Drog

Jackie was a popular seventies/eighties comic aimed at teenage girls which included amongst other things, comic strip stories of made up of photographs.

Drog

She is a drog

a term she has coined for herself

since she appears to not fit within any other -

not a punk, a skin, or mod,

heaven forbid a rocker.

Not new wave

or even old wave.

She is grey -

nondescript,

homogenous,

androgynous.

An entity of angst and insecurity

that exhibits itself

in sullen silence

and a tangible shield

of static.

She seeks knowledge, wisdom, solace -

not from some great diety

since no church exists within her house

but instead

between the glossy covers of a teenage magazine.

Flicking through the leaves

she finds what could be answers

played out in imaginary lives –

staged kodak moments

mimicking friendship and betrayal

love found

then lost

then found again.

Mental notes are made

of what to say

if ever placed in such a drama.

Attention is paid - closely - to hair and clothes.

A different code from the weekday blue and black (not her choice but one of council catchment) that defines her anonymity.

And so at first she compares,

then contemplates,

that which remains thus far

unimagined,

unphotographed,

undocumented,

unwritten –

a blank comic strip.

How she will fill it?