My hunger,
………..pacing.
Dark battlements
of earth and stone.
No
………..milk
of kindness
here.
In my dull stare
I watch you.
You seek a
comfort of stars
I can only imagine.
Do not praise me, fool.
The maze in which you are lost
is my lair.
_____
Words from a wordle, Big Tent Poetry’s prompt (where other entries are linked in the comments):
Rubies in Crystal 
OOOOO Evil One! Bwaaa ha ha! I love the tone of this…you carried it through. Well written, engaging, evil. Perfecto!
Wasn’t intentional! The minotaur made me do it! Gaarrggh…. (smiley thing without the yellow face now)
Thanks, Brenda W!
Love the sinister tone to this.
Thanks, Stan… though our most often used reply seems rather strange to be saying in this case!
Me too. Excellent response to the prompt. I like the layout.
http://thelaughinghousewife.wordpress.com
The minotaur was waiting in the wordle, and emerged as I wrote. New approach for me, definitely. Thanks, tillybud, the arrangement of words on the page/screen is always important isn’t it…
Creepy, an interesting take on some prosaic words.
Creepy is putting it mildly! A totally new vantage for me, though, in writing. Not altogether comfortable either. Thanks…
Bravo. I do love the evil tone!
http://inthecornerofmyeye.blogspot.com/2010/06/looking-for-love.html
Quite a twist for me, Mary- allowing a poetic narrator to be ‘hungry,’ ‘dangerous.’ But the minotaur didn’t really have a choice. I thought about that. Imprisoned from birth, victims sent into the labyrinth. Is it any different to our slaughterhouses for animals? Though I chose not to push the moral angle. Gosh, I don’t even watch horror flicks or thrillers – can’t! Yet the narrator of this poem – shiver – move over Count Dracula!
Aside from my constant stares behind — at the darkness—
I loved the play of this poem and the way it sits so comfortably on the page, as if daring anyone to enter the maze.
Your perception amazing, Linda… the poem sits, perhaps, to my eye, like the brick work of an old piece of battlement that might form an upholding wall in a labyrinth.
But I am at your site, whose title I love, and cannot find your wordle poem – is it protected, or not up, or have you decided to only read and comment but not write one yourself?
I love the sinister tone you have created here!
Pamela
thanks… Pamela
shudder.
makes me think of monsterous spidery appetite things in tolkienesque depths
Oooh, I like that, b_y, it’s even creepier than the perhaps somewhat intellectual but trapped Minotaur I was thinking of! I am amazed I can write so darkly, seriously. I never watch horror films or thrillers – nightmares, even at my age.
Deviously pleasant . Remind to not ever wander into your lair. “You seek a comfort of stars I can only imagine” was a simply mystical line. I truly enjoyed it.
What would it be like for the Minotaur, who never knew sunlight? From birth imprisoned in the labyrinth, fed victims. I started to write about being in the labyrinth, the wordle reminding me of a dark and dangerous maze. But quickly switched to writing a soliloquy by the Minotaur, who was not raised on the milk of human kindness, who never saw stars, who must stalk the unfortunate for his sustenance. He’s a ‘thinking’ Minotaur – very influenced by Picasso’s minotaurs, I suspect, though this guy is not a symbol of potent sexuality but of the sinister nature of Nature ‘red in tooth & claw’……
Thanks, Robert…… love your reading of that star line as mystical.
delightfully evil, delightfully evil! i love the narrator!
he is a bit scary 🙂
As others have said, Brenda, this poem has a ‘wonderful’ sinister poem. You said this isn’t your usual kind of poetry. Sometimes it is good to experiment. and I’d say this poem was a great success.
http://troublebeingstrong.blogspot.com/2010/06/call-to-hunger.html
Thanks, Diane… it’s interesting to write sometimes from an entirely opposite vantage. This poem started out with a protagonist, a persona in a labyrinth, but soon shifted to the perspective of the stalker. Very strange! I wouldn’t want to meet him in a dark alley, but he’s fascinating at a distance, huh!
Putting the words from a Wordle into a poem is like making your way through a maze – and you took that idea and made it into a fine poem.
Yes, Mr. Walker, surely it’s giving us ideas for future wordles or word mazes… hmnn. This one appeared as a labyrinth to me, especially with the dark words, which didn’t at all suggest Mummy’s milk as in the original poem, but something more sinister, dangerous. Then you walk it, in your mind’s eye, you walk that wordle maze and see where it takes you – uh – oh no – !
It’s great you broke out of your usual writing place; it’s fascinating how “given” words take the mind on unusual journeys. This works for me on many levels — the layout, the personification of a monster, the clear — if brief — image of intellect. “comfort of stars/ I can only imagine” speaks to that; the monster who knows his lack is a fascinating creature. I think that is when they speak to the dark side of our humanity.
And I appreciate he is no simple monster, but a minotaur! It’d be nice to name him somehow in this. (If you wanted to.)
😀 Isn’t that what the tags are for?
I had to give any potential readers a hint – though haven’t figured out tags at WordPress yet.
Deb, as usual, you have understood this poem in its depths at the centre. Yes, and yes again. I agree. He’s a reflective minotaur and probably isn’t anything like Picasso’s but rather fashions himself after Shakespeare’s Hamlet types. He’s in a bit of a bind, having lived imprisoned since birth with victims thrown into the labyrinth to feed him, but he must have a secret library somewhere in those hewn rocks. Or spoken to people before he eats them. How else would he know of stars?
:I’m laughing: Seriously I wouldn’t want to meet this half human/half bull-animal in a dark alley, but I am rather ingratiated towards him in a poem.
Thanks!
I really liked the sinister feeling you developed through this piece.
How clever you are to get into this frame and produce a personified piece of work from ‘his’.