Animal

Can this animal flesh really be me

As you, for reasons you scarce understand

Cuff my wrists and yanking fiercely my hands

Arrange me into a pose of slavery?

 

Can this thing be me, bashed like those

Who in Rome or Thrace were chained or whipped

Their faces slapped, backs bleeding red fingertips

Whipping pose, a beating in those ancient clothes?

 

Why do I wear this nakedness first

Stolen from lost cities of bronze and mud

Language of Gods or of golden blood

As if such ritual would slake my thirst?

 

Subhuman creep, I creep like a primordial bug

Dug mistaken from a deathly place

Half-human insect, half-person face

Lugging my bug shell from place to place.

 

O look not on me!  I am hideous, formed of old,

Old time.  I twist, I shake, I make myself and I

Die endlessly across the ages, just to die

Born to scream, die my death, my death to behold!

 

You chatter away, as I saw Rome sacked

I am that slave still creeping away from me

Creeping into chains though utterly free

Chained again for our contemptible pact!

 

Not so easy, as cowering before you, and real

You see me broken, your spit on my face

You see it, you do! You witness me in this place,

This cloak of nakedness you so fondly feel.

 

So yes, I am that animal, that flesh is me!

You try to help, but the old signs burn me,

Cruel cuffs and cigarette burns returning

This theatre to reality.

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