Painted Lady

Marble sculpture bathed in liquid bronze;

The art of every generation

All with the same, chronic fixation

To be polished, to be new.

 

Course skin crumbles where the brush blends

And down the valleys of her face,

Drifting by are painted flakes

Falling, light as snow.

 

She shakes her winter coat,

And shifts the powder with her hand,

So dust will settle upon the land

And then to dust she can return.

 

Lips too taught for breath to pass

Are bitten and licked,

Parted fast, and slicked,

Coloured red to reel them in.

 

She glides along the waterline

Armed with something sharp and black

And then she curls the lashes back

To flutter, like butterfly wings.

 

Her eyes lie soft within her mask.

They widen, she simpers, and asks;

“You like me better bare, uncovered?”

She shakes her head, tips foreword, laughs;

“You like me better painted, smothered.”

Author's Note

Hey guys :) I wrote this poem in the last hour, so I doubt that this will be the final draft of it! Let me know what you think.

Reviews

[The Rock And Roll Cowbo..]

I like the message this delivers… how hard we sometimes try to please others, when in reality we should do what pleases us and let people love us for who we are. All that glitz and glamour is a cry of low self esteem created by the medias ideals of what we should look like.

[H McG]

Thank you :) yes this is the message I was trying to get across with this poem. Sometimes we are 'smothered' by the superficiality of society.

[The Rock And Roll Cowboy(REBEL WITH A CAUSE)]

Yes we certainly are, we become media Zombies when they infect us with their ideals.

[willweb]

Love yourself as you are and others will soon follow your lead and if they don't you didn't need them anyway. This was wonderful. I really enjoyed this today.

[H McG]

Thanks very much :)

[ksscampos]

One must be comfortable in their own skin. She is beautiful even without the make up.

[H McG]

Yes, exactly. This is the mentality that our materialist society tries to eradicate. Thanks for the comment.

[Adreamer's Bluejay]

I really like this piece, it describes so many people in today's world without being all that obvious. I mean it is obvious, but from reading this piece, it truly sounds like you are describing a work of art (which you are, people are art, each beautiful and famous in their own way) but more than that, traditional paintings, sculptures, things in museums even after the end of the world's ends. I love the beauty in this piece and the perfection of every word. Amazingly penned.

[H McG]

Thank you very much for this lovely comment. I'm glad you like the piece, and it is true that we are all art in our own way.

[MomzillaNC]

A very pointed set of lines and commentary on our cultural obsession with masks of created beauty. Between the paint and the plastic surgery created beauty is the only thing our society seems able to see these days. By the time plastic surgeons have deleted all the differences, and the paint of makeup has been veneered on, all that's left is the mask. It begs the questions: does the original even still exist?

[H McG]

Eloquently put. It is true that, to some extent, these materialist obsessions dehumanise us. And thank you for your comment :)

[MomzillaNC]

You're welcome.

[Glorwen Helyanwe]

Wow. I love this. She knows that she is only considered beautiful because of all her cosmetics, even though that isn't how it should be. She wears it like a mask, as she says that "You like me better painted, smothered.”

[H McG]

Thank you very much for your comment. And yes, it's sad how women cannot be seen as beautiful anymore without all the cosmetics.