Here she is, motionless
On her stretch of pavement
Switched off
Assailed by a rain of liquid desires,
A rigid Barbie.
Her hair’s a shiny nylon.
Her clothes are branded with fake signatures
Stripping life of its vital essence,
Raped by vice
And by the media.
A mess of satin mediocrity,
She flashes glances of uncertainty and lust
Her breasts heave with inorganic polymers
Her wallet is heavy with Euros.
Eyes watch her – cement eyes cementing her to sin.
She’s immobile on that pavement. `switched off.
Underneath is a little girl naive,
Embracing its padded teddy bear filled with money
To protect herself from a monstrous darkness.
The darkness of debt and despair.
She stands erect, a rigid soldier of sex
A measure of the infections of the time.
Splashes of rain and semen are equivalent in her mind.
Under the spotlight of a harsh urban curtain of
Lemon-yellow lampposts
Her skin is revealed to be as fragile as glass.
You can sense the withered petals of her thoughts.
The aging process is clinical.
Perhaps God himself is here, dressed in a green coat,
Wielding a brilliant scalpel, to eradicate and cure for ever
That implacable unattractiveness called death.
She prays that he is her knight in shining armour
With a scalpel and neurotoxins to defend her
From the ravages of time when money dries up
And she becomes the food for flies.
Poetry and drawing: Elena Caldera
Translation: Heathcote Williams
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