The Receptionists

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Who are they, these bright and the beautiful,

Beaming smiles and assurance from behind

Marble top counters and oak-panelled desks?

These nameless dreamers from a dozen lands,

Polite ambition coursing through their veins,

Selling breakfast and cheap wine with

Cocquettishness and rounded accents,

Then leaving these contrived and temporary

Temples of careless, corporate indulgence

Through back doors, onto garbage-strewn lanes,

Eyes grainy in the night, cigarette in hand.


Who are they, these slight and the dutiful,

Offering charm and glamorous veneers

In starched blouses and pressed waistcoats?

These necessarily anonymous from everywhere,

Quiet disdain bleeding from their pores,

Nurturing private hopes of medicine or a

Simple hostelry by the Aegean's white sands,

And colluding in the pretence that somehow

This playground for credit-fuelled tricksters

High on coke, and the hollow promises of whores,

Offers escape from ordinary's grey-skied banality.


11th October 2018

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