Ouroborus Revisited

Behind a door, like any door, where anybody lives,
the subtle clues are there to find and each one dimly gives
an insight to the real self that makes up every life,
the physical reality that speaks the inner soul,
the oft unseen of everyday, a blindness running rife
to all the signs of hidden pain, just deafness hears it toll.

One plate, one knife, one fork, one spoon shout loud of loneliness,
a closet undivided speaks of lifelong emptiness,
the shades drawn tight to hail the dark within which is no rest
the stacks of books of fantasy, the world of hurts escape,
self poetry of whispered dreams that pens the conquered quest,
all waiting there to be perceived through mundane door agape.

Within a room, like any room of anybody's home,
a story that no witness sees, but she who is the tome,
unfolds in silent shadowed dim, kaleidoscope of ghosts
broken free of fettered lives which silenced their refrain,
to dance upon the tortured mind that was their jailer host
who years denied their clamoring, eschewed their rightful pain.

A maiden of just 18 years and maiden yet she was
took a step upon a path that still walks all she does
adventure colored youthful dreams and bid her take a chance
exotic journeys on a path that fate before her laid
a titillating life of fun, a stage on which to dance
attention from a multitude and so her choice was made.

Amongst her daily audience one worked to take her heart
told her of how sweet she was, intriguing was her art.
An innocent who dreamed of love, she let him turn her head
and never knew until too late that she was just a game
that he would win in anyway though she refused his bed
to wait a night of wedding bliss that never ever came.

To salvage pride and tramp her down for holding to her dream
he threw her to another man, 6 hours of whispered screams.
The wedding night she'd always planned, cheap room and dirty sheet
a man she'd never seen before, rough hands and liquored breath
forced to strip and watch his face, kneel naked at his feet
accept the pain in whimpered shame, no sound for threatened death.

Explicit terms he threw at her in harsh and gravely voice,
graphically he drew for her the only offered choice:
each act she must perform for him, a whore she must become
and look at him and beg his touch and plead to feel desire,
and every day through thirty years the shame can't be undone
her body traitor to her hate responded to the fire.

The final frame of memory a flash as if today,
crumbles walls of mortar built and rips the veil away,
and once again she's in the room, the words burned in her mind,
at freedom's door, derisive voice, hair pulled tight in his hand
"You've nothing worth the night I spent, just hours of wasted time,
a least a whore from off the street could satisfy a man."

Though reason spoke within her thoughts and said she had no blame
throughout the years her pysche lived with double bladed shame;
memory of the loathing pushed aside at pleasure's blast
disgust that she would feel a hurt from words put in her head,
her present always colored by the litany of past,
a buried fear he spoke the truth in hateful words he said.

A final step upon the path hard written by a hand
that stole what she was meant to be and left a shadowed land,
Another man reached for her heart and said he was her soul,
that they were one designed by fate each the other's care.
He gave her back her self-respect and tried to make her whole,
a year and an eternity he slayed her dragons there.

But as her womanhood began so now it also ends
the ghost of first and last entwine and all the memory blends.
The friend she took into her heart, belonging that she felt,
a closet marked now her and him, a life's mate at her side,
the answer to the prayer she made as supplicant she knelt,
told her that she bored him now and walked out with her pride.

Now on a chair in corner dim trapped deep within a mind,
each ghost once jailed behind blank walls raging through her blind,
and every ghost is all the ghosts run rampant from her past,
each memory: all memories, each pain now every pain,
the first a metamorphosis, incarnate in the last
ouroburos devouring self, infinite refrain.©
R.A.C. 11-23-99