The Cruellest Month

Closet Follies

I am a horse. I am a dummy,
I am lost in the closet:

while seeing myself
as certainly cerebral,
cultivating culture
(a string
of improving pearls)

I confess that I
am rudely obsessed
with old threads.

My wardrobe is a riot,
a crowd of cotton,
an army of sleeves
a parade of skirts.
Endless hanged selves
with their shoes on the shelves.

My red mouth makes
a satisfied smile
over red boots laced
up my thighs.

Nothing rhymes with orange
better than black.
I am a synthetic tiger
with a jacket on my back

and my very own
pilfered
brand-new leopard-skin
pillbox hat.

Yellow paisley spirals
down my butterfly sleeves
while a small embroidered sun
falls and rises on my breast.

Glass beads on grass green
silk, my most expensive skirt
swishes in sexy eights,
musically with each step.

I sing the blues in minor keys,
denuded, my bare arse cold
on marble stairs. Nude in blue,
so many clothes and nothing to wear.

Navy shift over indigo knickers,
violet lace and mauve nylon,
lavender, aubergene, plum,
all my heliotropic frustrations.

A clash of colours on the rack,
a dearth of white and acres of black.
Time and money put on my back.
Garments to cover whatever I lack.

I confess, I am obsessed
with buying vintage dresses,
retro skirts, preloved pants,
clothes that once were fit to other lives.

I am a dummy, I am a horse,
and hiding my pain in the closet.



April 1—personal folly (something really stupid or silly you can admit to in a poem)


This poem, I know, does not exactly fit the above prompt. An obsession with clothing purchases is probably neither really stupid nor silly - it's more, um, typical? stereotypical? classic? superficial, common, ordinary? But it's my folly, this need to buy clothes that I don't need. But this is where the prompt took me, this is what I produced. Thanks for visiting,