Street Scenes II
Make way for the mummy brigade because they're out in force tonight.
Lycra thighs are blazing up the sidewalk chafing and grinding,
like pistons moving cars along the highway.
Champagne and white lines are shared-
at little bars out of sight -
because K Road is hosting your husband for the night;
and the take-home ribbon for best in show goes to you,
because you're walking with the posh dogs, now.
You have an eyeful of reproach especially for me,
because I am a stranger to the streets of tailored suits,
and spray on tans, and because I am weary.
I'm stuck on a joy ride between hope and a jungle of red brick homes as you hawk eye me down turned-up nose,
and kids in their trendiest clothes are siting and staring into their phones;
on their way to see their favourite band playing up on Ponsonby Road.
And the folks in blue and grey are back again.
Blonde beauties line the windows of smart cafes,
and everything is fine, and strange, and finite and artful
because you are elegance defined
and I am a just charmless vagabond, you suppose.
It isn't hard to imagine how the other-half must see me,
from behind latte bowls through the window.
Smoking butts are smouldering stubbed, and I keep my arms folded,
feeling scorned and snubbed; and I shrink off someplace
where the violets grow