Christina Sestina

I wrote a Sestina
I called it Christina
She works in a chain store
A specialist dreamer
She is superior
On the exterior
Her nails her attitude
Make me inferior
The man from the label
Need acts for the stable
With tip-off in place he
Gets her round the table
Knocks opportunity
Plucks from obscurity
Promises fame and
Financial security
He rents drum kits guitars
Buys her pink neon bras
With 10 percent money
Keeps her plastered in bars
He gropes in the toilet
He writes out tonight’s set
He powders her nose while
She asks “what do I get?”
He presses record as
He barks out the orders
A 3 minute single
With pin badge disorder
Her face on the front page
With free flexi-disc rage
She’s waved about wholesale
The queen of the new wave
The journos all clamber
For snippets of anger
They act all much worse when
They put down their cameras
She’s not being funny
But “where’s all the money?”
She’s the animal tester
A punk playboy bunny
The toll takes its firm grip
Each motorway night sick
She’s cooking up backstage
As long as he sees fit
Equality vacuum
Sucks out in the green room
Where pin ups are pinned up
And torn down with “fuck yous”
Economy as art
Was there from the start
Will stay for the encore
And till death do us part

Rest in Power
Pete Shelley