Made In Hell
Her face was one-way glass
blank-innocent as a child's mirror,
her baby-blues welling soft,
winking not revealing
the opposite who watched
from the other side. She made her play
in a liar's crimson night where rain
greased the sidewalk smearing neon light
on the moon-hidden passage she shaded in her wait,
cigarette drooping smoke like San Francisco fog
above her golden gate.
His eyes matched her lipstick, hard as bathtub gin,
clear and extinguished as only eyes can be
that have seen the life go dead too many times,
suckered by patriotic chords that march
the rotting feet of war with tunes
suitable to aim your bullets by.
All that was over now
or always here to stay; a grin
is only smoke
curling in the shadow
of a tipped fedora's brim.
The kiss was never meant to be a trap,
but it snapped her leg and crippled him for life
neither able to ever run again, tangled in
booze and the dicey bed spread with ice-cold aces
and eights. And when the children came
they never could make the change;
just learned they had to
pretend to be
someone else.
June 2023
posted for I Wake Up Screaming
Images: Still from Secret Beyond The Door, 1947 Public Domain
Manipulated photo dated 3-7-1949 from personal collection ©joyannjones
