THE SOPHISTICATES

There they sit
in their serried ranks:
the sophisticates
crunching the bones of Becket or Berlioz
or, just possibly, Brahms;
or simply elegantly loll
in carefully chosen casual pose
around the fashionably kitsch
turquoise and teal theatre cocktail lounge.

A sample: she;
curled fingers cup the bowl
of the slim obligatory champagne glass
little finger slightly angled
to underscore a point of information
gleaned from the drama section of The Times.
Her companion cites a rival critic;
her perfectly plucked and pencilled eyebrows raise
and hmm … she says, and nods, just once,
to minimise disturbance to the overall ambience
and more particularly
to her artful deliberately-distressed hair.

Points sort of made and vaguely taken,
her focus fades, drifts and shifts across
to a delicately animated tableau arranged,
as if translated from a page of Vogue,
in the far corner of the room.
She absently murmurs her need to leave,
finger flicks a curt dismissal,
crosses with practiced ease the intervening space
and smiles an introduction
and repeats her purloined party-piece
seeking renewed acclaim, applause, appreciation.

Homage paid and bored again
her serendipitous glance slinks and glides
but snags on mine, fixed and firm
and hooked to hold – all other cynical senses
in slumber mode – and all the sad derivatory
literary badinage dissolves and dies away.
My steadfast stare tells my mind:
Not for me, this iconoclastic orgy
a trivial sport for the callow and the shallow.
Not for me: I am a watcher and a maker of plays
onstage and off. Act one, I smile.

She returns my smile
and adds a stylish tease of stocking-top
silky thigh and softly shadowed white lace:
an invitation a la Sharon Stone with chic.
A second smile renews the promise.

After the last Act, the epilogue,
my fine and fancy lady:
I will take you hard against the wall
white lace lowered
and drive home my probing personal point
Again and again and again.

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Cover picture : http://www.flickr.com/photos/7911705@N07/2211141478/