Painted (as a) whore,
offered as a bribe,
fathered by the greatest rapist
masquerading as graceful feathered force.
Taken from a king, given to a second son,
Perhaps Leda betrayed her, too.
Could a woman refuse a goddess?
The wall burned as it should.
About the Creator
Harper Lewis
I'm a weirdo nerd who’s extremely subversive. I like rocks, incense, and witchy stuff. Intrusive rhyme bothers me. Some of my fiction might have provoked divorce proceedings in another state.😈
MA English literature, College of Charleston
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Trickle Them Down, But Not Out
The thing about smart people is that they should know better, but alas, intelligence is not the same as wisdom. Not only do the mistakes of experts too short on vision—when they are not corrected—have the potential to do great and far-reaching damage, but they also undermine public confidence in the very notion of expertise. This is particularly so when expertise is wielded in defence of the rich and powerful as a cudgel against those laid low. As an academic, this lack of faith in “so-called experts” is painful to see as it plays out in the spread of dis-/misinformation, conspiracy theories, and anti-intellectualism writ large. But it is also an understandable impulse given the catastrophic failure of an economic ideology pushed by certain economic experts. Supply-side economics has shaped a broken system for the last half-century and has arguably done more to undermine the fabric of the American Dream than any policy framework of the past century.
By Cory Wright-Maley7 days ago in Humans
Comments (5)
🌼That opening line, "Painted as a whore," really got to me; it feels like a label used only by those who lack their own self-control. I felt a chilling distance in the isocolon of "Taken from a king, given to a second son". While the king and the son are balanced in that line, Helen is just the tethered ball tossed between them. It is wretched to think even her mother betrayed her in this myth.
This poem wants to grow up and become a sonnet. Stay tuned.
Lives of the rich and famous, and the disadvantaged. still it goes on.
Nothing ever really changes, does it? powerhouse of a poem that lingers!
Pure power words, and some of those "men" got what they deserved, but it seems even worse today