We all know it's coming.
We just don't know when.
We drive our cars,
we speculate,
forks in hands,
we gesticulate.
Why? (Huh?)
When?
When we least expect it.
Where?
The battlefields of the beautiful.
What?
The raging war that has been coming.
The battle between
the Clinique Ladies
and the Body Shop Girls.
Why?
Why do you think?
The Body Shop Girls
hate the Clinique Ladies with a passion,
with a passion fruit,
with a cosoba melon mint,
with a tangerine ice,
with a zucchini eggplant medley
or any of the other new luxuriant lip balms
that they offer.

These girls are young,
The old ones are 18.
Cigarettes in hand,
they proliferate.
Their navel rings,
they rotate.
They hand out fake phone numbers
and never date.
These girls are bad.
Good bad.
Bad, bad.
Bouncy, flouncy and cute as steel
They are an army.
An army that takes cabs.
("Do you have an extra twoonie?")
They'll tell anyone who will listen.
"We're going to fuck up those Clinique Ladies bad".

The Clinique Ladies say nothing.
These game show nurses are calm.
Teeth - filled smiles.
White lab coats stretched taut over hungry hips.
But don't be fooled,
they are animals.
Animals that waste no energy.
After their daily two hour shifts,
they return, without incident,
to their monochromatic high rise apartments.
Even the flowers are white.
In silence,
they eat their day's food
a single, simple, elegant pear
peeled with a spoon.
The only sound that radiates
the vapourizor
that rehydrates
their skin,
their subskin
and their hearts.
They do their nails.
Nail hardener and(,) lacquered
60 coats,
100 coats,
and filed
until they're weapons.
Although they don’t say it,
they’re looking forward to
the opportunity to
rip the T-zones off
those garish half-shirt
Body Shop Girls.

The mall had been a flutter
that an incident so small
had opened the pores
a little too deep.
Apparently Body Shop's Cassandra,
the 18 year old early night manager
had cut in front of Clinique's Charlene
at the Orange Julius
and she saw red.
At the time
Charlene had smiled like a politician's wife
but now
it was payback time.
Foot Locker Ron said "something's going on."
Gape mouthed.
The referee that would not interfere.
Great minds think alike -
so do the Bargain Hunters.
A river of Bargain Hunters
crawl on their stomachs
at the first sniff of trouble.

The Body Shop Girls approach from the Eaton's wing.
Clinique from the Bay.
They sweep past The Knife Shack,
past the lotto kiosks,
past a gaggle of stylish rave culture vultures,
who slouch by in seven hundred dollar striped windbreakers.
Both groups move towards ground zero -
the food court.
Predictably the Body Shop Girls pounced
the way only 20 19 year olds
working on 18 minutes sleep,
who are in the midst of
their 15 minute lunches
can.
The Body Shop Girls wielded
the eye definers,
eyebrow powder pencil
three shades,
fold away brushes
in their overtanned hands.
Bath beads in sacks,
churning above their heads.
The right blow can break a forearm.
They are against animal cruelty
but when it comes to people...
it’s a different pamphlet.

The Clinique Ladies did not hesitate.
With advanced cream
that infiltrates the eyes
of those they hate -
The Body Shop Girls.
Their two-step plan -
clean and exfoliate.
It took three minutes.
The smells of panic,
pineapple,
piss,
fear,
and astringent
filled the food court that "2 dollar Tuesday".
And the world was moist once again.