion and say Vogue mag swore was due,
Tae learn my peers yet scorn attempts in tour?
Cuz even when I did succeed and do
All that "they" said should be, or called too poor
What we thought tops, Death mocks as ere we knew?

07Nov18a