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Reserved

Yes... Yes you should... seeing as you guys are doing similar things.

That picture rocks. heart

I will enter, if that's okay? xd Heck, if attendance continues to be this low, I'd consider entering several times. Hands is a good, broad topic. 3nodding Would make a good Format in the Colosseum, even, if people wanted to challenge each other on it. ninja And then come enter the poems here. Maybe if we offered some kind of incentive, like a bonus prize? I dunno, though. Things have been slow, not because people aren't dueling, but because everyone's delayed by finals week, Xmas/solstice/Hanukkah family-time etc. So I'm sure people will come back here too once the holiday hubbub is past us.

Wrote this this morning. Something a little different--I've often prefaced poems with a quote, but for this one I dug through a whole Wikipedia article to steal ideas. I was all in a tizzy because I had to cut short a serious IM conversation with a friend last night, and now PMs are down and I can't continue it. So I thought the myths surrounding Horus were a good way to address the stuff I wanted to say, in a different and broader context than the original conversation.

Horus and the river

(Images partially inspired by Wikipedia.)

Women were always snakes, but you
never grew crocodile enough
to nurse from your grandmother's teat--
she whose milk makes stars
and monsters.

Your mother was a cow.
When your father hit the fan
and spattered, it was she who cleaned up
after him. She rolled the little bits
into a ball, as beetles do.
All but one piece--it mattered
not to you, you said--that she
left out, left
waiting
in the roots of the river.

The seed of your enemy
chuckles in the water. The old dog's laughter
rides the lap of every wave. You cut off the hand
that saved you, threw it in the river,
let the river answer:
I drank of the father's milk
and of the dog's milk;
as for him, I know none.

Hold back;
store up your name, O distant one.
One-handed, one-eyed, let your black wings
wink out, a speck within the sun.
Let the naked abyss yawn
as the Nile's black banks heave wet,

giving everything
but birth
to the grandchildren of Nun.