Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Captivity

“We are determined to answer evil with GOOD, slavery with FREEDOM, 
rape with hope!  We are against slavery, rape, beheading, torture, 
violations of human rights, corruption and misuse of religion!” 
― Widad Akrawi

“Knowledge makes a man unfit to be a slave.” 
― Frederick Douglass

“The caged eagle become a metaphor for all forms of isolation, 

the ultimate in imprisonment. A zoo is prison.” 
― Nadine Gordimer, Get a Life

source

Midweek Motif  ~ Captivity

The United Nations uses March 25th to observe two separate International Days for victims of slavery and other forms of captivity.  Follow the links to read more about the United Nations' resolutions:

• International Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade:  ". . . tribute to the many women who suffered and died during the slave trade . . . "
• International Day of Solidarity with Detained and Missing Staff Members:  ". . . protect United Nations staff and peacekeepers, as well as our colleagues in the non-governmental community and the media."

YOUR CHALLENGE:  Describe a captivity in a poem using imagery and narrative story ~ OR, simply use captivity as a motif.

my own photo in Père Lachaise Cemetery

Excerpt from  To the Right Honourable William, Earl of Dartmouth

by Phillis Wheatley, 1753 - 1784 

. . . . .

Should you, my lord, while you peruse my song,
Wonder from whence my love of Freedom sprung,
Whence flow these wishes for the common good,
By feeling hearts alone best understood,
I, young in life, by seeming cruel fate
Was snatch’d from Afric’s fancy’d happy seat:
What pangs excruciating must molest,
What sorrows labour in my parent’s breast?
Steel’d was that soul and by no misery mov’d
That from a father seiz’d his babe belov’d:
Such, such my case.  And can I then but pray
Others may never feel tyrannic sway?

. . . .   (Read the rest HERE at Poetry.ORG.)

The Captive Dove 

byAnne Bronte 

Poor restless dove, I pity thee; 

And when I hear thy plaintive moan, 

I mourn for thy captivity, 

And in thy woes forget mine own. 

To see thee stand prepared to fly,

 And flap those useless wings of thine, 

And gaze into the distant sky, 

Would melt a harder heart than mine. 

In vain ­ in vain! Thou canst not rise: 

Thy prison roof confines thee there;

 Its slender wires delude thine eyes, 

And quench thy longings with despair.

. . . . 

(Read the rest HERE at Poetry Soup.)

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Post your Captivity poem on your site, and then link it here.



Share only original and new work written for this challenge. 



If you use a picture include its link.  


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(Our next Midweek Motif is "cherry blossoms.")

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