Jack Rose by Maxwell Bodenheim — Read

/ 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.