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Heartbreak Facades

Little cocktail girl on the stage
Spotlight on your perfection
Hiding with make up your age
Men whistle in heat for intersection

Slow, sensual, dirty saxophone in agony
Stained your lips, in blood pursed song
A song of spite in bluesy key,
Anger for he who did you wrong

Men hush up in immaculate silence
As you wish curse, and hex, and violence
Girls like you should be unbroken
You let him have it, stab him, choke him

In a lap you've moved to sit
Touch the tie, kiss the neck,
Next man! Next! Away you flit
Through lap and arms, still you trek

You put on a face for all,
These men don't hear all that sass,
He decimated you,
Left to bawl,
All they see is tits and ass

Then back to stage for tips,
No howls as silence falls,
Your heart is seen, not just hips,
Every heart breaks in your last note call

Style / type: 
Free verse
Review Request (Intensity): 
I want the raw truth, feel free to knock me on my back
Last few words: 
Did you ever wonder why those gentlemen's club girls in the past sang? Was it just the money? Or was it to tell a story? Do you think men ever truly heard it if so? Id like to think there was always at least one person who heard her crying through her act...
Editing stage: 

Comments

You have caught not just the sadness and degradation but also the courage, the will to persist and survive. And I get your own wistful compassion, that somewhere, somehow they have been truly heard.

The overall structure works well, the rhyming scheme and line lengths. There are a couple of things that bother me structurally. One is that I have a bit of a problem with poetic inversions like-
Hiding with make up your age
and
In a lap you've moved to sit
To me it feels contrived although I know it doesn't bother some people.

More of a problem for me is the inconsistencies of meter. It stumbles in places which is more important in this poem because we are brought into the musical scenario. I'm going to read it for you. Hope it helps. If not feel free to contact me or the Mentors.

On reading it aloud it scans a lot better than I thought.
https://soundcloud.com/user536630132/heartbreak-facades-by

cheers,
Jess
A new workshop on the most important element of poetry-
'Rhythm and Meter in Poetry'
https://www.neopoet.com/workshop/rhythm-and-meter-poetry

I enjoyed the two narratives carrying on at the same time throughout. I would have liked to see a more consistent line length, but that's me.
An excellent poem.

W. H. Snow

A poet is a nightingale, who sits in darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds. Percy Bysshe Shelley

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