I sit alone in the darkness,<\/p>\n
tossed in without a prompt<\/p>\n
by those damned judges<\/p>\n
in their fine black robes.<\/p>\n
Fettered to the wall,<\/p>\n
all I hear is the swish<\/p>\n
as the pendulum drops.<\/p>\n
Panic sets in as time ticks away.<\/p>\n
Confusion clouds my brain.<\/p>\n
I am in the depths of despair.<\/p>\n
Crying, pleading, shrieking, flailing,<\/p>\n
until I realize by the stench that<\/p>\n
others have been here before me.<\/p>\n
I grope the littered floor for any<\/p>\n
scrap of paper and writing utensil.<\/p>\n
My hand stumbles onto a stub of a pencil<\/p>\n
and a crumpled piece of paper.<\/p>\n
The swishing sound of the pendulum<\/p>\n
increases,<\/p>\n
and I can feel the breeze it creates.<\/p>\n
I scribble faster trying to scrawl<\/p>\n
a couplet containing a coherent thought.<\/p>\n
As the blade brushes my shoulder,<\/p>\n
Poem #1 falls<\/p>\n
unfinished<\/p>\n
from my hand<\/p>\n
lost forever<\/p>\n
before I could even begin.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I sit alone in the darkness, tossed in without a prompt by those damned judges in their fine black robes. Fettered to the wall, all I hear is the swish as the pendulum drops. Panic sets in as time ticks away. Confusion clouds my brain….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1448,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-62387","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-miscellaneous"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62387","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\/1448"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=62387"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62387\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":62410,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62387\/revisions\/62410"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=62387"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=62387"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=62387"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}