My Pain For Your Enjoyment

The scream was the woman;
A gibbering creature from beneath the warped waves
Of the Atlantic or was it the Indian?
Whatever waters sprung her bounds, her gills rejected her.
Her chipped, chewed-on nails pulled,
Pulled in feverish intensity at her glossy hair.
Her eyes shed tears, that her face seemed not to recognise,
Her lips in a grimace, that her pain filled eyes seemed not to understand.
She struggled through the throng;
A shuffle, a crawl in the faded light.
Mutterings and spittle fell from gnashing teeth
Like torn petals of decayed roses.
Mud-stained breast stared in depressed feeling
at the shadow shaped by the sun's last glimmer
Before the stars turn their twinkling gaze on night.
She gibbered, she tittered then she laughed.
She laughed hard, her loose stomach swinging merrily in reply.
She walked forward to the glass window and stopped.
She peered into the reflection and admired the red gown.
She patted her glossy hair, her grimace, her lazy breasts and flattened stomach.
She pirouetted, she twirled then she flew away
Into the gas lamp, lit for P.T. Barnum's encore.
What an applause! The audience, agog;
A mermaid that flew! What a feat!