Monstrosity: A Study In Four Acts
act one.
unkindness carves sin into mankind:
a crime takes place, or some slight
against one god or another. unless
it is a full-moon-tuesday, a woman
is punished. they send her to the
darkest corner of their histories,
and leave her there.
a tested formula. she joins her sisters
in shadow-worlds, and they kiss her,
welcome her with tongues and teeth
and an inhuman tangle of limbs. they
cannibalize each other, speak new selves
into being, merging, no separation,
schrodinger's monster pit, until eventually,
act two.
when the history-shapers have run
out of red thread, they pull on hers
(whoever’s; all of them the same to
one another in the dark), retrieve
the monster from under the bed, find
her hungry and tenderness all used up
on the other victims of traditions.
her violence rends the ground, another
god-slight, another punishment falling
on her grotesque, exquisite head. she
becomes hungry for two (or more, if
mercy is short and spite tall on high),
wrecks the land more until the cave calls,
then into the womb of the earth goes she,
act three.
to bring another curse awake in darkness;
this one sans light, but not alone, you’d
think, but think once more. there is nothing
so lonely as a mother. isolation in sight of
companion, in arm’s reach of light, time
under pressure of earth. Monster Again.
and mother twice so, for twice the process.
ouroboros of unkindness rears to strike at
mankind who was not kind, first to one
another, and then to Mother, and now comes
the child, vengeance on the land that
cast out its blood. fields of repaid malice
are in turn made restitute by monster-
murder (not so, not so, for it was by
act four.
a hero done, and heroes do no wrong).
the trail of death enters the mother-
monster’s senses, the snake comes
round again, wheel spins, calamity is
the rage of a mourning mother. love
is not enough to make her human,
and that sin of man is another crime.