SELFIE

SELFIE

She’s pouting alright

This pale-skinned woman who might look her age

I cannot tell, I’m just the selfie.

I have no judgement

Just reflect who she might be

With the right light

The right angle

The right life.

You might look in her eyes

But you’ll find nothing there

Just squashed down emotion

Eaten, smoked, drunk

Distracted by drama

Talked over with laughter

Bottled up

Like shame at a wedding.

You could kiss her neck

She’d close her eyes

And in that moment she’d be closer

Much, much closer to me.

Look deeper, look in

Do you dare?

To see her bare

Naked skin

A red raw bleeding weeping woman

With foundation smoothing off her edges

Eyeshadow brightened eyes

Lengthened lashes

Full lips reddened pinker

Than her beating heart.

She smiles, that’s true

But not for you.

And to show my poem's flaws up (!!) I also want to share Plath's poem Mirror. The 1950s selfie xx

Mirror

I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions.
What ever you see I swallow immediately
Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike.
I am not cruel, only truthful---
The eye of a little god, four-cornered.
Most of the time I meditate on the opposite wall.
It is pink, with speckles. I have looked at it so long
I think it is a part of my heart. But it flickers.
Faces and darkness separate us over and over.
Now I am a lake. A woman bends over me,
Searching my reaches for what she really is.
Then she turns to those liars, the candles or the moon.
I see her back, and reflect it faithfully.
She rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands.
I am important to her. She comes and goes.
Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness.
In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman
Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish.