Lying Eyes

By: Shawn Lee McPherson

Shades of blue and gray swirled together as one
Kissing
BROKEN UP
As narrow streaks of yellow fight to escape seductive black holes
I saw things
I wanted to see them
Blues and grays caressing the other
An ancient form of dance
A slight glimmer illuminating her face
An absent hint of smile
Strength shown through from a place deep within her soul… it changed
I saw what was truly there
A mask
Fear sank its crooked talons into my flesh
My body shivered
I had seen truth…
I had seen honesty…
I had seen an aura of mystery
It now had me prisoner in its horror
It stole my breath
For the first time I saw the lie
The illusion.
Blues no longer danced
They fought to stay alive
Grays no longer held the blues
They pushed them into the yellow flames of the black abyss
My soul was caught and drawn deeper
For the first time I saw pain…
Fear…
I felt helpless
Scared, I looked deeper
Things I had never dreamed within her reached for me in dieing desperation
I sank deeper into its grasp
I felt like I was falling
It was my first true glimpse at the heart of her soul
Weakness…
Confusion…
Helplessness…
She was drowning in a pool of misery trying to save others around her
Not herself
I reached for her
I couldn’t reach
My eyes closed and slowly opened
She smiled
It was gone
No more pain
No more weakness
Only the mask

Authors note:

I’m not super connected to the poetry I write. I don’t mean to say that as if there is a major disconnect between me and the finished work. When I write poetry I would say a hard 95% of the time I am searching for an image to paint in words. While the other 5% of the time is me witnessing something that can best be described with less then it could be done with more. With a poem you are creating a image for the reader. It doesn’t have the luxury of being a novel where you can bond your subject to the reader with a long developed relationship. In a poem it is a short vivid, here you are. When I write poetry and prose I create it and I move on. I am there for a moment and then I move to the next. I don’t have an idea that haunts me with poetry. My ideas are stored with thousands of others just like it. If I don’t have something to say, I can visit them and spark something from it. When I close the file, I have moved on. 

I’ll explore this in future posts, but as for this poem, this is to me the first. It is not the true first, but this is the oldest I’ve kept. Everything before it is gone. This is from 1995 and it is the first poem I transcribed into the first Composition book I started for my poetry. There is no sequential order after this one, and this isn’t my best poem, but it again, was my first worth keeping.