70spoems/social*

THE SOCIAL POET

She wears her art
like a gaudy red
dimestore ring.
Downtown over cocktails
it adds the just right touch
of social acceptability,
no passion to risk.
Her perfectly painted
cultivated grace
her image always in tact,
her myth
the flawless illusion,
unmarred by gray tracked
strain.
Her wrists unscarred,
no suicide art
her poem,
in time she’ll read
Redbook and eat
cheap chocolates.

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