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Emily Becker Poem
Poseidon hurt me,
took me against my will after I swore
my body and my mind to you, oh beloved goddess
He ravaged me like a madman,
consumed by his lust and disregard for consequences.
He screamed like a fool and left me there,
shaken in your home.
Ruined in front of my lady.
I had no place left to go-
my entire life sworn to you, grey eyed goddess,
protector of cities.
And i wept.
Wept for the atrocious crimes you had to witness,
and for my innocence, so brutally taken.
and for you, most beautiful goddess.
and as the tears hit my skin-
scales erupted.
Painful scales, making me writhe
it felt like fire consumed my entire body.
And even after the fire of my body ended,
my eyes still felt like fire,
my hair-my beautiful hair,
the locks Poseidon had grabbed in climax,
it whispered into my ears
and as I looked around all I could see was stone.
I knew at once it was you.
They whispered into my ear of curses and pain,
the snakes.
Of stone men and some hero approaching,
and look at him before he gets your head.
And at long last, when wonderful, brave, handsome Perseus came to me-
i knew you had sent him.
I warned him.
You betray those loyal to you,
the victim but not the guilty.
So he took my head and I was forced into the pages of history
As a monster
I am what you made me.
Copyright © Emily Becker | Year Posted 2015
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Emily Becker Poem
Do you want to know how the pomegranates tasted?
Oh mother dear, would you like to know how they felt?
Like freedom.
Oh mama, don’t you know?
He didn’t kidnap me.
He didn’t have to.
If we’re being honest here,
I stole him.
With all his darkness and silence,
his dark kingdom with no queen-
it’s so alluring.
No longer am I merely a flower
and the power of being queen is addictive
Oh Mother dearest,
your darling sister is using her power wrong.
Using it with spite and pettiness,
what a foolish woman.
my kingdom is smoke and bone,
my lovers eyes are brimstone and his mouth
is stained red with pomegranates
that taste like blood.
You warned me against gods like him,
told me the story of your brothers,
how they were all trouble those three.
told me to never taste his world, no matter how tempted.
But mother, oh do you know how he tastes?
The pomegranates were so very tempting.
it’s really not so dreadful here.
All I really wanted was to be queen,
I suppose was a tad more ambitious than you Mother
And who is going to question my rule?
It’s so funny
how my husband, always kind and faithful,
is always the villain,
and I, the goddess of flowers, am ever the victim.
Isn’t it funny how everyone only knows your side of the story.
But that’s okay,
they don’t know how I love my power,
as Queen of the Dead.
They’ll never know the hunger of the flower queen
Don’t you realize how difficult eating pomegranates is?
I had to pry the fruit open with my bare hands fingers bloody from
nails breaking
I used to be so weak.
And if they still look at me and see,
only a rose ready for picking,
oh, mama, they deserve to prick my thorns and bleed.
Copyright © Emily Becker | Year Posted 2015
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Emily Becker Poem
She wakes up to a phone call,
she hadn’t realizedshe was asleep.
There was an accident they tell her
And she walks in, past all the mangled bodies,
not bothering to swat the flies away
Just hoping they were wrong
That her family was safe in the country.
She wanted to look away,
but oh god it was them.
Her older brother looking peaceful,
her little brother a mess.
And now she was so angry.
“They’re in a better place” Everyone tells her,
‘Yes,’ she wants to scream, ‘but that’s not the problem.
The problem is they went there without me!’
But instead she smiles sadly, and nods,
Develops a routine.
Wakes up, puts on lipstick and nylons.
You can build things in lipstick and nylons she learns,
But only if you aren't afraid to get a few runs in them.
She learned there was no shame in being pretty,
because being pretty was her only power left.
She decides then
that a god so cruel as to punish her by making her walk through the
hall full of stinking corpses
for growing up without him
was not one she wanted to forgive her.
They told her she still had time to repent.
To ask for forgiveness, for her disbelief and lipstick.
And she, ever the graceful queen in her heart,
yelled back that she would not.
That their god should come crawling at her feet,
that he should ask her forgiveness.
The smell of death isn’t one she was like to forget or forgive.
She cries for hours on the day she laughs for the first time.
And she always buys detective novels,
though there is no little brother to read them anymore.
she screams into the night that she is too young,
too young to have so many ghosts.
but when morning comes
she is a mask of lipstick andwaterproof mascara.
She still feels a hole in her heart,
gaping and big and dark,
an emptiness where her brothers and sister had lived,
a hollow place where her parents had lived too.
And she grows older like this,
grows older with her heart screaming
everytime she saw things they’d never have.
She dreams of wearing a lion’s pelt.
And revenge.
She dreams of a lion pouncing on her family,
all the while making her watch.
By then she thinks she has earned her death,
oh but she hopes he chokes on her.
She dreams of a dead god,
dreams he lies with her dagger in his heart,
and the words he was about to say dying on his lips,
‘i forgive you child’
he almost says, in the dream,
and she twists her dagger in his heart,
and whispers to the god of her sister,
“look at all your forgiveness is worth,
maybe you should have sought mine instead.”
Copyright © Emily Becker | Year Posted 2015
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Emily Becker Poem
You were too beautiful for me.
Your song forever burning in my mind,
oh love, will they make a myth of us i wonder?
too light, too divine, too harsh
i was just a girl.
but my whole life i have only been yours.
i never learned to be anything else.
i have never loved another, yet you have never loved me
stealing secret trysts,
as you stick a dagger in my chest
and i call it love.
you are not forgiven.
oh, you are always forgiven
will you mourn me?
when i am ashes and you are still young,
and shining.
will you cry out my name in battle?
the mortal you would never stay with
you will see nations rise and fall,
will watch Achilles weep for Patroclus
and Medea’s crimes in the name of love.
and your name will live on for thousands of years.
they will forget my name the moment i reach Charon
I learned about her at the same time that I learned
about you and that your sheets were yellow, and that
drowning doesn’t always happen in the sea.
‘Cause I drowned in your eyes.
Sometimes drowning happens in a bed late at night with only memories to keep you company
What is this fire if not love
when i saw you i was made of broken glass
and you didn’t want blood on your hands
sometimes love isn’t soft or gentle
like your poems say it is
love is gritty and dirty and possessive- it’s curses.
because i am young and you are old.
and when they come for us,
when they burn my kin and my home and your temple,
you will look on with indifference
because the fire will never burn as bright as you.
When i told you that you would come to love me,
you didn’t believe me.
and then nobody believed me again
Copyright © Emily Becker | Year Posted 2015
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