#NaPoWriMo Day 12: Venusian.

Today’s activity by napowrimo.net was to pick out at least one word each from Lempriere’s Classical Dictionary and Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction, and use those words as the prompts for today’s poem.

I chose the terms ‘Venus Anadyomene‘ by Apelles and ‘Venusian’ from these dictionaries. The poem I’ve written today is loosely based off of the concepts of these terms.

Make sure you go check out Kittu’s Modern Mixtape and Amour Infini’s Instagram for their poems today. They are wonderful writers and you do not want to miss out on their poetry! Trust me.

I hope you like reading this poem! Make sure to check out the endnotes to know more about the poem. Xx

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I fail to find the words that could paint your picture,
A disgrace to the poet that I’ll never be—
As though there is a dearth of synonyms and adjectives
That I could offer at your altar—
Worshipping the very ground you walk on,
Strewn with flowers your gentle feet never touch,
For you float in all of your heavenly grace,
An image of the goddess Venus.

And I,
I am only another mortal.

Unworthy of singing in your praise,
No ocean could hold the depth of my devotion,
The sky isn’t high enough to build shrines in your name;
What am I in the face of beauty that never fades?
You rise from the sea in the waves of high tide—
Magnificent, graceful,
With the force of a million hurricanes;
And I am only another mortal,
Helplessly and hopelessly enamoured
Tangled in the embrace of your Venusian vines.

And if your thorns were to pierce me to the bone,
I’d bleed for you,
For you, I’d perish,
I would live, I would die.

I weep tears of disbelief and admiration
For your beauty is beyond any I’ve ever beheld,
Or perhaps ‘beauty’ is a word far too inadequate;
You, my goddess, burn with all the brilliance of the stars,
Adorned by the flowers your worshippers leave at your feet,
Your warmth radiates far more golden than the sun,
My entire being on fire, consumed
I’m set aflame by the fire that you are;
If this is how it all ends,
I’d burn,
I’d burn,
I’d burn until there was nothing left of me.

And I should think,
How fitting it is that you burn
Bright enough to be called the morning star,
And I should think,
How fitting it is for you to be
Love and burning desires personified,
As though there are no secrets in the world I could keep,
Anything I burn for, you’d see it in my eyes,
You’d see right through me.

It terrifies me how
I’d want to keep myself from you,
Lest you must read me like the open book I am,
And if I am, then I am for you,
Loving you in ways unrestrained, unheard,
But you’re untouchable,

And I,
I am only another mortal.

~© Shubhangi Srinivasan.

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This poem is about that all-consuming love, where you’re willing to lose yourself and let yourself drown in it. It’s the most terrifying kind of love out there because you find yourself unable to breathe, unable to think coherently in their presence and there is just so much love inside you that it threatens to burst out of you. We read and write about this love in so many different contexts, but I can only wonder what that must feel like. This is one of those poems that is very close to my heart because of how raw it is. I hope you liked reading it as much as I loved writing it.
Yours truly,
The Shubhster. Xx

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Featured Image by Juri Noga on Unsplash