The Writers' Room
Would you like to react to this message? Create an account in a few clicks or log in to continue.

'Chelonia Mydas' - A Poem

Go down

'Chelonia Mydas' - A Poem Empty 'Chelonia Mydas' - A Poem

Post  Jake Reynolds Fri May 06, 2011 4:55 pm

Bonjour! I don't write poetry that much, but I do try a little bit now and then. This is one I wrote for a poetry competition coming up as alerted to me by my English teacher, but instead I opted for a more dramatic performance in the style of a poem/monologue. Hope you enjoy!

Chelonia Mydas

A turtle wades through the lapping waves
Bobbing across a sapphire blanket, out of place
A strange, quiet creature, gulping and thrashing
Disproportionate, disjointed, contorted, fragmented,
Finding its way through the beds

An ugly shell, home to a species far away
Sets across a fleshy back
A cracked, chipped and prehistoric suit of armour
A saddle for no-one, an arthropodic nothing
The only characteristic and somehow redeeming feature of
An otherwise writhing, hideous, flesh-ridden reptile
Like those we find repulsive and threatening
The lizards, the crocodilians, the trademark of slime and scales
Of which the turtle strives to separate itself from

From the shell pokes an ugly head
A bruised, battered, blotchy, broken head
A lump of matter that scans with loose skin
A beak-like mouth, snapping and filtering,
Constantly agape and painting an expression of loneliness in this
Plain of water

Four blunt scythes of flesh,
Wading through the sand and the sea
Not quite limbs
Not quite fins
Merely waders

And when the lonely creature lays eggs
It scrambles and slithers up onto a beach,
Rolling hills of wet, grainy sand
Where beautiful, opal white pearls
Are scattered.
And as the lonely, ancient reptile lies there,
A species away from everything else,
It approaches motherhood
But scampers back into the reassuring yet perilous blanket of water
In both fear and shame
Of its form,
A disgusting half-creature, neither one nor the other

And on one night
As the pearls open,
Dozens of tiny, innocent clones scuttle towards the waves
The waves which were
To their mother the calmest and loneliest place possible
Yet to them a hellish forest of crashing waters and predators
And as they are washed away,
Battered by the water,
They live and mature into creatures
That are adored outside the water
Yet within the water are just hideous mutations
For up to eighty years.
Jake Reynolds
Jake Reynolds
Just Starting
Just Starting

Posts : 8
Join date : 2011-05-05
Age : 29
Location : Here.

Back to top Go down

Back to top

- Similar topics

 
Permissions in this forum:
You cannot reply to topics in this forum