La Bestia Negra

An ode to my blood-soaked jubliee

To the day
for thirty years
I have been riding
the black beast
to escape
starvation

---

Chasing in leaps and bounds
it carries me
over cliff
and abyss
Appropriately
I am clad all in black
a seducer 
a hooker 
a ghost
always affirming
what I negate

---

Shrouded in blackness
on the back 
of the midnight-colored mount
I cannot distinguish
what is still beast and
what is already me
the frenzy of our movement blurring 
what wafer-thin border
remains

---

By the force
of the beast
when I ride it
the white swan named 
truth
is trampled and
maimed and
finally torn to bits
by the paws
of the purity-hungry
predator

---

But casually
after such an exertion
the beast feeds me too
First it nestles
its six-horned skull
with catlike tenderness
against my cheek
Then it opens its mouth
full of fangs
and regurgitates 
what will constitute
my share 
of the spoils

---

I put my head
between the gaping jaws
of the beast
and find in its gullet
a morsel
rosy
and raw
and still studded 
with down

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