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.