Plucked from our homes
to populate His harem
we spend our days
in hazy, lazy
pointless conversations
pretending we are not in competition
whilst on and on time runs
nothing to gain and all to lose
because all that matters
at the end of the day
is which of us He, will choose
and with us lay…
Written for dVerse – Poets Pub Ekphrastic poetry challenge.
Posted by Grace in Poetics with help with the images from Melissa Lemay.
© Andrew Wilson, 2023
What a day you have captured with: we spend our days
in hazy, lazy
pointless conversations
The competition is intense in that harem. Thanks for joining in.
Thanks Grace – I mostly write in free verse but I enjoy the Poets Pub challenges because the tight forms exercises the poetic voice and although this is no particular form and the rhyme scheme is a bit erratic, it was nice to get a lot of rhyme in…
I’m sure in those times and forced circumstances, the woman who bears him a son first “wins.”
I’m sure you’re right – sadly…
I like the illusion of contentment you’ve evoked in the opening lines, especially in the internal rhyme and elongated ‘a’ sounds in ‘we spend our days / in hazy, lazy / pointless conversations’, but then turn it around to the competition to get their lord and master’s attention with ‘nothing to gain and all to lose’ – what could be a dangerous situation.
Somebody criticised one of my poems for being too long the other day and whilst i didn’t agree in that particular case, it was certainly fun to see just how much meaning you could pack into a short form poem.
Thanks for visiting…
How long is a poem supposed to be?🤔
Send them to read some of mine.🤣
LOL I do belong to a writing group and we usually write for 25 minutes and that largely determines the length of the poems. I seem to have aknack for realising the complete poem arc in that time and I don’t usually revise much when I type them from longhand. How do you write – longhand or straight to PC?
Do the others heave a sigh of relief?
Lol
I think you captured this in the pointless conversations and waiting, the competition for favor–such a sad life, even though to those outside it might seem pampered.
I wonder how Delacroix, especially with the reputation of the French, was allowed in to do such paintings.
A sad life indeed.
Lots of unexpected internal rhyme, and a wonderful poem to accompany that image.
Thank you Misky…
A sad truth beautifully rendered. I think the servant girl waving goodbye is the lucky one.
I am afraid you are right…
Thanks for visiting Yvonne.
“pretending we are not in competition”
Such a simple phrase speaks profoundly of human nature and how it remains unchanged even in the most dire of circumstances.
They say that 80% of our big brains developed to work out what another person was about to do and that other things like story-telling are just by products of that development…
Thanks as always, for visiting Melissa…