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Medusa (noun)
Sometimes the Greek myth gorgon monster, most of the time, I am—
Misunderstood. Unheard. A story twisted by trembling tongues.

They paint me a monster because it’s easier—easier than admitting what they did. Easier than facing the truth: I was not always this.

Once, I was soft—a girl with warmth in her hands and light in her eyes. But the world does not spare the soft. They touched without asking. Took without permission. And when I refused to break, they called me wicked.

I became what they feared. Not by choice—by survival.

Now, I wear my venom like a crown. I speak, and they call it defiance. I exist, and they call it danger.

But still, they watch. Still, they want. Still, they tremble beneath the weight of me.

I am the gaze that stops you mid-step. A warning wrapped in beauty. Venom in velvet.

I do not chase—I turn. I do not beg—I reign. I do not soften—I sharpen.

Once, my eyes turned from sweet to fierce, like an eagle. Once, my voice shifted from jolly to a roar, like a lion. Once, my personality changed from bubbly to gorgon—run for your life, boy, my snake hair will do the rest.

They whisper my name like a curse, but still, they look. Still, they want. Still, they fear.

I am the one they cannot hold, the storm they cannot quiet, the ruin they bring upon themselves.

I was not born to be kind. I was not made to be gentle. I am the consequence—the reckoning.

Stone-hearted? Perhaps. But only because too many tried to touch me with unworthy hands.

Misunderstood? Perhaps. Unheard? Not anymore.

I do not need to be saved. I do not need to be softened. I am the ending they never saw coming—and the beginning they cannot escape.

I am not your muse. I am your myth. Not the victim, but the legend. And when you dare meet my eyes—remember, I never blink first.
Gideon Mar 8
“Hello” is a bad word that sits at the tip of her tongue.
Like a snake’s venom, it is always there, always ready.
It lies in wait, hoping for the next unsuspecting victim.
The pain is preceded by hope. A glimmer of “Maybe.”
Maybe when those fangs sink into me, it won’t hurt me.
Maybe the sweet anaconda embrace is a hug this time.
Maybe this is the last time her hissed hello will bite me.
Heidi Franke Jan 29
Tell me of your delight
The wisp of wind
That catches your hair
Breezy enough to sense
The winds direction
To which you set your sails
Moving through glass water
Unwilling to break

Tell me of your delight
In the shell of a snail
Digging up its squishy life
For just you alone
Thumbing through
In a smile and a jar of joy
Enough to break a mother's heart
With every win and loss
On your way to manhood

Tell me of your delight
As you swing in the air
Legs kicking as branches do
When the air picks you up
No longer weighing you down
All cares wash through
The space of regrets
And deposit themselves
As pebbles on the shore
Where your feet will land

Tell me of your delight
Where the garden snake
Attempts to outwit
Your stride in the grass
As you quietly watch
With patience of a lifetime
That marches ahead in this stillness
That is between the distance
Where now is forever
In your hand you swoop up
A life trying to escape yours
Gleeful are you as you set
The creature free once more

Tell me of your delight
As you see the rays of a day
Shine on every stone
And drop of rain
Washing rivers deleting cares
Surpassing a mother's gloom
Her soup of ingredients
Marinated longer than your
Innocence wants to keep birthing
It will be her death that it takes
To be released and unburdened
So you can breathe again this day
Heart open to drown all sorrows
Brand new as the dew
Raven Kuhn Jan 5
I got my letter but I didn’t read it,
Just followed along with my kin;
I wouldn’t let the Sorting Hat touch me,
And claimed to all I was Slytherin.

I never liked the other colours,
But green seemed to fit, and I felt like a snake!
Plus, when I’d want something as much as I did,
I was more than willing to be fake.

I didn’t try with witches or spells;
I missed class on purpose, and it stung my pride.
My Patronus, the crow, still crouched in my shoulder—
But even he’d known I’d lied. Now I’m trapped inside.

My life’s about art and academia, dark...
So I’ve poured over books behind secret walls.
An INTP means something to me,
Now I’m staring, completely enthralled.

I got my House but I didn't fit in--
At least not to the same degree.
Maybe I earned it for all that I was,
But now it doesn't feel like me.
I'm not a fan of Harry Potter, but I went to the theme park in 2017 and of course my family did the quiz. It got me thinking: if you begged the Sorting Hat hard enough, would it really put you in the House you wanted at the time, even if it wasn't who you'd turn out to be?
This poem eats its own tail,
a serpent made of sentences,
its scales glinting like verbs
you haven’t conjugated yet.

It starts where it ends,
or it never starts at all—
just hovers,
a balloon tied to the wrist
of a stranger you dreamt.

Its metaphors bloom like sideways petals,
teeth glinting beneath their velvet edges,
biting the air until it tastes electric.

It clings to ozone,
that split-second before lightning remembers
it’s a blade meant to cut.

Each metaphor is a double-jointed bone,
bending past reason, snapping backward
into a shape that means nothing—
or everything, I mean everything.

It keeps its secrets folded
into origami shapes that collapse
when you try to unfold them.
A crane? A dagger? A heart?
All of them, none of them—
it depends on the angle of your longing.

This poem is yours only in the pause
between breaths,
mine only in the breath itself.
It ends when you stop reading.
It resurrects the moment I exhale my last.

Each line is a trapdoor,
a loaded chamber spinning,
blanks carved from silence.
You keep reading like the next word
might hold the trigger—
it’s always the one after.

It scratches itself raw
just to prove it can bleed,
then paints over the scars
in words you’ve heard before,
but never in this order.

This poem wants nothing from you,
except everything—
your eyes, your breath,
the parts of you
you didn’t know could rot so stunningly.

It will devour itself,
edges sharp with longing.
While you starve,
your breath will catch—
a witness to the teeth
that hollowed you.
Valentine Aug 2024
We watch for rattlesnakes as we walk
And after nearly bitten by death
Grab them by their gleeful heads
Deep holes we dig
Soon doused in gasoline
Where the creatures are flung atop their brethren
The devil's eyebrows curling into one another
Soon enough
The sparks fly from our feet
Slabs of flint scraping and gliding

Calling ourselves civilized as we waltz above
The rattling of natural beauty
Odd Odyssey Poet Jul 2024
A wave of tears gradually carries away the tides of night
Alongside the river that weeps in its current plight
Unheard songs play, to the dead man who loves to sing
A dead silent night, for two lovers to bury the hatchet
In the tomb of being dead asleep in their shared beds-
Waiting for what falsehoods all sweet dreams bring

As the rhyme for a kiss is hiss; the cobra that loudly speaks,
She purrs and catwalks the runway- while her love is expensive
But we pay for it all, as the clock writes out a free verse

Filling poems to the taste of love, for the apple of my eye
A taste so bitter;- with a snake inside that bit my tongue
In a sole of time, the heart breaks- as roses tend to be forgotten
And unfortunately, the apple to my love had gone rotten.
Odd Odyssey Poet Apr 2024
Love, a complex and ever-evolving force,
can be likened to the shedding of skin
with each passing season, rejuvenating the
spirits of the old to make room for the embrace
of new beginnings.

The ebb and flow of
relationships echo this continual metamorphosis,
as some individuals offer solace through
gentle caresses that blend seamlessly like a
poetic kiss, while others wield their words
with a sharper edge, concealing deceit beneath
the guise of intimacy.

Just as the gentle whisper
of a kiss may be heard, so too can the sinister hiss
of untruths slither beneath the surface,
reminiscent of a serpent's deceitful ways.
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