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Anne Sexton  Feb 2010
Rapunzel
A woman
who loves a woman
is forever young.
The mentor
and the student
feed off each other.
Many a girl
had an old aunt
who locked her in the study
to keep the boys away.
They would play rummy
or lie on the couch
and touch and touch.
Old breast against young breast...
Let your dress fall down your shoulder,
come touch a copy of you
for I am at the mercy of rain,
for I have left the three Christs of Ypsilanti
for I have left the long naps of Ann Arbor
and the church spires have turned to stumps.
The sea bangs into my cloister
for the politicians are dying,
and dying so hold me, my young dear,
hold me...

The yellow rose will turn to cinder
and New York City will fall in
before we are done so hold me,
my young dear, hold me.
Put your pale arms around my neck.
Let me hold your heart like a flower
lest it bloom and collapse.
Give me your skin
as sheer as a cobweb,
let me open it up
and listen in and scoop out the dark.
Give me your nether lips
all puffy with their art
and I will give you angel fire in return.
We are two clouds
glistening in the bottle galss.
We are two birds
washing in the same mirror.
We were fair game
but we have kept out of the cesspool.
We are strong.
We are the good ones.
Do not discover us
for we lie together all in green
like pond weeds.
Hold me, my young dear, hold me.

They touch their delicate watches
one at a time.
They dance to the lute
two at a time.
They are as tender as bog moss.
They play mother-me-do
all day.
A woman
who loves a woman
is forever young.


Once there was a witch's garden
more beautiful than Eve's
with carrots growing like little fish,
with many tomatoes rich as frogs,
onions as ingrown as hearts,
the squash singing like a dolphin
and one patch given over wholly to magic --
rampion, a kind of salad root
a kind of harebell more potent than penicillin,
growing leaf by leaf, skin by skin.
as rapt and as fluid as Isadoran Duncan.
However the witch's garden was kept locked
and each day a woman who was with child
looked upon the rampion wildly,
fancying that she would die
if she could not have it.
Her husband feared for her welfare
and thus climbed into the garden
to fetch the life-giving tubers.

Ah ha, cried the witch,
whose proper name was Mother Gothel,
you are a thief and now you will die.
However they made a trade,
typical enough in those times.
He promised his child to Mother Gothel
so of course when it was born
she took the child away with her.
She gave the child the name Rapunzel,
another name for the life-giving rampion.
Because Rapunzel was a beautiful girl
Mother Gothel treasured her beyond all things.
As she grew older Mother Gothel thought:
None but I will ever see her or touch her.
She locked her in a tow without a door
or a staircase. It had only a high window.
When the witch wanted to enter she cried"
Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair.
Rapunzel's hair fell to the ground like a rainbow.
It was as strong as a dandelion
and as strong as a dog leash.
Hand over hand she shinnied up
the hair like a sailor
and there in the stone-cold room,
as cold as a museum,
Mother Gothel cried:
Hold me, my young dear, hold me,
and thus they played mother-me-do.

Years later a prince came by
and heard Rapunzel singing her loneliness.
That song pierced his heart like a valentine
but he could find no way to get to her.
Like a chameleon he hid himself among the trees
and watched the witch ascend the swinging hair.
The next day he himself called out:
Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair,
and thus they met and he declared his love.
What is this beast, she thought,
with muscles on his arms
like a bag of snakes?
What is this moss on his legs?
What prickly plant grows on his cheeks?
What is this voice as deep as a dog?
Yet he dazzled her with his answers.
Yet he dazzled her with his dancing stick.
They lay together upon the yellowy threads,
swimming through them
like minnows through kelp
and they sang out benedictions like the Pope.

