Laced With Arsenic - Vic Gamble

These old wasted women
behind the dapple of lacehole curtains
sucking in the gossip
with perfect pulse
of piranha …...

careful Eugene
you have been seen
canoodling,
Tom-foodling
and the hot wire is buzzing
from lace to lace
in the metal grindings
of their see-saw tongues.

They slipper shuffle,
like carrion birds on a dead rat,
each vein and artery decimated,
like rancid rats on the gangrene of garbage
each gnaw is anticipated,
but it is, after all,
their private over-excitable art
of self preservation.

These wasted old ladies
with no hope for a new & healing skin,
each one at their personal station of the cross,
unsure if their Jesus
knows of their worst
& sinful sin.

...and lace flutters, whilst they,
like a butterfly still trapped,
unfocused by its
fluttering vision,
inwardly watch their own weak strength
being sapped.

Vic Gamble