{"id":114860,"date":"2022-06-25T18:53:55","date_gmt":"2022-06-25T22:53:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/?p=114860"},"modified":"2022-06-25T18:53:55","modified_gmt":"2022-06-25T22:53:55","slug":"10th-hour-his-penance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/2022\/06\/10th-hour-his-penance\/","title":{"rendered":"10th Hour: His penance"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Out of the womb of the earth,<br \/>\nHe trickled out, once a glorious serpent; a terror to his enemies<br \/>\nHis skin, now sallow, limp, barely covering his existence<br \/>\nDragged himself painfully, a dull thudding on the ground<\/p>\n<p>A curious monkey up a tree, chanced upon him,<br \/>\n&#8220;O serpent, how did they beat you?<br \/>\nDid your poison run out?&#8221;<br \/>\nOr did your courage?&#8221;<br \/>\nAnd the monkey thumped his tail on the ground<br \/>\nGrinning from ear to ear, mocking him whose end was near<br \/>\nThe serpent, his yellow eyes filled with ire<br \/>\nHis large angry head went side to side,<br \/>\nHe sat up straight, his full length<br \/>\nAlmost reaching the quaking primate up the tree<br \/>\nHis fangs looked like the god of death; the monkey said his last prayers<br \/>\nFor that one moment, the serpent glistened; his once glorious self<br \/>\nThe next, he crashed to the ground, with a tired smile,<br \/>\n&#8221; Go, insensible monkey, I have chosen to nevermore kill<br \/>\nI have embraced ahimsa<br \/>\nThis is my penance for killing so many<br \/>\ninnocents<br \/>\nI will die soon, so I can really live&#8230;!&#8221;<br \/>\nThe monkey bowed down in shame,&#8221; Guruji,<br \/>\nI will follow in your footsteps&#8230;&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Out of the womb of the earth, He trickled out, once a glorious serpent; a terror to his enemies His skin, now sallow, limp, barely covering his existence Dragged himself painfully, a dull thudding on the ground A curious monkey up a tree, chanced upon&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4553,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-114860","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-marathon-poem"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114860","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4553"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=114860"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114860\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":114880,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114860\/revisions\/114880"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=114860"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=114860"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=114860"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}