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Don Bouchard Apr 2014
Portia and Bassanio

Brave Portia's lot was cast
Inside a mocking case of lead,
Morrocco came and passed,
Then Arragorn, arrived and left, forlorn.
A list of louts came, failed, and went
Before Bassanio played his turn...
Poor rich Portia's patience spent,
Nerissa's lady solace yearned

Antonio, Bassanio, a troubled pair
A wily shark a loan arranged,
Whose bite, though small,
Beyond compare aimed deepest
To the matters of the heart.

Antonio, about to lose his fortune,
Bemoaned the losing of a friend,
The foiling of a fortune, sunk.

Shylock, certain of his pound of flesh,
Summarily dismissed by gentile gender-bending,
Played as a fool by a woman posing as a man,
Who drove a lawyer's visage in a Portia.

All ended well, at least for "Christian" men...
Life sweetened by the turning of a Jew,
No matter his conversion at duress...
Straight away Portia and Nerissa turned back
A ******* borrower who had landed on his feet,
And sprang their traps to tame their husbands' heat.
Jeuden Totanes Feb 2014
Dead leaves rustled along the sidewalk
I looked around
The chilling breeze made me freeze
To where I stood
I bit my lips hard
It bled
Warm blood dripped to the stone floor
Shadows and mist hovered overhead
Then I saw her
A frail figure inching towards me
Pale as snow
The frightening face of terror
I screamed
No voice came from my mouth
I couldn’t move
Her eyes pinned me to where I was
And as I shake in fear
And panic
She stretched her arms
A hideous grin was sculpted in her face
A glint of metal in her clasp
I know I have wronged her
And she seeks revenge
I fluttered my eyes
I opened them to agonizing pain
A blade quivered on my chest
Blood
I fell face down
She let out a wicked laughter
I felt a stab
Swift as lightning
Nerissa
The black witch of the earth
Tore my chest apart
Pulled out my heart
A clean sacrifice
In the stone temple
Darkness flooded my vision
Bitter death
In the hands of Nerissa
My mother
The black witch of the earth.
My first poem here on Hello Poetry :)
Grace Feb 2018
I go outside to escape my self
and the end and the inevitable
and I sit admiring the night sky
until the stars become the scattered
words I’m trying hard to understand
but seem completely unable to.

I look up into that dark blue night
and I wish it was the ocean.
I wish the world was a fading purple
sunset. I wish the world was
the moonstone blue of the sea.

I’m drowning in the night sky instead,
in all this vast intangible vagueness.
There’s no edge, no shore to the sky,
just stars and then stars and then stars.

I want to be on the shore again,
feeling alive, feeling maybe, just maybe
there’s a little hope in the waves that
have always been able to comfort me.

See, the sea is full of lonely moments,
losing moments, shipwrecked moments,
but it is also the place of liminal on the shore
moments, meeting moments, happy, maybe moments.

But here I am, sitting beneath the sky, not the sea.

I came out here to escape yet all I’ve found
is the inevitable in all its dark, vast, uncontainable glory.
I look away because I don’t want to see it.
I look away, because now it’s the end,
I’m not ready to leave.

I gather handfuls of cold to my chest
and take it all back inside with me.
I dream of the ocean. I long for the sea.
Maybe one day I'll write something where I don't go on about the sea. Maybe one day I'll feel at ease with the sky. Maybe one day I'll write a poem that doesn't sound the same as all my others.
Maybe, just maybe
(probably not)

— The End —