“Take Me, or Not” by Danil Rudoy is a 48-line rhymed poem from Love Is Poetry, dated June and November 2019. It moves through humiliation, endurance, self-reproach, regained agency and a final vision of wisdom as the basis of human completeness.
Take Me, or Not
When in doubt, be present and flirt.
Never mind how much you got hurt.
They will say you’re nothing but dirt,
Ugly trousers with a bad shirt,
Just a beggar on the road curb,
In the thoughts of others, a blurb
Misdirected by a straight verb:
“Stay away, and don’t you disturb.
We have everything that you lack,
What a show, to see your heart crack!”
I was there, in the last lane,
Going deaf, and numb, and insane.
I composed, and they did not deign;
I forgave, they caused me more pain.
What was I if not a darn fool,
Doing time in the profane school,
Saying “sorry” to my best self,
Crying over all the lost wealth?
Still, I tempered under attack:
Well enough to never look back.
End the hour
Of your torture,
Start an endless day.
Where’s your power?
Where’s your fortune?
Just a step away.
Take me or not,
I am taking a bow
In the shine of my soul,
Mesmeric and hot.
I played the infamous role
Until the end, and now
I know every time I was wrong.
Take me or not,
I am taking a bow
At the edge of my sins.
I’ve finished the plot,
I know what loses or wins
In games of life, and now
I am back to where I belong.
Wisdom’s sweeter than profit
And too rich to deplete.
Gods have made you a human,
Now you know what they mean.
Let the conquered acumen
Guide your spirit serene:
Only then life is worth it,
Only then you’re complete.
June, November 2019
Self-worth and return
The poem begins inside a hostile social gaze: the speaker imagines contempt, exclusion and the spectacle of a wounded heart. Its second movement turns that pressure inward through memory and self-reproach. The later refrain “Take me or not” marks a recovered position from which acceptance no longer determines the speaker’s value.
The closing movement gives that recovery an ethical vocabulary. Wisdom, acumen, spirit and completeness replace the earlier language of humiliation. The poem’s arc therefore joins emotional survival with a demanding form of self-knowledge.
Critical reading
A detailed critical reading of “Take Me, or Not” on Prose & Poetry examines self-worth, social judgment, repetition, refrain, agency, wisdom and the poem’s movement from humiliation toward self-possession.
Related reading
Continue with Recurrent Pattern, The Endless Day, and the wider English poems by Danil Rudoy.
Text and citation
Copyright © Danil Rudoy. The poem is published here as the author’s canonical text. Short excerpts may be quoted for criticism, scholarship, teaching and literary discussion with attribution to Danil Rudoy and a link to this page. Full reproduction requires separate permission.