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Rules: Write a poem for national poetry month on the topic or form described. Each poem should appear as a separate reply to this thread. The goal is to, at the end of the month have written 30 poems for National Poetry Month.
Describe, in potentially graphic detail, torture.
A LESS GNARLY ALTERNATIVE: write about an elephant, or some group of elephants.
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The martyrdom of Urbain Grandier
(executed as a sorcerer who caused the possession of an Ursuline convent at Loudun in 1634)
bound
stretched out on the floor
his legs
from knees to feet
enclosed between four oaken boards…..
the outer pair being fixed
the inner ones moveable
wedges are driven in
crushing the knees, legs, ankles
ordinary/extraordinary torture
determined by wedges
numbered one to eight
Urbain Grandier survived
what equated to a tenth wedge
administered by Father Lactance and Father Tranquille
without confessing
his legs crushed
splinters projected through the mangled flesh
along with the blood
an ooze of marrow
survived to be burned
there at Loudun
with great ceremony
a few hours later
for reasons of hysteria, mendacity,
a priest’s surrender to lust,
(overlooking the pyre
M. Trincant
sipping wite wine
toasted the father
of his bastard grandchild )
his intelligence
angering too many of the powerful
who lacked both his good looks
and his brain.
The possessed nuns continued their show
for three more years
twice daily, Sundays excepted
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Crucified
First, he was flogged with a nine-tailed whip
that tore into flesh, ripped skin and muscle, as blood
sprayed across the public square for all to see.
A vertical beam awaited as he struggled through
the dark, narrow street with the horizontal piece. Rusty
nails drove into his wrists while he writhed on the ground.
His cross was lifted as vultures circled above. His leg
muscles tired, and his body hung limp. His shoulders
popped out of their sockets; his twisted wrists dislocated.
He drifted near death until an iron mallet crunched
against his thighs, breaking both legs. Birds plucked out
his eyes. Soldiers jeered as he shit blood, naked and exposed,
Night would fall before he died.
(Untold thousands met this fate under ancient Roman rule.)
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Practitioners
What, after all, is torture’s purpose?
Extracting information, one might say,
of a political or military nature
or ideological, not excluding religious...
But when brands are applied,
rack racheted or water put to work,
they will say any thing
true, false, made-up or simply noise
to make it stop.
Useless, then.
No, torture’s purpose is to frighten
those not yet subjected to
give up their friends,
their secrets, faith,
their cringing souls
while they still have
any of those to give–
while sanity remains.
Demonstration, then.
But after that
the show continues
for since victims are, by definition,
in the power of practitioners
all that remains
is to exercise it, prove their power
endlessly. Simply knowing
that one’s minions carry on
in one’s absence is sufficient.
(It is said the Huron
tortured captives to let
them prove their mettle.
Dilettantes!)
 Non-practicing atheist
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Dry mouth with wet skin,
the dust sticks to the damp
of your sweat in desert heat.
An elephant’s legs are pulled
taut with chains.
A tuba wails at odd intervals.
You gather the saw
and begin to work.
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Some put their trust in chariots, and some in horses,
but why not those beasts massive enough that their carts
need not be dragged behind them? Whose hooves are not
mere clubs or hammers
but anvils, trees, roof beams, even little hills?
Indeed, whose nature-endowed panoply extends
beyond feet and mouths, beyond mass and speed:
whose ivory bidents
and leathern snares make them the sponsored
net-men of the King of Hell? Was it not the most beautiful thing
for the black earth along the Hydaspes or even the Trebia
to be stained red?
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I would rather write about elephants than torture.
In Africa, where summer’s a scorcher,
people often end up in a lion’s
belly. Of beautiful young Nelly
there’s a tale of woe. Being a ho
makes her tale no less tragic,
it’s sad if it’s anthropophagic
regardless of the victim. As to why I picked him -
for Nelly identified as a male animal -
specifically, an elephant adorned with a lotus
whose forefather was gifted by Sandrokotus
to Seleucus, then in turn to the Molossian king,
serving in the formidable ranks of Hannibal -
I picked him because it serves a cautionary tale:
you’re not an elephant, female or male,
if you don’t have a trunk.
On the day of the story, young Nelly was a-roaming
feeling lucky as a punk,
railing at the advice of the witch doctor - monk
against venturing in the gloaming
when the felines are de-homing
in the savanna. “Junk!
Your thinking always stunk!”
roared foaming at the mouth, a cross young Nelly,
quivering like jelly
with rage. “Does a pachyderm need permission?
The matriarch knows her mission,
and single young males
scatter, like gales,
prides of scraggly lions, from Uganda to Wales.”
Then Nelly (known as Ryan)
upped and sauntered
into the savanna
like Castro into Havana
and Trump into his cabana.
At the sight of the first hungry feline
Nelly’s pants showed a pee line,
though briefly, for after a strangled scream
which might as well have been a bad dream
but for the whomping,
the chundering and chomping,
as unlike an original elephant
into the lion’s belly went
with monogrammed clothing elegant
young Ryan, also Nelly, gent.
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