Each day he brought her a skein of silk
to fashion a ladder so they could both escape.
But Mother Gothel discovered the plot
and cut off Rapunzel's hair to her ears
and took her into the forest to repent.
When the prince came the witch fastened
the hair to a hook and let it down.
When he saw Rapunzel had been banished
he flung himself out of the tower, a side of beef.
He was blinded by thorns that prickled him like tacks.
As blind as Oedipus he wandered for years
until he heard a song that pierced his heart
like that long-ago valentine.
As he kissed Rapunzel her tears fell on his eyes
and in the manner of such cure-alls
his sight was suddenly restored.

They lived happily as you might expect
proving that mother-me-do
can be outgrown,
just as the fish on Friday,
just as a tricycle.
The world, some say,
is made up of couples.
A rose must have a stem.

As for Mother Gothel,
her heart shrank to the size of a pin,
never again to say: Hold me, my young dear,
hold me,
and only as she dreamed of the yellow hair
did moonlight sift into her mouth.
Gideon McCarthur Oct 2015
Once a girl lived in a tower.
She had the longest golden locks you had ever seen.
Her mother would visit and be hoisted upwards upon those locks to see her daughter.
The girl was named after a plant… Rapunzel.
How could she know this though when she had always lived in her home of the tower.
Her mother had kept her there since she could remember.
Rapunzel would ask when should could see the world.
Her mother would turn down these pleas saying the world was too dangerous for Rapunzel.
As she grew older Rapunzel realized that she resided in not a home but a prison.
Why was mother allowed to see the world and she was not?
Why could she not decide for herself the dangers of the world?
Freedom always framed within her window but too far below to reach.
On her 18th birthday Rapunzel fled the tower using the locks that had grown so very long.
Her mother soon after discovered her daughter to be missing.  Full of spite she pursued her daughter.
Rapunzel’s hair kept her from going too far and soon her mother was upon her.
Rapunzel tried to flee, but her mother seeing her daughter free from the world she had made for her stepped upon the long locks.
She pulled her daughter back to her slowly, back to the safety of her arms, her world. Rapunzel struggled on the ground trying to escape. She took a rock and severed the locks from her head. She fell forward into the edge of the woods and onto thorns.
She was blinded. Her mother rushed to her side not concerned for the eyes that weeped red but for the destroyed beauty that was her daughter’s locks.
Rapunzel may have lost her sight in that moment but her mother had lost hers long before that. Unable to see how she had hurt her daughter. That the greatest pain her daughter had experienced was given by her. Her daughter was blind and could not see the world, but her mother had never seen her for what she was.
Sharina Saad Jun 2013
Locked away in a tower in the middle of a forest
since the age of twelve
Hidden from the public eyes for years
Beautiful Rapunzel was imprisoned
A binding promise made
To compensate for the sin of his father
who stole for love

Rapunzel's life was completely shut
a couple of times in a day
she only came to light
only to let her golden long hair down
through a tiny window that connected her caged like world
to the bright world outside

upon a call from the enchantress
"Rapunzel, Rapunzel, please let your long hair down for me"
Rapunzel let down the braids of her hair,
and the enchantress climbed up to her

Many years have passed
nobody knew of Rapunzel's existence
The dragging years
Too little sunlight
The magnificent hair of Rapunzel
became weak and thin
Once it was the strongest ladder
but The enchantress fell in the thorny garden
in an attempt to climb up the tower

Rapunzel's hair no longer lustrous and strong
Waiting for a brave prince for too long
Till the hair is tired and the waits prolonged....
Thoughtsonpaper Feb 2018
If a girl is hopelessly crying in a forest and no one is around to hear her, did she actually cry?

All that you’ve heard about Rapunzel is pure lies.
She had jet black hair, that was darker than the midnight sky.
Entirely broken inside, waiting to end her life.

Ladies and gentlemen, let me tell you what really happened tonight
Grab a delicious treat and something sweet to drink.
Before I wish you a goodnight’s sleep.

Once upon a time there was a young girl named Rapunzel
Since the age of ten she had been locked away in a monstrous tower.
Kept in chains by her demons all day.
They liked to play games with her mental state.

