Why are the daughters
Fatter than their mothers?
When did we reverse the ancient spread?
Enormous breasts
Were once the preserve of feeding mothers
Or elderly dowagers
In gross excess of chiffon décolletage.
Now the plumpness of ageing
Shrinks beneath the gargantuan expanse
Of generation X:
Behold the enormous bellies
The kilojoule crests
Fecund with the avoirdupois
Of take away excess.
This purposeful satiation
Has truly succeeded
In turning these unformed bodies
Into laminated Buddha’s
Waddling in tight jeans
Across the market place
Trailing their honeyed intersex.
In the shopping malls
Young boys on heat
Pout with conceit
At the shape of their purchasing power
Yet diabetes haunts their framework.
Like animals on their way to some distant slaughter
Their tiny eyes radiate fear.
The mangled hips
Anchor that crippled gaze
While the pinched sneer
Of vacuous lives lived too well
Haloes their untempered natures
Sharp and ungracious
Glossy and hard like their painted nails.
Their fairytale lives
Shall reign shorter than their parents
As the clocks reverse
And the rivers flow backwards
As sky sinks into the sea
And the dish runs away with the spoon.
O lick, O taste, O sorrow!
The young should not look so old.
Gar Jones: December 2016
Fatter than their mothers?
When did we reverse the ancient spread?
Enormous breasts
Were once the preserve of feeding mothers
Or elderly dowagers
In gross excess of chiffon décolletage.
Now the plumpness of ageing
Shrinks beneath the gargantuan expanse
Of generation X:
Behold the enormous bellies
The kilojoule crests
Fecund with the avoirdupois
Of take away excess.
This purposeful satiation
Has truly succeeded
In turning these unformed bodies
Into laminated Buddha’s
Waddling in tight jeans
Across the market place
Trailing their honeyed intersex.
In the shopping malls
Young boys on heat
Pout with conceit
At the shape of their purchasing power
Yet diabetes haunts their framework.
Like animals on their way to some distant slaughter
Their tiny eyes radiate fear.
The mangled hips
Anchor that crippled gaze
While the pinched sneer
Of vacuous lives lived too well
Haloes their untempered natures
Sharp and ungracious
Glossy and hard like their painted nails.
Their fairytale lives
Shall reign shorter than their parents
As the clocks reverse
And the rivers flow backwards
As sky sinks into the sea
And the dish runs away with the spoon.
O lick, O taste, O sorrow!
The young should not look so old.
Gar Jones: December 2016