Wednesday 10 August 2016

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.

13 comments:

  1. love this touch of myth and so vividly portrayed....

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  2. bloody and stone cold your words for this prompt - couldn't be better

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  3. My goodness!! This is beautifully haunting!!

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  4. So full of surprising images! This one stopped me cold:
    "Your pearly teeth biting each syllable
    Making it shout in barbarous pleasure."
    To see Selene and Artemis in one is marvelous. Thank you.

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  5. Those strawberry lies would be very enticing to overlook - you raise a good point that predator cannot live without prey and vice versa..such is life..and a really good poem!

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  6. I really like this subject matter. ))

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  7. Dark, mythical and quite alluring

    Much love...

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  8. Enjoyed the mythological, Nicholas. Quite fantastic imagery & originality.

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  9. i love the quote about predator and prey evolving together. My poem is on a somewhat similar vein..............this is a very interesting post and the imagery in your poem is wonderfully vivid. One can see the sinew!!!!!!!

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  10. What a glorious poem, the ancient poets would be proud of you.

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  11. Those vivid imagery in this haunting piece...

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  12. so love this poem.............
    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.

    ReplyDelete