One of the games included, Simon Says.
Simon Says, cut a blade through your wrist.
Simon Says, bang your head against the brick wall,
Until you begin bleeding and start to fall.
She hated Simon Says,
But she always obeyed what they said.

Mother Gothel was an antagonist; a myth.
Rapunzel made her up in her mind to have someone to blame,
For all the wretched pain which she endured everyday.

Loneliness became her closest friend
As she sat alone in a cobwebbed den.
Listening to the clock ‘tick tock’ in her head
Over again like a broken record.
Making her want to rip her hair out to shreds.

The voices screaming in her head made her psychotic.
No one cared about this depressive girl,
More than they did about summer rain.
They all couldn’t see her suffering, so it didn’t matter.
Instead they threw her in a tower, an architect built.
So her mind could rot in tiny pieces, lying still.

One day a boy named Flynn came into the mix.
He loved her with all his heart; they could never be apart.
When he was around, her eyes light up.
Forgetting the misery that came after dark

Tomorrow came along.

Rapunzel was found sobbing in her fragile pale hands.
“Leave me alone!”, she screamed in terror with her eyes closed shut.
Shaking uncontrollably, while the rain and tears flowed as one.
Just like the river she wanted to drown herself in.

Flynn gently helped her to her feet in panic.
The electricity still flowing through her entire body.
“I love you.” he softly whispered into her ear.
“I love you!” he says with passion and honesty.
Her breathing slowly came to a halt, after hearing him speak.
He made her believe that life had some meaning.

Her soul now feels at peace
She looks at him with pure sincerity  
He whips her tears away, “I’ll never leave you”.
A promise he can never keep.
“I love you too”, she says with ease.
Their eyes meet together, as they laugh in unison.
Lips softly meet as one; the night has just began.
This is the happiest Rapunzel has ever been in years,
Too bad it will all suddenly disappear.



It was all an illusion.
Rapunzel suffered from Schizophrenia.
Flynn was a figment of her imagination.
An escape from her cruel reality she faced.
The townspeople didn’t want to deal with her mental illness.
So they washed her away, to be left astray.

People hate what they don’t understand,
So everyday for eight years she sat freezing in sorrow.
While her demons devoured her spirit.
Incapable of love and affection.
With a hollow chest where her heart should be.

In order to cope with the ‘life’ she was living,
Her mind made up Flynn.
Though they were madly in love; he was a fairytale.
As years went by depression ate her whole.
She died alone, in a pitch black room.
No light seeping in, with nobody to love and hold her.
To tell her everything will be okay,
And keep her heart beating in place.

If a girl dies alone in a tower, where everyone hates her, and no one is around to witness her death: did she actually exist?
The End.
I dedicate this poem to my childhood self. You deserved and deserve better. For all the sunny days people shattered with grey clouds.

I hope this poem means as much to you as it does to me. Don't stop until your reach "The End". I promise you won't regret it. I swear.
Q  Nov 2012
Rapunzel
Q Nov 2012
When the princess was lost
they all heard the sound.
The whole kingdom would search
until she was found.

But she didn't get lost --
she'd been stolen from home!
Because the evil witch -- Gothel --
wanted the throne.

The young girl, Rapunzel,
was locked in a tall tower
until the day Mother Gothel
would come into power.

The princess had planned --
Rapunzel had dared! --
to find an escape
so she grew out her hair.

It took so much time
and her hair was so long.
So she waited until
Mother Gothel had gone.

The door locked behind her,
the witch not in sight,
she hung her hair on a hook
and began her great flight.

Rapunzel escaped
and soon she found love.
But Gothel had found her
and both had to run.

Gothel was angry
and she ran after then.
Rapunzel had fooled her,
so she would get her revenge.

She grabbed a gold knife
and Rapunzel did dart.
Then the man that she loved
was stabbed in the heart.

