Facade - Prose

Facade

Like the pretty woman

Who avoided my glance

And shifted hers

To the boys at her feet

And spoke to them

To make me see

That she belongs to them

And not to me

What makes her strain in the daytime

What men has she had to beat

That she now vomits away

When I look toward her taken eyes?

All I wanted was some hope-

Men need that-

Need to be able to look

Into the sunshine of the feminine

They do it instinctively

They do it greedily sometimes

And frantically

Not for sex or some third tier need

But simply for nurturing – to remember

That there is something soft and forgiving

In this hard world of angles

So now I ask

As one turned away at the inn

When will she heal

When will she walk unencumbered

(As I am also a victim of the Mankind

That unkindly made her Its object)

When will I be allowed to gaze

Past this worthy façade

To the Face I would see beneath

Her lighted eyes

Not to persuade her to a dark corner

Away from her children

But to simply see in her

The light that is there

The light that was there

That should be allowed to shine

And would

Were it not for that time

Long ago…

Eric Marley

January 2011