POETS UNITED - PREDATOR & PREY

“Whatever deceives men seems to produce a magical enchantment.” - Plato

For this Mid-Week Motif, Poets United has set the theme of “Predator and Prey”. The motif states: "Life exists with both the spirits of predator and prey. As in animal kingdom so in human society. The most interesting point is that predator and prey evolve together. One, in order to eat and the other to avoid being eaten."

Here is my contribution:

Selene the Enchantress

Your eyes are made of flint and limpid quartz

And evil witchcraft is in your arcane gaze.

Your eyes the green of serpents, fireflies, lizards;

The sweet laurel, the bitter deadly nightshade,

A touch of balsam mixed with fiery poison!

You speak and siren sings while nightingale warbles:

So sweetly sung, but words that hide fatal meanings.

Your voice enchanting music to my ears,

Your pearly teeth biting each syllable

Making it shout in barbarous pleasure.

Your lips inflamed like a gaping wound,

Your kiss, cold as sepulchral marble,

Yet it burns me with infernal fires.

Your lips are scarlet like a strawberry,

A bite and sweet blood gushes - juice of the forbidden fruit…

The vice of your embrace crushes me,

I die and suffocate whispering your name.

My hands caress your supple skin

As your silver nails gash my flesh,

Exposing raw sinew, tense tendon.

Up in the sky the sickle of a moon

Cuts swiftly the thin thread of my life.

Virginal Artemis laughs and in her blood-stained hand

Lies yet another trophy – her prey vanquished,

In a hunt that from the start was doomed.

The illustration above is from the work of Susan Seddon Boulet.