Cuckhold
Two unsuspecting gentlemen were sitting in a room, conspicuous for its opulence and comfortable because of its color. John was reading a newspaper, contemplating the morbid style of journalistic writing, while Michael was staring intensely, as if he was in a trance, like one stares at a fire. The silence of the room gave John a potent feeling of loneliness, so he broke the quietude.
John: The problem with life is that it is so lifeless. Can't we just live? Or must we always live under the tyranny of compulsion.
Michael gave a furtive glance and proceeded to look mesmerized and emotionless.
John: What is this dreadful look? Clearly you have found a cure for the world's economic disease and have lost it?
Michael was displeased with the topic of politics and John knew this. Michael was forced to talk, to change the subject, he confessed.
Michael: I am in love! Just last month or was it longer ago? I met a woman, who I swear to the sweet Virgin Mary, whose heart beats the scarlet blood of Juliet directly into her voluptuous lips. Her brown eyes remind me of a hidden cave, containing a treasure of passion and an amulet of life. Her dainty little hands have the purity of a child's but the sensuality of a woman's. Her walk is so delicate, not even the tender blades of grass bend under her feet. Her mind is so elevated; it's as if the wings of an angel carry it. Her breasts are as fruitful as watermelons and her voice as sincere as this confession.
My only wish is to kiss her lips, caress her cheeks, and smell her long ebony colored hair. I wish to brush my nose against her nose, bury my soul into the grave of her soul, live by her not with her and even die next to her.
John: Certainly you're on to something. Women have a remarkable quality of bringing out the worst in good men. You are so moral Michael, it's charming to hear you utter words of one of life's most mortal sins; lust.
Tears came down Michael's face at hearing such detestable language.
Michael: It isn't lust! It's love. My heart melts into sweet wine and I feel drunk at every coy gesture she makes. My soul skips like a child on a summer day every time she laughs. She is nature. Nature is she. She is art expressed through the body and a body expressed by the soul, she is complete, marvelous, magnificent, delicate, fragile, and strong; she is beauty.
Michael's countenance revealed a soul drunk with dreams, no rational man would believe a word he said, but a child, with its curious mind, would stop and be enchanted with his incantations, even though a child might not understand what he was saying.
Michael: Her beauty makes Cleopatra conscious of her imperfections, her rosette cheeks make a garden of roses shrivel with jealousy, the gleam in her eyes pierce harder than the rays of the sun, her smile makes the moon feel loved, her spirit causes quarrels between all the Saints, her melancholy robs sentimentalist of their tears. She is the river of life, the ocean of life and all its force!
John: Michael you're committing the common sin of blasphemy, so common even Jesus fell to its error. Who is this demi-god you speak so reverently about?
Michael: She is mystery clothed in a brown body. She is the symbol of all mysticism, she is the sorrow painted on the Madonna's face, she is the love contained in the beatitudes of Christ, she is the obsession in Shakespeare's sonnets, she is the Beatrice of Dante's Divine Comedy; she is the blue of the ocean, the green in emeralds, the purity of pearls, the fire of the sun, the power of mother nature… O! She is so beautiful!
John: Ok! Who is she?
Michael: A married woman
At this utterance Michael's body collapsed in to the sofa he was sitting in, as if he had just been exorcised. John gave an incredulous look and grinned. He reveled in other people's misery; it was the source of his happiness. He loved seeing morality whiter away… it gave him a keens sense of reality.
Ding Dong! A doorbell rang and protruded into John's thought.
John: We aren't expecting any guests?
With avidity, John quickly fled to answer the door expecting an uninvited guest, while Michael laid listlessly dwelling. John opened the door, let out a quiet "O my Lord, " and fainted. Michael's face metamorphosed from a pallid listlessness to a fiery smile; he transformed from a Christian to a Pagan; he grew Cuckold horns…
poem by Kevin Michael Murphy
Added by Poetry Lover
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