TOY BOY OR NOT TOY BOY

Uma Thurman, 36, recently admitted she was on the look out for a toy boy and it seems 29-year-old Orlando Bloom could fit the bill. She said: “I know women who like to have ‘boy toys’ – and actually I could grow into that.” The Borkowski poet in residence imagines what might be going through her mind…

Oh youth, yes youth, is still on my side
but still, but still I can’t decide

whether to be sober and down to earth
with an older man or go for rebirth

in the arms of a boy who’s many years younger
Which oh which will sate my hunger?

The corrosive caresses of fast-marching time
will leave my body far from sublime

and if I’m to find any measure of joy
there are endless games I’ll have to employ

to keep me looking and feeling young.
So should he be pretty or just pretty well hung?
Adept with his body or just with his tongue?

Beauty’s a game of imagination.
It can’t be created with layers of foundation.

But must I think I’m lovely or must it just be perceived?
Is beauty a state of being deceived?

There are women in this world, and men as well,
who only age under plastic and look like hell

because their minds are not in it and so they dissolve
into a new sort of ugliness, born of lack of resolve

and yet still I come back to my difficult choice
between wisdom, beauty and finding my voice.

Can I be free and happy and have what I want
or is it the quest of an idiot savant
to get older and older and still want to flaunt

one’s memories of youth in the face of creation?
Such behaviour is rarely the key to salvation.

Oh youth, yes youth, is still on my side
but still, but still I can’t decide

whether to be sober and down to earth
with an older man or go for rebirth

in the arms of a boy who’s many years younger
Which, oh which, will sate my hunger?

In truth, the choice is out of my hands –
it’s pheromonal, it’s all about glands –

but that’s hard to admit in the public eye.
You’re doomed to obscurity if you try

in a world where the surface is all that matters
and anyone, anyone who scars or shatters

beauty’s illusion is swiftly destroyed
by a public who, like gods, are easily annoyed.