THE PAIN OF PRINCESSES
Every three hundred years a wolf is born
half hologram, limned in that breed of light
that is searing, and shameless, and adorned
with blood; a wolf with hands, and nails, and bite.
The king’s daughters wasted the finest days
of youth in the hunt, training bionic
eyes and moon faces from castle to highway,
but they caught not a stitch of furred onyx.
Sebas, the youngest, and our heroine,
knew the proof of value lay in killing,
but she loved that wolf, the adrenaline
in preternatural night. Not willing
to expose to malice something so rare —
She lived obscuring its scent in the air.
ANGLERFISH
Nelumbo, goddess of cybernetics
is at her laptop, furrowing her brow.
She’s lambasting the Internet critics
who poison the good-natured Wikihow.
Meanwhile, in the data stream, binary
code is working to mediate between
the heirs of the digital dynasty.
The cyberspace sea, blue and bottle green,
cries out in glum mourning at their quarrel.
Why fight like this when information lies
at their fingertips, tactile as coral?
Nelumbo answers: humans agonize
as easily, tenderly, as they love.
Been this way since from the ship left the dove.
Hey, I remember when you first said you’d write a poem about wolves. 😛 I think for 10 minutes you’ve created a GREAT treatment to expand this into something longer. There’s a whole mythology wrapped up in the “Pain” pseudo-sonnet, and I think you should unwrap it. The images we get of Sebas seem to strain against the six lines she’s allotted.
“Anglerfish” works great as a pseudo-sonnet, I think. Clever, and as always your deftness with language shines.