A dame walks in with an eye
for trouble and runs
it round the room.
She’s tall, like most “dames” are
and the red light behind her
illuminates her personality.
She sashays in her dress,
sashays around the room
wrapping it
in a net of perfumed filament,
preparing to pull
the purse line closed.
She plays
the pouted lips
perfectly and applies
the lipstick three times
like the apples of Hesperides.
Only one eye is seen,
the other is spying
from behind a blond waterfall
like Hera freshly bathed.
“Her name is Darling
which makes her nobody’s,
guaranteed” says the bartender
who likes blonds, but had
a bad experience with a collie
and can’t seem to get
close to a blond without a stick
in one hand. He fingers
a bat and waits for the first
sucker to buy her a drink.
The bat has Babe Ruth’s
name, and he keeps it
back there because the last
bartender did too, and he figures
it was the name of the dame
that finally got to him.
He whispers, “That’s one hot tomato,”
and the guy beside him, who
happens to know
who Babe Ruth is and never had
a bad experience with a collie
thinks it’s all great,
and maybe she is too,
“but” he says,
“I don’t like tomatoes.”
