Exposed on Bankside
5 May 2011 § 8 Comments
Phoney
The woman
In a tight black dress and nipped-in jacket
Tailor-made
(But not for her)
Calls a contact overseas
So stridently she scarcely needs
Her smartphone in its pink leather case;
A long-range artillery exchange
With names as targets,
Dates and times as ordnance.
She signs off, looks round
To make certain
She’s been overheard
Giving out her full plus-four-four dialling code.
Consults the papers
Tucked under one plump arm,
Makes firm, important pencillings,
Snaps the folder shut.
Another call:
Leaves a message for a minion,
Swirls her power and grip on things
Around her like a villain’s cape.
Consults her watch:
Calculates.
Flips the phone cover open
And gazes, rapt
Like a miser at his money-chest.
Then thumbs great secrets
Into the keypad:
Revealing more than she intends
In the moving of her lips.
It seems slightly unfair to single out this one person; you could fire a cannon down any street in London and be sure of hitting at least a dozen just like her.
Gonecycling 
Ah, I have seen her – there is a proliferation of them in Leeds too Nick!!
Seems she and her kind everywhere these days! The wrong people are in charge, but then again I’m not sure I’d want to work for a company run by me…
OMG…they’re everywhere…I really dislike these folks…they are new to power and thus like the nouveax riches must make a scene to prove their worth…excellent poem about them.
Thanks, Charles – the fact that she turned up while I was waiting to go into The Globe Theatre to see ‘Hamlet’ made her yammering all the more painful to listen to!
Damn, you saw me.
In truth, my circumstances and wages don’t stretch to accomodating power dressing, so I have to rely on good old mind manipulation to get what I want. My mother always told me, if you really want to be heard, lower your voice and keep it deep.
A pink mobile phone case? Really? Maybe she was a … ssshhh 😉 Excellent poem.
I couldn’t do a job where I had to dress the part (I know, I’ve tried) I’m not much good at mind manipulation either, but I do like to keep people guessing by leaving my mobile switched off in a drawer for days on end. Kind of a ‘stealth copywriter’. Glad you enjoyed the poem.
So many people let power or responsibility go to their head; so many people imagine they have both when they don’t really xx
Ain’t that the truth…I’m grateful every day that I have neither!