Alias Miss Smith (Or Sometimes Jones) (Poetry)

She was the girl with green stockings
who slept with the whole crew for free
call her Gina or Josie or Julie
when she lived half her life on TV

She hardly woke up for a moment
She dreamed she was princess Louise
and she launched a cool advert for legwear
while the fashion world fell to its knees

How the magazines fought for her photo
and the bidding was keen for her past —
a biography hyped to sheer fiction
though she feared that such fame couldn’t last

She had silk, she had mink, she had diamonds
and yet nothing that had any worth
party drugs kept her high for a season
then she plummeted cold back to earth

Once again she was in all the headlines —
her image declared a disgrace
how they jeered in the editor’s office
now her stockings hung wrecked as her face

And they called her a hasbeen at thirty —
a washout — the world had moved on
and the use-by for sex and bright legwear
had expired , plus the money’s long-gone

So she sits in her make-ends-meet bedsit
and broods over cuttings of fame
she was known as the girl with green stockings
although no one remembers her name