"I want the real you" she cried
He hesitated and said " I can't"
She insisted,"its the only way, I can't take you otherwise"
then he looked on to her daring eyes and did what she asked.
He poured his messy soul in a cup.
He mixed loyalty later with betrayal, his big dreams with his dark past, his honesty in denial, his tenderness with indifference , his boldness with resistance, his shame with arrogance, forever with an end and eternity in breakups.
Then he gave her the glass of his bare heart with shaking hand saying "its blend of bittersweet, you won't like it"
but She looked up to him with "I love all of you" smirk. And taken aback by the aroma she eagerly wanted to drink
Your love
was a warm, yellow light
shining through white windows
of a green cabin
as I stood alone
at dusk
in the black forest
of my loneliness.
My body ached from weariness
my soul cried out for comfort
I entered
I thought that smiling mask . . .
that lovely smiling mask . . .
was you.
I asked for food
you gave me dried bones on a wooden platter.
There are millions of inventions
by man
and still it goes on.
All have had and still have
a single purpose:
to make a better and easier life
for humans on this planet.
But shoes ...
the invention of the shoe was an earl one.
This damning invention -
with its tenderness,
seduced human feet so much
as to make us not to feel the craving
for fervent kisses of the earth:
the first human betrayal of land.
Millions of other betrayals came later
You have freed me--
In opening wide the doors
Of flesh
You have freed me
Of the binding leash.
I have climbed the heights
Of white disaster
My body screaming
In the silver crash of passion ...
Before you gave yourself
To him
I had chained myself
For you.
But when at last
You lowered your proud flag
In surrender complete
This door you might not open, and you did;
So enter now, and see for what slight thing
You are betrayed. . . . Here is no treasure hid,
No cauldron, no clear crystal mirroring
The sought-for truth, no heads of women slain
For greed like yours, no writhings of distress,
But only what you see. . . . Look yet again--
An empty room, cobwebbed and comfortless.
Yet this alone out of my life I kept
Unto myself, lest any know me quite;
And you did so profane me when you crept
Unto the threshold of this room to-night
That I must never more behold your face.
This now is yours. I seek another place.
Henry got me with child,
Knowing that I could not bring forth life
Without losing my own.
In my youth therefore I entered the portals of dust.
Traveler, it is believed in the village where I lived
That Henry loved me with a husband’s love
But I proclaim from the dust
That he slew me to gratify his hatred.
I spent my money trying to elect you Mayor
A. D. Blood.
I lavished my admiration upon you,
You were to my mind the almost perfect man.
You devoured my personality,
And the idealism of my youth,
And the strength of a high-souled fealty.
And all my hopes for the world,
And all my beliefs in Truth,
Were smelted up in the blinding heat
Of my devotion to you,
And molded into your image.
And then when I found what you were:
That your soul was small
And your words were false
As your blue-white porcelain teeth,
It never came into my mind
Until I was ready to die
That Jenny had loved me to death, with malice of heart.
For I was seventy, she was thirty—five,
And I wore myself to a shadow trying to husband
Jenny, rosy Jenny full of the ardor of life.
For all my wisdom and grace of mind
Gave her no delight at all, in very truth,
But ever and anon she spoke of the giant strength
Of Willard Shafer, and of his wonderful feat
Of lifting a traction engine out of the ditch
One time at Georgie Kirby’s.
So Jenny inherited my fortune and married Willard—
That mount of brawn! That clownish soul!
At first I suspected something—
She acted so calm and absent-minded.
And one day I heard the back door shut
As I entered the front, and I saw him slink
Back of the smokehouse into the lot
And run across the field.
And I meant to kill him on sight.
But that day, walking near Fourth Bridge
Without a stick or a stone at hand,
All of a sudden I saw him standing
Scared to death, holding his rabbits,
And all I could say was, “Don’t, Don’t, Don’t,”
As he aimed and fired at my heart.
I was well known and much beloved
And rich, as fortunes are reckoned
In Spoon River, where I had lived and worked.
That was the home for me,
Though all my children had flown afar—
Which is the way of Nature—all but one.
The boy, who was the baby, stayed at home,
To be my help in my failing years
And the solace of his mother.
But I grew weaker, as he grew stronger,
And he quarreled with me about the business,
And his wife said I was a hindrance to it;
And he won his mother to see as he did,
Till they tore me up to be transplanted
With them to her girlhood home in Missouri.
And so much of my fortune was gone at last,
Now God between us and all harm,
For I to-night have seen
A banshee in the shadow pass
Along the dark boreen.
And as she went she keened and cried
And combed her long white hair,
She stopped at Molly Reilly's door,
And sobbed till midnight there.
And is it for himself she moans,
Who is so far away ?
Or is it Molly Reilly's death
She cries until the day ?
Now Molly thinks her man is gone
A sailor lad to be ;
She puts a candle at her door
Each night for him to see.
Hollow rang the house when I knocked on the door,
And I lingered on the threshold with my hand
Upraised to knock and knock once more:
Listening for the sound of her feet across the floor,
Hollow re-echoed my heart.
The low-hung lamps stretched down the road
With shadows drifting underneath,
With a music of soft, melodious feet
Quickening my hope as I hastened to meet
The low-hung light of her eyes.
The golden lamps down the street went out,
The last car trailed the night behind;
And I in the darkness wandered about
With a flutter of hope and of dark-shut doubt
In the dying lamp of my love.
Two brown ponies trotting slowly