By Scott Bailey © 1999
I am the factory wall, despised and so defaced
Covered with graffiti, defiled and disgraced.
I am the concrete tower that holds up the concrete road
Bleak and faceless white, bearing my toxic load.
I am the bin on the street, bursting full with waste
Where rats and vermin crawl, around me in distaste.
I am the battered traffic cone abandoned in the hedge
A used forgotten prize of lives lived on the edge.
I am the street side gutter where dirty water flows
A place of infestation, where all the darkness goes.
I am the discarded knife with bloodstains on the blade
The close but unseen menace lurking in the shade.
I am the lofty tower spewing clouds into the air
That speed across the oceans, killing without a care.
I am the broken shelf with screws rent from the wall
That supported all the books and caused them all to fall.
I am the sodden cardboard box flapping in the street
Broken, limp, forgotten, always under feet.
Once I was a poet, bright-browed with golden-haired
Playing harp and singing, songs into the air.
Once I was a druid learning from the trees
Drawing strength from bark and wisdom from the leaves.
Once I was a warrior with proud and shining sword
Singing with my war-band a deep heroic chord.
Once I was a chieftain with princes round my hearth
Against war and cold and famine, our mighty hearts did laugh.
Once I was a king whose soul was all the land
Who tended all his people with a strong and generous hand.
But I made other people suffer
Now suffer myself in turn.
But as you wreak your vengeance
What lesson do you learn?
What lessons do you all forget?
#DailyPrompt, #amwriting, #postaday
This is beautiful. Very well done. Powerfully evocative imagery. I love how you’ve mimicked the form of some of the Taliesin poems, but infused it with purely modern images. Love it!
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Thank you. I appreciate that a lot. Not many people even know Taliesin these days
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I’ve been interested in Celtic Literature and Mythology for s long time and love Taliesin. I’ve even written a poem based on his style:
https://darknessofhisdreams.wordpress.com/2019/05/16/a-song-of-taliesin-revised-expanded/
I’m actually currently reading a new translation of the Book of Taliesin by Gwyneth Lewis and Rowan Williams that is, in my opinion, amazing.
The Book of Taliesin: Poems of Warfare and Praise in an Enchanted Britain https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07K2LH92W/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_B47fDbMHKE8PD
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I will check both of them out. I love the era myself. Full of contradictions. Full of culture and magic but also peopled by violence and harsh realities.
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