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Mantis: A Fable

Adam Torkelson

The harshest discipline will not alter
the base nature of an evil person.

Consider how the mantis was once a mortal man,
hypocritical prophet and fortune teller—
how he was not fulfilled with courting one woman
at a time, but consistently cast his covetous eyes
to the opposite sex then begged for forgiveness.

His lust enraged Jupiter so much that He
remodeled him into the bug we now know today,

the praying mantis.

Jupiter’s sentence, which the female executes,
will compel the mantis to furnish his head as a feast—
a most sacred form of            castration,

decapitation

during copulation;

but even with the clairvoyance of such a fate,
the mantis remains steadfast in his ways...

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