Mannequin peace
In the gleaming bustle of the night
Another Harley Queen takes a long, deep breath.
The day was much longer than the previous night;
It takes resolve to cool down in the last wintry air
A vague sense of relief filling her lungs.
She isn't the first or last one to quit
As the frenetic show can't endlessly go on.
The outfits and the songs and the undivine comedy:
It's all been fashionable make believe.
But even plastic dolls see through liminal lies.
Peace can one always find in a brief moment's calm;
This much she has experienced so far.
Not to mention that the boys are just as clueless
But they too breathe the cold of a budding spring night.
The street splashes by in gentle annoyance
as harrowed passers by stare almost incredulously.
She ends her last strut on semi-public display
This time a spectacle of historic hallucinations
Blending generational slop and longing for a lost future past.
The queen of the show executes the well-rehearsed moves
Huddled between a crumbling empire and an inner kingdom,
Of which she now owns a small fragmented piece.
Perhaps she never wanted to be a woman with no kin
Always haplessly on the move,
Turning down sophisticated debauchery and white snow
And yet somehow finding time for deeper sustenance.
The Harley Queen is now proudly selling her crown
to whosever will take it half-willingly.
She still hasn't met the aspiring king of her dreams
And perhaps never will, because it no longer matters
Who shall wield the power, the money and the glory.
The restless princess turned narcissistic demi-goddess
Is now but a beautiful commoner because the glossy mask
Has lost all its surrogate shine and glamour.
As the forbidden thoughts stream through half coherently
Harley Queen straightens and braces herself
Takes another knee jerking cold breath
And righteously claims her piece of new found land.
Queen for a forlorn exhausting day
The peasant girl picks a yellow public bicycle
Back to her modest semi-reclusive abode
To quietly celebrate the end of a dastardly winter
With the cool ashes of consumed anger.
Will a tall dark stranger lend her a helping hand
As she carries the old bundled skins up those winding stairs?
Whether he shows up or not, the retired manic queen
Only cares about this newly found sense of peace
That looks and feels like diamond dust.
The older retired princesses and queens,
And even some of the soul-searching men,
All implied that an anti-climax would end it all.
Once the phony fantasy and the fun have but worn out
There comes a profound sobering realisation
That this most precious sense of peace
Once thought chimerically unattainable
Always did hide crudely in plain sight.
Worth seeing
A photo of a street art mural of Harley Quinn made by Tag Lady, as captured by 'Typlan' on 10 rue des Halles in Orléans (France) in July 2024.