Now, again, she is locked
in that very tall tower
and all she can do
is sit there and cower.
Nicole Dawn May 2015
Rapunzel is a lie
There was no witch
Rapunzel locked herself
In the tower

She was done with the world
But it's a fairytale
So she couldn't die

Rapunzel locked the tower herself
She got lonely, yes
But it was her own mistakes
Which held her captive
Not a witch

There may have been a prince
But he left lonely and sad
Rapunzel trusted no one
And refused to let her hair down

Rapunzel is a lie
It's not happy
And she was not innocent
Poetic T Jun 2014
Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your
hair, as her golden locks came slithering
down, a secret hidden.

Razor wire underneath, as it wrapped
around. Controlled from above, it cut
and shredded poor Flyn surrounded by
blonde blades, a smile from above.

A look of fear as her hair twisted tighter,
a thousand cuts, tortured by the girl in
the tower.

Never was it to keep love out, because all
that love has been a mirage of beauty,
hidden was her sin. She preferred to unleash
pain and death to those who thought she
was a prisoner within.

The girl in the tower not as fair as the tale
had once said. Hidden from those that she
wishes to do harm, the bushes fed by the
blood and bodies buried in shallow graves
around.

She was beauty that hid a darkness within,
her hair of blonde hiding death within,
nourished by the blood of those lacerated,
with the blades within.

Rapunzel, Rapunzel in a tower so high, to
keep you hidden from the world, for inside
the beauty is a secret, that is locked in this
tower, forever hidden protecting those from
the fairy tale lie.
.
Annie  Feb 2017
Rapunzel
Annie Feb 2017
Once upon a thyme
In an herbed house
Their lived a witch
Whose ripe rampion
Was so overpowering
That the neighbors
Left bottles of febreeze
On her doorstep.

The witch didn’t care
- But
In the flat-ironed town
Of Lunch time lipo
Where you were defined
By your eating disorder
She looked like
An Omish escapee
With hips that wriggled
And ******* that jiggled

So her cell phone number
Wasn’t in anyone’s top five
-Except
For one confused neighbor
Who never made it to college
And got to experiment
Like a true Gemini.

Now imagine the witch’s surprise
When this neighbor confides
That she would love to eat
Her ripe rampion.
- Naturally
The witch agreed.
It was nice to have something
That somebody else wanted
Though it was exhausting
For the neighbor
Who munched day and night.

And if one surprise
Wasn’t enough
The witch discovered that her
Neighbor was pregnant.
Now the witch had many powers
But that wasn’t one of them.
It appeared that her neighbor
Found her husbands
Carrot patch to
Quite esculent also.

And the witch
Being a picky Virgo
With a jealous Scorpion moon
Thought that her neighbor
Should not
Have spun around the vegetable
Color wheel quite so fast
And so in a fit of temper
She stole her baby
And locked her away
In an ivory tower.

Initially everything worked out
Until the oil crisis
And then the witch couldn’t
Visit Rapunzel quite as often
As she would have liked
Not with gasoline
Being so expensive
And so Rapunzel became bored
And started chatting to
Prince charming
On her face-book wall.

The witch took all the hopeful Trojans
That the prince had left
On previous visits
And tied them together
To form a rubbery step ladder
And when she heard him shout
"Rapunzel, Rapunzel…let down your hair!"
She threw this at him…angling it
With just a little thread of hate.

Prince charming grew all shivery
And put on his worst
Austin powers "Oh behave" accent
Thinking of the delights
That awaited him

However, his shivery-ness
Soon became a full body tremor
When the witch met him
On the top rung
And he knew quick enough
This wasn’t a
Ménage à trois.

The prince spent many months
In traction
Recuperating from his fall.
Rapunzel was sent off
To boarding school.
And as for the witch…
She dropped twenty pounds
And got her own reality show
*Housewives of Salem county.
The once little, little prince,
stood wide-eyed, unto the sunless sky,
there, winged was she,
Rapunzel fair, princess no longer for he.

You see, he doesn't remember now,
how long ago it was he was told,
To find a princess, locked far away,
and if patient be ye, so too will treasure most pure,
be
his own.

