Chaos to Couture

Hello, are you there?

I'm waiting, standing

in the middle of a room

surrounded by mannequins

with orange hair wearing slashed cotton

reattached with safety pins,

and Patti Smith's Horses is playing

and the lights have dimmed

to reveal, written in washable marker 

on the esteemed walls - 

the kind of marker you were allowed

to use as a kid just in case you wrote

on yourself, on the floor, on your bed -

a specter of a revolution, it read,

"Punk is about revolting," 

and I ditched a pink stilleto,

"revolting against a society"

and I stretched my toes,

"against a society that doesn't"

and the security guard eyed me, 

"a society that doesn't think you deserve,"

and told me to put my shoes back on
"doesn't think you deserve a revolution,"
and I walked into a long hallway where

placed on pedestals were row upon row

of the now quintessential little black dresses

claiming to be the beginning of retro,

and I stretched onto the balls of my feet

and extended myself through the space

until under duress,

I sat in the silence and

placed one shoe back on, and then another,

and bathed in the fading glow

of a an era that had once decreed its independence,
but was now being declared useless

and ending its revolt.