Highlight the Metaphors, Personfication, Visual images, Tactile images and Alliteration in the text

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by Michelle Williams

They caught it and thought they were heroes.
Smiling like idiots they posed with stubbies
And punched one another playfully
While bulbs popped in the dark.
The crowd applauded with gusto
Ogling the monster hanging from the winch,
Fantastically curious now the attraction could not be fatal.
Some prodded the black, jellied eyes
Marvelling how Death’s intensity seemed still to chill them …
Some stroked the leathery skin
And relished the slime of blood on their fingertips
As if touching the beast made them part of his capture …
Involved them somehow in the ignominious end, where
‘He got his due for tangling with us!’

The shark, head down and swaying slightly
Obliged with a vacant smile,
His teeth the picture of perfection,
Apart from the greyness of blood-drained gums
And three trophy-holes where specimens
Were removed for threading on chains.
Through my six-year-old eyes I saw not capture
But slaughter.
This shark was neither monster nor beast.
Even now, I could sense the sleekness of his form
And feel the thrill of his fin slicing the water.
This shark was a master, a prince of the sea
Betrayed by the trickery of a hook.
‘Doesn’t he look savage?’ declared the hero,
Colluding the crowd in his victory.
‘Isn’t he fierce? Look at those teeth!’

But I knew where savagery lay
And it encircled me.
I saw it in the leering smiles
Of those with blood on their hands,
I smelt it in the fetid odour of an innocent death
And I heard it in the puny pride of self-sung heroes.
All that night, my head still painful
From the brightness of flashlights,
My mind ran reels of horror that tortured my sleep.
They were there, I knew,
The beasts that stalked me,
The savages that would pitilessly pull me from safety
And rip my insides bare.
All night I saw them approaching
Sometimes in twos, sometimes in threes,
Walking towards me, stubbies in hand
Mouths hungry for blood
Grinning.