And when, after many years traveling hence,
he arrived there upon the scene,
of the long, lonely tower, spiraling up,
there on and until the single window,
opened gently, and residing faintly,
laid a dream, he could not appease,
nay, no matter how much he rubbed his eyes,
Still, did the little prince look up and see,
Fair Rapunzel, in all her resplendent beauty.

Wait, she said, smiling gold,
In just a few years hence,
She laughed, merrily,
Will my hair grow long enough,
for you my dear Prince,
To come on up and truly rescue me.
For now it is good to talk,
and dream and be, for surely still,
must my luck be overwhelming,
with you here, to keep me company.
With just, YOU, here, little prince,
eyes nearly watering, she whispered,
And now not for me to be so lonely.

The little prince's heart, somewhere long gone,
Along the way, had already flittered up,
Though she could scarcely feel it,
With tower keeping them at bay,
Indeed it it land on her doorstep,
And there, long, did it lay.

So for many years, the Little Prince,
And Rapunzel did lay,
Her up high, and he down low,
With her hair, growing more each day.
And he was happy though, he was not sure,
If he was more trapped than her,
encased, but with each days growth,
of her luscious golden hair, did each time,
take a bit of his aching heart, beat by beat,
before mind barely had a say.

And then, alas, a few seasons hence more,
Around the corner was he, into her arms,
Evermore.
But cruel fate did lay, such plans for naught,
For at once her hair doth shed, and wings did she partook,
Yea, Little Prince, said she, Though doeth I love you so,
And the price I paid was dark and grave,
No bargain have I pursued could ever be forsook,
As this, one feeling, oh to fly over stone,
valley, canyon, and brook,
To be free, untethered, beating release,
NO LONGER DO I NEED WAIT,
OH WITHOUT SUCH WASTEFUL WORDS AS PATEINCE!
Now I am my queen, and you,
She looked down softly,
Not even my cook.

And the little prince looked up in awe,
Always believing in that which he was seeing,
awful though was his mind, that, Even still,
as his heart did empty,
did it endeavor, hurriedly quick,
To deny that reality, of waiting for a trick.
I was a game, he thought, but still,
if this be a quirk of god or fate,
Even now, in its very face will I,
Lucifer, be, Agnostic in this,
my hell.

So he closed his red eyes,
as his angel did ascend,
ne'er close did he ever reach,
someone.
Just a story now,
for children,
and growing young men,
Don't wait so long for someone,
you love in a tower,
or else you'll find yourself,
too, A...
Little Prince, not so little,
Anymore.
So much symbolism. For me. For life. For others. And, I must admit, not even did I see that ending coming.
yellah girl Nov 2016
i am Rapunzel.
captured behind a stone wall
slick with acid, coated with barbed wire.
i beat and i pound at the wall, until the flesh
is torn and my bones crumble.
i scream and i cry, until my voice cracks
and my throat bleeds.
i pray and i persevere, but no matter
how much i try, the wall will not budge.

i am Rapunzel.
captured behind a stone wall,
slick with acid, coated with barbed wire.
i cut my hair and dripped it out the window
like garland, but no one climbs through.
i sing a broken hallelujah, like a songbird
with a wish bone in her throat.
i search hi and lo for the key to my tower,
but there is only stone and a locked door.

i am Rapunzel.
captured behind a stone wall
slick with acid, coated with barbed wire.
i hold the fragments of my hope in my
****** palms, i water them with my tears.
some day my prince will come, perhaps
with a silver key in one hand, and
the Promise Land in his eyes.
I suppose this is a little better than the previous temper tantrum that was published.
Batool  Aug 2015
Rapunzel !!
Batool Aug 2015
Locked up in the tower,
she waited
till her last breath
to listen to those magical words
that her prince
was supposed to say
"Rapunzel, Rapunzel !!
let down your hair"
to set her free
to let her love
but destined to die alone
she never got to listen
as nobody ever dared
to speak those words !!

— The End —