Pacoima

Three Mika Buttons

One Cup of Cash for Charity

Two Battered Medicine Drops

Aqua Net Hairspray

Lots of Dye

Nostalgia from when I believed Beauty Mattered

It doesn’t, though it may help

Two Orange

One Red

One Purple

Various Blacks for Nails and Lips

A Frog and Tortoise

Two Proper Frogs

A Little Empty Pink Box- Perfect

The Tile Floor is Cold

I Remember When I Climbed up Into the Sink

And Scratched at my Reflection

And Sobbed and Sang

It was my only Stage then

I have been provanity since I was TEN

Or Earlier-

Give or Take a decade of decency and depravity

And there’s all your goddamn Shells

Both real and false-

False may be better for your purposes of hollow sweets

Yet the grit from the sand is what we need

I am that sand now

And I’m more beautiful than plastic bubbles

To think I used to give a damn.

TEN-

That’s just sick.