DMV Envy

Oddly ugly people I see
Hoi polloi at the DMV
Bored, impatient citizenry
waiting in line ahead of me

We get numbers, then wait some more
We’re pacing—pacing on the floor
and standing, sitting—what a bore!
Oh, to be done and out the door!

A sleeping woman by my side
is a prune all wrinkled and dried
She looks as if she might have died
except her lungs push out her hide

Perhaps forty, or younger yet,
her beauty’s flying like a jet
It looks as if she’s lost a bet
and Father Time’s called in her debt

Above her cheek’s a gruesome mole
she looks like tanning’s done its toll
and too much drugs and rock and roll
have turned a princess to a troll

She smells of smoke and cheap perfume
Beneath her eyes are bags of gloom.
Her bleached hair looks like a vacuum
has sucked it to a frenzied doom.

I sit and wonder of her life
Was it sordid or was it rife?
Had she some joy or only strife?
Has she children? Was she a wife?

An hour has gone by of my time
but I grin when I think that I’m
inspired as I write this rhyme
by a woman way past her prime

I’ve things to do, places to go
but my time drags just way too slow
but, for her, time’s unceasing flow
ages her fast and is her foe.

I’m going crazy waiting here
watching that woman sitting near
I’m dying from this crowded drear
She will not even lend an ear!

Wait…she is waking up I see
She stands!...and walks away from me?
Ah…her number’s called, she’ll soon be free
from this dreary DMV

Then I look down and am aghast…
I won’t be gone from here so fast—
I stoop and frown and feel downcast
because –my number is long passed!

I came before that sleeping dead
and realize late, with utmost dread,
that now she is far, far ahead
She’ll be free, I’ll be here instead!

Oh…it is really quite unfair
I missed my number calling there
Because I couldn’t help but stare
At a withered wench in the next chair!