Femme Fatale

A sprinter and a model girl were dawdling over dinner;

The athlete nagged the odalisque for trying to get thinner.

He told her (as he shovelled down potatoes, beef and pasta)

She was living on amphetamines and smoking like a Rasta;

That pills and Scotch and cigarettes were kippering her guts,

And making her hysterical like All Those Other Sluts

And worst of all, the racehorse hissed (without a trace of pity),

She’d abused her constitution till she wasn’t even pretty!

She ate an olive; sipped some gin; with dignity arose;

Swayed off into the ladies; stuck some powder up her nose;

Emerged, all eyes upon her smile so radiant and so smooth,

Saw the three private bailiffs round the athlete in his booth,

Sent by a former squeeze, whose mother’s ring she’d nicked, to dun her:

So while they broke the runner’s leg, the stunner done a runner.

Late 1990s (not written for publication)