Arachne's Defiance Poem by Laura Greene

The stage burns brightly in the crimson blaze
Of the shimmering spotlight’s iridescent gaze.
They watch, like angels, from lofty heights
The holy man conjured in the stage’s far right.

He’s raised on a platform to double his height
Bright eyes glittering with an unearthly light
His smile is dazed and distant as he lifts the mic,
Wielding his holy text, ready to strike.

Audience’s whispers wither and fade
As they cower further into the shade
Only the challenger Arachne will brazenly dare
To defy the holy man before the camera’s glare.

Both sides proceed to string and tether
Strands of theological thought together
To weave and craft a powerful net
To trap the opponent in the argument’s depths

Alir, the religious man, spins ideals of family life
The authoritive husband, the submissive wife
While Arachne weaves an opposite view
Exposing religion’s failures old and new
To the West women weep on blazing pyres
To mortify the flesh of those heretics and liars
To the East men hurl rocks, and curse and hiss
At girls who suffered an unconsenting kiss.

Alir spits that he derides
Secularism for causing family divides
While Arachne weaves a picture with perfect precision
Of the church’s infamy for total division.
Alir counters that these indiscretions
Are caused only by man’s transgressions

Arachne cries, ‘If God speaks when the faithful pray
Why fail to guide them when they wander astray?
Is he dumb or is it not his concern
That in his name people bleed and burn? ’

Alir fumes. The buzzer shrieks like a screech owl
Ending the debate with a deathning howl
His eyes flash like a lightning storm
Longing to strike down Arachne’s form
Even the hatred in his quivering heart
Could find no seam to pull her argument apart

But the pantheon of producers decide
To cut, rip and tear at clips they deride
Destroying her perfect argument’s frame
That put the Godly man to shame
Arachne should have better known
You can’t pull the powerful off their throne