Femme Fatale`

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  • Mother

    Poem Commentary

    Dedicated to my mother, who was once dubbed the Jean Harlow of fifth period English, and to the Blue Angel (Dietrich the guardian), Matahari (the recognized and accused Garbo in all of us), and to all other industrial strength women who have inspired me, legendary and otherwise. Also, a special thanks to those men who have helped develop, and continue to promote, and indulge in the “Illusion of Power” clause, for without it there would never be a man with enough guts to kiss any one of them.

    Femme Fatale`

     

    Salome,

    (The original Femme Fatal)

    Lets fly seven silken and softly deadly veils

    From the hands of this also comes “The Kiss”.

    Few are immune to its vice.

    Not even the draped damask Roser of beads

    Can completely throw off it's clawing, and yet caressing, grip.

    It is the self-indulgent smile of the Mona Lisa,

    The name of a chant,

    to the mirror on the wall, of the infamous step mother,of white driven purity,

    A message tattooed on the owner’s obsessive I,

    A thin marbled vein of conceit in the Master’s perfect statue,

    An alchemical spell of poisonous pheromone perfume,

    Composed of the mixed crushed flower Narcissus

    And a reflective pool of tears from a rejected Echo.

    It is as hard to catch and cork

    as the escaped bubbles of a flat champagne Full of flattering phrases.

    Once released, as Ms. Eden from her genie bottle,

    It consumes the humble devotee

    as a flash fire devours the purest breathing.

     

    It flies, this sheer and flimsy veil, down to the depth of Hades.

    A journey that is only skin deep.

     

    ***

     

    Like a slim Erte` She carouses in the corner of the eye.

    Just that same place where the sliver of thine is

    Looking through the knothole in the bored of her own.

    She is the vision of the original sin of her gender.

     

    Mistress of the coffee shop hop,

    She smokes her cigarettes like a classic black and white,

    Crushes souls with her stiletto’s

    When she puts her coffin spikes out.

     

    Sits at dinner parties,

    Spouting out of demolition red lips,

    Orders a round of molitov cocktails

    (From a weak-wristed waiter)

    For which she is dutifully unwilling to pay.

     

    Shatters hearts like Vitrified Waterford,

    And never quite licks the plate clean,

    Just to prove she can afford to waste

    Her taste on even the finest china.

     

    From the spitted and caustic accusations of gossip

    (Whether other’s or her own),

    She uses her stigmata

    To hang her wide collection of piercing paraphernalia,

    And declares mere earrings a passe` fancy.

     

    She is fashionably late when arriving on time.

    She often claims the bell tolls for her alone,

    To signify, she assures us, her awaking from beauty sleep.

     

    Burning Steinham like a bra,

    Dripping, dipped in her own intuitive mystique,

    She plays “Woman” as a leading role.

     

    She is everything from the ice carved matriarch,

    To the frailest frigid snowflake lace,

    A snapshot of a fractal

    A tamed tessera tiger.

     

    She is as impenetrable as the sides of a faceted stone,

    Bludgeoning faces with one sharpened and cutting glance.

     

    She looks as clear to the uneducated eye

    As a still summer spring,

    Caged in the gilt gold of a diamond ring

    Concealing class five mountain capped rapids beneath.

     

    Her distilled fuller bodied flavor

    lent by the darker depths of a Minotaur’s Maze.

    She catacombs her woven net of concubine snare,

    While tangled languid labyrinths of ghosts

    Plague and haunt the silent solo sax of her world weary soul,

    She is singing her siren song,

    Within her,

    There in the sacred subterranean caverns.

    Her body is a plucked string,

    An instrument,

    A musical thing.

    She is,

    The taunt intensive note busting free of the ensemble.

     

    Her Truth

    Is like her veils,

    An onion

    Peeled back in the thinnest filmy layers,

    To reveal a liquid salty ocean

    Beyond sonic depth

    Of blue neon tears.

     

    An expressionist,

    She searches frantically for her favorite pair of under wear,

    Gypsy dervish.

    Stark Naked,

    She cannot find her Self,

     

    Still

     

    She is most certainly the master of someone’s fate….

    Poem Comments

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    ginga commented on Femme Fatale`

    01-25-2011

    shallene, you certainly have the FF pegged, and in wonderful metaphhors and vivd imagery. I thoroughly enjoyed this one. ginga

    Rhymer commented on Femme Fatale`

    01-21-2011

    The temptress, one of the best pieces I have read on this site. Excellent piece and staright into my favs.

    shallenemcgrath

    01/21/2011

    Tempting without trying.

    HarverTomsson commented on Femme Fatale`

    01-20-2011

    I would either succomb to vapid flattery, or bore you with what you already know, but several of these lines are in a word "brilliant", luminous with poetic conceit. I understand why it took awhiile to get another write out of the starting blocks. Harv

    shallenemcgrath

    01/21/2011

    Awww. We need our flattery here -don't we? Everyone has to get their strokes... its a good thing :-)

    Chaos128 commented on Femme Fatale`

    01-20-2011

    "She burned too bright to live long". There is nothing purer or more honest (to my unconventional eye) than an unashamed fascination of one's own uniqueness. Jean Harlow was marketed (within the limits of the time) as the virtual incarnation of carnal desire softened by an artfully coy naiveté that brought her just short of the image of a woman beyond redemption. A masterful portrayal that couldn’t have been manufactured by anyone other than herself. A masterful account/imagining, Sha, underwritten by true understanding : )

    shallenemcgrath

    01/20/2011

    Thank you sooo much Chaos! Your comment is greatly appreciated.

    HarverTomsson commented on Femme Fatale`

    01-20-2011

    Just look for the woman with her scant knickers in a perpetual twist, . . . . cause she put them on that way while brooding over whose neck to wrench next. Devilishly entertaining write about the decline of self-actualizing feminine culture. Hers was self-absorbed, after all. Harv

    shallenemcgrath

    01/20/2011

    You wicked man... I'm glad you found this entertaining. :-)

    In science one tries to tell people, in such a way as to be understood by everyone, something that no one ever knew before. But in poetry, it's the exact opposite.

    Franz Kafka (1883-1924) Czech writer.

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