A Pearl Before Swine
Who let these heartless beasts into your home,
Into these pastel and eggshell rooms to pick at your
Delicate bones and your paleness, feasting on your flesh,
On your eyes and the mad sparks dancing within,
And your voice with its bookish seductive drawl,
Shot full of coy, with a twist of wanton lust?
Who would probe with such curious intrusions,
Impolite, without restraint, and pin you down so savagely
On black and white film, while peeling back the layers,
Fumbling at your un-buttons and pulling at your skirts?
What kind of scoundrel would paw at your body
Tearing at your threads, and so causally toying
With your sanity's frayed and loose ends?
Who would wind up your free spirit only to
Catch you unspooling with wild abandon,
And convince you to let down your guard
Saying things best left unsaid, or in private,
Secrets whispered best for lovers or victims,
Not to be strewn about, a pearl
Before these insufferable swine,
Boorish and insatiable, snouts rooting,
Lusting for another skin to sink their teeth into and
To suck off the marrow and flesh leaving a pile
Of milk-white bones, like broken china littering
An unswept linoleum floor, along with scattered wrinkled Pages ripped from your notebooks and several crumpled, Lipstick-stained cigarette butts?
Some careless someone left these lights on,
Even though no one lives here anymore.
They left you long ago, abandoned, long before
You snuffed out what little they had left,
Which they hadn’t pecked apart
With their ambitious beaks,
And vanished like the ghost
You always aspired to become,
Dispersed like fumes,
Fleeing like hunted words,
Fluttering on wind-beaten wings,
Above the place where the stormy sea swings
Against the rocks, on the shore and the constant roar, Searching for a quiet street where mercy could live and Your heart with all its collected, paper-thin murmurings Could finally be free, where without ambiguity, you could
Truly voice your liberation to the heavens and the hells
And to all of the liars caught between,
OUT! OUT! YOU PRURIENT LOT!
GET OUT OF THIS HOME!
GET OUT OF MY LIFE!
About this poem
I wrote this poem for a poetry workshop for Veterans. We had looked at the work of Anne Sexton and this was my reaction to Anne and her work, inspired also by the Peter Gabriel song, "Mercy Street." I incorporated some words and images from what we had read as a tribute and, also, a look at her work from the inside out.
Written on February 27, 2019
Submitted by TheOutlawHalo on December 19, 2022
Modified on April 27, 2023
- 1:58 min read
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Quick analysis:
Scheme | ABXXXX CDXXDEX XXXXX XX EXXEX XBBXXC XX XXFFXCX XAX |
---|---|
Closest metre | Iambic hexameter |
Characters | 2,150 |
Words | 395 |
Stanzas | 9 |
Stanza Lengths | 6, 7, 5, 2, 5, 6, 2, 7, 3 |
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"A Pearl Before Swine" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 8 Jun 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem/147692/a-pearl-before-swine>.
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