LIPSTICK:

She daily walks dawn´s streets beneath the dew´s pearled scattered beads,

Shuffling on old slippered feet, following her small mangy mutt on his lead,

Wrapped in papery wrinkles, unseen smiles and that old stained plaid coat,

Wreathed in thin silvery hair, always humming that same unforgotten note,

Toothless, penniless, scruffy and so alone, yet she´s always carmined lipped,

Her red painted memories, not letting go of the life she had gulped and sipped.

Known once long ago as ravishing carmined harlot of the sinful down town city,

Where she made her bucks, charmed the men and where they called her pretty,

Those scarlet lips that once drank in life, love and that rough red and ready wine,

Lips that kissed with passion, the passing, sweating bodies, twisted and entwined,

Smiling at the spilt red blood upon the hot sandy arena at the torero´s brave Ole´,

The rose between her teeth, her flashing olive eyes, long gone in her lost yesterdays.

Husbands and lovers, more than one, all gone, all left at the passing of festival fun,

And lost too, aborted by the marching of time, her sad, misguided and errant sons,

Her rushing life, fiddled on the delicate strings of those past broken orchestral years,

Her only solace now, found in the empty city streets, in the lone mangy cats and curs,

No more tangos to be danced, no more fun, no more life to be gulped and gaily sipped,

But clinging on to hope, this little old lady still smiles with her red and carmined lips.