The Utter Failure Poem by Fred Davis Chappell

What's left of her hair
Spears out in green and orange spikes;
Her eyes, a snowman's anthracite,
Look upon us with a stare
So hard we're forced to think that she dislikes
The lot of us, eager to fight
With nail and tooth
Our flabby images of untruth.

Her furious tattoos,
Those Jolly Rogers and daggered hearts,
Bleeding roses and poison darts,
Her fingernails in various hues
Of pretended harlotry,
Are manifestos meant to address
And put to exquisite duress
Her misguided family.

She's punctured her head with painful holes
In fervid hopes to shock our souls,
And yet she looks merely as grubby
As some punk baroness and her hubby
At Epsom Downs or Ascot.
Cousin Lena's proud ambition
Was to shame us of our condition,
But there she sits, our cute mascot.