In a castle where shadows crept and curled,  
Lived a beast, feared by the world.  
But within his roar, a silence dwelled,  
A heart that once in sorrow swelled.  

Beauty saw beyond the beastly mask,  
In kindness, she found her task.  
For love, she knew, is not just sight,  
It blooms in the darkest night.  

She taught that grace is more than skin,  
It’s the love we give, the strength within.  
In patience, she untied the knot,  
That cruelty and fear had tightly wrought.  

The beast’s true face was never shown,  
Until Beauty’s love had grown.  
A lesson here, both old and new,  
True beauty is found in what we do.  

So heed this tale, let love be your guide,  
For every beast has a soul inside.  
It’s in the heart, where true love's feast,  
We find our beauty, we find our beast.

©Priyanka Bhagat

Don’t nobody mess with Snow White.
I’m the Queen of the ‘hood, don’t give me a fight.
I’ve got Grumpy and his Kalshnikov.
Sneezy and his crew did the bank job.
***** meets the plane coming in at JFK,
with its cargo of smack, to bag and weigh.
Sleepy got busted, he’s doing time--
but he ain’t no snitch, so we’ll all be fine.
Happy’s my honey, as long as I got money--
I feed him some coke and he keeps my mood sunny.
Bashful’s the lookout, he stands on the corner.
Doc sews them up, saves them from the coroner.
I ain’t got no evil stepmother,
and if you mess with my crew you’re a stupid *******.

The fairy tales are

over, since then they just tell --


how it really is.

~
I.
Killing Mary Poppins
with a spoonful of sugar,
the sugar from the medicine
on the other side of town,
the town called Silent Hedges
And A Bit Of Fluff.

II.
Only a display model,
her name is Marmalade;
skin white like the moon,
she wears her ****** stranger dress;
one of her sisters is dying,
the other never lived;
God is a far off concept,
the fuchsia colored ball on
an overhead power grid
points her way to salvation.

III.
Morning became something else:
bright decline,
cold things start to burn,
tragic saxophone
among the beckoning,
everything's a symptom:
tax exiles, imperialists,
girls talking nitrous
--mouths full of soil,
Virginia Reel around the fountain
(do-si-do),
ready to buy up impossibles
as the dominoes fall.

IV.
Memory is a chemical
to the girl who cried champagne,
like ceiling stars
during the prodigal summer,
she played the game
on all fours,
and found a drawer
full of quarantine polaroids,
some with blood in her mouth,
others, of rain on her birthday.
~

Men love a good Femme Fatale.

But they do not love an ugly Femme Fatale—

So they plucked her naked,
gave her a nose job, and called her
a “mermaid” instead

{Siren}