Tarts & Hearts (A Poem)

In a faraway land lived a wicked queen,

With cruel and exotic pleasures.

And high in a tower, behind a locked door,

Was the room where she kept her treasures.

Under her bed, slick, full and red,

A box of human hearts.

And high on a shelf, the family jewels,

A bowl of other, male, parts.

But on the table, in rows of six,

Laid out like the proverbial lamb,

Was the queen's truest weakness, her secret, her vice;

Tarts with strawberry jam.

With lipstick smeared and a dripping chin,

The Queen would devour her feast,

Grunting and groaning and making the call

Of a horned, amorous beast.

The years would pass, and the royal rose drooped,

But the queen never left her tower.

High in her room, swathed in scarlet,

She never once doubted her power.

Her subjects revolted, and marched on the tower,

They trampled the door and they took her head.

And for all the tarts, and hearts, and private parts,

It didn't matter; the queen was dead.

Maenad

She appears one night from the woods,
a pale and pretty thing.
A stranger to the campsite,
she simply begins dancing.

The Welsh mountains watch her,
unperturbed and unimpressed,
weightier things on their minds
than a woman barely dressed.

But others can't help but wonder
as she flits about with ease,
in the cold land of the dragon,
how is it that she does not freeze?

The thin metal walls of the caravan
echo and clang and shake,
playing chorus to the kinds of sounds
that no girl or beast should make.

The shrieks and yells and songs
that come ripped unbidden from her throat
fly out on the same wind that whips
around her like a bitter winter coat.

And even as the tourists fear her,
this wild and beautiful creature,
they marvel at her set of lungs,
surely lent by Mother Nature.

Her beauty is a primal thing,
giddy on wine and bloodied furs;
for no fox nor hare nor doe
has feet as quick as hers.

She sways and spins alone,
observed from tents and camper vans,
yet those who watch her do not feel
it is a lonely dance.

Rather, she is surrounded by partners
they simply cannot see;
base and elemental beings that make her laugh
and hug herself with glee.

Some shed their clothes to join her,
to writhe and chant by her side.
She greets each one like a lover,
and begins to glow, lovely as a bride.

When men and women fall on each other
and the dance becomes a fray,
the maenad laughs, and claps her hands,
then merrily runs away.

Her white body is visible for miles,
her cries heard wide and far.
Her glittering eyes mad, rapt and alive
with the light of the morning star.