ManicDDaily

Tasked

There are small children
in my brain tasked
as whipping boys.
They take it and take it
and take it,
while I stand by, increasingly
mortified.

We have, you see, been educated together
from birth, which has created
a strong emotional attachment
between us–these small children
and all of me,
or rather, the rest of me,
or rather, Queen Me.

A part of that part of me cries
when they are punished,
as if, in my stead,
but educated from birth,
I’ve learned to keep it
in my head.

But these, my whipping boys,
grow into smaller and smaller children
as I age,
and now, unable to keep to one place, pained,
leap from brain to limb
from chest to face,
and my feet trip
and my hands mistake–
all because they refuse
to just sit still, take it.

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Here’s a very draft poem for Grace’s prompt on With Real Toads to write a poem inspired by Eugenio Montale.  I love Montale;  I’ve not read enough, and I can’t say how this poem was inspired by him–only that I read Grace’s prompt and struck by his poem about a well and this was what I wrote shortly after.  Whipping boys were used in the English court, when young princes were basically unpunishable by their tutors–the whipping boy was punished in place of the prince; the idea to teach a lesson  to the prince through the punishment of what was sometimes an only friend.  

I’ve not had much time for drawing lately so using photos I have!  I like this one though (taken in the beautiful Catskill Mountains.)