Olympia

[Robin]

I wrote this after watching some 19th century art video with a nun named Sister Wendy. One of the first pictures they did was Olympia by Manet, and it inspired me a lot.

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Look at that girl dancing in the rain,
Fighting with the lightning,
And picking up sticks to break hearts.
“Baby, mail me your broken heart tonight.”
She gets off by breaking hearts.
How do you get off?

Wasted girl,
She’s starving for something.
For some inspiration to fill out the hollows of her face
(she’s poured all of it into her work)
So she takes it from you.
She wants your soul -
She’ll be dreadfully disappointed when she finds out you don’t have one.

Soul or no soul, she’ll take you.
A bit of bliss is better than a bit of Toni Morrison.
Nobody cares about white butterflies with torn wings,
Nobody who matters, anyways;
Desperate housewives, maybe,
Like the ones on that show everybody seems to love.
But then again, maybe not that kind.
Not sexy desperate housewives.
Fat ones consoling themselves with Oprah’s sagging physique,
With the hollowing of Tyra’s temples.

Her temples are hollowing,
And she’s barely pushing thirty,
Unlike that racist skank Tyra.
So any idiot can see why she’ll take anything she can,
Anything she can sink her claws into.
Impetuous? It doesn’t describe her.
She looks with a cool, calculating Olympia gaze,
Unknowing, like that defiant prostitute, like that defiant kitten,
That she’s entirely vulnerable.
One kick, one gunshot, and bye-bye birdie.
So fiery.
It seems impossible that she could ever be obliging.

But she is.

She’s not an ice queen yet, just the princess,
And the princess never gets enough practice.
The stone-cold expression melts when it begins,
And when it’s over…
Well, all the bumblebees wonder why they thought the Venus fly-trap was dangerous.
She doesn’t have the heart to trap them.
They aren’t flies, they’re bees.
Bees sting when they’re attacked,
And sometimes when they aren’t.

Aphrodite girl.
She gobbles down honey while she can,
Before the bumblebees come,
Before their stingers hit home.
They die when they sting her, more often than not,
But that doesn’t stop her ichor mingling with their blood.
Their clear blood.
How can somebody with clear blood be human?

The only way to console herself is by eating their honey.
By breaking their hearts.
She gets off by breaking hearts.
How do you get off?

[Robin]

Aww man. I was looking forwards to some comments, although I expect I shouldn't really expect some until I go out and give some of my own.

[darktears]

I enjoyed this. Well written.

I loved that you got your inspiration from a painting.

My favourite stanza was
She’s not an ice queen yet, just the princess,
And the princess never gets enough practice.
The stone-cold expression melts when it begins,
And when it’s over…
Well, all the bumblebees wonder why they thought the Venus fly-trap was dangerous.
She doesn’t have the heart to trap them.
They aren’t flies, they’re bees.
Bees sting when they’re attacked,
And sometimes when they aren’t.

But I loved the whole poem.

Good work.

[onemoremile]

I liked this, it's long, but it kept my attention all the way through, and i almost always daydream throughout long poems =P

However, i didn't really like the repetition of breaking hearts at the beginning, it's alright with two, three repeats just felt like a bit much. Also, the line 'The only way to console herself is by eating their honey.' seems a bit simplistic, i think if you reworded that slightly it would make the last stanza a lot stronger. You dropped a lot of names into it which threw me off a bit because i didn't recognise a lot of them... but i expect that's just because i'm an uncultured child =P

[Robin]

I didn't really like the ice queen stanza...but that's what usually happens. People like the stanzas I don't like.

And I did use 'broken/breaking hearts' too much in the first stanza. I'll go ahead and fix that. I'll have to re-write that stanza completely...unless you think just putting in synonyms for broken/breaking would help?

I didn't really think that I dropped a whole lot of names. Toni Morrison was the only one I would think people would have trouble with. Are you saying you don't know who Oprah is? Naw, I know what you mean, I like dropping names. It makes me feel smart, and it ties my stuff together really nicely.

Sorry about the length. My stuff generally turns out long. It's either this long, or one stanza, and I prefer the former.

[onemoremile]

yeah, it might work with synonyms, just play around with it and see what you think

errr... technically i've never heard of Toni, Oprah or Tyra *blushes*. Possibly cos Oprah is an American talk-show host whereas i'm an English talk-show hater - but i probably should still have heard of her... like i said, i'm an uncultured child (and yeah, i looked her up on the internet - sad, i know)

meh, i like long stuff if i can concentrate all the way through... just usually i can't

[Robin]

There's a huge internet culture surrounding Oprah (check out ytmnd.com, they have quite a few surrounding Tom Cruise and Oprah - Tom Cruise kills Oprah is my favorite), so I thought maybe...bah, it doesn't matter.

Toni Morrison was the second woman to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, and Tyra Banks is a model who created the show America's Next Top Model (she was a racist because only black girls like her won), and she now has a talk show. I think she's trying to take over, because Oprah's getting preetty old.

[onemoremile]

ah, ok. apologies for my ignorance =P

[Robin]

You aren't ignorant. I only know all this because of YTMND.