[DOWNLOAD] "Introducing Irony: A Book of Poetic Short Stories and Poems" by Maxwell Bodenheim * eBook PDF Kindle ePub Free

eBook details

Title: Introducing Irony: A Book of Poetic Short Stories and Poems
Author : Maxwell Bodenheim
Release Date : January 06, 2019
Genre: Fiction & Literature,Books,Literary,Action & Adventure,
Pages : * pages
Size : 378 KB

Description

WITH crafty brooding life turned to Jack Rose

And made him heroin-peddler, and his pose

Was sullenly reflective since he feared

That life, regarding him, had merely jeered.

His vanity was small and could not call

His egoism to the dubious hall

Of fame, where average artists spend their hour.

Doubting his powers he was forced to cower

Within the shrill, damp alleys of his time,

Immersed in that brisk midnight known as crime.

He shunned the fiercely shrewd stuff that he sold

To other people, and derived a cold

Enjoyment from the writhing of their hearts.

A speechless artist, he admired the arts

Of blundering destruction, like a monk

Viewing a play that made him mildly drunk.

And so malicious and ascetic Jack

Bent to his trade with a relentless back

Until he tapped an unexpected smile—

A woman’s smile as smooth and hard as tile.

May Bulger pawned her flesh to him and gave

His heroin to her brother, with a grave

Reluctance fumbling at her painted lips.

Though angry at herself, she took the whips

Of undesired love, to quiet a boy

Who wept inanely for his favorite toy.

She hated Jack because he failed to gloss

And soften the rough surface of her loss,

His matter-of-fact frown biting at her heart.

He hated her because her smiling guess

Had robbed him of ascetic loneliness,

And when her brother died, Jack sat beside

Her grief and played a mouth-harp while she cried.

But when she raised her head and smiled at him—

A smile intensely stripped and subtly grim—

His hate felt overawed and in a trap,

And suddenly his head fell to her lap.

For some time she sat stiffly in the chair,

Then slowly raised her hand and stroked his hair.