False Madonna

of succubi, of lust

You were a sparkling-eyed coquette
-when youth flowed in my veins-
A lusty lass with teasing bosom,
And a curvy coy grin.
I saddled on thy blind horse,
Only to realise
Only to become
Another Macbeth with failure,
My false Madonna, my so-called love!

Three witches came to the earth that day
To warn me of your advances.
Glitch on the bed of love-making
I thought and heard no more.

The fourth witch left me
Naked, bloodied and humiliated
For I was too inseparable from the desire to stop
Now, here I moan...
Banquo, my friend, don't leave me alone...

I'm lost, time-worn and gray,
Languishing in the pity of the eyes
Around me.

I've ceased to worship Baal in Madonna's guise
Succubi: women
Sin of lust: love
I realise.

Author's Note

photo credit: Leonardo da Vinci (Madonna of The Rocks)

Reviews

[Priyanka Natesh]

Whoa whoa!! I loved it! You just keep getting better and better with every experience (as grueling as they may be ;)) It's such a treat to read your poems and this one specifically stands out! :D I am going to rank this my second favorite after Minstrels of Love :)

[Emily]

What a creative, yet time-honoring way to write! I especially loved the stanza "Three witches came to the earth that day/To warn me of your advances./Glitch on the bed of love-making/I thought and heard no more." Very nice!

[EileenMarie]

Deep and profound....... Excellent work!

[Thomas Fitzgerald]

It blends and leaves the mind asking questions.

[Coyote Poetry]

Great skill in writing this poem. I like the story and the strong ending to the poem. Thank you for the excellent poem.
Coyote

[Laura Maidah]

"Lusty lass" might be better as "lusting lass". Nice alliteration. Every phoneme used is so careful and precise. The end loses steam. It should be both climax and resolve. It's the crux of the vignette. Instead, I lost momentum and zoned out a bit, thinking about the colons and how to better phrase things. Punctuation should be adventurous in places, but in the final bang, I'd opt for modern traditionalism and stick to regularism. This poem has a static mood that I can feel, but I don't know how to express in words. I feel the register is too didactic for me to pick up on the atmosphere clearly. It's got around two poems in one. The first stanza is abrupt, no transition, cuts to the Macbeth references, and prods me forcefully into the three witches. Then the speaker is moaning. It's great diction wise. You clearly wield your pen and know when to use which words. Now use the right words.

[JohnnyMagrinho]

I really like this piece.

It's very, very well written and considered. I feel the rhythm and pace in this poem is much better than your others; it's as though you have contemplated what to write in this poem less, that is, you wrote with more fluidity rather than thought. The level of depth to the poem belies that analagy, but at the same time, that's usually the case; we write our subconcious.

Interesting, like Alicia says, the references to Macbeth scattered throughout the piece, with the obvious inclusion of an extra witch, the cement the idea that something has gone awry and perhaps you have committed an extra sin; you are even more wrong than you originally should have been. You're giving a strong sense of injustice and wrongdoing for perhaps an overly trivialised, normal occurance in our modern day society.

The juxtaposition of the witches against the carnal admiration of the she who is being lusted over is immortalised in the cannonisation of the admittance of a sin in the eyes of whatever judge or deep set feeling of perversion some of us may choose to live by, and ends the poem nicely.

There is a sense of self-discovery and stark humility throughout this piece and I think it was a nice, brave attempt to convey perhaps an overly personal experience or point of view on something many of us would be very quick to trivialise and ignore.

Thank you for the read.

[Alicia Beavis]

Nice comparison/references to Macbeth in this piece. The thought of 'Baal in Madonna's guise" was an interesting one to include in this.

Nicely done!