The Godly Smile Of Agony Poem by Herbert Nehrlich

He'd kept his eye on her,
the dominant would guard
the goings on, day in
and for the rest of time
he'd listen to the sounds
of shy erotica, personified
within a barely living thing.

As ears will always do,
fatigue takes hold,
and silence soon resumes
its unbecoming dream.

He prayed, though not to God,
the catcher of the souls
stood ready at his say
and at the crack of dawn
a moth emerged, leaving behind
a tuft of cotton wool
as living proof, for all to see.

A moth requires sustenance,
but scant and of a kind
that can be readily procured
by tiny feet and hungry insect lips.

He ate but once and vowed
to stay alexithymic, taking air
and little else, it was a strategy
to travel to the end of his own world,
to dive inside, immerse himself
though uninvitedly, and lacking shame,
it was the terror of his being turned
into a wild, obsessive dream;
if he would die, it mattered not
it was the mind inside the brain
that would be showing him the way
before the end and its inevitable decay.

He now imagined he could see
a light, aglow from the inside
of her, whose flesh was warm
and faintly pink, the smooth
inviting texture of pure silk,
lights are required to attract
all moths including those
who'd metamorphed to gain
unfair advantage of a pot of gold,
or so he thought and voiced
out loud for other moths to hear.

It took the whole of Spring
the better part of Summer
and the frosty nights of Fall
when he descended, falling free
into the light that beckoned
from the earth below, to him
invisible to all, it was his prize.

She was asleep, spread open
like a white and shiny Y,
cut from a birch upon a hill
a tuft of curly moss, it swayed
with breaths of passion's breeze
and caught his eyes, reflecting light
within a still and oval pond.

The nectar carried up to him,
and there were ghost-like hands
attached to endless arms of want
that tugged his skin, caressing
in their fragrant way chitineous flesh,
until he fell, more from a sense of lust
and with the joy of sheer abandonment
into the den that was the entrance
to the cave he had but dreamed of
all these years; it had, he now could see
not been in vain and all was right,
and beautiful, the smells and textures,
and the aphrodisic sounds, like birds.
And like a bird in Paradise he fell,
and made no move to save his skin,
he paddled only to prolong,
until his final breath took in her scent
he held it, deep inside his chest,
and died wearing the godly smile of agony.