What Ruins Many A Beauty Queen? Poem by Njousi Abang

Many beauty queens die out
Living only faint imaginings
Of their false selves to hunt
The realism of their ephemeral
Nature that hardly lasts a blue moon.

But what ruins many a beauty queen
More than false hopes and the vanity
That goes with money, merry-making and men
Who give what the hearts desire but reason protests.

What ruins many a beauty queen today
Is the incessant quest for the wind
And things that last only for as long
As the wish is fulfilled by those
Who die for the intangible.