The Good Ship Lollipop
Christopher Barnes, UK
Mr Smuts, the window’s sponger
bubbles and squeaks
a pot-luck snack
setting a cap to his Hollywood troll.
At this snigger-scoff sanatorium
in every pane’s a motley Shirley Temple,
15 tea-gown changes all-absorbing.
Tinselly twinkle toes Morse code a slogan:
more curls, more frills, more fame.
She’s 37, a long time cramped,
each get-up’s first day at kindergarten.
Mouth-foaming, bee-bonnet drunk
she’s still a blue-joke puppet show
worth grovelling up
the shins of the ladder for.
